New Bookmarks
Year 2000 Quarter 3:  July 1-September 30 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the July 1-September 20, 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

September 26, 2000     September 20, 2000     September 12, 2000     September 5, 2000   

August 29, 2000           August 22, 2000           August 9, 2000

July 26, 2000               July 19, 2000                July 12, 2000                July 5, 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/.

September 26, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

Budget --- an accounting system for going broke more methodically.

Don't use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

Every morning is the dawn of a new error (that's for sure if you are writing FAS 133 cases)

Technology for calm and quiet --- a phoneless cord.

I can see clearly since my brain was removed.

I used up all my sick days, so now I'm calling in dead.

Mental floss prevents moral decay.

There cannot be any crisis today ---  my schedule is full.

A conclusion is simply a place where you got tired of thinking.

I don't have a solution, but I admire the problem.

It's not hard to meet expenses, because they're everywhere.

The wise man knows how little he knows;
It is a foolish person who imagines he knows everything.

A Tribute to Jean Heck and "his" Academy of Business Education --- http://www.abe.villanova.edu/ 

Dr. Heck is one of the most amazing workers that I've ever encountered.  In addition to teaching, research, and service responsibilities of a full-time professor of finance at Villanova University, he is the co-author responsible for most revisions of a finance textbook and editor of two journals.  In addition, he manages to devote a minimum of four hours a day updating literature databases, most notably a database on economics literature.  

About a year ago, Jean single-handedly formed a new multi-discipline academic association called The Academy of Business Education.  There must have been a need for such an association, because within a matter of months there were over 500 dues-paying members of the Academy.  The Academy now has a new journal (The Journal of the Academy of Business Education) and held the first ABE annual meeting in Bermuda last week.  We were going to meet at Bermuda College, but the number of pre-registered participants exceeded the capacity of Bermuda College for such an event.  Jean managed to shift us to the Southampton Princess Hotel.  Over 200 papers were submitted for the first meeting.  During the first year, Jean's success in incorporating the ABE, serving as the first editor of the JABE, refereeing the journal submissions, refereeing the annual meeting submissions, and tending to virtually all details of the Academy and its first annual meeting is mind boggling.  Jean not only did all this, he did it very well with virtually no help (my title of ABE Vice President in Accounting has been a ceremonial title in that it did not entail any work other than attending the first Board meeting last week).

Next year, Jean has already lined up our second annual meeting site (around the third week in September) at a ski lodge near Jackson Hole in the Grand Teton Mountains.  Since the lodge only has 200 rooms available, participants should think about getting reservations in early.  Managers of the lodge warned us that we will be there during the mating season of the moose (mooses?). I'm not sure what this means, but apparently the lodge will be surrounded by large four-legged beasts making lots of testosterone-inspired calls of the wild.

I think the program for the first ABE meeting was excellent.  In the sessions that I managed to attend, all the presentations were very informative.  It was only possible to attend some of the many sessions since I could not be two places at the same time.  A few of the programs I chose to attend are mentioned below:

• Barry Rice (our AECM leader and Professor of Accounting at Loyola College) did his usual magnificent job giving us an overview of his unique combination of "hybrid" asynchronous and synchronous course delivery.  
• John Dunkelberg (Wake Forest University) discussed the development of oral communications skills in a case environment using a multi-group sequencing approach.
• Robert Fletcher and  Brenda Moscove (California State University at Bakersfield) teach business both on campus and on public-access television.  They compared student performance and motivations under both delivery systems.  One thing I chuckled at is the motivating power of having project presentations being televised for viewing by the general public, including parents in many instances.
• John Parnell (Head of the Department of Marketing & Management at Texas A&M) opened my eyes to the significant thrust his institution is making in distance education in Mexico as well as parts of Texas.  After two semesters, this program looks like a rising star.
• Don Simon (Director of the MBA Program at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh) revealed how regional state universities in Wisconsin (along with the flagship in Madison) are jointly developing core programs for distance education across the entire state.  Don revealed how course evaluations were higher in some instances in the distance education courses than in their onsite counterparts.  He also revealed that among all the business courses compared, the most dramatic improvement was in managerial accounting.
• David Stout (Chair of the Department of Accountancy at Villanova) revealed a research project at three widely dispersed universities on peer evaluations by students in business and accounting classes.
• Skip Smith (Professor of Management at Southeast Missouri State) revealed how student participation in evaluating course activities part way through the semester in a team-taught business strategy course dramatically doubled the student evaluations of the entire course.
• Nancy Gillette (Robert Morris College) and Denise Letterman (Carnegie-Mellon) reported on research comparing upper-division versus lower-division student expectations and a unique "behavioral contract."
• David Aviel (California State University) reviewed many years of using the McGraw-Hill/Irwin Business Simulation Game. 

You can view the complete program with abstracts at http://www.abe.villanova.edu/prog2000.html 
The proceedings will be available online whenever our working dynamo, Jean Heck, gets all that work done.

WOW Professor of the Week

At the first annual meeting of the new Academy of Business Education last week, I listened to a number of outstanding presentations. One in particular that I would like to mention to you was presented by the Head of the Department of Marketing & Management at Texas A&M University. His name is John Parnell. For two semesters, John has been delivering an online business strategy course for students at Monterrey Tech (ITESM). This may evolve into an entire Texas A&M degree program at both Monterrey and across Mexico in general.

One link of possible interest is http://business.tamu.edu/cibs/index.html 

It all started, as Dr. Gideon Burton puts it, "innocently enough." A professor and scholar of rhetoric at Brigham Young University, Burton originally turned to Web pages and the hyperlinking of data as a way to make notes to himself, to organize the vast terminology of historical rhetoric from antiquity to the Renaissance. Three years later, Burton has added another dimension to his role of scholar-professor --- he is now Web master of a widely known and award-winning discipline portal on rhetoric: Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric.

The development of Burton's portal was also, in part, an outgrowth of his effort to improve his teaching, making an extremely complex subject easier for his students to grasp. Like educators everywhere, he had printed handouts of definitions and explanations, but still the terminology was confusing and overwhelming to his students. This struggle with the terminology seemed to be obscuring the primary functions of the larger field of rhetoric-not being able to see the forest for the trees. This would eventually become a metaphor for the Silva portal, where the "forest," "trees," and "flowers" of rhetoric inhabit separate frames on the same screen.

Burton himself had appreciated the simple charts of "rhetoric in a nutshell" provided by Edward Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, and used this print model as a starting point for his Web site. He discovered that the Web environment could accommodate both the simplicity of Corbett's visual as well as the details of rhetorical terminology. "Through hyperlinks," Burton explains, "a reader could travel readily back and forth between the overview (forest), and the details (trees)."

Burton discovered that the multi-frame ability of the Web was actually superior to print media for organizing material simply. Web page organizational capabilities, he says, "accommodate well an esoteric subject and make it more accessible" to multiple audiences. Thus, when colleagues at academic conferences asked for more scholarly details and sources, Burton integrated a scholarly apparatus to accompany the more general information. While Silva is still simply organized, each frame addresses a different set of learning needs, a different audience. The frame on the left, trees, includes a limited set of choices and encourages the reader to "stay here so you won't be overwhelmed." The frame on the right includes a more daunting list of rhetorical terms; when a reader clicks on one entry, the term's home page comes into the center frame and includes comparative Greek, Latin, and English terms; etymologies; and the Greek in its original alphabet. At the bottom of every page appear citations to the primary texts where the particular term is defined or discussed.

"Though Web-based scholarship remains an oxymoron for many," Burton confides, this collegial interest in Silva resulted in his taking his Web site "more seriously as a scholarly endeavor precisely because others began to do so." Today, he comments, "my academic Web site has complemented and supplemented the professional meetings I regularly attend." For instance, a professor of Russian at the University of Tartu in Estonia employs Silva in teaching Russian stylistics and has, with Burton's permission, translated the site into Russian at a mirror site.

Rewarding to Burton is evidence that his work has had an impact on students. "That I succeeded in reaching students is apparent not only in my own teaching," he says, "but in the fact that secondary and elementary schools have recommended Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric as a resource. In September of 1997 the site received the Wise Owl Web award 'in recognition of exemplary design and educational excellence.'" Are Burton's students impressed by his Web expertise? He pauses to consider. "I know students are often more computer-knowledgeable than their teachers these days," he says. "Does the site make them think I'm hip? I hope so."

For more information on the Forest of Rhetoric, go to http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm 

Time for another dose of fantastic Flash action. Take a look at Alanski.com and Mighty Assemblyhttp://www.alanski.com 
http://www.mightyassembly.com  

The Complete History of the Discovery of Cinematography --- http://www.precinemahistory.net/ 

Forbes 400 Richest Americans (darn, I was overlooked again this year) http://www.forbes.com/tool/toolbox/rich400/ 

Formosa: Nineteenth Century Images (history, photography) --- http://web.reed.edu/academic/departments/history/formosa/ 

For Steve Zeff (Rice University) and others into both accounting/economic history and Holland --- Dutch National Accounts: 1800-1913 --- http://nationalaccounts.niwi.knaw.nl/ 

The Kodak Girl Collection (history, photography) --- http://www.kodakgirl.com/ 

The Living Room Candidate  (history, politics, television) http://www.ammi.org/livingroomcandidate/ 

Kodak: Olympics 2000: Olympic History --- http://www.journale.com/kodak/olympics/olympichistory/index_body1.shtml 

Handspeak: A Sign Language Dictionary --- http://www.handspeak.com/ 

Forwarded by a colleague

Subject: Riding dead horses

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

In business, however, it seems that we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Saying things like "This is the way we have always ridden this horse."

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Increasing the standards for riding dead horses.

7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.

8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.

9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment over time.

10. Change the requirements to declare that "This horse is not dead."

11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Declare that "No horse is too dead to beat."

14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

15. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.

16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.

18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.

19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.

20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.

21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Forwarded by David Stephens [StephensD@CBS.CURTIN.EDU.AU] 

"Welcome to the working world"

The following are designed as advice for graduating students. Origin unknown.

On SUCCESS - Success comes in CANS not CANNOTS.

PROGRESS - Be prepared to go anywhere as long as it's forward.

GOAL SETTING - Not reaching your goal isn't as dangerous as not having one.

FAILURE - Failure isn't falling down, it's staying there.

FOUL-UPS - Making mistakes isn't stupid* ignoring them is.

CRITICISM - If it had real power, the skunk would be extinct by now.

AVOIDING CRITICISM - It's easy* say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

RECOGNITION - The best way to get credit is to try giving it to others.

DON'T GIVE UP - When you're being kicked from behind it means you're in front.

BEING CRITICAL - You can't sink the other person's end of the boat and keep your end afloat.

SELF ESTEEM - No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

SMART is when you believe only half of what you hear.

BRILLIANT is when you know which half to believe.

ETHICS - Honesty is not only the best policy; it's rare enough to make you conspicuous.

WORK ETHIC - The best form of industrial action is a full day's work.

HARD WORK - If you find the going is easy, you could be going downhill.

EXERCISE - The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their peers, side-stepping responsibility and pushing their luck.

LEARNING - Learn from the mistakes of others: you won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

CHANGE is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.

MORE LEARNING - Asking a question may make you appear a fool for two minutes: not asking may make you a real fool forever. Put another way: worse than not knowing is being too smart to ask.

LEARNING THE HARD WAY - Reading the fine print may give you an education, not reading it will give you experience.

EXPERIENCE is a wonderful thing: it enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again, but remember* EXPERIENCE is also a hard teacher: she gives you the test first and the lesson afterwards.

DIPLOMACY - Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. Conversely, there are times when the message has to be blunt so that you will see the point.

THE UNKNOWN - Never fear shadows. They simply mean there is a light somewhere nearby.

RESISTING CHANGE is like holding your breath - if you succeed, you die.

PROCRASTINATION is the thief of time. A procrastinator is one who puts off until tomorrow what he has already put off until today.

MEETINGS - When someone answers "That's a good question", you can be sure it's a lot better than the answer you're about to get.

THE BOSS - The person who know how will always have a job,,, the person who knows why will be the boss.

SUCKING UP - When two people in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

MONEY - You don't get paid for what you do, you get paid for what you get done.

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 September 26, 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  

September 20, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
As quoted in the bottom of email messages from Mark S. Eckman, AT&T, Financial Director

"I can only please one person a day. This may not be your day. Tomorrow doesn't look real good either."
Author unknown.

Forwarded by Debbie Bowling --- She spies on The Word Spy at http://www.logophilia.com/WordSpy/ 

cookie jar accounting (noun)

The corporate accounting practice of taking a reserve to reduce profits in good years and then using that reserve to increase profits in bad years.

"The SEC charged that Grace employed a 'cookie jar' accounting strategy that stashed as much as $20 million of excess profits at a time the company believed it would not be rewarded for beating financial expectations. The idea, according to the SEC, was to declare the profit at some later date when operations were not running so well in a process known as financial 'smoothing.'" --Steve Bailey and Steven Syre, "SEC files suit against W.R. Grace," The Boston Globe, December 23, 1998

See Also: fraud-u-Net, open-the-kimono

With that, Bob Jensen just had to check on "open-the-kimono"

To open a company's accounting books for inspection; to expose something previously hidden.

"Public companies also have much stricter rules of disclosure to potential investors. The company founder who used to keep his yearly salary a tight secret must reveal all when he goes public. 'You have to be prepared to open the kimono,' Meyers said." —George Hostetter, "Going public: Rewarding, dangerous," The Fresno Bee

Even though I illustrate both zero percent and non-zero percent discounting in my futures contract accounting cases, I added the above update warning to these cases.  My futures cases include the following:

• Case B7 in 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/  (Please download a fresh copy of this file)
  
  
• MarginWHEW Bank Case (interest rate profit hedging with 30 Eurodollar futures contracts)
  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/285case.htm
  The Excel spreadsheet is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/xls/285wp/285wp.xls 
  (I still need to fix up the hedged-item discounting in this long case.)
  
  
• Margin OOPS Bank Case (interest rate profit hedging with 75 Eurodollar futures contracts)
  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/285case.htm
  You can access the MarginOOPS Bank Case with buttons at the bottom of the screen.
  The Excel spreadsheet is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/xls/286wp/286wp.xls 
  )I still need to fix up the hedged-item discounting in this long case.)

My Request From Richard Campbell and Others in the World

I have been invited by University XXXXX to help them map out a strategy for an expanded distance education program. A couple of years ago, this university opted for WebCT. Faculty are not particularly happy with off-campus course delivery using WebCT. I have a limited amount of knowledge about software alternatives, but I would like some update information from users of software in present distance education courses. For openers, readers can check my document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

I would also like to thank you for the lead on http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/evalapps.html 
I was wondering which of the systems analyzed in the above comparative analysis you recommend and which software you would avoid. Since you are so experienced in software, I respect your opinions on such matters.

I am mainly wondering what software you and others would recommend that universities use for online delivery of both synchronous and asynchronous courses. Assume for the moment that software cost is not an issue. Think more in terms of features. For example, some features that instructors like include:

Email messaging that shows the message being typed rather than having to wait until it is completely typed and sent (this is a great feature in chat rooms.)

• Email messages that window so that students can see the lesson content screen while the email discusses parts of that content.
• Audio software that allows students hear hear the lesson content screen being explained in a real human voice or a simulated human voice. I have some great CDs and networked online computer tutorials that provide audio explaining how do such things as write macros for MS Access, but I think that in such instances the software used is proprietary. Examples that I like for the joining of audio and content can be found at http://www.learn2.com/ 
  Do you have any recommendations for software packages that are especially good at this type of audio/content joining?
• Video software for the web (especially video for low bandwidth users).
• Audio reading of database knowledge such as cleverly employed at http://www.biztalk.com/ 
• Complete course management that you get in such systems as Blackboard.

Is there any magical solution in a single package or will universities still have to patch together software from different vendors?

Do you have any recommendations about outsourcing the delivery with pros such as eCollege and CyberClass?

I will be in Bermuda the rest of the week (tough life), so if I do not respond quickly it is because I am out of the office. Next week, however, I would like to thread your response and the responses of others on this important issue.

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 

The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2000, p. B10
Net2Phone is switching strategies after concluding that long-distance calling is as cutthroat on the Internet as it is in the traditional off-line world.  ---
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB969058211191117045.djm&template=pasted-2000-09-18.tmpl 

Net2Phone made a splash three years ago by charging only pennies for long-distance phone calls made over the Internet. Today, it claims a 40% share of the small but growing market for Internet telephony, enough of a presence to have attracted a $1.4 billion, one-third stake from AT&T in March.

But the Internet telephony market is a crowded and unprofitable one, with 300 companies using price cuts to win customers and driving toll rates to as low as two cents a minute for domestic Internet calls. Net2Phone is expected to report a loss of $41.5 million for the fiscal year that ended July 31, on sales of $70 million.

While Internet toll charges now account for 95% of the company's business, Net2Phone executives hope to shrink that percentage to 50% within two years.

They also hope that 20% and 30% of their revenue by then will come from their new business line: telephone network management software for major carriers, like AT&T, which are moving more of their calling to the Internet. The software allows carriers to handle such common network management tasks as call routing and fraud detection.

A new-business unit, to be called Adir Technologies, will be formed with Cisco, and will be majority-owned by Net2Phone. It will sell the company's software along with Cisco's hardware.

Analysts said the move by Net2Phone was inevitable, considering that its earlier strategy, while attention-getting, wasn't sustainable.

"Every carrier in the world is reducing its rates," said Mark Winther, vice president of telecommunications services at International Data Corp., a Framingham, Mass., market-research firm.

Mr. Winther also warned that the move is a risky one. "It's a completely new business for them and there are a lot of companies offering this type of network management solution," he said.

The homepage for Net2Phone is at http://www.net2phone.com/ 

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

And a major competitor to Net2Phone is DialPad.  The following news was sent to me by DialPad 

Here are some of the new features to enhance your Dialpad experience! 
dialpadStore - Check out the latest e-products in our new store! http://click.dialpad.com/dp123506651.201.0.105 
Firewall Reflector - Use Dialpad at work or at home! http://click.dialpad.com/dp123506651.201.0.106 
PC-to-PC calling - Call your friends whenever they are on-line! http://click.dialpad.com/dp123506651.201.0.107 
Skins - Change the look and feel of your Dialpad applet! 
http://click.dialpad.com/dp123506651.201.0.108 
Dialpad Agent - Launch Dialpad from your desktop! 
http://click.dialpad.com/dp123506651.201.0.109

WOW Website of the Week (as quoted from Yahoo's picks of the week)

A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict

http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/ 

India 1930, Denmark 1940, Nashville 1960, Poland 1980, Chile 1983, and South Africa 1984 -- these were rare historical moments when people succeeded in using nonviolent means to achieve social and political change. This PBS companion to the TV series looks at the resistance movements of the 20th century, at leadership and tactics, and the essential philosophy of nonviolent conflict. Consider this arsenal of 198 methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion, a fascinating list that includes everything from rude gestures to street theatre, from haunting and taunting to hunger strikes, as well as many varieties of sit-in, teach-in, stay-in, walkout, and slowdown.

Important Download Noted by Neil Hannon at http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

Tom Peter's (Slides) Rant: Talent!

Tom Peters Web site is a wealth of management information including several recent slide presentations given by Tom in recent seminars. His staff has compiled a special presentation of 74 slides focused on talent. Here is what the Web page has to say about Tom's slides:

We're thinking about talent because Tom has extracted 74 slides from his master presentation to create a "Talent Presentation." The first slide is a quote from Christopher Meyer's and Stan Davis' new book, FutureWealth. "When land was the scarce resource, nations battled over it. The same is happening now for talented people." That's the good news. If you're talented, you're in demand. The problem with the good news is that there's always bad news. And the bad news is that talent has got a short shelf life. David Maister, author of a number of books on professional service firms, writes in True Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career: "If all you work on is what you already know how to do, you'll eventually be overtaken by someone younger." Ouch. If you're not doing something new today, you're in trouble. Need a kick start? Start here with Tom's Talent Slides.

http://www.tompeters.com/slides/ppt/talentwar.ppt 

New from Australia

Kerry politely asked me ahead of time if I would include some information about Australian authors.  I replied that I would be glad to do so for any vendor as long as it was in good taste.  The following website is most definitely in good taste.

Dear Bob, 
Many thanks for your response.

I trust that the following will be acceptable, and thank you for your kind consideration. 
Sincerely,
Kerry

Australian publishing site with links for new and emerging authors. http://www.sidharta.com.au 

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Hello Mr. Jensen,

I think you are someone who enjoys seeing all the interesting sites on the WWW - I know I am. The only reason I am sending this to you is because the "Electronic Resources Review" included in this weeks free access is a review of websites around the world. I don't have the means to search, but I would be surprised if your website wasn't included (that is how impressed I am with what you are doing).

http://www.mcb.co.uk/jotw/ 

Scott Bonacker, 
CPA McCullough, 
Officer & Company, 
LLC Springfield, Missouri www.moccpa.com 

I (Bob Jensen) could not find any matches for "Bob Jensen."  I guess I'm a nobody!

Scott also added the following link:

Thank you! That was extremely useful. Are you a fan of old time country/western music?

I hope you will find the following link useful as well: http://www.balducci.com/summer.asp 

(I hear the lobster is good)

Scott 

Internet Statistics --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Statistics_and_Demographics/ 

You can consult a techie or become a techie consultant at Arzoo.com --- http://www.arzoo.com/ 

If you become a techie for Arzoo.com, your first advice should be on how to speed up the loading of their home page (presently it takes forever and a day).

Welcome to Arzoo Beta! Please explore our site and preview our service:

1. ASK QUESTIONS Tap the knowledge of tech professionals and expert consultants from around the globe.

  2. ANSWER QUESTIONS Monetize your knowledge! From optical networking to IT support, your expertise is in demand.

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HP's buyout of PwC would be no easy deal

The two companies are still likely weeks away from completing a deal. But it's a move fraught with perils that could test the strength of HP's recent reorg. --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0009153/2628470/ 

WOW News of the Week (From Syllabus News, September 19, 2000)

Wireless Connection at UC Davis

Beginning this fall, students at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management will be able to wirelessly connect to the school's network and the Internet at speeds up to 11 megabits per second (Mbps) by plugging PRISM-based wireless LAN cards into their notebook computers. The school is currently recommending Dell, Cisco, and 3Com WLAN cards for student purchase. These cards fit into student laptops and provide a high-speed wireless link to the campus server, allowing students to collaborate and work in areas on campus that are not wired for the Internet. For more information visit http://www.intersil.com/ 

Also note the following:

Nokia and Midwest  Establish Model Wireless Campus at MSU

Nokia and Midwest Wireless will collaborate to create a model wireless 
campus at Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU). MSU will act 
as a wireless learning environment and a research and testing ground by 
enabling students to perform their daily work using mobile handsets and 
services. Faculty and students will be using mobile-messaging-capable 
Nokia 5100 series phones and 200 Internet-ready Nokia 7160 
(tri-mode AMPS/ TDMA 800/TDMA 1900) phones. Nokia also will 
contribute a Wireless Application Protocol or WAP, server and WAP 
application developer toolkit. To provide maximum coverage on this 
model campus, Minnesota-based Midwest Wireless has constructed a 
cell site tower on the university grounds. 

This program is the latest in a series of MSU wireless initiatives on 
campus over the past several years, including campus-wide laptop wire-
less capabilities, incorporation of wireless technology in the College of 
Business, remote facility wireless support, and an upcoming pilot with 
Midwest Wireless for a Local Multi Point Distribution System (LMDS), 
an emerging wireless broadband technology that may serve as a viable 
alternative to traditional fiber-based broadband solutions.

Windows ME from Microsoft purportedly does not add a lot vis-a-vis existing Windows systems.  However, one feature that may interest some of you is the new Microsoft utility for recording audio that is built into the system.  Recall that awful Sound Recorder that limited your recording to 60 seconds and forced you to install third-party software.  That is no longer the case in Windows ME.  Dell Computer Systems has announced that it is shipping Dimension desktop and Inspiron notebook systems running Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me).  See http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/default.htm 

From Syllabus News on September 12, 2000

Carnegie Mellon to Offer Online Classes in India

Carnegie Mellon University will soon offer computer-programming courses in India via the Internet. Software-development courses will be available through a partnership between Carnegie Technology Education and the Indian-based company Sterling Infotech Ltd. A subsidiary of Sterling, DishnetDSL will provide access to students via 90 computer centers across India. In six months, the company plans to add 100 more centers, with 20 to 120 computers in each location. The high Internet speed at the centers will mean that Indian students need not own computers to participate in the pro- gram. The online skill-certification program will include 10 courses identical to those Carnegie Technology Education offers to American students. Officials hope to enroll 15,000 people initially, with plans to train 100,000 students simultaneously within two years.

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

In response to significant protests from Canadian graduate students, Contentville officials recently announced that they would halt the selling of all Canadian theses until the national library and the graduate schools can come to some agreement that allows authors a chance to refuse to have their theses sold through the site. American authors already have the ability to limit the sale of their works by UMI. 

Bob Jensen's discussion of Contentville can be found (by scrolling down a bit from August 22, 2000) at
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q3.htm#082200 

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

Animated E-Mail

Learn2.com, a learning service provider, recently introduced a line of products in animated audio e-mail and animated character technology.Created with Learn2.com's proprietary and patented tech- nologies, these products will be marketed through the Company's Technology Division to other organizations for applications not competitive with Learn2.com's core online learning business. Learn2Mail, the Company's animated e-mail product, allows users to record and send computer-generated, animated, audio e-mail, lip-synched with and animated by the inflections of the user's voice. Learn2Mail also has text to speech capabilities, which will allow users without microphones to send an audio Learn2Mail. To use Learn2Mail, visit www.learn2mail.com.

And to think that Bob Jensen did not even know he was in Babylon!

Congratulations and welcome to the exciting world of Babylon glossary owners!

Your glossary "Jensen's Technology Glossary", has been successfully uploaded to our web-site, and can be found under the  following categories: 1. Computer & Internet

You are welcome to update your glossary at any time using the Babylon Builder.

Check out users suggestions for your glossaries by logging  into the "Glossary Owner's Area" located on our home page.  More features and options will be available soon from this area, so stay tuned...

For further assistance and tips in glossary building, use the help topics option from the Builder. Contact us at helpdesk@babylon.com  for questions and comments about our product.

Thank you & Regards,

Babylon Team, www.babylon.com  Information @ a click 

P.S. 1875 1st phone created 1903 1st airplane built 1926 1st television made 2000 and beyond your glossary and all the information you need at Babylon.com

Ed-Tech Looks for Answers --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38509,00.html 
Secretary of Education Richard Riley hosts a conference on educational technology this week. Researchers and educators 
want to figure out what works in educational technology, and the best way to assess it.

Educators will be grappling with questions such as: What real value does technology bring to schools, and why does technology work in some schools and not in others?

"We think Congress and legislators and local school boards are asking us, 'Is (technology) really making a difference?' And we need to be measuring this in some way," Reed said.

One hot topic is the use of assessment tests as a means of evaluating technology. They may or may not be the best measurement of success . . .

Microsoft launches Windows Me
The new OS for home users isn't considered a must-have upgrade, but it adds new programs, such as a music player that can record and play songs --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0009143/2627881/ 

From the Financial Executives Institute (Newsletter) dated September 17, 2000 at C:\TEMP\feiexpress40.htm 
Only three excerpts are quoted below:

Our Committee on Corporate Reporting filed a response to the SEC's proposed auditor independence regulations. Our response is consistent with previous FEI positions, in that we believe that shareholders and the audit process are best served if a company can use its external auditor for other services like systems design, consulting and internal auditing services. Buying the best possible service at the cheapest cost benefits a far greater number of shareholders than the number of shareholders hurt by the rare occurrence of comprised independence. My own read of the situation is that the best practice among our companies is for the audit committee to review the assignment of non-audit work to the external auditors and approve it only if they are comfortable with the checks and balances in place. Some audit committees decide they want the additional check of a different firm doing this work. Some are comfortable with the controls in place. Either way, the audit committee is the place to make this decision, not the SEC.

FASB Update
Regarding the business combination project in which the elimination of pooling is proposed, the Board is actively assessing the feasibility of leaving goodwill on the balance sheet subject to an annual impairment test. Companies may also have the option of amortizing it if they deem it appropriate. It is still early and it's a difficult issue, but this is an important development and desirable outcome to many. Stay tuned.

The consolidations project plods ahead with no similar breath of fresh thinking. Much to FEI's chagrin and after concerted efforts to communicate and get the Board to listen to reason, they appear to be forging ahead with the "control" framework and the presumptive situations that require consolidation. At this point, I encourage our members to really study the proposal, because it is going to change the entities you consolidate, and deals you're doing today need to be designed to take the new proposed rules into consideration. I think you'll find this to be another FAS 133 surprise when you assess the answers

The New Economy and Financial Reporting
At the New York University Stern School, Professor Baruch Lev is performing a survey of financial officers regarding their views of the adequacy of the current financial reporting model. Both he and I would greatly appreciate it if you could jot your thoughts on this important issue and fax/email it back me at plivingston@fei.org or 973-898-9456. Baruch and one of his Ph.D. students are collaborating with FEI's Research Foundation on a project entitled "Quantitative Measures of the Quality of Financial Reporting." We hope to assess financial reporting in an objective, quantitative manner to provide some overall context for the future development of policy in the area. Baruch and I go way back to my days as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. His class in Financial Statement Analysis was standing room only on most days. Download the 1-page questionnaire at: http://www.fei.org/download/private/Baruch_Lev_Q.doc

Several people have asked me how I make (encode) MP3 audio files from WAV files. I use a free encoder called Blade that was first recommended to me by Scott Bonacker.

Blade is relatively easy to use, but there is a trick to it. You can read about it, about how to download it, and about how to make it work at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#MP3  or at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm#Resources 

It seems to me that what Dell is doing for the computer world, online education programs will soon be doing for training and education.  

Eric Lundquist thinks that Michael Dell's objective to make computer purchases easier is a lesson all dot-commers should take to heart. --- http://www.eweek.com/b/pcwt0009136/2625950/ 

Toshiba to launch Bluetooth card
Is Bluetooth finally moving forward? Toshiba's Type 2 PCMCIA card with radio will cost under $200.
http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0009145/2627575/ 

Hi Norimasa

Yes, FAS 133 makes a huge distinction between a hedge and speculative position. This is particularly true with embedded derivatives.

And yes, the power industry is very upset. If FAS 133 wasn't bad enough, the power industry views the FAS 138 amendments as a disaster. You can read more about the power industry at the bottom of the document at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/138intro.htm 

In that document search for the message from Sanford Menashe, Project Manager, FAS 133, Bonneville Power Administration. The problem is the changed treatment of bookouts. Brownouts used to be the problem in the power industry. Now they're bookouts.

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: REPC28 [mailto:repc28@jepic.or.jp]  Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 7:42 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu 
Subject: Inquiry

I read the homepage of http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ . Thank you for your cultivated and useful information.

Is it possible for me to ask questions regarding SFAS 133?

1. I could hear that Statement 133 (the amendment) would require entities to make a strict delineation between a hedge and a speculative posision. Is it true?

2. What effects will the amended SFAS 133 give to the electric power companies in U.S.?

Best regards,

Norimasa Tamamura Researcher Research Department Japan Electric Power Information Center, Inc. 4-15-33, Shibaura, Minato-Ku 108-0023, Tokyo, Japan TEL: +81-3-4511-3310 FAX: +81-3-4511-3399 E-mail: repc28@jepic.or.jp 

To think high school students are studying FAS 133!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Hamzah Richie [mailto:mydebill@email.com]  
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2000 2:43 AM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject: help for research

dear sir, I'm Richie, a last semester undergraduate student in Accounting Program, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia. Rightnow I am in the middle of finishing my final assignment as a requirement for finishing my study at this university. My topic is about the implementation of accounting for commodity future contract under SFAS 133. Prior to my email, I have visit many of your site regarding the implementation of derivatives, but up to now, I'm still confused by the literatures. I consider that there's still lack of explanation regarding commodity future contract. Therefore, I have several problem that i would like to ask to you, Sir: The problems are as the following: - In the FAS133, every derivatives should be recognized as either assets or liability. According to the above statement, what should the commodity future contract be recognized? Is it as an assets or liability

************************************************************************************ 
Bob Jensen's Answer 
That all depends upon whether its value is positive or negative and how you are doing the accounting for the Futures Margin Account. If you are combining the Futures Account into the Futures Margin Account, then it will always be an asset, because the Futures Margin Account can never fall below the minimum balance. If the futures contract value falls below the margin requirement, you must add cash to bring that account up to a minimum. Technically, you have a liability but since you feed in cash instantly, the liability does not stay on the books.

You can read more about this in my MarginOOPS Case at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/285case.htm 

A shorter example can be found in Case B7 in my 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

This is one of the main differences between forward contracting and futures contracting. Another difference lies in the accounting. In the forward contracting case, you should discount the derivative forward and spot prices. This is not the case in futures contracting since the contracts are settled daily for cash. ************************************************************************************

- If the commodity future contract should be recognized as an asset, in what category the contract shall be included?

************************************************************************************  
Bob Jensen's Answer 
Since the futures contracts are settled daily, I would include the Futures Margin Account in current assets.

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

- To the extent of the three categories of hedge activities (cash flow hedges, fair value hedges, and foreign currency hedges),   Does the commodity future contract can be implemented as foreign currency hedges ?

************************************************************************************ 
Bob Jensen's Answer 
It all depends upon what your are hedging. If you have a firm commitment for 100 million yen, then there is no basis for hedging cash flow. However, you can hedge against the fluctuation of the yen (FX risk) against some other currency such as the U.S. dollar. If you have a forecasted transaction that has both cash flow risk and FX risk, then my understanding is that you must have two separate hedges for hedge accounting under FAS 133/138 (only in the case of joint interest rate risk and FX risk can one hedge suffice under the FAS 138 amendments).

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

- And how about cash flow hedges, Does commodity future contract required for the implementation of cash flow hedges.

************************************************************************************ 
Bob Jensen's Answer 
FAS 133 requires that all derivatives (including futures contracts and forward contracts) be booked and maintained at fair value. If the company invests in futures contracts on rice as a speculation, then there is no hedge and no hedge accounting (i.e., the investment is a speculation on the price of rice). If the company invests in futures contracts on rice as a hedge against a forecasted purchase or sale of 1,000 tons of rice then hedge accounting might be allowed. In any case, the futures contracts must be accounted for at fair value. In the case of a cash flow hedge, part change in value can be offset into OCI. In the case of a fair value hedge, part of the change in value can be booked to the hedged item itself (e.g., rice inventory). ************************************************************************************

I really grateful for your help, in the fact that I have to finish my final assignment around October. Your help are very important thing to me. Thank you very much.

Richie (mydebill@email.com) 

From cpanet on September 15, 2000

Search the business Internet at Business.com--a comprehensive resource for all your Accounting & Auditing information needs. Find the latest information on The Big 5 or research how the Internet is revolutionizing the accounting industry. Business.com provides company profiles, industry resources, news, statistics and more. Visit: http://www.cpanet.com/up/09business.asp  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Every so often you come across a site or article that makes you stop and take notice...

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Council on Foundations - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0025 
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Guide Star - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0027 
Nat'l Charitable Statsistics - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0028 
Philanthropy Roundtable - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0029

Data & Statistics ------------------------------ 
NASD Market Data - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0001 
Int'l Banking Statistics - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0002 
Exec Compensation Database - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0003 
Economic Data & Statistics - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0004

Client Advisory - Biotechnology ------------------------------ 
Biospace.com - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0005 
Biotech Sage Report - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0006 
Biotech Watch - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0007 4
biotech - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0008 

Internet Research ------------------------------ 
Analysis of the B2B Market - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0009 
Managing Knowledge Flows - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0010 
It's a Woman's World Wide Web - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0011 
Media Metrix Special Reports - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0012 
Digital Commerce Center @ USC - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0013 
Nua Internet Surveys - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0014 

How-To Sites ------------------------------ 
Free Skills - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0015 
Find Tutorials - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0016  
eHow - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0017  
Learn2.com  - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0018 

For Fun ------------------------------ 
Read Unleashing the Idea Virus - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0019  
Urban Legends - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0020 
Internet Movie Databse (IMBd) - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0021  
Timelines of History - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0022  
WSJ Online Investing - http://www.cpanet.com/up/s0009.asp?ID=0023 

ebook and pbook
Debbie Bowling sent the following that she got out of Word Spy

As today's word shows, the apparently inevitable e-book revolution is forcing the language to change in anticipation. Within a year or two, using the word "book" without any kind of modifier will be confusing because people won't know if you're talking about a book printed on paper or one that's printed on electrons (so to speak). So I predict that p-book (or pbook, which I've also seen) will become a common noun that will help us distinguish between the paper and electronic formats.

In linguistic circles, a word such as "p-book" is known as a retronym: a word formed from an older word by attaching a previously unnecessary modifier. For example, there was a time when the words "guitar," "mail," and "transmission" were unambiguous. However, the advent of the electric guitar, e-mail, and the automatic transmission forced the creation of the retronyms "acoustic guitar," "snail mail," and "manual transmission."

You can read my threads on ebooks at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm 

Really cheap airline fares (travel) --- Hotwire - airfares http://www.hotwire.com/ 

The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2000, p. B1 --- 
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB969222134607846557.djm&template=pasted-2000-09-18.tmpl 
In Texas Hill Country, Getting Out the Vote Means Going Online.  In scattered elections around the U.S., the Web's influence is percolating down to local politics. As a result, voters are getting a valuable new way to learn about and even interact with those who would represent them. 

The tactics in this race show that online campaigns aren't just for big-name politicians anymore. Here in Austin and in scattered contests around the U.S., the Web's influence is percolating down to local politics. As a result, voters are getting a valuable new way to learn about and even interact with those who would represent them.

Eventually, especially if proposed online voting systems make casting a ballot push-button easy, this trend could broaden participation in local politics. But with plenty of voters still unwired, there are also questions about the digital divide. For now, using the Net in a local campaign means knowing how to balance high tech against low.

A great website to start with if you are interested in the new age of networked politics is http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/Politics/Elections/ 

The Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art --- http://www.crowcollection.com/ 

Especially for Rita!

---------------------- Forwarded Message: --------------------- 
From: "Fiona Manks" <email-admin@mcb.co.uk>  
To: <bonacker@worldnet.att.net> 
Subject: NEW JOURNAL ANNOUNCEMENT/CALL FOR PAPERS - 2001 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 11:37:35 +0100

To General management list

=================================================== CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: The international journal of effective board performance ISSN - 1472-0701 ===================================================

================= ABOUT THE JOURNAL =================

MCB are pleased to announce the launch of the above journal in February 2001. Corporate Governance will lead the international debate on board performance, corporate responsibility and CEO effectiveness through practical, real-world discussions and analysis of past, present and future concerns. The journal will be edited by Samuel Natale, Professor of Strategic Management, Adelphi University, New York and seeks to bring together the tactical knowledge of leading Corporate and Public Sector managers and executives with the Academic world.

======== COVERAGE ========

This quarterly 48-page journal will cover newly evolving assessment techniques and developing trends such as outcome based assessment, member selection, membership profiling, decision consensus, problems of implementation, executive succession, intra and inter-processes, corporate decision making and quality control. Regular features will include executive summaries of each article for quick reference to assist busy managers, a legal issues section edited by Dr Libertella, Dean of Business School, Adelphi University and conference/book reviews.

======================= BENEFITS TO SUBSCRIBERS =======================

Corporate Governance will enable you to: - - Keep abreast of developing trends in the field - Examine the role and performance of Boards of Directors - Discover how governance issues are raised, challenged and resolved - Implement successful decision making processes within your organisation

======================= FORTHCOMING ARTICLES =======================

"Qualities to be developed in Board Members" L. Perry, Vice President for HR, General SemiConductor

"Membership and Mission Concerns of the Board" D. Schroder, Board Member, Benedictine Health Services

"The Moral Responsibility of the Board Regarding Technology Policy" S. A. Sora, Owner of I-BEST Company, Consultant to IBM

"Influence of the Board on Day to Day Operations" R. Callan, Director, Learning Styles Centre

======================== SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ========================

Corporate Governance will be published from February 2001, in February, May, August and October and will include 4 print issues and 4 Internet updates with a site licence, reference linking, key readings and email alert service at no extra cost.

2001 Prices UK£99 +VAT UK£8.66 US$169 AUS$249 EUR 149 +VAT EUR13.04

If you would like to receive further information please contact: -

Fiona Manks MCB University Press 60-62 Toller Lane Tel: +44 (0)1274 777700 Fax: +44 (0)1274 785201 Email: fmanks@mcb.co.uk 

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Watch the birds on the wing in migration --- BirdCast  http://www.birdcast.org/ 

Tempus Fugit: Time Flies (a great timeline on history) --- http://www.nelson-atkins.org/tempusfugit/ 

The new women in dot-com town are smashing the glass ceiling -- and showing others the way. eWEEK profiles four women breaking through the IT gender gap --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0009111/2624282/ 

Hi David,

It brought tears to my eyes as well. It made me wish that I was better at this type of thing. I have, however, been fortunate to come in contact with a very few teachers who have this type of patience and dedication. One (now retired) was at Alice Nichols at Florida State University. Alice taught Intermediate Accounting and would spend nearly every minute of every working day in her office one-on-one with students who lined up for her help and caring. In major universities in this era of multiple responsibilities (teaching, writing, research, service, reputation, etc.), the teachers who spend virtually all their time teaching are becoming extinct. My hat is off to the ones who both do it and do it well.

Thanks,

Bob

-----Original Message----- 
From: David Stephens [mailto:StephensD@CBS.CURTIN.EDU.AU]  
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 3:14 AM 
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU Subject: 
Re: The August 29 Edition of New Bookmarks

Dr Jensen

One of my students sent me this. I have to admit that I had a tear in my eyes at the end. I thought it might be nice to share with the group.

============================================================

Life's Teaching...

There is a story many years ago of an elementary teacher. Her name was Mrs.Thompson.

And as she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children a lie. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. But that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard.

Mrs.Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he didn't play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. And Teddy could be unpleasant. It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold X's and then putting a big "F" at the top of his papers. At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child's past records and she put Teddy's off until last. However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.

Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners...he is a joy to be around." His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle." His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best but his father doesn't show much interest and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken." Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and sometimes sleeps in class."

By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for Teddy's. His present which was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag.

Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one quarter full of perfume. But she stifled the children's laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, "Mrs.Thompson, today you smelled just like my Mom used to." After the children left she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, and writing, and arithmetic.

Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and, despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her "teacher's pets."

A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her that she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then and wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he'd stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He assured Mrs.Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he explained that after he got his bachelor's degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had. But now his name was a little longer -- the letter was signed, Theodore F. Stoddard, M.D.

The story doesn't end there.

You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he'd met this girl and was going to be married. He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was wondering if Mrs.Thompson might agree to sit in the place at the wedding that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom. Of course, Mrs. Thompson did.

And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several rhinestones missing. And she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their last Christmas together. They hugged each, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson's ear, "Thank you, Mrs. Thompson for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me that I could make a difference."

Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back. She said, "Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I met you."

=======================================================

David Stephens
David Stephens CPA CISA Manager Undergraduate Programs School of Accounting Curtin University of Technology Western Australia
E-mail: stephend@cbs.curtin.edu.au  

Welcome to the September 17th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. XBRL: Biggest Thing to Hit Financial Reporting since the ASCII File 
2. E-Week Features How XBRL Takes the Pain out of Financial Reporting 
3. Tom Peter's (Slides) Rant: Talent! 
4. Oracle Offering Free Sales Management Tools for Online Business 
5. W3C Forms Group to Explore Machine-to-Machine Protocol 
6. Forbes ASAP Special Issue on Truth 
7. XML NEWS! Live Feed for all News about XML All the XML you need to know, fresh stories daily.

PRO2NET ACCOUNTING WEEKLY UPDATE http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of September 18, 2000

1. The Week's Top Accounting News 
2.  CPAs: Earn Free CPE Credit! 
3. Feature Solutions Articles in Brief 
4. Execusite, Pro2Net Team Up 
5. Pro2Net Tip of the Week: Some True -- But Not Inherently Obvious -- Facts About Independence 
6. Pro2Net Marketplace Grand Opening!

Pro2Net Accounting Students Newsletter http://accountingstudents.pro2net.com  September 13, 2000

1. Meet Five Outstanding Accounting Students 
2. Online CPA Exam Tips 
3. Contests! Contests! 
4. How to Fit in at the Office 
5. Hiring and Retaining Gen-Xers: Audio Interview

See past and present U.S. Presidents dance (history)--- http://send4fun.com/presidentdance.htm 

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

A middle-aged man is out to dinner with his wife to celebrate her  40th birthday.  

He says, "So what would you like, Julie? A Jaguar? A sable coat? A  diamond necklace?"   

She says, "Bernie, I want a divorce."  

He says, "I wasn't planning on spending that much."

From: Auntie Bev

Sure to confuse those who haven't had your fill of caffeine!
21 Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn:

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

Forwarded by an engineer friend (I like the Take Two module)

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take One ----------------------------------- 
Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take Two ----------------------------------- 
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take Three ----------------------------------- 
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him." "Hey George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greenskeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take Five ----------------------------------- 
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets.

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take Seven ------------------------------------ 
"Normal people ... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."

**************************************************************
Comprehending Engineers - Take Eight ------------------------------------ 
An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess". He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

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 September 20, 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  

September 12, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

The Accounting Firm of Ruth, Gehrig, Dimagio, & Mantle
SPECIALIZING IN BALLPARK FIGURES
Readers Digest, July 2000, p. 67

There are three kinds of people:  Those who can count and those who can't.
Author unknown.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
Author unknown

Experience comes from bad judgment (what I should have put as a header on some of my FAS 133 cases)

One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
Author unknown

Some people change their ways when they see the light
Others when they feel the heat
Author unknown

Be nice to your kids
They'll choose your nursing home
Author unknown

And if you believe this, I've got some ocean front property in Arizona for sale.

[High tech companies like BEA systems, Cisco Systems, Inforspace, Qualcom, and Yahoo] argue that leaving out the payroll taxes on options actually makes their business returns clearer to investors. "We're just trying to give people a better idea of our operating results," says Dick Grannis, vice president and treasurer of Qualcom, a wireless-phone-technology firm. "That's what any pro-forma earnings tries to do."
See below for details.

New and Revised Already!

FAS 133 Hedge Accounting Ineffectiveness Testing Short Cases --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/000ineff.htm  
The above document was specially prepared for my Year 2000 KPMG Workshops that I am conducting with Ira Kawaller in Chicago October 12-13, New York City November 2-3, and Las Vegas November 30-December 1. Persons interested in attending these workshops may contact Lysle Hollenbeck at  [lhollenbeck@kpmg.com] 

If you previously downloaded the Excel workbook copy of my three "short" cases on testing for hedge ineffectiveness using futures (Case B7), Forwards (Case A7), and foreign currency forward contracts (Case A1), please download a fresh copy  by downloading the Excel Workbook 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

There may be other corrections and additions after the rest of you give me feedback.  One reason I really love the Internet is that people using my cases point out their flaws and shortcomings.  Robert Steeindl pointed out that in my Case A1 the spot and forward prices did not converge at maturity for Nation 2 foreign currency.  I fixed this.  There was also confusion over the DELTA(t) definitions.  I added commentaries and made some corrections.

Case B7 features a hedge effectiveness test based upon DELTA(t) defined as the absolute value of the change in futures prices divided by the change in spot prices of corn.

Case A7 features a hedge effectiveness test based upon DELTA(t) defined as the absolute value of the change in forward prices of Columbian coffee divided by the change in forward prices of Brazilian coffee.

Case A1 features a hedge effectiveness test based upon DELTA(t) defined as the absolute value of the change spot prices of Nation 2 currency divided by the change spot prices of Nation 1 currency. Since spot prices are used, Paragraph 63(c ) is invoked where effectiveness testing excludes the difference between forward and spot prices.

Case A1 also adds a test for hedge ineffectiveness materiality.   Hedge accounting in Case A1 is denied only when the hedge ineffectiveness is material in dollar amount as well as violates the 0.80-1.25 Rule for DELTA(t).

Note in particular that I have some relatively short (relatively short in terms of the cases listed below) that expand upon FAS 133 Appendix A Problem 7 versus Appendix B Problem 7.  You can proceed directly to those short cases by downloading the Excel Workbook 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

In that same workbook, I extended a KPMG example on foreign currency hedging of an equipment purchase.  Whereas KPMG assumed perfect hedge effectiveness, I added examples of both immaterial and material hedge ineffectiveness.  Go to my 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

I have also improved my Excel Workbook expansions of Appendix B Examples 9 and 10.  These are in files 133ex09.xls and 133ex10.xls that can be downloaded from http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

Hi Bob (Steindl),

I attached two files in which I added DELTA(t) calculations to FAS 133 Appendix B examples. The 133ex10a.xls file may especially relate to your problem since it removes the difference between spot and forward rate values when testing for effectiveness.

The 133ex09a.xls file does the same thing with options hedging. However, I am having trouble with the DELTA(t) calculation in the final period. Any thoughts on this last period problem?

If you have trouble reading the attached files, you can download them from http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen /

Thanks,
Bob Jensen

And if you believe this, I've got some ocean front property in Arizona for sale.

[High tech companies like BEA systems, Cisco Systems, Inforspace, Qualcom, and Yahoo] argue that leaving out the payroll taxes on options actually makes their business returns clearer to investors. "We're just trying to give people a better idea of our operating results," says Dick Grannis, vice president and treasurer of Qualcom, a wireless-phone-technology firm. "That's what any pro-forma earnings tries to do."

"Tech Firms Hide Payroll Taxes On Employees' Stock Options," By Robert McGough and Mylene Mangalindan, The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2000, p. C25 --- http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB968275690764816208.djm&template=pasted-2000-09-07.tmpl 

Nobody likes paying taxes, but some tech companies apparently like reporting them to their shareholders even less.

In their quarterly earnings announcements, businesses such as BEA Systems, Cisco Systems, InfoSpace, Qualcom and Yahoo! are playing up a net-income figure that ignores the payroll taxes they owe when employees exercise stock options -- as if the taxes had never been incurred.

What a concept! In today's stock market, the companies are under heavy pressure to look as profitable as they can. By stressing an earnings figure that excludes the expense of the payroll taxes, they do look more profitable.

How are the companies able to do this? Thank Silicon Valley's brilliant innovations in the field of pro-forma earnings. At the top of the earnings releases that technology companies publish, they announce their pro-forma earnings. In the pro-forma number, companies get to include -- or exclude -- just about any revenue or expense that they want. The huge body of accounting rules only applies to the dreary official-income figure that shows up later in the news releases. Inevitably, pro-forma earnings are higher than this "generally accepted accounting principles" number reported lower.

Some expenses excluded from pro-forma earnings, such as costs associated with acquisitions, seem reasonable to exclude. They arguably aren't recurring, so their exclusion gives investors a better idea of how the day-to-day business is faring. But payroll taxes? Aren't they a cost of doing business?

To be sure, the payroll tax represents only a small portion of income for the companies that exclude it from the pro-forma figure. Still, nowadays, a penny in per-share income can have a big effect on a stock price. And some accounting experts and investors say the disappearing payroll tax is yet another example of the kind of wacky accounting that shows up in pro -forma income.

"When you're talking about e-businesses, they all come up with their own cookbook for what the earnings should be," complains Jack Ciesielski, publisher of the Analyst's Accounting Observer, a Baltimore newsletter. "It's kind of ludicrous."

Bob,

You, and your bookmarks' readers, might be interested to know that the final report of the Panel on Audit Effectiveness is now available by going to:

www.pobauditpanel.org. 

Also, the SEC has posted the entire transcript of the first day of public hearings on its independence proposal on the SEC web site. It makes for very interesting reading.

Denny Beresford

An Excerpt reads as follows:

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE AUDITING PROFESSION 
1.9 The past decade has been one of unprecedented change in the global economy and capital markets. Key aspects of the current business environment include a globalized, highly competitive, expanding economy; explosive growth in the development and use of technology; dramatic increases in “new economy” service- and technology-based businesses with predominantly intangible assets; unparalleled expansion in the number of public entities; large increases in the number of individuals who directly or indirectly own equity securities; and unprecedented growth in the market value of those securities. 

1.10 The growth in equity values over the past decade has introduced extreme pressures on management to achieve earnings, revenue or other targets. These pressures are exacerbated by the unforgiving nature of the equity markets as securities valuations are drastically adjusted downward whenever companies fail to meet “street” expectations. Pressures are further magnified because management’s compensation often is based in large part on achieving earnings or other financial goals or stock-price increases. These pressures on management, in turn, translate into pressures on how auditors conduct audits and in their relationship with audit clients. 

1.11 The expanded use of technology in both the operating and financial systems of companies also has significantly affected the audit environment, forcing audit firms to recruit, train and deploy a large number of information technology specialists to support their audit efforts. It also has caused firms to reconsider their audit methods and techniques in an effort to harness technology to improve audit efficiency and effectiveness. Some have questioned, however, whether the increased efficiency may have come at the cost of reduced, not enhanced, effectiveness. 

1.12 The technology explosion also has contributed significantly to the enormous growth in large audit firms’ consulting practices, to the point where revenue from their audit practices has declined from 70% or more of total firm revenue 25 years ago to about half that today. This shift has led to concerns about the relative importance of the audit practice to firms and about auditor independence when significant non-audit services are performed for audit clients. These concerns come at a time when the importance of public confidence in auditing has never been greater. 

1.13 Thus, examining the efficacy of the audit process alone is not the answer to assessing audit effectiveness. Understanding the environment in which audit firms operate and the factors that drive their business was an important feature of the Panel’s efforts. Accordingly, the Panel studied not only how audits are conducted but also whether non-audit services provided to audit clients pose a threat to auditor independence and whether the system of governance of the auditing profession is adequate or in need of change.

The Financial Executives Institute (FEI) has some PowerPoint presentations available (from Arthur Andersen experts) on FAS 133.  Faculty and practitioners may find these useful --- http://www.fei.org/download/fas133.cfm 

WOW News of the Week From Syllabus News on September 5, 2000  (Can something like this be done with schools of accounting?  Of course in our case the help may need to flow in the other direction.)

Medical Schools Collaborate on Physician Web Site

A new Internet service, UPCMD, has been created by six well-known medical schools. The site contains thousands of pages of information to help health-care providers diagnose and test for a variety of diseases. Because printed medical sources become outdated so quickly, a consortium directed by the departments of pathology and laboratory medicine from six universities contracted with about 150 medical experts around the country to review and update the information on the site. The service, available through annual subscription, allows physicians to type in the name of a disease and obtain within seconds a description of the condition, its clinical characteristics, several recent newspaper articles about it, and information about tests to confirm the diagnosis.

WOW Site of the Week --- Knowledge Management: A Bibliographic Resource 
By John Hokkanen, Esq. and Tricia Bond --- http://www.llrx.com/features/km_bib.htm 

This is a very good source for a variety of references on knowledge management classified into topic areas.  For example, one topic category is "Return on Investment, Cost Justification, Economics."  That section reads as follows:

Return on Investment, Cost Justification, Economics

Return on Knowledge by Dawne Shand, Knowledge Management Magazine, April 1999.

This article examines the use of “knowledge metrics” where managers can measure the value of investing in KM. These types of measurements help a company define the most effective knowledge management strategies. The author also reviews a “balanced scorecard” where companies can estimate four areas: financial goals, customer strategies, internal process initiatives and learning and growth activities.

KM from the Ground Up: Debunking the Myths that Knowledge Management Initiatives Have to Be Huge, Expensive and All-Encompassing Knowledge Management Magazine, May 1999.

According to this article, starting KM from the top (e.g. CEO, COB) is not always the best way to implement effective knowledge strategies. Starting small works better for some firms. “Sometimes the most effective approach to implementing a knowledge management initiative is to look for low-cost small wins in a single department or community of practice.” The article also addresses the high cost of KM technologies, but how they are often worth the investment.

Another section is on "Knowledge Management Technologies."

Knowledge Management Technologies

Knowledge Management: Great Concept…But What is it - Information Week Labs and Doculabs examine five products that try to help companies turn an abstraction into a reality by Jeff Angus of InformationWeek Labs, and Jeetu Patel and Jennifer Harty of Doculabs, InformationWeek, March 16, 1998, Issue: 673.

This article addresses several KM concepts such as - What is KM? What are some of the new KM technologies? And what are some of the difficulties encountered with trying to implement a KM environment? The article explains that knowledge management is “more a business practice than a product. The products are what facilitate the practice of knowledge management…with the appropriate use of technology.”
Furthermore, competitive environments, where employees believe sharing knowledge will reduce their chances of individual success, can be damaging to KM, allowing the concept to never reach full potential. The article also reviews five knowledge management technology products – Wincite, Intraspect, ChannelManager, BackWeb and KnowledgeX.

We Have the TechKnowledgy by Tom Davenport, CIO Magazine, Sept. 15, 1996.

This article reviews some technology tools for use in knowledge management - web based systems, expert systems, constraint-based systems, case-based reasoning applications and neural networks.

Visualizing the Workplace: Graphical Workflow Systems Both Represent and Reengineer Business Processes by Lee Sherman, Knowledge Management Magazine, May 1999.

Visual workflow systems can be helpful in managing your knowledge, as they “can show you exactly what impact any reallocation of resources, time or money might have on your bottom line.” This technology is beneficial because information does not have to be created from the ground up each time. Process 98, WorkDraw, Ptech’s FrameWork and Micrografx iGrafx Process are some of the technologies reviewed.

Legal Ease: Law Firm's Web Technology Uses Agents Instead of Paralegals for More Efficient Information Retrieval and Sharing by Lee Sherman, Knowledge Management Magazine, May 1999.

This article analyzes how one law firm, Davis, Polk & Wardell, is using technologies such as NMatrix to retrieve and manage information. With NMatrix, the law firm is able to combine information from resources such as the World Wide Web and Lexis-Nexis , and arrange the data so that their attorneys may utilize it more efficiently.

Knowledge Tools: Using Technology to Manage Knowledge Better by Rudy Ruggles, April 1997.

Knowledge management tools can enhance knowledge by a variety of ways including generation, codification and transfer. Rudy Ruggles examines these tools and notes that, “without a culture that supports the rewards of knowledge sharing, the tools can be useless.”

There is nothing given about accounting firms, but there is a section entitled "Law Firm Knowledge Management Articles."

And don't forget BakerBooks -- Harvard Business School http://www.library.hbs.edu/bakerbooks/ 

Econbase -- Elsevier http://www.elsevier.com/inca/homepage/sae/econbase/ 
Over 60 journals online.

Mojo Nation at http://www.mojonation.com/ 

Wired News on September 8 noted that IMojo Nation "attempts to offer the best features of PGP, Napster, Distributed.net, and HavenCo, all in one nifty package."

You could be paid for putting your extra disk space and network bandwidth to work? Mojo Nation creates a digital marketplace for the exchange of idle disk space, bandwidth, and CPU cycles. By providing services and resources to other Mojo Nation peers you earn credit that can be used to consume content or sold for cash. Freeloaders cannot consume more than they contribute to the system; they must purchase more resources from you.

You could participate in a peer to peer network, knowing your security and privacy were protected? Strong cryptography protects messages within Mojo Nation. Pseudonymous access and relay agents protect your privacy while browsing or providing content. Simple cost recovery prevents most denial of service attacks.

You could publish your web pages without worrying about their sudden popularity? Mojo Nation distributes published content widely across all participating peers, using market-based mechanisms to control flash crowds and efficiently cache data. When a user downloads content from Mojo Nation he compensates the peer providing the data with credits for the resources consumed; popularity does not increase the cost to the publisher.

You didn't have to worry about the sudden unpopularity of your web pages, either? Mojo Nation is de-centralized and secure, once data is published it cannot be deleted or controlled. Publishers have their identities hidden with pseudonyms and can publish without fear of reprisal. Content consumers can retrieve data with as much anonymity as they desire, privacy is a simple economic decision.

My threads of Napster etc. can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/napster.htm 

CyberU has over 17,000 online courses from hundreds of universities and corporate providers --- http://www.cyberu.com/ 
There is also a set of Resources and a Virtual Library of over 1,600 selected sites at http://www.cyberu.com/catalog/resource_schools.asp 

LEARN SOMETHING Online Classes Online Resources Online Training Certificates & Degrees

JOIN THE COMMUNITY Forums Volunteer Parents Educators

CAMPUS SERVICES Campus Store Career Planning Financial Aid Help

 

OVERVIEW 
CyberU makes online education and corporate training more accessible.

CyberU strives to increase access to education by delivering best-of-breed online corporate education directly to company intranets, online training directly to small businesses, and online personal and professional development resources directly to individuals through CyberU.com. Whether using CyberU's Corporate Education System as a corporate employee or going straight to www.cyberu.com as a potential student, people now have access to thousands of online courses and resources at their fingertips.

CORPORATE EDUCATION SYSTEM

For large corporations, CyberU has developed an ASP-based Corporate Education System, providing training managers with a single interface to administer and track employee training across the entire enterprise, while delivering top online corporate training and executive education. Through the system, Employee Knowledge Portals are built and customized for each employee in the corporation. Because the Corporate Education System is extranet-based, the service is continually improved and updated as new content becomes available.

AFFILIATE NETWORK FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Small businesses will benefit most from CyberU's Online Training Center, which helps small companies to grow their most valuable assets-their employees. CyberU brings together online business, technical, and skills training, which means that employees can learn everything from Microsoft Office 2000 to public speaking to accounting without leaving the office. CyberU reaches small businesses through its network of distribution partners and has launched an affiliate program with Commission Junction.

Over 40 colleges thus far are using Academic.com at http://www.academic.com/ 
academic.com, Academic Systems' new web-based product, offers a complete eLearning solution for online, general education courses across many disciplines. With academic.com, educators get the tools, supplemental learning modules, training, and support they need to build engaging and effective Web-enabled courses. Administrators get an easy-to-use, scalable, and fully supported eLearning platform. Campus IT professionals get a fully supported Internet-based solution that's easy to integrate within their existing infrastructure. Best of all, students get anytime, anywhere access to high-quality instruction even when they are on their own.

	Content: academic.com provides a collection of high quality interactive, online instruction content modules that faculty can use to supplement a wide variety of courses.
	Platform: Academic Systems has teamed up with Blackboard, Inc. to license and integrate Blackboard's technology into academic.com.
	Services: academic.com provides 24/7 technical support for faculty and students along with a professional development team that provides a variety of faculty training workshops.
	Brochure: Download a copy of the academic.com brochure

A Captive Audience Learns Tech Seymour Papert, co-founder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, is working with juvenile delinquents in Maine. He's using technology to try and spark their interest in learning --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38488,00.html 

Looks like Active Development is another Blackboard wannbe!

Active Development, Inc.

Would you like to offer classes, testing and labs online? Create rich, dynamic content for your students easily Active Academic 1.0

Active Academic 1.0 enables you to easily:

·Create and maintain individual or multiple online classes or schools.

·Serve as the dean of your online school by assigning administrative rights to other professors for their own classes.

·The graphics, look and feel of the program are customizable for each school through Active Academic’s administration which also features a full HTML editor for easy layout and design.

·Our easy interface does not require any programming experience.

Additional Features:

· Professors can upload created HTML Documents, Labs, Tests securely or create them from our proprietary HTML Editor

· Active Academic supports unlimited schools, classes, corporations, divisions (for corporate training purposes or if an e-learning portal is selling online course space)

· Tests can be graded automatically or can be emailed to the professor for grading

· Built in order processing to charge for courses offered

· Graphics and text are dynamically generated for each individual school or corporation allowing customization for each.

· Professors can post grades that students can view securely with their identification number.

265 First Street Hoboken, N.J. 07030 · Ph: (973) 785-1037 · Fax: (201) 792-7578

site: www.activedevelopment.com  email: info@activedevelopment.net 

From the Scout Report on September 5, 2000

The Sociosite/ ICAAP Journals Database and Distribution Centre http://www.icaap.org/database/journals.html 

In association with Sociosite, the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication (ICAAP) offers a database of "full text, freely available, peer reviewed (and clearly identified) scholarly journals." In sum, the site features over 70 periodicals -- many of them in the fields of the social sciences and humanities. Relevant subject headings include environmental studies, history, humanities, philosophy, political science, religious studies, and sociology. Each listing features a basic and expanded entry that includes information such as the type of periodical (journal, newsletter, magazine, etc.), the type of review process, the publisher, a link to the publication, and in the expanded version, the periodical's start date, country of origin, and a brief description. In point of fact, many of the titles listed are not refereed journals, but magazines on scholarly topics with editorial, rather than peer, review. And, as is so often the case with Internet publications, some are updated more frequently than others. Nonetheless, there is much here to take advantage of, and perhaps as the field of electronic scholarly publishing evolves, this ambitious Website will evolve along with it. ICAAP "is a research and development laboratory and standards organization devoted to the advancement of electronic scholarly communication."

Don't forget the ERIC Digests Database http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/index/2000-8-28.html 

CYBERTIMES EDUCATION 
Distance Learning Goes Niche By REBECCA S. WEINER
NY Times, September 6, 2000 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/06/technology/06EDUCATION.html 

The Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has found that 44 percent of all higher education institutions offered distance learning courses in the 1997-1998 academic year. That figure does not include the growing number of private, for-profit entities that are tapping the expanding market for adult education. The center estimated that 1.3 million students were enrolled in postsecondary degree-granting distance learning courses in that same academic year, up from 750,000 in 1995.

Still, despite the rapid growth, distance learning executives say they do not expect to supplant traditional campus-based universities. Instead, they said they will focus on serving those people for whom a traditional educational program does not work.

"The traditional universities, to some extent, have disenfranchised the working adult," said Steven Shank, chief executive officer for Capella University, an online institution. "The traditional classroom-based education does not wash well for the adult learner. The typical student for us is aged 25-55, employed with an over full life."

The University of Phoenix has 48 campuses in 14 states in addition to its online offerings. The institution is not cutting into demand at traditional universities, Mueller says.

"Our niche is working adult students. Because we haven't deviated form that niche, we've been successful," he said. "If you look at our ground-based campuses, we've had very little impact on the institutions in those areas," he said, adding that the school's campus in Salt Lake City, Utah, has not detracted from Brigham Young University's attendance.

Capella University, based in Minneapolis, Minn., offers a number of degree programs in business, education, psychology and information technology through courses that are taught exclusively online. Founded in 1993, the school now has 1,600 students. It is part of an Education Department demonstration project to determine how traditional student aid funding can be applied to distance education courses. Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, is sticking to a form of distance learning more rooted in its traditional campus program, beaming courses via satellite to community colleges in other parts of the state and even aircraft carriers at sea. The school even put a nuclear engineering program on CD-ROM for navy submariners who could not access the satellite courses.

"There are lots of different students out there and one kind of model will not fit all," University President James Koch said. "Students who opt to do distance learning have in a sense self-selected and are willing to try different things."

Pull the Plug by Clifford Stoll in CIO
A article on the downside of computers in the classroom ---  http://www.cio.com/archive/090100_diff.html 

THIS YEAR WE'LL spend some $3 billion to wire our nation's classrooms, bringing students into the Internet era with computers, multimedia and Web connections. On the surface that may seem like a worthy effort. But as information executives know, technology is not an end in itself. Rather, its value comes from solving real problems. So what pressing issues are computers solving in education?
    Among the challenges confronting our elementary and high school students today, one might list short attention spans, lack of discipline, cynical attitudes, too much television, low regard for teachers or little interest in reading. OK: Which of these problems are solved by a classroom computer? Which, on the other hand, are made worse?
    The one thing that the networked computer does well is to give our kids more information, faster. But lack of information simply isn't a problem in any school I've visited. Indeed, most teachers complain that they haven't enough time to teach the information that's already available.
    Some might argue that the goal of wiring schools is to replace outdated textbooks with the latest information from the Net. But most subjects don't change that quickly. The core of physics and chemistry, for example, evolves slowly. Schools certainly don't need the Internet to teach poetry or literature. And only a fool would teach current events from a textbook—that's the purpose of magazines, newspapers and the daily news.
    Maybe we're wiring our classrooms to promote computer literacy. But how much computing does a student need to be taught? I'd say that a high school graduate oughta be able to use a word processor, manipulate a spreadsheet, know what a database does, use e-mail, browse the Web and use a search engine. OK, how long did it take you to learn to use a word processor? A day? Maybe three? Did it take you a week to figure out how to surf the Web? Aside from the mechanical typing lessons, this just isn't challenging stuff. And whatever the problems confronting our students, fear of computers isn't one of 'em. Nor is the inability to use the Internet. Quite the opposite: Kids quickly take to computers and will happily spend hours sending e-mail, logging into chat rooms and generally fooling around online.
    Computer literacy doesn't demand the same level of instruction as English, American history or physics. Spending semesters teaching computing simply subtracts time from other subjects. It's one more way to dumb down the school, giving the appearance of teaching futuristic subjects while dodging the important topics. You can learn how to use computers anytime in life, but some subjects really are best learned when you're young—foreign languages, musical instruments, just to name two.
    The fact is, computers don't belong in the classroom. Not only do they not help solve any educational problems, but they very often make existing problems worse.

Note from Bob Jensen
Yes Clifford, but what is the alternative for your kids?  Do you want them to grow up in the 21st Century without being computer savvy or to fall behind their peers?  Do you want them to compete with the whiz kids from the techie-smart schools?  Do you want them to be ignorant on how to use the blame things for accessing the knowledge portals of the world?  Do your want them to fall behind in multitasking and to ignore new knowledge as it unfolds?  Do you want them to be different than their 20th Century dad?  

If you answer is NO to all of the above Clifford, then I pronounce you a luddite.  In this day of age, learning the computer and the Internet is like learning how to use the library.  It is our portal to knowledge.  I don't think that kids should postpone learning how to use the main portal to unfolding knowledge, especially in the world's digital library.  I guess I am glad that you are not my parent or my teacher.  I would have been more impressed if you challenged some of the serious research.  See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#evaluation 

And perhaps you did not interview creative teachers using computers in the classroom.
The Creative Teaching Web Site (mostly at K-12 levels)  http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/ 

Making homework fun for kids --- http://www.lycoszone.com/homework.html 

From the Scout Report on September 5, 2000

Two from NCES [.pdf] "NAEP 1999 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance" http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main1999/2000469.shtml  "Projections of Education Statistics to 2010" http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000071 

The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) released two new reports last month. The first, a 138-page report from NCES's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), presents long-term trends in the performance of nine-, thirteen-, and seventeen-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science. The NAEP has administered assessments in these three areas since the early seventies (1969 for seventeen-year-olds in science), and this report summarizes the findings, including overall national trends, trends analyzed by student subgroup (e.g., ethnicity, gender, parent's level of education), and data on experiences at school and home that may have an impact on achievement (e.g., classroom equipment, television watching). Generally speaking, the NAEP reports that math and science performance declined in the 1970s but increased during the 1980s and early 1990s, remaining mostly stable since then. Students made modest gains in reading, and improved most clearly across the assessment years in mathematics. The second report listed is part of an ongoing series begun in 1964. The 179-page report revises projections made in last year's "Projections of Education Statistics to 2009" (see the August 20, 1999 _Scout Report_), and includes national data covering the last fourteen years and projections to the year 2010 for enrollments, teachers, graduates, and expenditures; and state-level projections for enrollment graduates to the year 2010.

From Syllabus News September 5, 2000

* Online Advising Service Helps Students Choose a College
PureAdvice http://www.pureadvice.com/  debuts its online service providing live, one-on-one college guidance and financial aid advice. PureAdvice offers professional, certified college guidance and financial aid experts will help guide students through the options and decisions of choosing a college. The site includes advice through Internet chat sessions, a set of calculators to help users create a financial profile of college costs, and college search tools to access data on all two- and four-year colleges and universities. PureAdvice is offered not only a stand-alone service, but also as a built-in service on U.S.News & World Report's .EDU site.

---

Free GMAT Test Prep Software

This month the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) will offer the latest version of Test Preparation for the GMAT at no charge. The software includes previously administered GMAT questions and includes two GMAT computer-adaptive tests driven by the software application used for the actual exam. The Council's board of directors decided to offer the software to promote access to GMAT questions and information to all potential MBA students prior to testing. The software will be available for download from www.gmac.com .

And the government (at all levels) is joining into the act in a very big way according to Syllabus News on September 5, 2000

Government to Collect $602 Billion Via Internet

According to a new report from Forrester Research, Inc., Sizing US Government, federal, state, and local governments will collect 15 percent of fees and taxes online by 2006, a total of $602 billion. Most government services and regulatory requirements involve the filing of an application or report by businesses and constituents. Governments at all levels will receive 333 million online sub- missions by 2006. State governments will receive the most -- 137 million in 2006 -- fueled by online business reporting. By 2006, authorities will produce nearly 14,000 total online service applications nationwide. The majority of these services will come from the nation's 35,000 cities and towns.

According to the report, this eGovernment adoption will evolve through three phases: experimentation, integration, and re- invention. Expectations for online government will rise quickly as citizens incorporate private sector eCommerce into their daily lives between 2002 and 2005, forcing governments to respond with business-focused services as well as more sophisticated, customer-centric offerings that require integration among multiple departments and address privacy concerns.

The information in the report was gathered via Forrester interviews of CIOs and other heads of eGovernment efforts at federal, state, and local governments that have already begun eGovernment implementations, as well as five international governments. For more information visit www.forrester.com 

Hi Federico,

There are no free copies of any FASB standards, because sales of those standards are main sources of revenue to the FASB. My advice is to contact Pricewaterhouse Coopers and subscribe to their PW Researcher that contains all standards for a number of nations, the IASC international standards, and all FASB standards. You can get this on the PW Researcher CD-ROM that is updated as new standards and interpretations come along. FAS 52 is one of those standards. One website for the PW Researcher is 
http://instruction.bus.wisc.edu/jfuhrmann/pwr/PW%20Researcher%20Guidelines.html 

The other alternative is to order FAS 52 from the FASB at 
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/fasb/public/index.html 

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: Federico Aranda [mailto:pla@telnor.net] 
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 5:01 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject: Fas 52

Dear Mr. Jensen

My name is Federico Aranda, and I am trying to find out where can I get the FAS 52 because I need to evaluate if it has being properly followed in the company that I am working.

Please could you help me

Sincerely yours

Federico Aranda

Highlights of Women's Earnings, 1999 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)  http://stats.bls.gov/pdf/cpswom99.pdf 

The most important bottom line conclusions that I noted from a quick scan of this report is that it really pays for a woman to get a college degree, and it hurts (income-wise relative to men) to grow older.  Women in accounting-type occupations (including clerical) earn 89%-92% of what men earn in the same categories.  These averages are so aggregated across levels of education and income that it is difficult to isolate what is happening in the higher professional levels of accountancy.

The following appeared in Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks on July 19, 2000 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q3.htm 

"Highlights of Women's Earnings in 1999" --- http://stats.bls.gov/pdf/cpswom99.pdf 

Between 1979 and 1999, earnings for women ages 20 to 64 grew closer to their male counterparts’ earnings. The women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio among 35- to 44-year-olds, for example, increased from 58.3 percent in 1979 to 71.7 percent in 1999, and that for 45- to 54-year-olds rose from 56.9 percent to 70.1 percent. The earnings ratio for teenagers and the ratio for workers age 65 and over showed no definitive trend over the period. (See table 13.)

...

The earnings difference between women and men was widest for whites, with white women earning 75.7 percent of what white men did. Among blacks, women earned 83.7 percent of what men earned, and Hispanic women made 85.7 percent of Hispanic men’s earnings. (See table 1 and chart 2.) • Between 1979 and 1999, inflation-adjusted earnings for white women increased 22.0 percent, while black women’s real earnings rose 12.4 percent.1 Earnings for Hispanic women were little changed over the period. (See table 14.)

...

In Table 3, the median weekly earnings for accountants and auditors shows $651 for women and $891 for men.

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.

Women Partners Gaining Ground at Top Firms --- http://www.electronicaccountant.com/news/080598_1.htm  

Related sites

Work of Women --- http://www.workofwomen.org/ 

Women in Print September 14-15, 2001 Madison, WI http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/Conferences/inprint.html 

American Memory and more (history) --- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/new.html 

Vital Statistics of the United States, 1997, Volume I, Natality http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/natality/natab97.htm 

Psych Web http://www.psychwww.com/ 

Online Prices Not Created Equal Variable pricing has hit the Web. Amazon charges different prices for the same products depending on who visits, and that's hacking off some loyal customers.  http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38622,00.html 

Sounds like it is time to wipe out those telltale cookies on our systems!

Microsoft intentionally made it difficult to find where companies drop cookies in your system when you visit their websites.  Andrew tells us how best to discard those stale cookies.

For those interested in Cookie Pal, you can find it at http://www.kburra.com/products.html 
Regards
Andrew Priest [a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU] 

If you are stocking a business and economics library of databases, you might be interested in the University of Wisconsin library of databases at http://www.library.wisc.edu/guides/coreguide/bus95.htm 

You may also want to take a look at http://www.nd.edu/~bic/dbases/ 

Rome: Republic to Empire (history)  http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/politics.html 

Olympic History (photography) http://www.journale.com/kodak/olympics/olympichistory/ 

Glorifying the disaster --- Edsel.com http://www.edsel.com/ 

From the Scout Report on September 5, 2000 

FEED Magazine http://www.feedmag.com/ 

FEED, one of the Web's most compendious 'zines, offers an original and insightful source of information on a wide variety of topics, such as "media, technology, science, the arts, and other aspects of pop culture." _FEED_ features regular monthly columns, as well as numerous other frequently posted articles and essays. Featured at the site at the time of our visit were such offerings as an interview with a Penn State professor who has invented a kind of "aura sniffer"; a reluctantly admiring piece on prog rock; an examination of the effect of e-commerce on urban street culture; a look back, ten years later, at the propaganda of Operation Desert Storm; and an essay that explains why the decoded human genome is not a biological Philosopher's Stone. Past articles can be accessed from the front page, as can several special issues that focus on particular topics; in addition, a discussion forum called The Loop allows readers to chime in with their opinions. Users should be advised: the discovery of one interesting, well-written article after another can easily turn a quick visit to _FEED_ into a lengthy stay.

You may want to note the Best of FEED at http://www.feedmag.com/best/feedfavorites.html 

The Penn State professor mentioned above in Gary Settles from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.  The link is at http://www.feedmag.com/re/re381_master.html 

It's a rare piece of tech that manages to simultaneously capture the imagination of the New Agers and invasion-of-privacy obsessives. And it's even more unlikely that the invention that would unite these two communities would emerge from the field of thermodynamic imaging. But Penn State Professor Gary Settles managed to do just that when he unveiled Patent No. US6073499: the aura sniffer. The name conjures up images of a whole new way to do personnel screening: "Sorry, your aura is bile green, and we just don't think you're spiritually advanced enough to fit in around here..."

Sadly, the U.S. Patent Office insists on referring to Settles' invention by a somewhat less zippy, but more explanatory name; they call it a "chemical trace detection portal based on the natural airflow and heat transfer of the human body." It's a machine for quickly (the whole process takes ten seconds) sampling and then analyzing the contents of the thermal plume: the invisible cloud of hot air, skin particles, and trace chemicals that surrounds every human, from the feet up. The idea is that the portal will be put in place at airports and used for explosives detection. But the other possible uses -- drug screening and genetic testing among them -- are enough to present new concerns for those worried about their rapidly disappearing privacy.

We caught up with Professor Settles recently, and talked with him about auras, potential uses (and abuses) for the portal, and the history of schlieren imaging, a thermodynamic imaging technique that goes back two hundred years. We also got the scoop on his next research project -- the artificial dog nose.

I imagined up a few jokes and poems over this one, but I will refrain from repeating them here since this is an important and dignified piece of research.

What'sNu in education websites --- http://www.whatsnu.com/ 

Bach Digital (music) http://www.bachdigital.org/ 

NPR: America's Greatest 20th Century Music --- http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/vote/list100.html 

The FEI magazine called Financial Executive has an excellent article entitled "Accounting Fraud:  Learning from the Wrongs," by Paul Sweeney, Financial Executive, September/October 2000, pp. 18-22.  The free online version is at http://www.fei.org/magazine/articles/9-10-2K_Fraud.cfm  

Among other things, this article summarizes findings in a significant PricewaterhouseCoopers study.  Unfortunately, Paul Sweeney does not do a good job referencing this PwC study, and the PwC website (like most Big 5 websites) is a very difficult place to find specific things in most any search (especially publications).

From Yahoo on September 11, 2000

Electronic Literature Organization --- http://www.eliterature.org/ 

First there was the groundbreaking Project Gutenberg, a collaborative effort to distribute world literature in electronic format. Now, e-books, e-ink, e-publishing, and e-reading devices are part of the daily buzz. The newly launched Electronic Literature Organization aims to serve as hub and gathering place for literati of the Net, providing news, resources for authors and readers, and a growing showcase of online work, from avant-garde hypertexts and visual poetry to more familiar fiction and non-fiction formats. The ELO is also building a directory, which promises to grow into a valuable catalog of digital authors and their online work.

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

The Golem Project --- http://golem03.cs-i.brandeis.edu/index.html 

Tired of using the idle CPU cycles on your networked computer to search for intelligent life in a cold, unfriendly universe? Maybe you'd prefer cultivating a little artificial intelligence closer to home. The Golem@Home Project is a distributed computing experiment that uses the Internet environment to automatically design, evolve, and manufacture prototype robotic lifeforms. You participate by downloading a screensaver designed by scientists at Brandeis University, then, whenever your machine is idle, you sit back and watch the colorful tubular entities evolve all by themselves. Golem (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics) is actually named for a legendary giant clay man.

A FEDERAL JUDGE ruled that MP3.com willfully infringed Universal Music Group's copyrights when it created the online database My.MP3.com. Damages were set at as much as $250 million. http://interactive.wsj.com/pages/techmain.htm  

Why college bookstores are having a tougher time competing with the online textbook sellers, New and Used Books from Barnes & Noble ---  http://client.lycos.com/r.asp?CB&X6Klf.uYLaPAA967667837 

If nothing else, these folks have one of the most interesting interactive homepages I've seen.

http://www.imexpages.com/ 

Scott Bonacker [scottbonacker@MOCCPA.COM]  
CPA McCullough, 
Officer & Company, LLC 
Springfield, Missouri moccpa.com

Bob Jensen agrees!  This is neat stuff!

From the Scout Report on September 7 (eCommerce and Internet Business)

Internet Indicators [.pdf] http://www.internetindicators.com/ 

In 1999, the Internet economy's revenues rose to over half a trillion dollars, and employment in this sector has grown to directly support 2/476 million workers, according to this site sponsored by Cisco Systems and the University of Texas. June 2000 findings of the Internet Economy Indicators are also presented in the report _Measuring the Internet Economy_, which examines the Internet economy in layers of indicators. The first layer looks at the Internet infrastructure, which consists of telecommunications companies, Internet carriers, and Internet service providers. The second Indicator, the Internet Applications Infrastructure Indicator, studies Internet software products and services. Layer three, the Internet Intermediary Indicator, includes businesses conducting transactions on the Web, and the final layer, the Internet Commerce Indicator, looks only at companies that conducted Web-based commerce transactions. Each of these layers is carefully explained in the report. The site includes case studies for each of these indicators and offers a Big Picture overview of the Internet economy. Along with these explanations and snapshot views and others, the entire report may be downloaded in .pdf format.

Click-and-sniff computers due soon --- Surfing the Web will never be the same
By Eric Auchard 
REUTERS --- http://www.msnbc.com/news/456274.asp?cp1=1 

NEW YORK, Sept 6 — Welcome to the era of click and sniff. The nose may know what the computer can only guess at but virtual aromas may soon be wafting to a keyboard near you

DigiScents’ smell-sensing technology, which consumers can expect to begin seeing in advertising, shopping, travel and video-game settings as early as this Christmas season, promises to recreate thousands of different odors.

TheLion.com http://www.thelion.com/ 
This is a search engine focused on financial and investment news. 

Don't forget Bob Jensen's search helpers and links at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

Everything you wanted to know about options investing (except on how to account for them under FAS 133)
Optionetics Education Center --- http://www.optionetics.com/education.asp 

Women's Institute for Financial Education http://www.wife.org/ 

"Anatomy of a Recall" --- Time Magazine  http://www.time.com/time/daily/0,2960,53931-101000903,00.html 

FIND THE PERFECT DIGITAL CAMERA! http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?51972:2700840 

September 10th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Socially Responsible Businesses Gain Respect Read about Paul Neuman's trip to HASS 
2. RSA Encryption Now Freely Available 17 years of patent protection are over 
3. eAI Magazine: Internet Messaging and The Fourth Wave Wireless will impact your company's I.T. 
4. "The dirty secret of educational technology is that computers waste teachers' time." One man's opinion. 
5. Hold On, I've got a Bill Coming on my Cell Phone! Can you send my cell phone a copy, please? 
6. XML NEWS! Live Feed for all News about XML All the XML you need to know!

PRO2NET ACCOUNTING WEEKLY UPDATE http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of September 11, 2000

1. The Week's Top Accounting News 
2. A Free Service from Pro2Net and VerticalOne 
3. Feature Solutions Articles in Brief 
4. How to Get Answers to Your Complicated Tax Questions

Pro2Net Accounting Students Newsletter http://accountingstudents.pro2net.com  September 5, 2000

1. Visualize Yourself Taking the Exam 
2. Account for Your Future Scholarship Winners 
3. U.S. News & World Report Announces Top Undergraduate Accounting Programs 
4. Receive a Free CMA on CD-ROM Demo Disk 
5. CPA Exam Review Contest Extended

Forwarded by Debbie Bowling

YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM SAN ANTONIO IF...

You know exactly how to get to the "Ghost Tracks" from anywhere in town. 
You thing "pro-choice" means flour or corn tortillas. 
You think being able to read the Taco Cabana menu makes you bilingual. 
You used to live in a neighborhood you wouldn't even drive through now. 
There has not been a road crew on your street since before the Alamodome was build. 
You remember when Crossroads mall used to be called Wonderland. Playland park...enough said! 
You remember when KTSA was the #1 station in town. 
Your idea of culture is wearing a Spurs T-shirt. 
You do your shopping at the Flea Market. 
You have 3 Rodeo outfits but have never been on a horse. 
You know the "real" definition of FIESTA is "stay home if at all possible." 
You have ordered Mexican food at a Chinese restaurant. 
You remember the Joske's Christmas display. 
You remember Joske's period. 
You know that Wheatley and Brackenridge is the same school. 
You know who plays in the Chili Bowl, Gucci Bowl, and Frontier Bowl

Forwarded by Dick Haar

My wife chewed me out at the company picnic a while back. She said, "Doesn't it embarrass you that people have seen you go up to the buffet table five times?"

"Not a bit," I replied. Then I added, "I just tell them that 'I'm filling up the plate for my wife'."

Forwarded by Bev Koebrich [auntiebev@mediaone.net] 

YOU KNOW YOU'RE GETTING 'MARVELOUSLY MATURE' WHEN.............
  1.  You and your teeth don't sleep together.
  2.  Your try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any.
  3.  At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal.
  4.  Your back goes out but you stay home.
  5.  When you wake up looking like your driver's license picture.
  6.  It takes two tries to get up from the couch.
  7.  When your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.
  8.  When happy hour is a nap.
  9.  When you're on vacation and your energy runs out before your money does..
  10. When you say something to your kids that your mother said to you and you always hated it.
  11. When all you want for your birthday is to not be reminded of your age.
  12. When you step off a curb and look down one more time to make sure the street is still there.
  13. Your idea of weight lifting is standing up.
  14. It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.
  15. Your memory is shorter and your complaining lasts longer.
  16. Your address book has mostly names that start with Dr.
  17. You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going.
  18. The pharmacist has become your new best friend.
  19. Getting "lucky" means you found your car in the parking  lot.
  20. The twinkle in your eye is merely a reflection from the sun on your bifocals.
  21. It takes twice as long - to look half as good.
  22. Everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt - doesn't work.
  23. You look for your glasses for half an hour and they were on your head the whole time.
  24. You sink your teeth into a steak - and they stay there.
  25. You give up all your bad habits and still don't feel good.
  26. You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore.
  27. You finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.
  28. You wonder how you could be over the hill when you don't even remember being on top of it.

Forwarded by Bev Koebrich [auntiebev@mediaone.net] 

She was so blonde...     .....

she took a ruler to bed to see how long she slept.   .....
she sent me a fax with a stamp on it.   .....
she thought a quarterback was a refund.   .....
she tried to put M&M's in alphabetical order.   .....
she thought Boyz II Men was a day care center.   .....
she thought Eartha Kitt was a set of garden tools.   .....
she thought General Motors was in the army.   .....
she thought Meow Mix was a CD for cats.   .....
she thought TuPac Shakur was a Jewish holiday.   .....
under "education" on her job application, she put "Hooked on Phonics."  .....
she tripped over a cordless phone.   .....
she spent 20 minutes looking at the orange juice can because it said "concentrate."   .....
she told me to meet her at the corner of "WALK" and "ONE WAY."   .....
at the bottom of the application where it says "sign here," she put "Sagittarius."   .....
she asked for a price check at the Dollar Store.   .....
she studied for a blood test.   .....
she thought she needed a token to get on "Soul Train."   .....
she sold the car for gas money!   .....
when she missed the 44 bus, she took the 22 bus twice instead.   .....
When she went to the airport and saw a sign that said "Airport Left," she turned around and went home.   .....
When she heard that 90% of all crimes occur around the home, she moved.   .....
she thinks Taco Bell is the Mexican phone company   .....
if she spoke her mind, she'd be speechless.   .....
she thought that she could not use her AM radio in the evening.   .....
she had a shirt that said "TGIF," which she thought stood for  "This Goes In Front."

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 September 12, 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  

September 5, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

e-Deep in conversation.
Betty Hollins

I(nternal) R(evenue) S(ervice): We've got what it takes to take what you've got.
Seen on a back bumper

Hang up and drive!
Seen on a back bumper

When you build bridges you can keep crossing them.
Rick Pitino (Lead to Succeed, Broadway Books)

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell

September tries its best to have us forget summer.  (Not in Texas)
Bern Williams

And this is good old Boston 
The home of the bean and the cod, 
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, 
And the Cabots talk only to God -
Dr. John Collins Bossidy, 1910 (as quoted recently in an appropriate place by Roger Collins)

New Short Cases for FAS 133 Instructors and Practitioners

FAS 133 Hedge Accounting Ineffectiveness Testing Short Cases --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/000ineff.htm  
The above document was specially prepared for my Year 2000 KPMG Workshops that I am conducting with Ira Kawaller in Chicago October 12-13, New York City November 2-3, and Las Vegas November 30-December 1. Persons interested in attending these workshops may contact Lysle Hollenbeck at  [lhollenbeck@kpmg.com] 

I will be providing an overview of most of the cases listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm 

Note in particular that I have some relatively short (relatively short in terms of the cases listed below) that expand upon FAS 133 Appendix A Problem 7 versus Appendix B Problem 7.  You can proceed directly to those short cases by downloading the Excel Workbook 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

In that same workbook, I extended a KPMG example on foreign currency hedging of an equipment purchase.  Whereas KPMG assumed perfect hedge effectiveness, I added examples of both immaterial and material hedge ineffectiveness.  Go to my 133ex07a.xls file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

I have also improved my Excel Workbook expansions of Appendix B Examples 9 and 10.  These are in files 133ex09.xls and 133ex10.xls files that can be downloaded from http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

Featured Article of the Week 

"Rethinking the human factor," by Paula Shaki Trimble, Federal Computer Week, August 28, 2000 --- http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0828/tec-nsf-08-28-00.asp 

Rutgers has completed a three-year, $780,000 research project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop systems that will replace the keyboard and mouse with devices that track the user’s gaze, respond to voice commands and enable the user to move icons on the screen with a gloved hand that registers motion.

During the project, the Army National Guard of New Jersey demonstrated the ability of military planners to more accurately and more easily collaborate on military planning procedures using the system, called the Speech, Text, Image and Multimedia Advanced Technology Effort (Stimulate).

Stimulate is a joint initiative of NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, the National Security Agency’s Office of Research and Signals Intelligence Technology, the CIA’s Office of Research and Development, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Technology Office.

Rutgers researchers used a combination of prototype technologies to study how people interact with computers employing systems that offer multiple modes of communicating — sight, sound and touch, said Edward Devinney, senior associate director of Rutgers’ Center for Advanced Information Processing (www.caip.rutgers.edu), where the Stimulate research was conducted. The research team plans to deliver its final report to NSF within a few weeks.

"We’ve found it is faster to use multimodal input," Devinney said. If someone who’s never used a computer is told to grab an object using a glove, the tendency is to just grab in a natural way, he said, while it takes some time to become comfortable with a mouse.

The system uses special software called Fusion Agent to teach the computer to interpret what the user wants and to prioritize the activities, he said. For instance, in a situation where a user looks at one thing but says another, the computer may be programmed to always follow the voice command.

A key part of the system is a force-feedback glove, patented by Rutgers, which reads gestures by detecting fingertip positions relative to the palm. When a user points to or picks up an object on the screen, the user receives feedback in the form of pressure from the glove. The glove weighs less than three ounces.

The system also employs a gaze tracker. Rather than a headpiece, the device is a unit mounted on the desktop that rotates to detect where the user is looking. The user can direct a cursor just by looking at the computer screen. Voice recognition and voice synthesizing software can understand simple commands and respond audibly.

For instance, if a military user tells the computer to create a camp, it will place the new camp where the user’s eyes are pointed or where the user points with the glove and then respond that it has created the camp. "We’ve got quite a playground here," Devinney said.

Users can work together from different locations through a standard Internet connection or other type of network. The users would launch Rutgers’ object-oriented groupware called Distributed System for Collaborative Information Processing and Learning (Disciple), which integrates the inputs from the various devices on the user end into logical commands.

Devinney said potential applications include battlefield management, tele-medicine and other types of collaborative decision-making during which users are mobile. The Rutgers team has suggested to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that it employ an enhanced version of the system for designing the command post of the future. According to that proposal, users would collaborate around a three-dimensional situational map, moving assets around or identifying units and using the glove to retrieve information about the unit’s readiness and size.

Seven participants from the Training Technology Battle Lab at Fort Dix, N.J., spent several months field-testing disaster-relief scenarios in which military planners could collaborate remotely to decide how to deploy resources and assess the terrain on a map-based display.

"The advantage is the ability to be able to see the map and the activity on the map," said Brig. Gen. William Marshall, deputy State Area Command commander for the New Jersey Army National Guard.

Marshall said the Rutgers Multimodal Input Manager led to the concept of the digital battlefield, in which planners can test a possible movement and see its impact.

Because moving an icon that represents a military unit automatically generates a wide variety of technical information about the action, such as position or number of personnel in the unit, the Rutgers system saves considerable time and redundancy, Marshall said.

"If you move a flag on a flat map, you have to record the data in two or three places. It’s one entry vs. three with grease pencils," he said.

Devinney said the system has potential for helping people with disabilities access computers. For example, the glove is being used elsewhere at Rutgers as a physical therapy tool for people with hand injuries.

Featured Websites of the Week come to us from Carylyn Kotlas at Infobits

Two recent issues of the JOURNAL OF ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING NETWORKS are special issues that include case studies presented in August 1999 at a Sloan Foundation-sponsored, invitation-only, workshop at the University of Illinois in Urbana. The main topics at the workshop were:

Learning effectiveness: JALN, volume 4, issue 2, http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/jaln-vol4issue2.htm  and Faculty satisfaction: JALN, volume 4, issue 3, http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/jaln-vol4issue3.htm 

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks [ISSN 1092-8235] is published online by Vanderbilt University for the Asynchronous Learning Networks Web. Back issues are available on the Web at http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/jaln.htm  For more information contact, John Bourne, Editor, P. O. Box 1570, Station B, Nashville, TN 37235 USA; tel: 615-322-2118; fax: 615-343-6449; email: john.bourne@vanderbilt.edu 

The objectives of the ALN Web are to provide "(1) a focal point for information interchange among researchers and practitioners in the field of asynchronous learning networks and (2) a scholarly reviewed on-line journal which captures the archival knowledge of the field." For more information see http://www.aln.org/ 

The INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (IRRODL) is new online refereed journal whose purpose is "to contribute and disseminate to practitioners and scholars worldwide scholarly knowledge in each of three areas: theory, research, and best practice in open and distance learning." Articles in the first issue include: "Theoretical Challenges for Distance Education in the 21st Century: A Shift from Structural to Transactional Issues," "Digital Learning Environments: New Possibilities and Opportunities," and "Current Developments and Best Practice in Open and Distance Learning."

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning [ISSN 1492-3831] is published by Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3 Canada; email: irrodl@athabascau.ca 

MEASURING DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDENTS' LEARNING

"The challenges of measuring and identifying student learning and attributing that outcome to particular practices are as difficult in a distance-learning environment as in a traditional classroom. So you fall back on consensus over pedagogical strategies and whether they're applicable. . . . The research often comes up with this 'no-significant-difference finding' between a distance-learning or electronic mode and a traditional-delivery mode. I don't think that's good enough. To justify the investments, we're going to have to show some real learning gains." In "Logging in with . . . James R. Mingle: Measuring Students' Learning is a Major Challenge for Distance Education" [THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION Distance Education, August 25, 2000], Dan Carnevale interviews James Mingle, senior policy adviser for the Southern Regional Education Board's Distance Learning Policy Laboratory and head of a subcommittee studying faculty issues that evolve with the growth of online education. You can read the interview online at http://chronicle.com/free/2000/08/2000082501u.htm 

One of the modules in my CPE Workshop 1 in Philadelphia on August 12 was a presentation by Dan Stone on the University of Illinois SCALE experiments (probably the most extensive and expensive experiments ever conducted on asynchronous learning).  I am working on a way to get the entire six-hour workshop available to the world in some form.  Presently, I am working on getting server space for the entire workshop on MP3 audio.  If you are interested in asynchronous learning experiments, you will want to learn more about what Dan found out while investigating the SCALE experiments.  In the meantime, I have some older material about SCALE at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm 

As always, we seek illuminating articles that will assist educators as they face the challenge of integrating information technology tools in teaching and in managing educational organizations. Please review our call for manuscripts at http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/call.asp  and send me a note if you would like to contribute such an article.

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 Emeritus, On the Horizon Phone: 919 962-2517 http://www.camfordpublishing.com  Fax: 919 962-1693

IN THIS ISSUE:

Anyone who has taken a college course knows what happens after the final; instructors pass out the infamous course evaluation sheet--the remaining obstacle between students and their long-awaited semester breaks. With their backpacks already slung over their shoulders and their car keys in hand, students typically scribble out their ratings of course content and teacher performance in about twenty seconds flat before scooting out the door. Is there any way that instructors and administrators can receive more thoughtful feedback from students? Keith Hmieleski and Matthew Champagne argue that Web-based evaluation is a much better method of review. High-tech course evaluation, they explain, wards against the all-too-common "autopsy approach," whereby instructors use evaluation results to determine what went wrong in a course only after the course is over. Hmieleski and Champagne thus inaugurate our new assessment section, which results from collaboration with the American Association for Higher Education's TLT Group.

Conferences have long been important opportunities for professionals to exchange ideas, present current trends in their fields, and develop relationships with their colleagues. As the influence of technology permeates the professional world more and more, many conferences are now taking place, at least to some degree, over the Internet. According to James Shimabukuro, there are two key challenges to the success of these virtual professional gatherings: balancing face-to-face and virtual interaction, and maintaining flexibility in terms of conference scheduling. Shimabukuro's Vision of the future of tech-savvy conferences draws on his five years of experience with the Teaching in the Community Colleges Online Conference.

While Shimabukuro argues for better technology in the planning of online conferences, Joe Slowinski's Commentary addresses the challenge of insuring that teachers improve their technology use in their classrooms. "Despite growing access to technology in schools," he reveals, "the number of teachers who report using technology in the teaching and learning process remains limited." Yet while teachers seem reluctant to integrate technology fully into their courses, states are continually enacting legislation that holds them accountable for technology competency. To remedy this inconsistency, Slowinski suggests key policies that he believes will allow teacher-training institutions to model appropriate technology use to emerging educators. Most sports players can testify to the great sense of reward and accomplishment that accompanies a team's success. These same players also know the hard work and collaboration that such success requires. Since teamwork is so invaluable on the court, can't it also bring success in the professional world? In our second commentary, Peshe Kuriloff argues that it can. Collaboration among teachers and technologists, she explains, is crucial to improving instruction in all disciplines. As she has discovered in her direction of the Mellon Writing Project at the University of Pennsylvania, this kind of teamwork is a winning situation for all.

In our third commentary, Nancy Cooley and Michelle Johnston explain the many factors that impede teachers' technology use in P-16 classrooms. While Slowinski suggests that responsibility for teachers' poor implementation of technology lies with teacher-training institutions, Cooley and Johnston contend that the sources of this problem are varied and complex, requiring more broad-based solutions. As they describe, poor funding and training and insufficient incentives and rewards are just a few of the many circumstances that continue to hinder greater educational achievement. Much like Peshe Kuriloff, Cooley and Johnston argue that teamwork is the impetus for better teaching and learning. They call for collaboration among teachers, administrators, and higher education faculty to develop a comprehensive approach to technology use.

Though most of our authors advocate technology as a way of customizing our educational system for the twenty-first century, Bethany Baxter reminds us not to forget the successes of schools of the past. In our fourth commentary, she explains how technology can allow everything old to be new again in modern education. Recollecting the days of one-room schoolhouses, she suggests that the individualized learning of the past was highly effective in insuring that students mastered skills, regardless of their ages or the number of years they had attended school. According to Baxter, today's teachers can replicate and improve upon this model. She asserts, "technology gives teachers the ability to again offer every child an individualized learning plan and to implement mastery learning using an abundance of resources."

Along with Kuriloff, Cooley, and Johnston, Kathy Biggs advocates greater collaboration in her case study of Clemson University's Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE). But while our other authors focus on professional teamwork, Biggs stresses the benefits of collaboration among students and professors. Providing examples from the English, Psychology, Chemistry, and Management Departments, she explains how the CLE enhances learning, enabling students to produce better projects for their courses, easily exchange ideas with their classmates, and effectively use resources in the community and in other University departments. She notes that the CLE has risen to prominence as a learning tool at Clemson largely because of student enthusiasm, suggesting that the system is succeeding in its job of improving the future of education.

Increasingly, state governments are passing initiatives that require not only greater technology hardware in schools, but also greater technology proficiency among teachers. But as many teachers and school administrators well know, tougher standards for technology use in education do not automatically guarantee success in such integration. Dalton Young and Patricia Reed present a case study of OKTechMasters, a program in Oklahoma that picks up where state requirements leave off. By expertly training master teachers, who then model their skills to their peer teachers, OKTechMasters insures that technology training suits teachers' needs. As Young and Reed explain, the program is a positive step toward the state's ultimate goal: "to place a 'lead technology teacher' (LTT), an expert in technology infusion, in every wing of every school building in Oklahoma within five years."

In their faculty and staff development article, Nancy Levenburg and Howard Major examine the challenge of motivating faculty to take advantage of the growing prominence of distance education. According to Levenburg and Major, many professors have been slow to accept distance learning as a concept because of the traditional basis for evaluating instructor performance: research and teaching and service. They assert that faculty should instead be encouraged to adapt to new technology through rewards that motivate, such as evaluations based on student learning rather than performance in the classroom. Through techniques such as these, they explain, teachers will become excited about new possibilities through technology.

Yuehua Zhang advises that the time to get teachers excited about technology is before they are actually teaching at all. Zhang suggests that good relationships between pre-service and in-service teachers are key to good faculty and staff development. Yet successful technology training for pre-service teachers is not reliant solely on in-service mentors, Zhang explains; students can also generate excitement for technology-assisted projects during future teachers' classroom visits. Using a collaborative project between K-8 teachers and Concordia University education students as evidence, Zhang describes the way in which teachers in training can benefit from exchanges with current teachers and students alike.

Learning Web course design can often be an intimidating prospect for faculty members accustomed to teaching in a traditional way. Luckily, there is help available to those taking that first step toward high-tech teaching. In the spotlight this issue is the UMUC-Bell Atlantic Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology, an online resource developed and maintained by the University of Maryland University College. As Stephen Downes explains, the site is a simple yet valuable resource for teachers who want to use technology to enhance their teaching.

In a letter to the editor, Roberto Bamberger responds to Stephen Downes' commentary in our July/August issue, in which Downes complains that Microsoft Word does not adequately accommodate speakers of Canadian English. Bamberger, of Microsoft's Higher Education Division, asserts that Microsoft's 2000 suite of tools does account for language differences such as this, and he defends Microsoft Office as allowing "more personalization and customization than any other productivity suite on the market."

In our second letter to the editor, Mary Harrsch echoes Bamberger's statements, adding that a software company's balance of advanced production with affordability for consumers can often be quite a task. Additionally, while Downes criticizes some of Microsoft Word's help features, Harrsch expresses her appreciation for the features, revealing her affinity for "Rocky" the friendly assistant.

Research Haven is a student research helper site that may also be of help to faculty --- http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6199/ 

Research Links

Book Store  

Looking for cheap books, CD's, software.  Chapters.Ca offers everything you need, and best of all, at Canadian prices, stretch your US dollar as far as possible..

Get Your Free EMAIL account here. 

Partnering with everyone.net, we are please to provide you with you very own e-mail address.  Forget about Hotmail and give us a try.

Start Earning Money Today  

Looking at making a little profit on the internet?  Check out some of these amazing new business opportunities.  Within minutes you could be making money at no cost to you.

Participate in Surveys and Focus Groups

Green Field Online offers you an opportunity to participate in live surveys and discussion groups.

Building a Web Site

All the tools and sites you need to build or upgrade your web site.

On-line Dictionaries Thesaurus and Famous Quotes.

Our on-line dictionaries and thesaurus as well as a list of famous quotes are perfect companion to any research paper.

On-line Resources

Don't have time to run to the library. Check our extensive listing or on-line journals, magazines and newspapers for past and current issues.

On-line Libraries

Trying to save yourself a trip to the library. Check these on line libraries which include most Universities and Government organizations in North America.

Tutorials

Having trouble where to begin or are you just looking for some assistance in your research paper. Check these sites on steps to writing papers, formatting, and basic study tips and much more.

Free Research Papers and Writing Services

Lost for a place to start. Check this extensive list of pre-written essays and research-writing services.
(Bob Jensen thinks that pre-written essays should be eliminated.  Instructors should probably get some idea about what students downloading and why.)

Fun Places to Visit

Find Accounting Software --- http://www.findaccountingsoftware.com/ 

Completing our Online Request for Proposal (RFP) saves your time, effort and aspirin by filtering the universe of accounting solutions down to those that best fit your business. We'll put you in touch with some of the top consultants in your area so you can compare each solution side-by-side. Best of all, it's absolutely FREE and you are under no obligation.

Do the work yourself... For the do-it-yourselfer, we've made our entire database publicly available for your convenience. Conduct software searches based on your industry, operating system or application. Browse through our alphabetical listing based on software developer or product name. Once you've narrowed down your choices, a simple zip-code search will return a listing of qualified consultants in your area.

Top Ten Criteria for Selecting Accounting Software --- http://www.cpaonline.com/insite/index.asp?id=22 

XML Capabilities for ERP Software --- http://www.cpaonline.com/insite/index.asp?id=19 

You may find other software finders at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#software 

Congratulations to Trinity University for once again retaining its Best in the West ranking according to US News at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/wstunivs/wstu_a2.htm 

Congratulations to the Department of Engineering Science at Trinity University for leaping ahead to Rank 12 in engineering programs at schools without doctoral programs as ranked by US News at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/cat13wo.htm 

The Trinity University Business Administration Department has an undergraduate program national Rank 103, although unlike the engineering rankings above the business school  competition includes schools like The University of  Pennsylvania (at Rank 1)  and MIT (at Rank 2) that have doctoral programs as well as undergraduate programs.  The overwhelming majority of programs ranked in the top 100 have doctoral programs in business administration as well as undergraduate programs.  Hence, Trinity University's Business Administration can hold its head high.  The undergraduate business programs are ranked at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/cat12rnk.htm 

Congratulations to the University of Illinois for the top accounting program ranking at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/bus/cobizs01.htm 
The University of Texas has Rank 2 in Accounting.

The top rankings of business schools (including those that have no undergraduate programs) is available at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/bcbiz.htm 

I was asked by a colleague to rank the top undergraduate business programs in the U.S.  Between last week and now, the rankings have changed.  

The first place to start for rankings is http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cohome.htm

Undergraduate business programs are ranked (with rankings heavily influenced by student quality)  at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/cat12rnk.htm 

Planning to become an accountant or marketing manager? Want to start your own company instead? This ranking of the country's top undergraduate business programs can help you create a list of possible schools. U.S. News first identified the 327 undergraduate business programs accredited by the International Association for Management Education. Then we asked deans and senior faculty to rate the quality of the academic program at institutions they are familiar with from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). About 45 percent of those surveyed responded. We also asked for the best programs in various specialties.

The other rankings are at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/cat12rnk.htm 

Educators' Portal --- http://www.educatorsportal.com/ 

Educational Media LLC, located in Stamford, Connecticut, publishes the following education related magazines:

Curriculum Administrator: The magazine for leaders in K-12 education. Matrix: The magazine for leaders in higher education. .edu/magazine: The educators guide to the Internet's impact on education. SchoolTone magazine: In-depth coverage of the SchoolTone Alliance and the web-based products and subscription services of its member companies. Our address is...

992 High Ridge Road Stamford, CT, 06905

phone: (203) 322-1300 fax: (203) 329-9177.

Integrating Computer Technology into the Classroom, by Gary R. Morrison , Deborah L. Lowther, and Lisa DeMeulle --- http://vig.prenhall.com/acadbook/0,2581,013270000X,00.html 

From Syllabus News on August 29, 2000

Test Preparation Materials on Handheld Devices Kaplan, a provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools and businesses is offering a summer promotion for students applying to college and graduate school. "Kaplan To Go" test preparation software is now available for handheld computers from Palm, Inc. through Palm's Road Scholar promotional CD-ROM. Through September 15, 2000, new buyers will receive Road Scholar, an education sampler CD-ROM when they register their Palm handheld computers. The Road Scholar CD features Kaplan's test prep material, including content for the SAT and GRE exams. The Kaplan content includes analysis of the test, practice test questions, and test- taking strategies.

For more information visit www.kaplan.com 

From Syllabus News on August 29, 2000

Mobile Computing in Modern Healthcare Wake Forest is the first medical school in the nation to fully implement a program in which students use mobile applications throughout the course of their clinical training. Aether Systems, Inc. provider of wireless data products and services, has an- nounced that Wake Forest University (WFU) School of Medicine has successfully deployed Aether's ScoutWare solution to bring mobile computing into its medical training curriculum. Under this program, Wake Forest is using Aether's synchronization and data management software to enable medical students to record patient and clinical training data "on the job" through the use of mobile handheld devices.

As students at the Medical School enter their third year of medical training -- moving out of the classroom and into hands-onclinical situations -- they carry Palm handheld computing devices to record important data while at the hospital or clinic, and then transmit the day's information to the Medical School's centralized database by placing the devices into cradles located throughout the Medical Center. Both students and faculty can then review the information at any time, tracking both patient treatment programs and students' progress toward fulfilling their training requirements.

For more information about Aether visit www.aethersystems.com.

From Syllabus News on August 29, 2000

Web Site to Support University Engineering Programs Xilinx, Inc., in partnership with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, announced the launch of the Xilinx University Program Resource Center web site at www.egr.msu.edu/xup-msu. Designed to support universities that include programmable logic technologies in their curriculum and use Xilinx products in classrooms and laboratories, the site serves as an online sharing tool to link engineering professors and students worldwide. The site provides access to current research and projects at participating universities as well as links and references related to electrical and computer engineering. The site also contains an online support system consisting of a mailing list, discussion board and e-mail responses to posted questions.

Developed by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, the site aims to enhance collaborative research efforts among universities participating in theXilinx University Program. A Xilinx scholarship valued at $100,000 provides funding for two graduate students from Michigan State University to manage and maintain the site.

For more information about other programs offered through the Xilinx University Program visit http://www.university.xilinx.com/ 

"Automated Digital Libraries: How Effectively Can Computers Be Used for the Skilled 
Tasks of Professional Librarianship?"
 [D-LIB MAGAZINE, vol. 6, no. 7/8; July/August 2000] --- http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july00/arms/07arms.html 

50 Free Web publishing tools --- Everything you need to publish online: HTML editors, database converters, code validators, servers, and more. http://www.zdnet.com/swlib/hotfiles/50freepub.html 

From Infobits on August 31, 2000

LEARNED PUBLISHING ARTICLES ON THE WEB

The full text of LEARNED PUBLISHING articles from volume 10, 1997
onwards are now available online at no charge at
http://www.alpsp.org.uk/journal.htm 

Articles in the latest issue (July 2000) include: "Universities and
Article Copyright," "Setting Up a First Website for Society
Publications," "E-Citations: Actionable Identifiers and Scholarly
Referencing," "Promises and Challenges of Electronic Journals: Academic
Libraries Surveyed," and "What Can Technology Offer? Notes on Technical
Developments for the Non-Technical."

The most popular computer products --- http://computershopper.zdnet.com/texis/cs/top_ten.html?page=home 

From Neal Hannon on September 1, 2000

Formal work in the area of XML glossaries of terms is well documented at the www.w3c.org web site. 

I am working with the XBRL.org steering committee.  We have developed a taxonomy, or data dictionary, for identifiying the elements of financial statements compiling with US GAAP.  XML Schema is being used to provide more flexibility in the expressiveness of DTD's. 

DTDs are part of the XML family of standards but do not use XML document syntax.  DTDs also do not provide the mechanism for specifying the fundamental type of an element or attribute.  XML Schema, although not yet a formal W3C recommendation, provides this ability.   The entire taxonomy and examples are posted at the www.xbrl.org Web site.

Books that cover schemas simply include "Teach yourself XML in 24 hours" by Ashbacher, "XML, a Manager's Guide", by Dick.  I hope this information helps.

Neal

The Journal of Accountancy, September 2000, p. 19 provides links to charity databases --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2000/chklist.htm 

www.irs.gov.All charities that collect more than $25,000 annually must file an annual information statement, form 990, with the government. Although the statement doesn’t break down fund-raising and operational costs, it does give a glimpse into the charity’s overall financial health.  http://www.irs.gov 

www.guidestar.org.This site includes a searchable database of more than 640,000 nonprofit organizations. It allows users to locate charities based on subject, state, zip code or other criteria. It also lists all charities that have filed a form 990 with the IRS.  http://www.guidestar.org 

www.ncib.org. The National Charities Information Bureau rates 400 national charities and assesses how they work. While the NCIB charges a fee for these profiles, a client considering a large donation will find the cost worthwhile.  http://www.ncib.org 

www.nsfre.org. The National Society for Fund-Raising Executives is an organization that holds its members to a strict code of ethics, which requires the largest possible percentage of funds raised to go directly to the cause supported. There are over 400,000 NSFRE members; a charity that is a member is probably being run efficiently.  http://www.nsfre.org 

The Journal of Accountancy, September 2000, p. 24 has a helpful section called "Smart Stops on the Web." --- 

Find ISPs and ASPs ASAP

www.webharbor.com

For users interested in finding an application service provider (ASP)—for Web-based, pay-per-use programs—this portal is a good starting point. It offers recent ASP industry news, classified ads and links to other ASPs for specific industries, for example, finance and project management. This site also includes a search engine that, when queried for tax software, listed 20 different packages.

Support Your Local Portal

www.myhelpdesk.com

The Computer Help Portal features links to the trouble-shooting and help-desk sections of various vendors’ home pages. Users can search a number of directories to find assistance for problems with modems, multimedia, and accounting and tax software applications, for example. Free registration allows users access to information on specific products—for example, frequently asked questions, forums and message boards, and telephone support for computer problems.

Start Your Software Search Here www.findaccountingsoftware.com 

This site boasts a powerful search engine, CPA Online PowerSearch, that, in addition to scanning its own site, links to a dozen Web search engines to locate exactly what you need. Users can find specific definitions for key terms and stock quotes for companies by prefixing a query with either DEFINE or QUOTE.

An Online Directory and Index www.taxsites.com 

This site offers hundreds of links to tax and accounting Web resources broken down into groups and subgroups. For example, the Tax Sites section lists Tax Software as a topic; click on it and find more than a dozen subtopics—tools and calculators, tax forms, publications and research, for example.

Hurray for Yahoo! http://www.1040.com/ 

Yahoo’s Finance section includes a Tax Center with many useful features, such as tax calculators, tax preparation checklists, online filing resources and tips on a dozen topics including charitable contributions, home and property, and retirement planning. News and links to tax software sites are available, as well as a detailed glossary of terms and definitions.

“Tax Information for Everyone” www.1040.com 

Sponsored by Drake Software, this site links users to all state tax forms and accompanying instructions, as well as to all state departments of revenue. The News Room section contains linked articles, mostly from the IRS Web site, on changes in tax laws, e-filing and updates on the service’s latest technological advances.

GENERAL INTEREST SITES

Find Definitions for Abbreviations www.acronymfinder.com  (You can find this and a long list of similar helpers at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm )

Web users will want to bookmark this site for future reference. It lists more than 150,000 acronyms and abbreviations, along with what they all stand for. A user can search subject areas such as information technology, telecommunications, the military and government.

America Is Online www.accessamerica.gov 

Log onto this site to sign up for free e-mail delivery of the weekly electronic magazine, Access America E-Gov E-Zine, which reports on the government’s involvement in, and programs dealing with, information technology. Users can search the archives for information on business tax filing, criminal justice, the environment, federal government payments and international trade.

BNA’s Online News Center  http://ipcenter.bna.com/ 

The Bureau of National Affairs Intellectual Property Center is one of four online centers—including corporate law, labor and employment law, and litigation—where users can access the latest news on topics such as domain names, online patents and software licensing as well as links to related sites.

StockSeekers Goes Multilingual  www.stockseekers.com 

This site, which offers daily English-language reports of current stock options, a free newsletter, a glossary of terms and an online calculator, now provides these features in five other languages—French, German, Italian, Portugese and Spanish. To access any of these alternative sites, go to http://global.stockseekers.com. The same information and options appear on all versions.

A Site of Their Own www.ajkids.com 

AskJeeves has grown in popularity since it was first mentioned in this column three years ago (see JofA, Jul.97, page 18), so much so it now boasts an offspring, AskJeeves for Kids. The site is primarily a research tool for homework and studies, but AskJeeves also has added a few online games and other activities. More importantly, the site includes only G-rated Web pages and others written expressly for children.

The hype and wording below seems a bit of an oversell that turns me off.  Net Detective --- http://affiliates.jeanharris.com/cgi-bin/clickthru.cgi?pid=ND&sid=stem 

Takes You Beyond What Search Engines Can Do. Stop Wasting Your Time on Searches that go Nowhere! Download Net Detective and discover the EASY WAY to find out THE TRUTH about anyone. You Can Even Discover What The FBI Knows About YOU. - Guaranteed-

Every business outcome is affected to some extent by variables
not quantified in financial statements.  I salute your work.

Improvements in reporting for many of these intangibles,
such as knowledge assets, IP, market performance, etc. have
actually been achieved by professions who compete with CPAs
such as data warehouse profession, and investment analysts.

The effective storage of richer attributes on transactions
is one of the keys to producing reports that are more relevant
to predicting future business outcomes.  These attributes
increasingly include keys to external customers, suppliers,
market segments, product segments, etc. in the macro-economic
environment.  Ultimately, all transactions are interconnected
with parties, and they are all about "products" or services
which have a shared description ni the source document agreed
between adverse 3d parties.  DO you see why I am excited about
XML?

Improving stewardship of those XML attributes is one of the
 motivations for rethinking the GL.
http://www.gldialtone.com/clearGLs.htm 

The design of rootledgerXML supports a fact table within
a star or snowflake schema.  In other words, the small business
GL becomes data warehouse hypercube, with this schema.

Labor savings by automating the entire workflow are of course
the principle drivers in redoing the GL.  The GL must be
reworked at least minimally, to conduct business over the internet.
My ballpark is $150 Billion savings
http://www.gldialtone.com/survey_of_waste.xls 
Todd Boyle [tboyle@rosehill.net] 

A free e-readiness report --- http://www.mcconnellinternational.com/ereadiness/report.cfm 

To Bob at BobWeb,

To consider as a new bookmark (you added Paul Brians's study guides site in December 1999, but I don't think you have this one he put together on English usage.) Got this one from www.cnn.com/online/ .

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ 

Ed Scribner Professor of Accounting Department of Accounting & Business Computer Systems Box 30001/MSC 3DH New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Common Errors in English --- http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ (we make more of them in these days of email and the Internet, partly because in the old days on the telephone we did not have to spell each word).

I'm learning English as a second language. Will this site help me improve my English?

Very likely, though it's really aimed at the most common errors of native speakers. The errors others make in English differ according to the characteristics of their first languages. Speakers of other languages tend to make some specific errors that are uncommon among native speakers, so you may also want to consult sites dealing specifically with English as a second language (see http://www.cln.org/subjects/esl_cur.html and http://esl.about.com/education/adulted/esl/). There is also a Help Desk for ESL students at Washington State University at http://www.wsu.edu/~gordonl/ESL/. An outstanding book you may want to order is Ann Raimes' Keys for Writers.

Tax Cape is an interesting and somewhat controversial website from the standpoint of international financing and taxation.  Among other things it compares 50 leading financial sites around the world   --- http://www.taxcape.com/ 

I received this email requesting that I add this message to New Bookmarks:

Your TaxCape Team
TaxCape Anstalt 
http://www.taxcape.com  
Landstrasse 30 FL-9494 Schaan Furstentum Liechtenstein 
Tel.: +423 238 11 68; Fax: +423 238 11 69 mailto:info@taxcape.com 

"Making a Game of Web Searches," by Lisa Picarille  http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38496,00.html 

Called Web Challenge, the show pits three pairs of teams equipped with laptops and Net connections against each other to answer trivia questions. But in this game knowing the answers is not enough -- contestants can only score points by finding the correct answers on the Web.

Web Challenge has no rules regarding which search engine contestants use, or how many browser windows can be open simultaneously. Contestants bypass search engines and go directly to informational sites such as GolfDigest.com or the Internet Movie Database to get their answers. The first team to find the right answer wins $150. But if no one answers correctly within the two-minute time limit, the prize is forfeited.

The teams are perched at podiums and share mouse and keyboard duties, while the host peers over their shoulders and asks questions about their searching techniques. Cameras will monitor the Web searches so that viewers can cheer or jeer their surfing expertise.

The show is the brainchild of Stewart Cheifet, the man behind Net Café and the 17-year-old Computer Chronicles television show, which both appear weekly on PBS. Cheifet is also the producer of the "Computer Bowl" trivia challenge, a decade-old trivia game about the tech industry that pits East Coast geeks against Silicon Valley techies.

Cheifet said one of the driving forces for creating Web Challenge is statistics showing that people use the Internet and watch TV at the same time.

There are also plans for two online components to the show. Users can play along with Web Challenge as it airs on TV, or play an online version of the game.

Last week Cheifet brought in contestants and technicians to record a demonstration of what the show will look like that will be used to pitch network television producers. Cheifet is promoting Web Challenge to six networks and said there is a very high level of interest. While he declined to say which networks he was in discussions with, sources close to the production staff said the networks include Comedy Central and USA Networks.

Disability services of the U.S. Government  --- http://www.disAbility.gov/ 

Forwarded by Debbie Bowling

guerrilla marketing (noun)

A marketing campaign that uses non-mainstream tactics and locations, often in defiance of local laws or statutes.

"College campuses provide the perfect venue for guerrilla marketing -- which runs the gamut from sidewalk chalking, biodegradable tree postings and stenciling to product give-aways and spray painting logos around campuses -- since students by nature are open to nontraditional marketing schemes, say experts." 
Erik Gruenwedel and Mary Power, "Street Fighters," ADWEEK, August 7, 2000

Ratings of computer stores (Reseller Ratings.com)  http://www.resellerratings.com/ 

Beyond The Fall: The Former Soviet Bloc in Transition 1989-1999 (History)  http://www.time.com/time/btf/home.html 

Expeditions into Myth: In Search of Seaman of Ancient Egypt (History) http://www.yoot.com/ 

Don't trust a medicine man prescribing the things at The Quackatorium (History)  http://www.radiantslab.com/quackmed/ 

Sounds like MS Quackery --- U.S. District judge says Bristol Technology was the victim of 'classic bait-and-switch' tactics from Microsoft. New legal woes ahead? http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0009014/2622749/ 

Smithsonian Collection and the Library of Congress, this archive houses more than a million recordings of American roots music, songs, poems, and speeches from 1890 to the present (History, Audio) --- http://www.saveoursounds.org/ 

"Laptops no longer a luxury for students," By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY --- http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crh472.htm 

Preparing kids for today's world, Throckmorton says, is part of the rationale behind the shift to laptops. "The idea was to look at a real-world model: You learn when you need to learn. You don't go into a special room to learn word processing when you don't have a report due. The idea of one-to-one access was the goal."

This school year, Episcopal laptops will reach beyond the classroom even more. "In science, they will have digital probes that will collect data in real time from experiments and load it into a spreadsheet. Students will take home data and spend time analyzing and interpreting data instead of entering it into a chart," Throckmorton says.

For the football team, playbooks are intranet hyperlinks that players access from dorm rooms. Coaches' chalk talk is a computer program with animated players instead of X's and O's.

The success at Brewster, where SAT scores have risen more than 90 points, relies less on the hardware, Smith says, and more on teacher training and schoolwide philosophies and curriculum. "The laptop is the child on the parade route for the emperor. Open it up, it says, 'What do you want me to do?' " Smith says. "If the school hasn't defined itself and doesn't know what it's doing, the computer will point that out. That's the case in the vast majority of schools."

September 3rd edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter  --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. Purchasing a new PDA? Here's a Buyer's Guide 
2. Cell Phones Will Come with Frequency Emission Measurements, Chart Explains the Exposure 
3. VBXML.com: Data-Driven XSL 
4. Will Thousands of Companies Register Their E-Business Methodology? 
5. Intel: The Future is Peer to Peer.. as in Napster-like Technology
6. XML NEWS! Live Feed for all News about XML

PRO2NET ACCOUNTING WEEKLY UPDATE http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of September 4, 2000

1. The Week's Top Accounting News 
2. CPAs: Earn Free CPE Credit! 
3. Feature Solutions Articles in Brief 
4. Enter to Win a Single User Fixed Asset Management System 
5. Execusite, Pro2Net Team Up

Pro2Net Accounting Students Newsletter http://accountingstudents.pro2net.com  August 29, 2000

1. Preparing for the New Governmental Financial Reporting Module 
2. How to Fit in at the Office 
3. Do You Have the Right References? 
4. Win a Bisk CPA Review Course

Prices and technologies of the 1950's (those good old days) --- http://www.funstun.com/1950.htm 

Real bloopers --- 3BP.com http://www.3bp.com/ 

The only if not, the largest collection of funny and odd headlines, photos, and video-clips submitted from all over the US and the world. These are all actual stuff torn from real life, in other words, none of it's made up. Don't forget to put a bookmark. Hope you enjoy them :-)

Go check out the headlines. These are actual articles and clippings from newspapers, magazines, and products.

Example 1 (a mistaken combining of two classified adds)

Free To a Good Home
Rottweiler, 3 years old, female, spayed, very intelligent, loves to eat rabbits and kittens, loves to play ball with kids.  Call (614)XXX-XXXX

Example 2

A actual business name --- Steve's Landfill and Burger Pit

Example 3 (Add for a weight loss program)

 Reduction is permanent as long as you don't gain weight.

From Leila Tompert

As usual, my dad bathed my four younger brothers, including the three-year-old twins.  But after cleaning up the bathroom, he came out to find three shining faces and one that was still dirty.  Clean twin Anthony gleefully announced to our mom, "Daddy gave me two baths."

Seen on a college application form from an honest young man: (from Mark Smith)

Extracurricular Activities:  Wrestling

Positions Held:  Pinned mostly.

Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.  When a man turned 65 he asked the wish fairy for a wife thirty years younger than himself.  Zap!  He was celebrating his 90th birthday at a bash thrown by his wife.

I stay in shape.  This is just the shape I stay in.

The most expensive bracelet in her jewelry box was made of cheap vinyl.  It was the one she wore every day during a stay in the hospital.

Seen in Type

If the strike isn't settled quickly, it could last awhile.

Lawyers give poor free legal advice.

Killer sentenced to die for the second time in ten years.

In a message dated 08/28/2000 10:06:10 PM, Evibb writes:

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said "someone may steal from it at night". So they created a  night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "how does the watchman do his job without instruction?"   So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to  write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "how will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "how are these people going to get paid?" So they created the following positions, a time keeper, and a payroll officer, then hired two people.

 Then Congress said, "who will be accountable for all of these people?" So  they created an administrative section and hired three people, and  Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, "we have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost."

So they laid off the night watchman.

Forwarded by Bob Overn

Two little kids are in a hospital, lying on stretchers next to each other, outside the operating room.

The first kid leans over and asks, "What are you in here for?"

The second kid says, "I'm in here to get my tonsils out, and I'm a little nervous."

The first kid says, "You've got nothing to worry about. I had that done when I was four. They put you to sleep, and when you wake up they give you lots of Jell-O and ice cream. It's a breeze!"

The second kid then asks, "What are you here for?"

The first kid says, "A circumcision."

And the second kid says, "Whoa! I had that done when I was born. "Couldn't walk for a year!"

Punny from Bev Koebrich [auntiebev@mediaone.net]

My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned couldn't concentrate.

Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn't hack it, so they gave me the axe.

After that I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn't suited for it. Mainly because it was a so-so job.

Next I tried working in a muffler factory but that was exhausting.

I wanted to be a barber, but I just couldn't cut it.

Then I tried to be a chef--figured it would add a little spice to my life but I just didn't have the thyme.

Finally, I attempted to be a deli worker, but any way I sliced it, I couldn't cut the mustard.

My best job was being a musician, but eventually I found I wasn't noteworthy.

I studied a long time to become a doctor, but I didn't have any patients.

Next was a job in a shoe factory; I tried but I just didn't fit in.

I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn't live on my net income.

Thought about becoming a witch, so I tried that for a spell.

I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining.

I got a job at a zoo feeding giraffes but I was fired because I wasn't up to it.

So then I got a job in a gymnasium (work-out-center), but they said I wasn't fit for the job.

Next, I found being an electrician interesting, but the work was shocking.

After many years of trying to find steady work I finally got a job as a historian until I realized there was no future in it.

My last job was working at Starbucks, but I had to quit cause it was always the same old grind.

You got any ideas? I'm opened for suggestions .........maybe you have something that WORKS..........because I don't.

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 September 5, 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  

August 29, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson (as quoted on the bottom of email messages from Judy Welch)

You guys (educators) are in trouble and we are going to eat your lunch.
Mike Milken as quoted by Mark Taylor (see below)

Finally, we believe that portals can be used to engage and retain students for a lifetime of education. Although new models of "digital marketing" are unfamiliar, and perhaps even alien in their campus. com incarnation, campuses can design and support portal-based "virtual communities" to extend traditional academic values and relationships into new markets.
Michael Looney and Peter Lyman (see below)

WOW Site of the Week

There isn't a lot (or anything?) on FAS 133/138 here, but this is a tremendous resource for risk management from a finance perspective --- Risk Management Special Report -- FinanceWise http://www.financewise.com/public/edit/riskm/rmindex.htm 

There are links to over 300 risk management websites.

FinanceWise Special Reports are designed to help you find the best information on the Internet in the quickest possible time.

Because of the nature of a search engine, information can often be located in a broad cross section of categories. Our reports bring that information together as one convenient resource enhanced by topic specific editorial abstracts for each site.

In addition to links we have selected articles and reports from leading publications and participants in the field of risk management.

We have launched an e-mail roundup of risk content on the web: the RiskBrief. It's your guide to the latest details of relevant sites, articles, books, conferences and more. Click HERE to subscribe. It's free.

FinanceWise users are also eligible for a special discount on the recommended titles on this topic from the FinanceWise Bookshop.

And for an insight into global thinking on risk management matters, news and discussion groups offer the opportunity to seek and express opinions.

To nominate a site, discussion forum, newsgroup or article for inclusion in the Risk Management special report send an email to our editorial team at web@risk.co.uk

Tony Tinker is not going to like this!

Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism http://www.moraldefense.com/ 

Actually the first to reply was Steven Filling

Bob -

I guess I'd agree with Tony then. A Mico$oft funded colony of deluded yits spouting bits of Ayn Rand annoys me as well.

Kind of funny how these 'moralists' define "economic relationships" as different in kind from any other, and hold only the economic sacrosanct from societal interference. Rather like Gary Becker for the illiterati, except they lack the wit to see the contradiction in government-subsidized pillagers of society wanking on about the ill effects of government interference. If you'd be interested in a philosophic explanation of why what this site espouses is nonsense I'll ask one of my sophomores to write something up.

On 26-Aug-2000 Jensen, Robert extemporized: > Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism > http://www.moraldefense.com/ >

cheers S Filling 
Nobody's Distinguished Professor of Business 
California State University, Stanislaus

Scott Bonacker [scottbonacker@MOCCPA.COM] responded as follows:

See also this book by Gilder, favored by conservatives and Republicans:

Wealth and Poverty (Ics Series in Self-Governance) by George Gilder, Robert B. Hawkins Paperback - 327 pages 2 edition (June 1993) Institute for Contemporary Studies; ISBN: 1558152407

As of August 29, the XBRL demo is still down.  Keep trying at http://data.research.freeedgar.com/xbrl/demo/xbrldemo.htm 

For more on XML and XBRL, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm 

Question:  What tremendous glossary has been added to Bob Jensen's list of leading business and economics glossary?

Answer:  The Online Glossary of Research Economics at http://econterms.com/index.html 

Other leading business and economics glossaries can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm 

My technology glossary and links to other technology glossaries are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm 

WizeUp requests that I be more accurate in my evaluation of their services.  My main complaint concerned the ethics of allowing professors to both adopt and sell leading textbooks online.  The latest version of the WizeUp website seems to be playing down that option for professors relative to earlier versions of the website.  Now I am happy to encourage students and faculty to make use of this wonderful way to purchase top academic textooks.

Other than that, I think that it is great that WizeUp is providing over 100 leading textbooks from almost every discipline online (it amazes me how they got the leading publishing houses to partner with WizeUp for this purpose.)  It great that these leading textbooks can be obtained in digital form for ease of storage, ease of access, ease of word search, and price.  

Different universities and bookstores offer different types of programs and pricing to students and the markets and prices are often complex and they often change.

Generally, WizeUp Digital Textbooks are currently priced at $10 below the used book - some of our Digital Textbooks are priced at $20 below the used book.

In the digital form, you can take notes, highlight, make bookmarks, and search.  My evaluation is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm#051500   Especially note the FAQs at http://www.wizeup.com/instructors_faq.html 

Reply to Jennifer Johnson, WizeUp Digital Textbooks
I will be out of town a great deal this semester. What would be better is for you to write a correcting message that you would like to have me put in my work. If I agree with your corrections (and I will probably trust your judgment more than my judgment), I will publish your corrections.

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: Jennifer Johnson [mailto:jenjohnson2000@earthlink.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 9:54 PM To: rjensen@trinity.edu Subject: (no subject)

Professor Jensen,

I read with interest the coverage of our company on your Website. I am the National Sales Manager for WizeUp and I would be happy to provide you with accurate information for your site.

It was a little difficult to follow, but the inaccuracies may discourage professors or student users. I would like our local rep to be able to meet with you for a demonstration of the product this semester. Would you be available?

I look forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.

Jennifer Johnson WizeUp Digital Textbooks (212) 324-1300 x 1021 jjohnson@wizeup.com 

Featured Document of the Week (at a philosophical level)

"Useful Devils," by Mark C. Taylor, Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html 

This is a heavy duty article that I think every educator should read with care from beginning to end.  It deals with very controversial issues beginning with the first " modern university" (The University of Berlin) that commenced in 1810. 

Immanuel Kant developed the blueprint for this university in a work entitled The Conflict of the Faculties, published in 1798. Kant began his analysis by arguing: 

 Whoever it was that first hit on the notion of a university and proposed that a public institution of this kind be established, it was not a bad idea to handle the entire content of learning (really, the thinkers devoted to it) by mass production, so to speak—by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee, and all of these together would form a kind of learned community called a university (or higher school). The university would have a certain autonomy (since only scholars can pass judgment on scholars as such) and accordingly it would be authorized to perform certain functions through its faculties

In this remarkably prescient passage, Kant associates higher education with mass production and, by extension, with what eventually becomes the logic of Fordism. Accordingly, the university is structured like an assembly line with discrete divisions and departments turning out uniform products with predetermined values. The curriculum and the education of students are linear processes, which are programmed by the producer. University professors are divided between so-called higher and lower faculties. The “higher” faculties are law, medicine, and theology, which represent what we today call professional schools. It is important to note that the university Kant designed is supported by the state. The purpose of the higher faculties is to provide the educated citizens that the government needs to maintain a functional society. The “lower” faculty, which Kant defines as philosophical, comprises what we now label the arts and sciences. The higher faculties are charged with providing practical education, whereas the responsibility of the lower faculty is disinterested inquiry and critical reflection ... 

There really is too much in this article to capture in brief quotations.  But I will quote the closing paragraph:

Change is never easy and always threatening. Yet change is what keeps institutions as well as people alive. Unfortunately, no institution is more resistant to change than the college and university. Perhaps it has always been so, but now time seems to be running out. If colleges and universities do not overcome their smug satisfaction with how they do business, the Michael Milkens of the world will indeed eat their lunch. The challenge that educators face is to turn the useful devils of business and technology to their own ends. If usefulness is a devil, it’s a devil we must learn to dance with or educational institutions will become more obsolete than they already are. This is neither a threat nor an ultimatum; it is just a fact—a brute fact. And it’s time to face this fact directly and honestly.

Featured Document of the Week (at a strategic level)

Following on the heels of my featured knowledge portal in my August 22 New Bookmarks comes a featured review of "Portals in Higher Education," by Michael Looney and Peter Lyman, Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html 

This is an outstanding introduction to web portals in general and educational portals in particular.  As you recall (from my August 22 edition of New Bookmarks), a tremendous education portal is under construction at Columbia University.  It is called Fathom --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q3.htm#Fathom 

A few selected quotations from the Looney and Lyman article are given below:

WHAT ARE PORTALS? 
Let’s start with a simple definition, and then explore some of the variations of portals. At the most basic level, portals gather a variety of useful information resources into a single, “one-stop” Web page, helping the user to avoid being overwhelmed by “infoglut” or feeling lost on the Web. But since no two people have the same interests, portals allow users to customize their information sources by selecting and viewing only the information they find personally useful. Some portals also let you personalize your portal by including private information (such as your stock portfolio or checking account balance). Put simply, an institution’s portal is designed to make an individual’s Web experience more efficient and thereby make the institution as a whole more productive and responsive.

. . .

The two most popular consumer portals are AOL and Yahoo! AOL ( http://www.aol.com ) has over twenty-five million users averaging 12 minutes per session.2 Yahoo! ( http://www.yahoo.com ) has over twenty-two million users averaging nearly 25 minutes per session and is the classic directory portal that most other portals have imitated. Portals often seem similar from one site to another because publishers of generic consumer information, such as InfoSpace ( http://www.infospace.com ) and MyWay ( http://www.myway.com  ), license the same information services to many dot.coms. College.com companies may license these information to companies as B2B (business-to-business) enterprise or use them on student-oriented web pages as a B2C (business-to-consumer) enterprise.

. . . 

According to the Delphi Group’s published survey results, 55 percent of Fortune 500 companies are already using an enterprise portal or have plans to develop one in the near future. Enterprise portals are intended to assist employees to be more efficient and productive by centralizing access to needed data services—for example, competitive information, manufacturing and accounting data, 401K information, and other human relations data. Enterprise portals often include news, weather, and sports feeds as a benefit for the employee, giving these portals the appearance of a community portal.

Examples of campus portals:

Some campuses have already started developing educational portals to accomplish these goals. The University of Washington has developed MyUW ( http://myuw.washington.edu ). This portal site uses information in innovative ways that enhance the educational mission, personalizing student data (student debit-card totals, student course information) and providing faculty with ideas and resources for new uses of technology for teaching.  The UW portal seems to have the mission of creating an online community encompassing a diverse and complex on-and off-campus environment. And the MyUCLA site ( http://www.my.ucla.edu  ), one of the oldest in higher education, provides a classic directory-style portal, ranging from new modes of accessing campus administrative data to relevant feeds from the UCLA Daily Bruin. 

I contend that the Fathom knowledge portals extend well beyond the objectives and strategies of the portals mentioned in the above Looney and Lyman article.  The Fathom portal has leading partners such as the Smithsonian and the New York Public Library for heavy input of knowledge into the portal.  It is called Fathom --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q3.htm#Fathom 

Some key knowledge portal links

Fathom Partners

Columbia University
LSE (Enterprise LSE)
Cambridge University Press
British Library
New York Public Library
Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History

Fathom@Columbia --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/00/04/fathom.html 

Fathom@LSE (London School of Economics) --- http://www.lse.ac.uk/Press/fathom.htm 

Knowledge@Wharton --- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?noid=yes&intro=yes 

Center for the Study of Technology and Society --- http://www.tecsoc.org/ 

Our work. The Center for the Study of Technology and Society, Inc. is a non-profit think tank granted tax-exempt status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.  Through original research and in-depth analysis, the Center examines the interaction of technological change and society.  The Center will strive to emphasize and clarify the point that advances in technology are neither inherently good nor inherently evil – but that every new technology has the potential to cause problems, and the capacity to solve problems.

Our belief. In all we do, the Center will be guided by the belief that properly utilized technology can be beneficial, but that uninformed government interference will only stymie technological achievement and close off avenues to progress.

Our plan. The Center has headquarters in Washington, D.C. and additional research staff in Chicago.  The Center is developing a network of industries and universities, of associations and NGOs, of policymakers and concerned citizens.  To find out how you can help the Center, click here.

From the National Academy of Sciences  (A Book)
The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age --- http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/ 

Borrowing a book from a local public library would seem to be one of the most routine, familiar, and uncomplicated acts in modern civic life: A world of information is available with little effort and almost no out-of-pocket cost. Such access to information has played a central role in American education and civic life from the time of Thomas Jefferson, who believed in the crucial role that knowledge and an educated populace play in making democracy work. Yet the very possibility of borrowing a book, whether from a library or a friend, depends on a number of subtle, surprisingly complex, and at times conflicting elements of law, public policy, economics, and technology, elements that are in relative balance today but may well be thrown completely out of balance by the accelerating transformation of information into digital form.

The problem is illustrated simply enough: A printed book can be accessed by one or perhaps two people at once, people who must, of course, be in the same place as the book. But make that same text available in electronic form, and there is almost no technological limit to the number of people who can access it simultaneously, from literally anywhere on the planet where there is a telephone (and hence an Internet connection).

At first glance, this is wonderful news for the consumer and for society: The electronic holdings of libraries (and friends) around the world can become available from a home computer, 24 hours a day, year-round; they are never "checked out." These same advances in technology create new opportunities and markets for publishers.

But there is also a more troublesome side. For publishers and authors, the question is, How many copies of the work will be sold (or licensed) if networks make possible planet-wide access? Their nightmare is that the number is one. How many books (or movies, photographs, or musical pieces) will be created and published online if the entire market can be extinguished by the sale of the first electronic copy?

The nightmare of consumers is that the attempt to preserve the marketplaces leads to technical and legal protections that sharply reduce access to society's intellectual and cultural heritage, the resource that Jefferson saw as crucial to democracy.

This deceptively simple problem illustrates the combination of promise and peril that make up the digital dilemma. The information infrastructure--by which we mean information in digital form, computer networks, and the World Wide Web--has arrived accompanied by contradictory powers and promises. For intellectual property in particular it promises more--more quantity, quality, and access--while imperiling one means of rewarding those who create and publish. It is at once a remarkably powerful medium for publishing and distributing information, and the world's largest reproduction facility. It is a technology that can enormously improve access to information, yet can inhibit access in ways that were never before practical. It has the potential to be a vast leveler, bringing access to the world's information resources to millions who had little or no prior access, and the potential to be a stratifier, deepening the division between the information "haves" and "have-nots."

The information infrastructure has as well the potential to demolish a careful balancing of public good and private interest that has emerged from the evolution of U.S. intellectual property law over the past 200 years. The public good is the betterment of society that results from the constitutional mandate to promote the "progress of science and the useful arts"; the private interest is served by the time-limited monopoly (a copyright or patent) given to one who has made a contribution to that progress. The challenge is in striking and maintaining the balance, offering enough control to motivate authors, inventors, and publishers, but not so much control as to threaten important public policy goals (e.g., preservation of the cultural heritage of the nation, broad access to information, promotion of education and scholarship). As usual, the devil is in the details, and by and large the past 200 years of intellectual property history have seen a successful, albeit evolving, balancing of those details. But the evolving information infrastructure presents a leap in technology that may well upset the current balance, forcing a rethinking of many of the fundamental premises and practices associated with intellectual property.

The stakes involved in all this are high, both economically and in social terms. Decisions we make now will determine who will benefit from the technology and who will have access to what information on what terms--foundational elements of our future society.

The Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure believes that fundamental change is afoot. As a society we need to ask whether the existing mechanisms still work, and if not, what should be done. What options exist for accomplishing the important goals of intellectual property law and policy in the digital age? Test cases are now the stuff of daily news, as for example the upheaval in music publishing and distribution caused by digital recording and the MP3 format. The committee believes that society needs to look further out than today's crisis, try to understand the nature of the changes taking place, and determine as best it can what their consequences might be, what it would wish them to be, and how it might steer toward fulfilling the promise and avoiding the perils. Stimulating that longer-range exploration is the purpose of this report.

Although the report builds on some past efforts, it takes a broader approach, analyzing the issues from the perspective of a multiplicity of relevant disciplines: law, technology, public policy, economics, sociology, and psychology. The committee strongly believes that attempts to consider digital intellectual property issues through a single lens will necessarily yield incomplete, and often incorrect, answers. The report is narrow in one sense, focusing primarily on copyright because it protects the intellectual property most frequently encountered by the general public.

Opinions run strong on almost every issue addressed in this report, in large part because the stakes are so high. If, as is often claimed, societies are seeing a shift in economies as significant as the industrial revolution, with the transition to knowledge and information as a major source of wealth, then intellectual property may well be the most important asset in the coming decades.

From Syllabus News on August 21, 2000

Mascot Network has announced that its Mascot 2001 portal will serve 500,000 students this fall. Built using Microsoft technologies, Mascot 2001 has several new features and enhancements, including instant messaging, a personal calendar, and a new interface to connect alumni, students and parents. Sensitive information is password-protected, and a campus channel enables students to check grades, register for classes, and access administrative information. Administrative access tools help administrators manage the service by adding and removing users, publishing school-specific content, and monitoring site activity. Also included is an academic research area that allows students to get research materials, online tutoring, and standardized testing assistance.

For more information visit http://www.mascotnetwork.com. 

***************************************************
Class of 2001 Has High Salary Expectations More than eighty percent of surveyed computer engineering and computer science students entering their final year of college report that they expect to earn higher salaries than last year's graduates averaged. CollegeHire interviewed more than 5,000 computer science and computer engineering students across the country and found that more than 51 percent of the respondents said they expect to earn between $51K - $70K in their first job. Graduates of those same programs earned an average of $47,000last year. Jeff Daniel, CEO of CollegeHire, cites a shortage of technical graduates as the main reason for the highest-ever salary expectations.

Do you want to by a shares in a prestigious university?

One alternative used by prestige universities is to partner with an online course development and delivery corporation such as UNext (a corporation that will deliver business courses developed and owned by Stanford University, Columbia University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics.   See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm  

Another alternative is for a university to form a corporation (and possibly sell investment shares to the public) and then deliver online and onsite courses through the private corporation.  One such company is the new Duke Corporate Education.   (Wanda Wallace watchers may want to note that our respected and talented Dr. Wallace has gone corporate.)

DUKE'S FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS FORMING PRIVATE COMPANY;
FIRST TO PROVIDE GLOBAL TOP-TO-BOTTOM EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

DURHAM, N.C. - Duke University's Fuqua School of Business is forming a private corporation to become the first business school to provide tailored, top-to-bottom educational services to the world's major companies, Dean Rex D. Adams announced Friday.

Blair H. Sheppard, currently Fuqua's senior associate dean for academic programs, will be president and CEO of the new enterprise.

Named Duke Corporate Education Inc., the company will provide corporate clients with business education designed specifically for their needs. It also will expand Fuqua's innovative distributed-learning consulting services to help corporations establish or radically improve their manager training programs and corporate universities.

"In my four years as dean, this is one of the most significant announcements I have had the privilege to make," said Adams, who will serve as the chairman of the company's board of directors. "Building on our success in customized executive education, we will be out front in teaching across multiple layers of management - anywhere in the world. Duke Corporate Education will house and expand our current tailored executive education operation and also our newly formed Corporate University Advisory Services and e-Learning Solutions groups of distributed-learning consultants.

"Faced with the accelerating pace of change and a growing dependence on talent, companies are looking for Duke-quality education to support strategic transformation, help develop managers and serve as an ongoing investment in human capital," Adams said.

He said the market for corporate education is now about $40 billion annually and is growing at 25 percent a year.

Duke University will be the majority shareholder of Duke Corporate Education. Private equity groups are expected to make major investments in the enterprise.

An agreement has been reached with Pensare Inc. to provide the distance-learning technology for Duke Corporate Education. Pensare, based in Los Altos, Calif., is the global leader in e-learning business networks. Pensare first partnered with Duke in October 1999 to co-produce a new curriculum and e-learning platform to support The Duke MBA - Cross Continent program. The Cross Continent program, which welcomes its inaugural class of 100 students from around the world in August 2000, offers a unique blend of classroom-based and online MBA education from campus locations in Durham, N.C., and Frankfurt, Germany.

Sheppard said the school "is a natural for leading this brand-new industry. We have been known for delivering innovative executive education, and creating this stand-alone business maintains our momentum and leadership. We will be providing a one-stop shop for corporate universities, delivering top-to-bottom education that is truly unique."

Other schools have formed private companies, but Sheppard said Duke Corporate Education will be the first to deliver programs at every level of a corporation, not just upper management.

He said initial clients of Duke Corporate Education will include Deutsche Bank, Ford, Siemens and Ericsson. Its offices will be in Durham, in close proximity to Fuqua, he said.

Joining Sheppard at the company will be Wanda T. Wallace, formerly associate dean for executive education, who will be director of customer relations and program operations; Professor John Gallagher, former director of Fuqua's Computer Mediated Learning Center, who will be head of research and development; and Professor John McCann, a specialist in e-commerce.

Sheppard said Judith A. Rosenblum will join the company in a leadership role. She is the former chief learning officer for The Coca-Cola Company and a former vice chairman for learning, education and human resources at Coopers & Lybrand.

Fuqua's second type of executive education program, open-enrollment courses taught to managers from multiple companies, will remain under Fuqua's non-profit umbrella. These include Fuqua's highly acclaimed Program for Manager Development and Advanced Management Program courses. New courses will be developed in the coming months.

Richard Staelin, the Edward S. and Rose Donnell professor of marketing at Fuqua since 1982, has been named associate dean for executive education to lead open-enrollment education.

Ninth House Network buys up intellectual property rights of leading scholars http://www.ninthhouse.com/home.htm 
The new E-Learning Resource Site is described at http://www.ninthhouse.com/news/press/pr00/q3/august15.htm 

Ninth House Network™, the leading broadband e-learning environment for organizational development, today announced the launch of its new corporate web site at www.NinthHouse.com . The new web site, which highlights Ninth House Network’s e-learning solutions, features a comprehensive e-learning resource center available to the general public, providing tools, information, white papers, relevant articles and related links that help further the understanding of the role that e-learning plays in organizational transformation.

The Ninth House Network web site features insight from leading business minds on a wide range of topics, including change management, building successful alliances and partnerships, team building, building community, management, innovation and customer service. Using a combination of streaming video, readable interviews, interactive web casts and related articles and books, Ninth House Network provides visitor access to business leaders such as Tom Peters, Ken Blanchard, Larraine Segil, Peter Senge and Clifton Taulbert.

The need to steadily expand their knowledge is just one of the watershed changes facing developers now that the Web has become the dominant platform --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0008221/2617315/ 

"Home Is Where the E-Classroom Is"  by Kendra Mayfield --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38161,00.html 

"The use of computers in the home-school environment is just exploding," said William Lloyd, researcher for the National Home Education Research Institute.

"The traditional classroom is built on a 19^th-century model of education. Some home schoolers are already getting a 21^st-century education," said Scott Somerville, an attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Experts estimate that there are more than 1.7 million home-schooled children in the United States, growing at a rate of 10 to 15 percent every year.

According to a 1997 study, approximately 86 percent of home school families reported owning a computer, compared to the 34 percent national average for U.S. families.

Since the report, the number of home school families using chat rooms, email lists, and listserves has increased tenfold, Lloyd said.

KMPG's New eValuation
"Services Calculate Net ROI Consulting firms update traditional business metrics for Internet" By CHUCK MOOZAKIS 

Calculating Net ROI

The fledgling oil and gas exchange PetroCosm knew it needed more than the backing of giants Chevron and Texaco to win over customers and suppliers. Even more important was the ability to demonstrate clear financial benefits for participants.

In the months leading up to its July launch, PetroCosm worked with consulting firm KPMG to develop a return-on-investment (ROI) model that would help potential customers make the case for participating in the exchange.

PetroCosm used a new KPMG service dubbed eValuation--announced last week--that takes into account traditional ROI variables, such as up-front development costs, as well as more Internet-centric variables, such as the additional sales that can be derived by participating in a wide range of online marketplaces. It also factors in the cross-company ramifications of Internet supply chains and how customers and suppliers can also benefit.

"We were able to come up with a business case that said this is a profitable business" for both suppliers and PetroCosm's founding members, said PetroCosm controller Rod Starr. "It sounds straightforward enough, but one of the great challenges is that there are no existing models to gauge ROI."

Armed with results from the ROI study that indicated the type of cost savings prospective members could realize by participating in a B2B exchange, PetroCosm has been able to sell prospective participants on the possibility of trimming anywhere from 5 percent to 20 percent of their procurement costs by joining the marketplace, Starr said. --Chuck Moozakis

Read the rest: http://www.internetwk.com/lead/lead082400.htm 

Thank you Boris Feldman for free access to "Investor Relations and Selective Disclosure Under SEC Regulation FD."  --- http://www.feldmans.org/Boris/FD%20FAQ.html#anchor12697 

In a nutshell, how will Reg. FD change my company’s disclosure practices? 
Does FD require my company to provide guidance as to future results? 
What information is "material" for purposes of FD? 
Are there audiences as to which communications are not covered by FD? 
How can I provide guidance in compliance with FD? Should we start using 8-K filings more regularly? 
Can I discharge my disclosure obligations by posting something on our Web site? 
How does FD affect the Safe Harbor for forward-looking information? 
How will FD change my conference calls? May I review draft analyst reports under FD? 
Does FD prohibit "walking the Street down"? Will FD change my behavior at investor conferences? 
How does FD affect the "quiet period" at the end of a quarter? What should we do if we make a mistake? 
What are the consequences of violating FD? When will FD take effect? 
Where can I find the text of FD?

The jury's still out on online banking for consumers, but some big brick-and-mortar banks are increasing online banking options for their corporate customers --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0008253/2620239/ 

MoMA2000 (Museum of Modern Art)  http://moma2000.moma.org/ 

NASA's Visible Earth --- http://www.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ 

Eyewitness Encyclopedia (over 40,000 pictures and 2 million terms) --- http://eyewitness.dk.com/

Daily Grammar http://www.dailygrammar.com/ 

Did you know that ASP has two meanings?  From my Technology Glossary at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm 

ASP = Active Server Pages.  ASP script extensions contain either Visual Basic or Jscript code. When a browser requests an ASP page, the Web server generates a page with HTML code and sends it back to the browser. So ASP pages are similar to CGI scripts, but they enable Visual Basic programmers to work with familiar tools.

ASP = Applications Server Page.  This is a page that performs customized "applications" services.  A great example is NetLedger.com where individuals or complete business firms can access accounting software that allows all accounting to be maintained in NetLedger's online files.  Business transactions (such as billings and collections) can even be managed by the applications server.  Other examples are given at http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2615695,00.html 

For now, however, the latest twist on the ASP trend—what Outtask and some analysts are calling the BSP, or business service provider, model—remains immature. The range of business process services being offered in conjunction with hosted applications is narrow, mostly limited to functions such as travel, PC support and payroll. And, while some hosting providers such as Alexandria-based Outtask have begun building mixed portfolios of managed application and business process services from scratch and selling them directly to their customers, many established ASPs are adding the BSP tag to their résumés by forming alliances with the BPO divisions of major consulting and systems integration companies or with leaders in specific areas of outsourcing, such as Automatic Data Processing Inc. for payroll services. Many of those relationships, however, are new. Often, the hosted applications from one vendor and the business services from another are not truly integrated. So the user is often left negotiating and dealing with more than one provider.

Stan Gibson asks: Does your ASP have what it takes to make it in the IT game of "Survivor"? http://www.eweek.com/b/pcwt0008256/2615698/ 

Culture and business of Florence and Tuscany (History) 
Virtual Uffizi: the Complete Catalog --- http://www.arca.net/uffizi/ 

Intel disappointed some observers Tuesday at its developer forum when it announced that the new Itanium chip won't be introduced initially at 800MHz. --- http://www.eweek.com/a/pcwt0008232/2618655/ 

Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature --- http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/ 

FertileMind - market talk for "educated investors" http://www.fertilemind.net/ 

TeacherWeb (a free place where teachers can post course materials) --- http://www.teacherweb.com/ 

Survival Guide for new Teachers --- http://www.ed.gov/pubs/survivalguide/ 

The reality is, nothing is as secure as it seems, especially when it seems impenetrable, warns Scot Petersen. http://www.eweek.com/b/pcwt0008236/2615692/ 

Historical Statistics on Banking -- FDIC [.pdf] http://www2.fdic.gov/hsob/ 

Digital movie archive of "America at Work, America at Leisure" (history, video)  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awlhtml/ 

Question:  What is the best way to learn about an industry?

Answer:  Industry Tutor http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/business/industry_tutor.htm 
From the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida 

Hoaxbusters (the Department of Energy's  place to start when you want to check on whether something you saw on the web or received via email is really true). --- http://HoaxBusters.ciac.org/ 

Interspersed among the junk mail and spam that fills our Internet e-mail boxes are dire warnings about devastating new viruses, Trojans that eat the heart out of your system, and malicious software that can steal the computer right off your desk. Added to that are messages about free money, children in trouble, and other items designed to grab you and get you to forward the message to everyone you know. Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While  hoaxes do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist. At CIAC, we find that we spend much more time de-bunking hoaxes than handling real virus and Trojan incidents. These pages describe some of the warnings, offers, and pleas for help that are filling our mailboxes, clogging our mailservers, and that generally do not have any basis in fact.

In addition to describing hoaxes and chain letters found on the Internet, we will discuss how to recognize hoaxes, what to do about them, and some of the history of hoaxes on the Internet.

Hoax Categories

Malicious Code (Virus and Trojan ) Warnings    Warnings about Trojans,  viruses, and other malicious code that has no basis in fact. The Good Times and other similar warnings are here.

Urban Myths    Warnings and stories about bad things happening to people and animals that never really happened. These are the poodle in the microwave and needles in movie theater seats variety.

Give Aways    Stories about give aways by large companies. If you only send this on, some big company will send you a lot of money, clothes, a free vacation, etc., etc. Expect to wait a long time for any of these to pay off.

Inconsequential Warnings    Out of date warnings and warnings about real things that are not really much of a problem..

Sympathy Letters and Requests to Help Someone    Requests for help or sympathy for someone who has had a problem or accident.

Traditional Chain Letters    Traditional chain letters that threaten bad luck  if you do not send them on or that request you to send money to the top n people on the list before sending it on..

Threat Chains    Mail that threatens to hurt you, your computer, or someone else if you do not pass on the message.

Scam Chains    Mail messages that appear to be from a legitimate company but that are scams and cons.

Internet Fraud: How to Avoid Internet Investment Scams http://www.sec.gov/consumer/cyberfr.htm 

From the NY Times "New Textbooks, New Pencils, New Internet Use Policies?" by Rebecca Weiner --- http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/08/cyber/education/23education.html 

The new school year is fast approaching. Students are getting ready to head back to class. Teachers are preparing their lessons. Administrators are reviewing and updating their schools' existing Internet use policies, ensuring they reflect rapidly changing technologies.

At least they should be, experts in education technology say.

While school attorneys say there are no set guidelines for how often schools should rewrite or update their policies, they recommend administrators review the policies annually to make sure students are protected while online and schools are shielded from potential legal conflicts.

"You do need to have a regular cycle for reviewing acceptable use policies and addressing gaps in the policy," said Edwin Darden, staff attorney for the National School Boards Association.

So-called acceptable use policies cover student and faculty member behavior while using school computer equipment. They often spell out guidelines on the privacy of e-mail messages, rules for complying with copyright laws and consequences for misusing school computers and networks.

Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity (history) http://www.aip.org/history/curie/ 

Three arrested in first internet bank robbery --- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Update/2000-08/first230800.shtml 

Cloud Forest Alive (biology and botany in Central America) http://www.cloudforestalive.org/ 

Internet Democracy Project --- http://www.internetdemocracyproject.org/

From The Economist, "The Jack who would be king," (about a rapidly growing Internet company called Alibaba.com that has its home base in China) --- http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/index_wb6672.html 

But Alibaba is remarkable in two respects. First, it mostly introduces not big firms but small mom-and-pop concerns (“shrimps” rather than “whales”, as Mr Ma likes to say). And second, the shrimps are from all over the world, including, crucially, the vast and largely uncharted small-business hinterland that is China. Indeed, Alibaba claims to be the only major international website whose origins lie in that country. The firm is not the first to see opportunities from linking China’s small businesses into global supply chains. But with its number of registered members passing 300,000 this month, it is the biggest to have done this online.

As a child of the cultural revolution, Mr Ma was once a Mao-loving Red Guard. Along with most of his peers, he grew up thinking that “the outside world was a terrible place”. This view was challenged only in 1985, when he first travelled abroad, to Australia. The place did not seem so terrible after all, and it became clear that Mr Ma and his hosts were utterly ignorant of one another. The experience turned his world view inside out, and he became a fanatical xenophile. Back in China, he listened to Tom Sawyer on the Voice of America and would cycle for almost an hour, in any weather, to “chat up” foreigners in the nearest smart hotel. In 1992, he founded the first English-language translation agency in his town. It was called “Hope”, and its slogan was “Shake Hands across the Ocean”.

The Alibaba website is at http://www.alibaba.com/ 

It gets easier and easier!  "The Mainstreaming of Kiddie Porn"  by Lynn Burke http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38393,00.html 

"FTC: 'Free' Porn Sites Charged" (Wired News)  http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38396,00.html 

"Internet gives Russians voice," by Fred Weir at http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/08/18/fp8s1-csm.shtml 

Thousands of Russians visiting his Web site have turned it into a bulletin board for all the anger, doubts, fears, and hopes that aren't finding their way into the official media.

One a Day Keeps the Tums Away (a revolutionary new type of aspirin) http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38374,00.html 

"Dead authors write to Amazon," by Robert Blincoe at  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12721.html 

The fact that anyone can post bogus author comments on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk doesn't seem to come as much of a surprise to Reg readers - a lot of you seem to have enjoyed the feature for quite some time.

And 2600: The Hacker Quarterly apparently revealed the hole more than six months ago.

But Steve Frazier, MD of Amazon.co.uk, reckons the only occurrence he is aware of is when the Reg proved how easy it was, a couple of weeks ago. This is in spite of Ted Dewan, chair of the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group at the Society of Authors, writing to Amazon.co.uk expressing his concern about the problem on 27 July. Ted's concerns were based on postings to Amazon.com.

If anyone has seen an amusing fake author posting on Amazon.co.uk get a screen grab and email me here. The UK site, though a subsidiary of Amazon.com, reckons it runs better security procedures (which it won't elaborate on, but is probably someone just reading emails) which guard against joke posting. The Reg's test got through, apparently, because we used a message the author was happy to appear next to his books.

For your amusement here's some more bogus author postings from Amazon.com, courtesy of Need to Know.

Einstein has revealed that he got it wrong about quantum mechanics and God does play with dice. And Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes that he still likes his work even though he's dead.

Video eyes even in the school bathrooms!   http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38082,00.html 
Twenty-five of the closed-circuit devices keep watch over the hallways, stairwells, and bathroom entrances of Blandie's New Jersey high school. Two full-time security personnel review videotape from the cameras daily, and if offenses are caught on screen, the students involved are called in and presented with the visual evidence.

Also see "High School Surveillance Cameras," http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38344,00.html 

PBS Kids Democracy Project ---- http://www.pbs.org/democracy/kids/ 

Forwarded by Dick Burr

HOUSTON, Aug. 23, 2000 - A $40 million gift from Charles T. (Ted) Bauer, co-founder and chairman of A I M Management Group Inc., to the University of Houston's College of Business Administration (CBA) will strengthen one of the nation's leading urban graduate business school programs by providing the resources needed to attract and retain outstanding faculty and students and by allowing the college to develop innovative business curricula. For a full press release, see

http://www.uh.edu/biznews/ 

PRO2NET ACCOUNTING WEEKLY UPDATE http://accounting.pro2net.com  For the Week of August 28, 2000

:1. The Week's Top Accounting News 
2. A Simple, Safe Way to Track Your Online Accounts 
3. Feature Solutions Articles in Brief 
4. Get Answers to Your Tax Issues

Pro2Net Accounting Students Newsletter http://accountingstudents.pro2net. com August 22, 2000

1. Scholarship Winners Announced 
2. Email at Work 
3. Laskawy Breaks With SEC at AAA Conference 
4. Be Ready to Prepare Financial Statements for the CPA Exam 
5. Win a CMA on CD-ROM Review Course

The August 27th edition of the Internet Essentials 2000 Newsletter --- http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

1. ebXML: E-Business enabled with XML 
2. Portable Technology: Electronics You Can Wear 
3. Google Improves Search Efficiency 
4. Life Without SOAP Would Be ....... 
5. XBRL.ORG Web Site Adds Presentations, Tools 
6. XML NEWS! Live Feed for all News about XML 7. The Future Without Wires

Neal Hannon states the following:

My favorite search engine today is Google.com.   Google consistently produces results that are on target with the context of my Internet searches, which puts the tools heads above the other search engines.   Here's what Iconocast recently had to say about Google:

"With the entrance of Google, which greatly improves search effectiveness and which was recently anointed by Yahoo! as the Net's definitive search technology, the search-engine game once again looks promising [we particularly like the "I'm feeling lucky" button]. Google claims to have cataloged 1.06 billion Web pages, no mean feat." Source: 2000 ICONOCAST  http://www.iconocast.com

God bless Mary (Molly) Thompson and Herb Treat.  The Trinity University community will not quite be the same without both of them returning to campus events.  I could not attend the services for Herb, but I did get to Molly's memorial service on Sunday afternoon.  The best line of the day was that "Molly could run on two hours of sleep and in parts of the remainder of the day hold long conversations at the big dining table, smoke two cigarettes, work a crossword puzzle and read a novel --- all at the same time."  The most important remembrance for her large family and many friends was that the back door of where she lived in Olmos Park (with my colleague and long-time friend George Thompson) was never locked.

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 August 29, 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  

August 22, 2000

Quotes of the Week:  

Fathom's most recent alliances are with Blackwell Retail, The British Library, Cambridge University Press, EBSCO Information Services, ecampus, and Taylor & Francis to offer high-quality knowledge e-commerce opportunities in the context of Fathom's public knowledge content. Visitors to the web site will thus have a simple, immediate way to purchase books, journals, periodicals, and articles that are directly related to the subjects in which they are most interested. In addition to these recent alliances, Fathom also has content partners, which currently include Columbia University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, The British Library, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and The New York Public Library.

Fathom Knowledge Network Inc. is a unique interactive enterprise dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge. The company's website offers unprecedented opportunities for discovery through authenticated information, learning opportunities, tools and resources overseen by an advisory board selected from its partners a consortium of the world's leading universities and cultural institutions. Fathom partners currently include Columbia University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, The British Library, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and The New York Public Library.
See below for details!

There is one added thing about bias --- biased people are generally unforgiving and paint organizations (a Big 5 firm, the SEC, the police,  the American Accounting Association, government, a religion, or whatever) as always being black (bad) or white (good). They become like the paparazzi seeking sensationalism by always looking for the negative happenings in life and rarely reporting the "good news today" (as in the lyrics of an Anne Murray song). For example, how about reporting cases where auditors acted highly professional to their own detriment? Or give credit where credit is due when an organization changes its policies and practices. Or publish the remarks of an author who admits that he agrees with the referees who rejected his work after reading their reviews. I've got a few examples of working papers that prove I really can be an idiot.
Bob Jensen (Scroll down near the bottom of this edition for the entire message!)

I sometimes save the bulletins from Parker Chapel services. Several months ago, came across one with a Trinity University Prayer. I don't know who authored the prayer, perhaps it was Reverend Judd. In any case, I placed a version of that prayer at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/prayer.htm 

I should have prayed harder before releasing my latest FAS 133/138 case.

Warning:  If you downloaded the following case and/or its accompanying Excel Workbook prior to August 22, please discard those files and download the updated files.  Both the case and the Excel Workbook contained some serious errors that (hopefully) have been corrected.

I am sharing my latest working draft of a case entitled FAS 138 Benchmark Interest Value-Locked Debt Accounting Case.  This is accompanied by a rather complicated Excel workbook.  The link to everything is now available at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/138bench.htm.  However, the way I keep revising both the case and the worksheet, it is probably best to wait until I make an announcement that I am at last happy with my work (that I mistakenly posted before it made sense.)

One feature of the case is a focus on accounting for hedge ineffectiveness.  In addition to the familiar 0.80-1.25 DELTA(t) Rule, I introduce a parameter for hedge amount ineffectiveness.  Testing for ineffectiveness significance only on the 0.80-1.25 rule ignores hedge materiality.  I propose a joint test for materiality and significance.  If C(t) depicts the carrying value of the debt, A(t) depicts the current discount/premium amortization, and I(t) depicts the present value of the the index rate present values as specified in FAS 138, most firms want economic hedges to qualify for FAS 138 hedge accounting in order to adjust carrying value of the debt by [I(t)-I(t-1)] to offset the booking of changes in hedge (e.g., swap) values required under FAS 133.  Suppose -V(0) proceeds are received when the debt is issued for a market rate liability of V(0).

With No Qualifying Hedge or a Hedge that Combines Ineffectiveness Materiality and Significance in Terms of the 0.80-1.25 Rule for DELTA(t). 

C(t)= C(t-1)+A(t)  (
      = V(0)-[V(0)+SA(t) to date]

With A Qualifying Hedge or a Hedge that Combines Ineffectiveness Immateriality and Insignificance in Terms of the 0.80-1.25 Rule for DELTA(t). 

C(t)= C(t-1)+A(t)+[I(t)-I(t-1)]  
      = V(0)-[V(0)+SA(t) to date]+[I(t)-I(t-1)]   (It's the last term that firms want in hedge accounting!)

A long last I think I have my Excel Workbook hedge ineffectiveness Materiality and Significance tests working in the Excel Workbook accompanying my originally error-bound case at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/138bench.htm.

One question never addressed by standard setters is what do do about hedge ineffectiveness that is material in amount but also has a DELTA(t) ratio falling within the 0.80-1.25 Rule bounds.  In my case, I do not deny hedge accounting in those outcomes, although the reason has me staring at the wall and wondering why.

I apologize for my confusions passed along to students and faculty in early versions of this case that were released before being fixed up.  In addition I apologize that even without the Excel Workbook, the case is over 70 pages long.  That also makes me stare at the wall and wonder why.

This case and my other FAS 133 cases are linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm.

Featured Future of Education "Fathom" Websites of the Week (Fathom is potentially a very, very, very big deal, especially for humanities faculty and students around the world!)

Question
What is Bob Jensen's vision for Columbia University's Fathom and similar knowledge portals?  

Answer
My vision for Fathom is the linking of the Fathom knowledge portal to speech recognition technology where anyone in the world can simply phone in both training and education queries.  For example, suppose you would like to hear an opera expert at Indiana University analyze a particular act of a Verdi opera (assuming that one day expert commentaries will be placed in the Fatham database).  You would simply dial into Fathom and speak out what you are seeking much like you ask for driving directions or stock information from a virtual woman at BeVocal ( http://www.bevocal.com/index.html  ).  Keep in mind that the virtual woman can translate your voice into a knowledge base query and then translate the bits and bytes of knowledge into a very pleasing human voice. Bob Jensen's speech recognition threads are at  at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/speech.htm .  (I suggest that you listen to at least one demo at BeVocal  if you want to be impressed beyond belief.)

The main Fathom Website is at http://www.fathom.com/ 

Six of the world's leading educational and cultural institutions announced today that they will create Fathom, a new company formed to launch the premier site for knowledge and education on the web. Fathom will present the best public content and courses of universities, libraries, and museums on a wide variety of professional, cultural, and academic subjects. The consortium's website, Fathom.com, will introduce the first home for authenticated knowledge on the Internet, serving a worldwide audience of business and individual users.

Much of Fathom's content has never been available outside of the participating institutions. Founding partners who will make their educational and cultural resources available through Fathom include Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, the British Library, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and The New York Public Library. Other institutions are expected to join the consortium. During the year-long development of Fathom, partners have invested invaluable intellectual assets and substantial financial resources. An experienced Internet team, headed up by President and CEO Ann Kirschner, Ph.D., manages the business, overseen by a distinguished board of directors of international business executives and by an Academic Council of leading scholars and researchers.

More Than Distance Learning: A "Main Street" for Knowledge and Education "Fathom is far more than another distance learning site," said Dr. Kirschner. "We are creating a vibrant 'main street' for knowledge and education. We intend to go beyond the current limits of information sites scattered across the web and also go beyond online initiatives from individual schools."

"Today, most initiatives by educational institutions are focused on courses," she continued. "Courses are important, and courses for distance learning will be one of the offerings provided by some partners through Fathom. But learning is not limited to the classroom, and the many other types of content provided through Fathom will provide a more complete and accessible context for knowledge. We believe that Fathom will define the transformation of the online learning category into a broader interactive knowledge marketplace," Dr. Kirschner said.

Fathom will include a comprehensive directory of related online courses offered by universities and cultural institutions, plus textbooks and other academic titles, specialized periodicals, individual articles and other publications, CD-ROMs, academic travel, and learning resources. Users will access online courses through Fathom, with tuition fees, accreditation, and admission policies set at the discretion of the offering university or cultural institution.

Wide Range of Subjects and Tools for Learning Central to Fathom will be a wealth of free content usually only available on university campuses and at leading museums and libraries. This content will include multimedia lectures, seminars, databases, publications, and performances. Working directly with the prominent faculty and curators of these institutions, Fathom will cover a wide range of subjects such as business, law, economics, social sciences, medicine, computer science and technology, the arts, journalism, and physics.

Fathom users will explore topics of interest to them professionally and personally. They will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with the leading experts in their field. Fathom's unique architecture will provide a powerful "search and explore capability" that will allow users to follow their interests, independently or with expert guidance, across the widest possible range of subjects.

Extensive Content, Highest Standards "Fathom reaffirms the founding principles of the Internet," said Dr. Kirschner. "By providing global access to these resources, Fathom holds the promise of knowledge without boundaries and offers a new medium for the exchange of ideas. It points ahead to a future where the acquisition and application of knowledge can be independent of economic status, time constraints, and geographic location. Fathom and its partners are committed to creating a dynamic home for knowledge."

All Fathom original content will be authenticated, meaning that the knowledge will be attributed to the appropriate educational or cultural institution and its faculty or professional staff. Fathom's standards of academic and editorial integrity will be monitored by the Fathom Academic Council, a panel of selected senior faculty and curators from participating institutions, which will be chaired by Jonathan Cole, Ph.D., Provost and Dean of Faculties, Columbia University.

Examples of Fathom content currently in development include: An oral history research project that includes 7,000 in-depth personal interviews, conducted over 50 years, with leaders from business, politics, and the arts, including, Frank Lloyd Wright, Dorothy Parker, Nikita Khrushchev, and Jimmy Stewart (from Columbia University); Excerpts from the field journals of a preeminent anthropologist of the 20th century, William Duncan Strong (1899-1962) (from the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives at the National Museum of Natural History); An overview of the provocative new science of astrobiology, which brings together molecular life sciences, space exploration, planetary science and the search for extraterrestrials, by astronomer and editor Dr. Simon Mitton (from Cambridge University Press); A talk on "The Weightless Economy," the shift from a world of manufacturing to a world of weightless services, by economist Professor Danny Quah (from the London School of Economics and Political Science); Multimedia presentations that bring to life treasured objects, from the Magna Carta to the Lindisfarne Gospels (from the British Library); A collection of over 54,000 photographic views of New York City that mark the development of the city, its architectural achievements, transportation system, and ethnic and cultural diversity (from The New York Public Library).

Strong Business Model To Create Category Leader Developed by top universities, Fathom will be the leading online destination for high-quality knowledge and education, a rapidly growing marketplace.

Significant growth in online education is expected over the next few years. According to IDC, the size of the U.S. market for distance learning is already $2 billion and is projected to be $6 billion in 2002 and $9 billion by 2003, a growing component of the $750 billion higher education market in the U.S. alone. Enrollment in online programs is expected to increase at an annual rate of 30-35 percent.

"The fit between the Fathom business model, the vast intellectual capital of the founding partners, and the talented management team in place at Fathom is exactly what you want to see when forging a vibrant new space on the Internet," said Michael M. Crow, Ph.D., Columbia University Executive Vice Provost. "We see an enormous need developing for this new interactive knowledge category. Fathom will meet that need with a combination of the technology we have developed and the best possible content provided by our distinguished partners."

In addition to Dr. Crow and Dr. Kirschner, Fathom's international board of directors will include former chairman of Goldman Sachs Stephen Friedman, commissioner of the National Basketball Association David Stern, chairman of Enterprise LSE and former director of Shell International Keith Mackrell, and chairman and CEO of MBNA Corporation Alfred Lerner.

Igniting the Desire for Knowledge "Fathom embraces the principles upon which the great learning institutions of the world were founded-to create a community where ideas flourish, to stimulate intellectual curiosity, and to aid in professional development. Fathom will harness the power of the Internet to enhance the learning experience while upholding the highest professional and scholarly standards," Dr. Kirschner said. 
http://www.fathom.com/pressreleases/04032000.html  

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Alliance to Offer Content, Courses via Web --- http://www.publishersweekly.com/articles/20000410_85626.asp 

A formidable alliance of prominent educational, library, museum and university publishing institutions has come together to launch Fathom.com, a for-profit Web site catering to a highly educated consumer market interested in broad, continuing learning for its own sake. The site will be supported by advertising and will offer a mix of free content, e-commerce (including the online sale of books, CD-ROMs and other products) and online courses from universities around the world.

Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, the British Library, the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum have teamed up to support Fathom.com with a wide range of validated, branded content and an equally wide range of online courses. The site is slated to add still more as yet unnamed, educational and cultural institutions later this year. The site is aggregating an impressive array of free content to attract consumers who will be able to pursue free online information--and buy related products--on everything from ballet, literature, science and public policy to history, performing arts and much more.

Ann Kirschner, president and CEO of Fathom.com, told PW that although Cambridge University Press is Fathom's initial publishing partner, Columbia University Press and its various online projects will also be involved. "We'll be working with other publishers over time. Cambridge is important to us, because we're after a global audience." Kirschner also said that the company plans to work with a variety of online retailers to handle book and product sales. "We'll know exactly who in a few more weeks," she added. She declined to give a firm startup date. She also noted that decisions about accreditation and admission to online courses would be made by Fathom's university partners.

Kirschner emphasized that Fathom.com is not out to sell the latest Grisham novel. "We're after readers who want specialized books, journals and documents and, of course, courses. We're going to promote the scholarly books of faculty members as well as other knowledge products." Kirschner explained that the venture was "more than another distance-learning site. We are creating a vibrant 'main street' for knowledge and education."

Michael Holsworth, director of business development at Cambridge University Press, told PW that all CUP content will be branded. "Fathom.com will be classy and slightly elitist. We're after an audience that is interested in news, culture, research, academic stuff. People interested in deep, lifelong learning."

I ordered my copy from Barnes & Noble at http://www.bn.com/ 
For more on the future of education in the 21st Century, my Book of the Week is as follows:

Higher education in an era of digital competition: choices and challenges. Hanna, Donald E. et al.

Format: Paperback, 362pp.
ISBN: 1891859323
Publisher: Atwood Publishing, LLC
Pub. Date: February  2000

Associated Dealer: Gull's Nest Books Portland, OR
A collection of 14 contributions which explore a variety of issues in the application of information technologies to higher education. Hanna (educational communications, U. of Wisconsin) has selected the chapters to address such themes as the emergence of a global learning society; changing patterns of individual, organizational, and social needs; the challenges and possibilities of advanced technologies; transformational change in higher education on a global scale; and the importance of ethics and equity of access as elements that must drive decision making and leadership at an organizational level.

Another big development at Columbia University!

Columbia University Establishes David Mahoney Center For Brain And Behavior Research --- http://www.nyp.org/news/jan4_mahoney.html 

Columbia University has founded a center dedicated to investigating one of the great scientific puzzles of the 21st century: the link between the molecular workings of brain cells and human cognition.

The David Mahoney Center for Brain and Behavior Research will bridge molecular neuroscience with cognitive systems that underlie complex human behavior. Housed on the fifth floor of the New York State Psychiatric Institute's Annex on West 168th Street, the programs will include a postdoctoral training program as well as a professorship in brain and behavior research. .

The Center, named in recognition of David Mahoney's outstanding national and international contribution to brain science, could not come at a better time for Columbia,. says Howard Hughes Senior Investigator and University Professor Eric Kandel, M.D., who helped found the Mahoney Center. . Historically, Columbia has been very strong in molecular neurobiology, neuronal signaling, synaptic transmission, plasticity, development, perception, and learning, but we have not been as strong in the biology of complex brain systems.

The goal of the Mahoney center, according to Dr. Kandel, will be to . bridge molecules to mind.. The Center will connect basic neuroscience studies now going on at Columbia to research in human cognition by focusing on the study of working memory and the planning of actions. The scientists will forge links between ongoing genetic molecular-based studies in flies, mice, and worms and brain imaging studies in healthy humans and patients with cognitive disorders by conducting research in non-human primates. Ultimately, with studies at the center, we would hope to uncover mechanisms underlying human disease and cognitive disorders including schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, age-related memory loss, and attention disorders of childhood.

Dan Stone made an excellent presentation on asynchronous learning research in my Philadelphia workshop on August 12.  Some of his leading links and references are as follows:

British Authorities May Get Wide Power to Decode E-Mail --- 
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/19britain.html