Use these pages to discover more about the British Library's award winning interactive display system Turning the Pages: About Turning the Pages: find out more about this project Treasures: information about British Library treasures currently available in Turning the Pages. History: a brief history of the Turning the Pages project. Turn the pages online in Shockwave, with examples from the Sherborne Missal. (Download the latest version of Shockwave.) News: the latest developments in Turning the Pages.

How would you advise somebody to start a training or education site?

Hi Juan,

May I have permission to quote your message in my September 10 newsletter? Your questions are very typical of many that I receive.

Forget ToolBook. It is out of tune with today’s world and will likely fail since it has never made a profit for whatever company owned it.

Even if you want to package your work on a CD, I suggest that you make it so you can also serve it from the Web. Be careful in making links. I suggest placing files in one large folder and then using “relative links” that only name the file. Avoid complete local path and/or http server path links. In HTML you can make a link to a document, audio file, picture file, and video file by simply naming the file if all linked files are in the same folder. If you have trouble with this, I can illustrate it for you later on.

I recommend that you learn the following software:

HTML Authoring Microsoft FrontPage (this is not hard to learn if you already know MS Word). It is generally easy to find video tutorials in your local computer store.

There are a few more bells and whistles in Macromedia Dreamweaver, but I would master MS FrontPage initially. You can also use MS Word --- http://www.archiva.net/mstutorial3web.htm 

Video Capturing of Lessons You Explain With a Microphone While Viewing Your Computer Screen Go to my Camtasia tutorial at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm#Video  My video tutorial on Camtasia is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

Image Capturing and Editing The pros use Adobe Photoshop, but I think you will prefer Paint Shop Pro --- http://www.jasc.com/products/psp/ 

Eventually, you may want to serve your courses from a server rather than from a CD. I recommend that you consider having e-College serve up your course --- http://www.ecollege.com/ 

You can use PowerPoint, but I do not recommend this since some users are not familiar with how to run PowerPoint. There are some other reasons that I will not go into at the moment.

That may be all the software you need to work with when starting out. Later on you may want to go into animations using either Flash or PowerPoint XP Edition, but animations are generally difficult to make and tiresome for students.

FrontPage for Dummies will be helpful as a reference and a book to scan before starting out. However, your main helper will be the Help menu choice in FrontPage.

If you already use MS Word, you will find FrontPage relatively easy. One difference is that when you paste pictures into word, they become part of the DOC file. This has huge drawbacks for pictures used in multiple DOC files, because each use of the picture takes up disk space. In FrontPage and other HTML editors, you provide a link to a picture such that one picture can be used in multiple HTM files. The picture takes up disk space only once. Also, FrontPage allows you to easily change the size of a picture. For example, if you have a picture that takes up most of the screen, you can easily change the view of the picture to any size you choose without actually changing the size of the picture. Once again I remind you to use "relative links" to picture files and other files in a folder rather than full-path links.

I also suggest that you purchase a FrontPage video tutorial. I recommend the Learn2 video tapes and CD tutorials at http://store.learn2.com/basket/default.asp 

I have some other helpers at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

Robert (Bob) Jensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Email: rjensen@trinity.edu
Homepage: http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Juan G. Gonzalez [mailto:grunert@hotmail.com]  
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 11:56 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: E-Learning in Latin America

Mr. Jensen,

I am a retired FBI Special Agent. During my last 3 years with the Bureau, I served as the program manager for a US Department of Justice program known as the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP). ICITAP provides technical and training assistance to the police in several developing countries. I served as program manager of the El Salvador, Central America ICITAP program.

I was always amazed at the insistence of ICITAP Headquarters in Washington that assistance to the police be delivered with the "give them a fish" mentality instead of "teaching them to fish." Today the same mentality continues to rule, especially in the US Department of State, which provides the funding for the ICITAP Programs around the world.

My son recently took an e-learning course as part of his postgraduate degree at Roosevelt University, Chicago. In taking the course, he introduced me to ToolBook II Instructor. I immediately realized that delivering e-training courses to the police where ICITAP has programs would be beneficial for both ICITAP and training participants. I say this because, if I understand e-learning correctly, e-learning places the responsibility for learning squarely on the student rather than on the instructor.

In navigating through the Internet, I came upon your e-learning web site. After reading only part of your site's content, I begin to question if I should invest any time trying to learn the ToolBook II Instructor, especially since I have not found it easy to learn. You present other options that seem better suited for someone who, at age 58, does not have the patience nor the smarts to learn something as complicated as TookBook II Instructor.

I wish to learn e-learning software that will help me to develop police Internet-deliverable or CD-deliverable training courses that ICITAP or any other US Government agency involved in such ventures can use to effectively and efficiently train police in developing countries in a variety of subjects, including administration, planning, investigation, community oriented policing, intelligence gathering. etc.

 

Do you have any suggestions regarding how I could "locally" prepare myself for this challenge?

Juan Gonzalez Grunert
Vice-President
Universal Asset Group, Inc.
PO Box 691147
San Antonio, TX 78269-1147
Home Tel. # (210 479-9768
Cellular Phone # (210) 316-7281
Email: grunert@hotmail.com 

Reply from Juan

Mr. Jensen,

Thank you for your quick response and for the specific advice. I will explore the software and sites that you recommend. I have no problem with you quoting my message in your September newsletter. I hope that if I have further questions you will not mind me contacting you again. Thank you.

Juan Gonzalez Grunert

HANDBOOK OF ONLINE LEARNING: INNOVATIONS IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND CORPORATE TRAINING Edited by Kjell-Erik Rudestam and Judith Schoenholtz-Read Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002 ISBN: 0761924027 (hbk.); 0761924035 (pbk.)

From http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761924035/qid%3D1030482142/sr%3D2-1/ref%3Dsr%5F2%5F1/002-8650629-2144831#product-details 
Editorial Reviews Book Description Technology-mediated instruction has taken the university and the corporate sector by storm. As more instructors teach online for a dispersed learning community in both academic and business environments, there’s a need for resources that will help them adapt to this new sort of "classroom." Educators who come out of traditional academic institutions tend to use traditional methods when offering courses online (e.g., lectures, textbooks and readings, examinations) rather than attend to small-group processes and principles of what the editors of this volume call "andragogy." This handbook goes beyond the mechanics of how to create and direct an online learning experience to consider such a new approach to pedagogy in doing so. Their primary purpose is to clarify the conceptual issues that underlie effective online teaching and to offer practical guidance to educators and corporate trainers who plan to teach in a virtual environment. Their central tenet: the adoption of computer networks as the teaching vehicle of the future demands a reexamination of our core beliefs about pedagogy and how students learn. The transfer of a classroom curriculum into cyberspace is deceptively simple, but doing so without an appreciation of the nuances and implications of learning online ignores not only the potential of this medium but the inevitable realities of entering it. Rather than fear the challenges that new technology brings to systems of learning, the editors hope to help instructors embrace it by rethinking how knowledge is acquired and how educational processes may be optimally designed in a new age of teaching and learning.

From the Publisher 

Part I provides an overview and includes discussion of the unique structural aspects of the electronic learning environment, pedagogical issues, curriculum design, psychological and group dynamics, and ethical issues. 

Part II examines practical issues associated with implementing courses online, both in the traditional university setting and in professional/corporate training environments.

The book draws heavily on personal case examples.

Bob Jensen's choice of key references in this area are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

"Please Learn From My Mistakes," by David G. Brown, Syllabus, August 2002 --- http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=6592 

I have come to the sad realization that many of the innovations designed to keep my course fresh have failed. My memories of failures are so poignant that it may be constructive to share them here. They can serve as warnings to others.

Unstructured chat room discussions don’t work. Chats lack depth. Someone new is always interrupting the online conversation with his or her own topic just when the discussion is getting interesting.

Ungraded assignments are usually ignored. I used to ask two students to search the Web for two or three sites that provided alternative ways to learn the “topic of the day.” They shared information on these sites in annotated bibliographies. An end-of-the-course evaluation, however, revealed that their classmates never went to these sites.

My current practice is to require each student to e-mail me with an evaluative comment regarding the sites. They know that their comments will factor into the participation portion of their course grades. A recent end-of-the-course evaluation now shows that the students regard the alternate Web sites as important and useful components of the course.

Personal e-mails can overwhelm. One semester, I asked all of my students to send me an e-mail answer to an assigned question each time we reached the end of a textbook chapter. The responsibility for reading and evaluating all those submissions just about ruined my family life. Now I have Student A e-mail a proposed answer to Students B and C. Students A, B, and C must settle on a single answer. They teach one another, and I have only one-third as much grading to do.

Students need to know in advance what their responsibilities are if the computer network goes down on the eve of an important deadline. Networks do go down. Students will panic, unless there are instructions in the syllabus that anticipate forgiveness or outline their alternatives.

Another semester, several weeks before the final, I accidentally deleted all my students’ grades from the electronic grade book. Fortunately, the syllabus stressed that each student is expected to keep a copy of every assignment submitted and also of every grade-related message sent to him or her. With help from the class and substantial effort, I was able to reconstruct the gradebook. Now I print out a backup copy of grades about every two weeks.

I’ve come to realize that students accessing materials from course Web sites using a dial-up modem from a shared apartment off campus cannot, or will not, wait for long downloads. I had the bright—and well-received—idea of personalizing the list of course assignments. For each of our 34 assignment days I added thumbnail photos of the students responsible for presenting their special reports. Although student reaction to this personalization was quite positive, I noticed that they were consulting the list of assignments less frequently. A focus group session revealed that the list was now taking longer than a minute to open. Consulting the list was an increased burden.

My students bring their laptops to class everyday. Even so, I’ve learned that it’s wise to exchange e-mail messages before class when anything out of the ordinary is to occur. If, for example, my plan for the day requires that every student have their computer, I send the class an e-mail message.

I suspect that others have made mistakes from which we can all learn. If you have a brief story you’d like me to share in a future column, please e-mail me. Let me know if it’s OK to mention your name or if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Online Faculty Workloads

The CIT Infobits May 2002 article "Online Teaching and the 24-Hour Professor" ( http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitmay02.html#1 ) described how the Internet is changing professors' workdays and workloads. John Messing, Director of the Research Centre for Innovation in Telelearning Environments at Charles Sturt University, continues this topic in "Can Academics Afford to Use E-mail?" (E-JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 5, no. 2, August 2002). Messing reports on a study that began as "an attempt to quantify what many educators have suspected . . . that the workload associated with the use of online tools is considerably higher than with conventional technologies. In the process of trying to make sense of the data, it became clear that there are a number of issues such as increased expectations on the part of students and the disproportionate load that administrative use of e-mail places on academics that are rarely, if ever, considered as part of the debate."

The study analyzed the author's administrative and course-related email messages from 1991-2001. Some of his observations:

Regarding course-related email: "While the number of students in [his Graduate Diploma of Applied Science] course has doubled, the volume of communication has increased 11 fold. . . ."

Regarding administrative email: "It might take a secretary 10 to 15 minutes to duplicate and distribute meeting papers to 20 people [via email]. If it takes each recipient just 5 minutes to read, extract, print and collect the meeting papers, that represents a total of 100 minutes. The secretary saves 10 minutes but the recipients collectively lose 100 minutes."

He concludes, "Just how much extra time an individual is prepared to sacrifice in order to also receive the benefits of the use of such tools is debatable. From a personal perspective, the limit has been reached. With well over 3000 e-mails to contend with in one semester, the system has become a scourge rather than a blessing."

The article is available online at http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/Vol6No_1/messing_frame.html  (HTML format) and http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/docs/Vol6No_1/Messing%20-%20Final.pdf (PDF format).

e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) is published by the Distance Education Centre, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland 4350, Australia; Web: http://www.usq.edu.au/dec/  Current and back issues of e-JIST are available at no cost at http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Warren Buffett (WB) is the most famous securities investor in the world.

August 30 message from clabitan@juno.com 

Bob,

WB has 61 years of business thinking experience. So, I selected business ideas from all his annual letters.

The Warren Buffett Business Factors, free internet book. (Selected articles from the Letters of Warren E. Buffett to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.)

http://www.frips.com/wbbf.htm 

or in word doc: http://www.frips.com/b.doc 

Selected and Arranged by Cesar Labitan, Jr. MD 
219-322-6281 
clabitan@juno.com 
MBAE student Purdue University 
Calumet School of Management Hammond, Indiana 2002

Most academics who have Websites simply put their material on a server and let the world beat a path to their door.  Commercial firms, on the other hand, work harder and spend more to attract users.  The goal is to improve the chances of being found by search engines.

"Search Engine Results You Can Control," Tessa Wegert, ClickZ.com, August 29, 2002 --- http://www.clickz.com/media/media_buy/article.php/1453811 

Assorted submission rules and policies, erratic protocol for updating databases, and varied techniques for optimizing a Web site to increase your client's chances of getting listed can all be overwhelming -- even for the most up-to-date SEO specialist. Yet, SEO remains a common method of increasing site traffic and exposure online. You've probably encountered plenty of advertisers who like the idea of getting their businesses listed on the top search engines on the Web. But how many of them are willing to wait for results?

Here's where media buying comes into play. Achieving rankings of any kind on popular search engines takes time, and top search results aren't a certainty -- but there are certainly ways to get your eager clients listed, and these methods can achieve a similar traffic -- and brand-building -- effect.

Where search engines are concerned, and when the objective is to garner immediate results, paid listings are a great alternative to submitting a Web site for listing the old-fashioned way. These placements have come to be considered part of "search engine marketing," the term SEO expert and ClickZ columnist Danny Sullivan often uses to embrace all methods of marketing involving search engine sites and directories.

The main difference between this and the more traditional method (which involves submitting your client's site and awaiting eventual rankings) is paid listings can be bought, giving you much more control over your results. Paid listings may not be the real deal -- and that surely affects their validity and value in the eyes of some Internet users -- but they'll give you the power to assure your client that his company name and product description will appear when keywords relevant to his site are typed into a search engine. It can take months to obtain a ranking using straightforward SEO, and the competition for gaining a significant standing under a popular keyword can be fierce. Paid listings allow the advertiser to position herself next to, and even above, her competitor's results.

When agency clients express an interest in advertising via paid listings on search engines, most buyers immediately recommend pay-per-search placements on properties such as Overture and Google. A slightly different approach utilizes a placement that is widely known as the "keyword text link." Most every major search engine offers these paid placements in a "sponsored links" or "sponsor matches" section, often on a CPM basis. The links are generally highlighted or visibly separated from the "genuine" results, indicating these listings were purchased.

Now that Overture and Google combined provide paid search results for the bulk of the other major search engines, arguing the benefits of a keyword text link over a pay-per-search placement can be challenging. With pay-per-search listings, you can get vast exposure while paying only when an Internet user clicks on your search result

Continued at http://www.clickz.com/media/media_buy/article.php/1453811 

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

September 4, 2002 message from the AICPA's Jodi Ryan jryan@aicpa.org  

New CPA exam website - Many of you may already be aware that the CPA exam has launched its own website, Http://www.cpa-exam.org . Please encourage students and fellow faculty to visit the site for the latest information on the exam.

Student recruitment campaign - The AICPA is entering its second year of the StartHereGoPlaces.com campaign. We ask that you promote this website to your students to find out more about the accounting profession. A business simulation game (bizzfun) on the site has been highly rated by students.

Takin' Care of Business materials -Our Takin' Care of Business materials are available for purchase from CPA2BIZ. A file describing the materials is attached to this e-mail.

In Our Opinion newsletter - Attached to this e-mail is a copy of the July 2002 issue of, In Our Opinion, the newsletter of the AICPA's Audit and Attest Standards Team. Please feel free to share it with anyone who might be interested in it.

Ordering additional brochures and highlighters - If you need more brochures and highlighters for distribution to your students, please call our member satisfaction hotline at (888) 777-7077 and ask for product #872561 (brochures) and product #872562 (highlighter pens). Allow at least two weeks for processing and delivery

Please feel free to call our On-Campus Champion hotline at (212) 596-6105 if you have any questions. Thank you again for your support of this valuable program. We hope it will benefit you, your students and the future of the profession.

Best regards,

Jodi Ryan 
Manager- Recruiting Programs jryan@aicpa.org 

 

September 3, 2002 message from mitchell.levy@ecnow.com 

The research I'm conducting on Web services for the class at SJSU and for the book I'm co-authoring is going well. I'm still looking for good business case studies, please contact me if you have any. Also, here are the resources I've compiled to date: http://ecnow.com/webservices. I need to expand on the tools section. Let me know if you have any suggestion for this page.

In this issue, we explore eBay through the eyes of the Value Framework(tm).

Some fascinating observations and some steps that need to occur to ensure success.

- http://vms3.info/Sep2002/feature.article.htm

We also take a look at some top level news stories via the lenses of the

Value Framework(tm). Get caught up for the month of April.

- http://vms3.info/Sep2002/management.perspective.htm

Mitchell Levy
Executive Producer, VMS3.info
Creator of the Value Framework(tm) <http://ecnow.com/value>
Author, E-Volve-or-Die.com <http://e-volve-or-die.com>
President & CEO, ECnow.com <http://ecnow.com>
Founder and Coordinator, SJSU-PD ECM Certificate Program
http://ecmtraining.com/sjsu
Chair, Co-Founder and Partner, CEOnetworking <http://ceonetworking.com>

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

"Firewall Follies:  The Net Effect," by Simson Garfinkel, Technology Review (MIT), September 2002 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0902.asp 

The complacency firewalls breed is ultimately more damaging than the computer pirates they keep out.

Do you use the Internet at work? I see lots of hands. You may not realize it, but your access to the Net is most likely mediated by some kind of firewall. Companies are spending thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars on these systems—and trust them to protect their networks from snoopers and intruders.

That’s a problem, because firewalls often provide a mere illusion of protection. They don’t make business systems significantly more secure. And by focusing attention on defending the perimeter, rather than on defending information assets within an organization, firewalls foster lax internal security practices that magnify the damage that insiders can inflict. What firewalls do accomplish, however, is this: they make the Internet more cumbersome to use. I recently visited a friend’s firm in New York and wanted to check my e-mail, so I plugged my laptop into a network jack in an unused office. Access denied: my PC wasn’t set up to work with the company’s firewall. So instead of reading my e-mail, I occupied myself by sniffing the traffic on the office network and probing for a way out. (Had I been inclined, I could have read everybody else’s e-mail—or done real damage.)

Firewalls are simple in concept. A typical firewall consists of a special-purpose computer that has two network plugs. One plug goes to the Internet; the other connects to a company’s office network. The firewall is programmed with rules that determine what traffic is allowed to pass and what is to be blocked. For example, a firewall might be set up to allow managers in human resources to browse the Internet, or to access their desktop PCs from home, while permitting people in the corporate call center only to access their e-mail. The better firewalls log everything that moves across the boundary, giving companies a powerful tool for auditing online activity.

The great appeal of firewalls is that they are supposed to ease the job of corporate security. Instead of feverishly downloading and installing security patches to protect thousands of desktop computers and servers running a menagerie of operating systems, many organizations find it easier to simply trust the firewall to keep the bad guys out. The problem with this approach: bad guys are everywhere. Sure, some are on the outside of the company’s network. But there are corrupt employees on the inside, too. And even well-meaning workers can have laptops that contract viruses during business trips—viruses that then infect the office network. This is why so many companies supposedly fortified with firewalls succumbed to attacks from computer viruses and worms like Nimda and Code Red.

The existence of firewalls has also allowed companies to neglect their internal security measures and to accept lower-quality software from their vendors. Instead of hardening their systems, many vendors now advise their customers to install their equipment “behind the firewall.” This has long been standard practice for software suppliers delivering systems based on Microsoft Windows. Now it is becoming common for network-based management systems that are showing up in things like photocopiers, HVAC equipment and even elevators.

Continued at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0902.asp  

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

August 30, 2002 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

STUDENT PERSONALITIES AND INSTRUCTION DELIVERY

In "Personality Type and Online Versus In-Class Course Satisfaction" (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, no. 3, 2002, pp. 71-2), University of South Alabama faculty Richard Daughenbaugh, Lynda Daughenbaugh, Daniel Surry, and Mohammed Islam report on a study they conducted of 146 college students enrolled in either online or residential introductory computer courses. Each student answered two questionnaires, one to assess personality type and another to measure course satisfaction. "Evaluation of personality type and course satisfaction data indicated that certain personality types preferred online rather than in-class courses. More extroverted students and those who were more sensitive than intuitive preferred the way the information was presented, and the way they were evaluated, in online courses." The authors present three recommendations based on their research: personality types and their different learning styles should be addressed in online instruction, student interaction should be increased in online courses, and more research should be done in this area.

The article is available online (in PDF format) at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm02312.pdf

The complete report, "Does Personality Type Effect Online Versus In-Class Course Satisfaction?" is online (in PDF format) at http://www.southalabama.edu/coe/bset/daughenbaugh/Personality%20Types.pdf

EDUCAUSE Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal published by EDUCAUSE, covers planning, developing, managing, using, and evaluating information resources and technology in higher education. For more information, contact EDUCAUSE, 1150 18th Street, NW, Suite 1010, Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-872-4200; fax: 202-872-4318; email: info@educause.edu; Web: http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/

For another view of the characteristics of students in relation to technology, especially young learners, see Edna Aphek's "Children of the Information Age: A Reversal of Roles" (UBIQUITY, vol. 3, issue 28, August 27-September 2, 2002; http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/e_aphek_3.html). Aphek is an education researcher with a special interest in learning environments for children and older adults.

Ubiquity: An ACM IT Magazine and Forum, a Web resource from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), provides a moderated, interactive community for IT professionals and others to discuss important issues. To contact Ubiquity: email: ubiquity@acm.org; Web: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/ For more information on the ACM, contact: ACM, One Astor Plaza, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY, 10036, USA; tel: 212-869-7440; Web: http://www.acm.org/

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

"The e-book market is littered with the wreckage of failed ventures."

August 30, 2002 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

FUTURE OF E-BOOKS

"The e-book market is littered with the wreckage of failed ventures, and with some justification, one might think that it is approaching total collapse." In "Electronic Books: Reports of Their Death Have Been Exaggerated" (ONLINE, vol. 26, no. 4, July/August 2002), Donald T. Hawkins, editor-in-chief for Information Today, Inc. Information Science Abstracts and Fulltext Sources Online, charts the ups and downs of e-books and the market's successes and fiascos. Although e-book company failures have shaken the confidence of early-adopters, Hawkins believes that e-books still have a future. The article is available online at http://www.onlinemag.net/jul02/hawkins.htm

Online [ISSN: 0146-5422] is published six times per year by Information Today, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055 USA; tel: 609-654-6266 or 800-300-9868; fax: 609-654-4309; Web: http://www.onlinemag.net/

In the article "Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds" (THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, August 26, 2002; http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002082601t.htm), Scott Carlson reports on a study of the usability of e-books and their acceptance by college students. The study was conducted by Richard F. Bellaver, Associate Director, Center for Information & Communication Studies, and Jay Gillette, Director, Human Factors Institute, Ball State University. The researchers concluded, that if future improvements are made in the technology, e-books could be acceptable devices for delivering and storing students' reading materials. The study's report, "The Usability of eBook Technology: Practical Issues of an Application of Electronic Textbooks in a Learning Environment," is available online at http://publish.bsu.edu/cics/ebook_final_result.asp

The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA; tel: 202-466-1000; fax: 202-452-1033;

Web: http://chronicle.com/

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

But the e-book market is still "clicking" in academe.

I thank Kevin Kobelsky (USC) for the link below:
"E-textbooks clicking with colleges Most greet e-books with enthusiasm, but wariness remains, by Marsha Walton, CNN.com,  September 1, 2002 --- http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/30/coolsc.ebooks/index.html 
Note that the link above also has audio testimonials From students!

It's 4 a.m., the astronomy homework is due in just a few hours, and there's still confusion about some quirks in those mysterious quasars. What's a fretting college student to do?

If you're in professor Michael Ruiz's astronomy class at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, your answer may be just a few clicks away, in an online forum that every student in the class can access, 24-7.

"If you don't understand something it's nice to be able to ask another student without wandering the halls knocking on doors saying, 'Do you take astronomy? Do you take astronomy?' Just type it in the forum, and ask your question about stars or nebulae," said Margaret Eason, who is taking the class this semester.

The student forum is one of dozens of interactive and multimedia features in the electronic textbook written and produced by astronomy and physics professor Ruiz. Along with his academic credentials, he's an accomplished musician, and a veteran experimenter in all types of technology.

All three of those interests contribute to the interactivity of his online texts, filled with music, movies, experiments, and incentives. He's also created an e-book for his physics of sound class, filled with online videos of his own piano and keyboard performances.

Fast updates, around-the-clock access Ruiz's electronic texts are Internet-based. Students access the class Web site on a with a login and password.

"I'm more effective with a class of 90 today than I was 20 years ago with 30 people and some equipment up front. Let's face it, your best time might be 2 o'clock in the morning, so if you're in here half falling asleep, you can see that demonstration or experiment again at home, and absorb it," he told students in his sound class the first day of this semester.

One major advantage over traditional texts is Ruiz's ability to update information, literally within minutes. And that's crucial, he says, in a field like astronomy, with constant discoveries and debates.

Continued at http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/30/coolsc.ebooks/index.html 

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

From InformationWeek Daily on September 6, 2002

Bill Gates has seen the future, and in his investing opinion, it's health care. At least that's what recent public filings by Microsoft may indicate. The software company's chairman has unloaded 9 million Microsoft shares--valued at more than $463 million--since the beginning of August. That includes 2 million shares he sold this week, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission document. As of June, Gates held 660 million Microsoft shares.

At the same time, Gates, widely heralded as a trend-predicting savant, has been loading up on biomedical and health-care stocks. In the second quarter, he bought 2.6 million shares of Prozac-maker Eli Lilly. He also acquired 1.3 million shares of Merck and 1.2 million shares of Pfizer.

Microsoft has been vexed by ongoing antitrust and consumer litigation and a rash of Windows security flaws that has forced the company to issue patches regularly. 

A survey by the National Whistleblower Center finds that most whistleblowers are male, and many still lack the legal rights to protect themselves from retaliation by their employers. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/89729 

AccountingWEB US - Sep-4-2002 -  Despite recent publicity given high profile female whistleblowers, a survey by the National Whistleblower Center finds that most whistleblowers are male and many still lack the legal rights to protect themselves from retaliation by their employers.

The survey was based on a random review of 200 cases reported to the National Whistleblower Center in 2002. Key findings:

• 60% of whistleblowers were male, 40% were female.
  
• 50% alleged they were terminated after they blew the whistle.
  
• 51% blew the whistle on fraud or criminal practices.

Some but not all whistleblowers were accountants. Others worked in a variety of other occupations ranging from computer programmers and social workers to doctors, teachers, and airline pilots.

To help whistleblowers gain the legal rights needed to protect themselves from retaliation, the National Whistleblower Center supports additional measures ranging from legislative relief to tax relief and prohibitions against unfair pre-employment agreements.

Continued at http://www.accountingweb.com/item/89729  

Hi Ivan,

The new product of choice that you will love is called Camtasia. I even provide you with a free video tutorial.

Go to http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

Or you can go directly to the Camtasia vendor site at http://www.techsmith.com/ 

Another alternative that is not quite the same, but it is popular by some instructional support centers is the option to make videos out of Macromedia's Flash presentations. However, this option is used mainly for videos of PowerPoint shows and is not as general as Camtasia in terms of making videos of any succession of screen images on your computer's monitor. Also Flash videos require much more skill and training to prepare.

Bob Jensen

 -----Original Message----- 
From: Anthony Ivan [mailto:Ivan.Anthony.bp@ptsi.siemens.co.id]  
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 4:30 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: Lotus Screencam Equivalent

Hi Bob 

I am a South African. I am looking for a product that is similar to Lotus Screencam. Screencam does not run on XP so I am not able to complete an important project. I would appreciate any suggestions you may have.

 Regards 
Ivan Anthony

September 3, 2002 message from George Durler [Durlerge@esumail.emporia.edu] 

Regarding the Hassellback Accounting Faculty Directory at http://rarc.rutgers.edu/raw/hasselback/ 

Bob,

I'm catching up on my AECM mail today and so someone might have already pointed out to you that the on-line Hasselback is very much out of date (1999-2000). My correspondence with Prentice Hall indicates that it is iffy whether they will update this on a regular basis.

George

Dr. M. George Durler 
Assistant Professor of Accounting 
Campus Box 57 Emporia State University 
1200 N. Commercial Emporia, KS 66801 
http://www.emporia.edu/~durlerge/ 

Forwarded by Scott Bonacker, CPA [scottbonacker@moccpa.com] 

1. ==== IN FOCUS ====

(contributed by Mark Joseph Edwards, News Editor, mark@ntsecurity.net)  

* CAN OTHERS STUMBLE INTO YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK?

In the August 7, 2002, edition of Security UPDATE, I wrote about a new trend called warchalking. As you know, warchalking is the act of marking buildings in the vicinity of wireless networks. The idea is to provide a visual clue indicating the presence of wireless networks so that people can obtain a free Internet connection. Warchalkers use distinctive markings and include information about bandwidth and various connection perimeters.

http://www.secadministrator.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=26207

The trend is catching on, so much so that, according to VNU Business Publications, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently issued an unofficial warning that businesses should check the security of their wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment to ensure that adequate security is in place.

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1134451

Recently, I learned about a new Internet site, NetStumbler.com, that aids users in identifying and locating WLANs around the country. Among other features, the site hosts a national map that shows cities that have open WLANs and a searchable database that helps users query for information about specific locations.

http://www.netstumbler.com

NetStumbler.com also hosts a downloadable program called NetStumbler that lets users investigate a given WLAN's security. Security administrators can use it to test their sites. Anyone can download a copy (291KB) at the first URL below. According to the Web site, "NetStumbler is a Windows tool that allows you to [scan for] 802.11b (and 802.11a, if using Windows XP) wireless LANs. It includes [global positioning satellite (GPS)] integration and a simple, intuitive user interface. Though primarily targeted at owners of wireless LANs, it has been the de facto tool for casual users such as war drivers for over a year." The tool apparently even won a "PC Magazine" award earlier this year (see the second URL below), which named the tool its favorite innovative networking technology in the wireless software category.

http://www.netstumbler.com/download.php?op=getit&lid=22

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,3666,00.asp

NetStumbler runs on Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Win95 but doesn't work yet on Windows XP, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows Me. To see what it was like, I downloaded a copy and installed the tool. NetStumbler has a typical GUI, lets you choose a wireless NIC to use for scanning, and has scripting capabilities. After you've scanned an area and discovered WLANs, you can save the NetStumbler output and upload it to the NetStumbler.com Web site, where an application on the Web site converts it to Microsoft MapPoint 2002-compatible output. The process helps you plot WLAN points on a graphical map.

http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/overview.htm

With resources such as NetStumbler and NetStumbler.com freely available, you should definitely take time to ensure that your WLAN security is adjusted to permit only authorized users access--unless you want to intentionally leave it open and available to anyone. The bottom line is that if you run a wireless network, you must keep it secure. If you don't, expect that someone will identify your network, chalk it up, and possibly submit it to the NetStumbler.com Web site--where everyone can find it quickly. For information about securing your WLANs, read Allen Jones' article, "Securing 802.11 Wireless Networks" (see the first URL below) and Paul Thurrott's article "Securing Your Wireless Networks" (see the second URL below).

http://www.secadministrator.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=24873

http://www.secadministrator.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=24521

Bob Jensen's wireless threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm#Wireless1 

From a Stanford University GSB Alumni Newsletter on September 3, 2002

ARE GLOBAL LABOR STANDARDS GOOD FOR WORKERS? 
Robert Flanagan Economists, politicians, and activists have long debated whether countries that do not adopt international labor standards gain an advantage in trade and investment at the expense of those who do. GSB Professor Robert Flanagan recently tested the arguments through a comparative study of about 100 countries at various stages of development from 1980 to 1999. August 2002 http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/community/bmag/sbsm0208/faculty_research_labor_standards.html 

ANALYZING THE ANALYST 
Harrison Hong Investors take risks based on information they can trust to be true. But in our post-Enron world, how does the investor know which voices to listen to in the clamor of financial information? And what regulations of securities analysts would restore the climate of trust? One step is to identify a predictable pattern of bias in the work of successful financial analysts and understand how that bias is rewarded. Recent research by Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member Harrison Hong does just that. August 2002 http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/research/reports/2002/hong.html 

STANFORD BUSINESS SCHOOL STUDY EXPOSES BLIND SPOT IN MUTUAL FUND INVESTING 
Eric Zitzewitz Volatility presents greater risks to market players attempting to stay ahead of the curve. The extent to which such volatility, combined with the standard industry practice of pricing mutual funds just once daily, has allowed arbitrageurs to profit handsomely. And those profits come at the expense of long-term investors-to the tune of $4 billion annually. That estimated $4 billion dilution level is part of a new study by Eric Zitzewitz. August 2002 http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/research/reports/2002/zitzewitz.html 

FUROR OVER MBA STUDY BY STANFORD RESEARCHERS: STANFORD STUDY CONTENDS MBA DEGREES OVERRATED 
For many would-be executives and entrepreneurs, an MBA degree is supposed be the ticket to career success. Two researchers, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christine Fong at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business are turning that notion on its head. Pfeffer is quoted, as is GSB senior associate dean for academic affairs David Kreps: "We are going to continue to pay attention to articles like Pfeffer and Fong and see how we can improve." San Francisco Chronicle, August 27, 2002 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/27/BU99160.DTL 

RELATED LINKS Similar stories appeared in over 77 newspapers across the country. See Baltimore Sun, September 2, 2002 http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-bz.mba02sep02.story?coll=bal%2Dbusiness%2Dheadlines 

NPR's "Morning Edition," Interview with Pfeffer (3:15 min.) (audio players can be downloaded from the left-side navigation menu) Wednesday, August 28, 2002 http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?prgID=3&prgDate=08/28/2002 

CONTROVERSY AWAITS MBA CERTIFICATION EXAM 
According to reporter Del Jones, a certification exam for MBAs will be launched in April in an attempt to figure out who among the 112,000 graduates each year has learned the core subjects of a master's degree in business administration. "The exam comes at a time when the MBA degree is under attack," writes Jones, citing recently published research by GSB faculty member Jeffrey Pfeffer. USA Today, Tuesday, August 27, 2002 http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020827/4394171s.htm 

August 30, 2002 message from A. William Richardson [awrichar@SPARTAN.AC.BROCKU.CA] 

The following is an article relating to the subject of corruption index that appeared in the Globe and Mail. At the end of the story are some rankings on the 1 - 10 scale that shows that the point in Prof Wright's email is generally but not precisely correct.

The URL is given after the article.

There was a similar article in the National Post and the URL is also listed after the article below.

Bangladesh most corrupt, study says

Survey results will not affect flow of aid and funding from Canada, CIDA says

By STEPHANIE NOLEN
Globe and Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2002 Page A14
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20020829/UCORROQ/

Business is bad in Bangladesh: an international survey of corruption in more than 100 countries has declared the impoverished South Asian country the most corrupt place in the world.

The top recipient of Canadian aid, Bangladesh ranks at the bottom of the Transparency International's annual corruption perceptions index for the second year running.

Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-governmental organization, builds the index from a "poll of polls," using 15 different independent surveys, including one by the Economist Intelligence Unit. A country must appear in at least three surveys to be ranked; citizens of a country are never surveyed on their own nation.

Finland was first with a score of 9.7 out of 10, while Bangladesh bottomed out at 1.2 out of 10, 0.4 points behind the next-most corrupt nation, Nigeria. Canada ranked seventh on the list.

Canada gives Bangladesh $50-million a year in bilateral aid, but a spokeswoman for the Canadian International Development Agency said the ranking would not affect aid funding.

"We don't penalize the poor by pulling out of the country," Ginette Lebreton said. "CIDA recognizes that corruption exists in some countries we work with and we support programs that strengthen good governance. Sixteen per cent of our spending is towards democracy, human rights, good governance and public management."

Non-governmental aid agencies suggested yesterday that the index is highly subjective. While corruption tends to be blatant in the least developed countries, it can be no less pervasive in higher income countries such as China and the Persian Gulf states -- just better disguised in more sophisticated business practises.

China, which receives nearly as much Canadian aid as Bangladesh and is often criticized for corruption, is 59th on the list.

"Corruption is damaging to the progress of a society, no question," said Nazeer Ali Ladhani, chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, a charity with numerous projects in Bangladesh and other countries near the bottom of the index. "But you have to see it through the lens of

poverty: where do you draw the line on what is corruption and how do you judge?"

When poorly paid public servants demand bribes to do their jobs, it is perceived as corruption, he said. But in middle-income countries, bribes can be formally presented as "user fees," which international business accepts.

Seventy per cent of the countries surveyed scored lower than five out of 10. The world's poorest countries were almost all lumped near the bottom of the list.

"Corrupt political elites in the developing world, working hand-in-hand with greedy business people and unscrupulous investors, are putting private gain before the welfare of citizens and the economic development of their countries," Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen said in a statement.

Corruption is perceived to be rampant in Indonesia, Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Paraguay, Uganda and Haiti. At the other end of the spectrum, the wealthy Scandinavian countries of Finland, Denmark and Sweden, plus New Zealand, all scored above nine.

Esperanza Moreno, deputy director of the Canadian Council on International Cooperation, suggested it was unfair to think of corruption as a plague of developing countries. "It is not only a Third World problem, as we saw recently with the big northern corporations [such as Enron]."

Because this year's index is drawn from data compiled in 2000-01 period, the impact of the major financial scandals that have occurred in the United States is not yet perceptible.

Mr. Eigen said he was disappointed that the list revealed no trend toward lessening corruption, although Russia (71st on the list at 2.7) and a few Eastern European countries have made progress in eliminating practises such as kickbacks, he said. Perceived corruption Transparency International, a coalition against corruption, has released its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2002. The CPI scores relate to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and risk analysts and range between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). Here is a selection from the 102 nations and how they scored. Country

Rank Name CPI score

1 Finland 9.7

7 Canada 9.0

10 United Kingdom 8.7

16 United States 7.7

18.* Germany 7.3

20.* Japan 7.1

31 Italy 5.2

59.* China 3.5

71.* Russia 2.7

101 Nigeria 1.6

102 Bangladesh 1.2

-*Rank shared by more than one country.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20020829/UCORROQ

http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=270FC3B8-7B9B-41FB-BC2A-28DB357FF9EF

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

The popular IVillage women's website goes beyond its usual free e-mail service and accidentally allows viewers to read other peoples' private messages --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54833,00.html 

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on September 5, 2002

TITLE: Cendant Takes Steps on Pay of CEO and Stock Options 
REPORTER: Motoko Rich 
DATE: Aug 29, 2002 
PAGE: B2 LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1030541238406495995.djm,00.html  
TOPICS: Accounting, Advanced Financial Accounting, Financial Accounting Standards Board, Financial Statement Analysis, Managerial Compensation, Standard Setting, Stock Options

SUMMARY: The article describes the impact of changing Cendant's CEO's stock options incentive pay and other contract provisions. Questions require students to understand accounting for stock options and restricted-stock awards, to define the terms EBITDA and pre-tax income, and to consider the FASB's standards setting agenda and potential Congressional influence.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What are the possible ways in which companies may account for stock options? Under what accounting standards are these requirements established?

2.) What are restricted-stock awards? How are these compensation packages accounted for?

3.) The Cendant CEO argues that the "hit to a company's income statement" for employee stock options "won't reflect the value of the options to employees...[whereas] the intrinsic value subtracted from the company's earnings [under restricted-stock awards plans] would be mostly equivalent to the intrinsic value that the employee receives." Explain these statements. Do you agree with the CEO's position? Support your answer.

4.) What is the difference between "pretax earnings" and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization" (EBITDA)? In your answer, first define these two terms.

5.) Cendant's chief executive's pay will be impacted in at least two ways due to the changes that are described in the article, one which certainly will reduce his incentive bonus and one which may reduce or increase it, in contrast to his former contract. Explain how these changes will occur.

6.) Why are corporations now choosing to expense employee stock options? (Hint: you may view the growing list of companies choosing to expense employee stock options on the WSJ web site at http://online.wsj.com/documents/opting_in.htm

7.) Why is Congress considering legislation that may mandate the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to undertake a project on the topic of accounting for stock options? Does Congress typically set the FASB's agenda? (Hint: you can find guidance in answering this question by going to the FASB's web site at http://www.fasb.org and clicking on "FASB Facts" on the left-hand side of the page.)

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

Research Study of the Week --- It's "Cool"

I have always attributed the declines in accounting enrollments in the United States mostly to the accompanying requirement that candidates for the CPA examination have five rather than four years of college (the so called 150-Hour Requirement).  I finally discovered a study that changed my mind somewhat (at least from over 70% down to 38%).  The study is by Jeff Boone and Teddy Coe.  I don't know Jeff Boone, but I've known Teddy Coe for many years.  There is one word to describe Teddy --- "cool."  He has been a long-time leader in accounting education with a charming personality and a deep knowledge of opera and accounting.  And there is one word to describe the "Quasi-Experiment" cited below --- "cool."  

The study provides a great review of the history of the 150-Hour Requirement and it's controversies.  Then it reports a very clever research design with excellent statistical analysis.  I honestly never thought there would be innovative research that seems to get a handle on whether the main cause of enrollment decline in accounting graduates was the 150-Hour requirement enacted by most states in the U.S.  The study essentially concludes that the 150-Hour Requirement is a leading cause, but it is less than 50% of the problem according to Boone and Coe.

"The 150-Hour Requirement and Changes in the Supply of Accounting Undergraduates: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment," by Jeff P. Boone and Teddy L. Coe, Issues in Accounting Education, Vol. 17, No. 3, August 2002, pp. 258-268 --- http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/pubs.htm 
You must be a paid subscriber to download the full article, but a free summary is available at http://www.newslettersonline.com/user/user.fas/s=604/fp=3/tp=44?T=open_summary,480676&P=summary 

ABSTRACT: 
The number of accounting graduates has declined sharply following the near universal adoption of the 150-hour requirement for licensing and as a condition for membership in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). This decline has led many observers to conclude that the 150-hour requirement was a mistake. Our study investigates the extent to which the 150-hour requirement (rather than other causes) is responsible for the decline in the number of accounting graduates during the 1990s. We document that approximately 38 percent of the decline can be attributed to the requirement. The other 62 percent of the decline remains unexplained. Our study underscores the importance of considering other factors such as noncompetitive compensation, unattractive working conditions, inappropriate student counseling, and inadequate curriculum among others when trying to understand the decline in accounting enrollments.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
We document a decline in conferred undergraduate accounting degrees that is associated with implementation of the 150-hour requirement.  Results show a monotonic decrease in accounting degrees conferred by treatment states as the 150-implementation date approaches, with the decrease reaching a maximum in the first year after implementation and disappearing entirely by event year +3. The estimated loss in graduating undergraduate accountants is 1,945 students in year 2000, which is 11.38 percent of the number of undergraduate accounting degrees that would have been conferred if the 150-hour requirement were not in effect.  Further, this estimated annual loss of 1,945 accounting degrees represents only 38 percent of the 5,074 annual loss in accounting degrees conferred by treatment states during the decade of the 1990s.

Since the adoption of the 150-hour rule for licensing in most U.S. jurisdictions and its adoption as a condition for membership in the AICPA, accounting enrollments have declined precipitously.  This has lead to considerable debate in the accounting profession as to whether this decline should be laid directly at the door of the 150-hour rule.  Albrecht and Sack (2000) even concluded that the rule "is universally seen as a mistake."  Our study supports the belief that the 150-hour requirement is an important yet incomplete explanation for the substantial and dramatic decline in accounting graduates.  In particular, estimates suggest that the 150-hour requirement accounts for 38 percent of the decline in accounting graduates, with the other 62 percent of the decline unexplained.  Efforts to increase accounting enrollments and the supply of professional accountants by eliminating the 150-hour requirement are likely to stimulate only a modest increase in accounting enrollments.  If leaders of the academic and professional communities want to address ways in which to ameliorate the decline in accounting enrollments, then issues such as noncompetitive compensation, unattractive working conditions, inappropriate student counseling, and inadequate curriculum among others must be considered.  Addressing these issues assumes even greater urgency in light of the possibility that the Enron debacle may further depress already dwindling accounting enrollments.

The 150-hour issue is a timely and important topic to accounting professionals and educators.  As Wallace (1996) notes, much research remains to be done before we can evaluate whether the 150-hour requirement represents progress or protection for the accounting profession.

The most significant study published about the decline in accounting graduates is the free Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future, by W. Steve Albrecht and Robert J. Sack (Sarasota, FL:  American Accounting Association, Accounting Education Series Monograph No. 16,  http://aaahq.org/pubs/AESv16/toc.htm 

Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU] 

This is a significant upgrade of Windows Media Player 9 and may be a nail in RealNetwork's coffin.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.asp 

Richard Campbell

Note that this is only the Beta version.  It was a piece of cake to upgrade.

September 6, 2002 message from Roxio [Roxio_support@adm.cheetahmail.com] 
Roxio's homepage is at http://www.roxio.com/ 

Roxio's VideoWave® 5 Power Edition is the complete video editing and DVD authoring solution for demanding users. Now, for a limited time, you can purchase Videowave 5 Power Edition for only $59.95. That's $40 off the suggested retail price!

Easy Capture: Easily transfer digital or analog** video from your camera to your PC. Powerful Editing: Use professional tools with drag & drop ease. Expert Effects: Create high-end image effects and transitions. DVD Authoring: Burn DVDs to share with friends.

Take advantage of the $10 instant discount and $30 mail-in rebate!

Bob Jensen's summary of resources can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

September 6, 2002 message from AACSB International - Communications [comm@AACSB.edu] 

And now we are your source for Worldwide Jobs in Management Education.

M.E. Jobs - http://www.aacsb.edu/jobs/default.asp  - is an ONLINE career marketplace for professionals in management education jobs that provides:

A user-friendly and immediate format Accessibility to job postings from our over 900 member schools Most ads were posted within the last 30 days - no job over 90

Bob Jensen's threads on careers can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Careers%20in%20Accountancy 

Because he was known as "Silent Cal," there is no audio at this site.
Calvin Coolidge: 30th President of the United States http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/ 

From Syllabus News on August 30, 2002

Technical Grads Have Highest Starting Salaries

Despite the economic downturn in the technology sector, students graduating with technical degrees are typically offered the highest starting salaries compared to their peers holding other degrees, according to a new job market survey by the New York Times. Starting salaries in the New York area for graduates with bachelor's technical degrees ranged from $38K to $52K. The range for the next highest group, business degreed grads, was $30K to $35K.

However, job seekers continue to believe that enrollment in a business program will help them secure good jobs. Nearly two in five job seekers interviewed think that recruiters are most likely to hire candidates with a business degree (38 percent). A business program is a top choice among current students (29 percent) and among those who plan to enroll at a college/university during the next year (30 percent).

---

U. Conn. Adopts Online Alcohol Ed Program:  It's a Required Online Course

The University of Connecticut said it mandated alcohol education for its students starting this September. All first-year students will take a three-hour interactive course, AlcoholEdu, developed by Outside The Classroom, Inc., which provides online health education for colleges and universities. The university will also make AlcoholEdu available to other campus groups, including athletic teams, Greek-letter organizations, and disciplinary referrals. "Binge drinking and other high-risk alcohol consumption can be a major problem for young men and women, especially early in their college careers," said John Saddlemire, dean of students at the university. "Research has shown that the strongest motivation for behavior change comes from relevant information delivered to students in effective and non-threatening ways. AlcoholEdu for the first time makes it easy and practical to provide this preemptive education to all our first-year students and other selected groups."

For more information, visit: http://www.outsidetheclassroom.com 

The Official Muddy Waters Website (Hear the Music)  http://www.muddywaters.com 

Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1892 to 1934 http://www.suba.com/~scottn/explore/mainmenu.htm 

Create your own music on the Web (free) --- http://www.myriad-online.com/enindex.htm 

MAC'S SLIPPING CLASS RANK 
Apple is losing ground to more enterprise-friendly Windows PCs in the critical education market. If that continues, watch out http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2002/tc20020827_9702.htm?c=bwtechaug30&n=link3&t=email 

APPLE'S JAGUAR LEAPS AHEAD OF WINDOWS 
The good old days are here again: The new version of OS X once more gives Macs clear superiority in operating systems http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2002/tc20020828_4318.htm?c=bwtechaug30&n=link12&t=email 

African Aperture (Beautiful Photography) http://www.africanaperture.com/ 

JAlbum 2.0 Web Photo Album Generator (free)  http://www.datadosen.se/jalbu 

Macromedia's ever-popular tool, famous for making it easy to create dynamic sites and Web-based apps, gets a massive overhaul and some new, drool-worthy features --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/34/index3a.html 

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

"The dark side of XML and privacy, by Jack Vaughan, September 5, 2002 --- AppDevTrends@101communications-news.com 

The data-describing power of XML could have a very dark side in the hand of mischievous individuals, says Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at industry analyst firm ZapThink, Waltham, Mass. "XML is essentially automating identity theft," said Schmelzer, a speaker at the XML Web Services One Conference in Boston.

By creating what Schmelzer described as a "human-readable, machine-processable, meta data-enhanced, text-based way of reading information that is tagged," XML has given developers a way to tag data fields that may be too efficient. With XML, developers don't really have the ability to tell DBAs to ignore the information. "It's like telling them not to think about polar bears. They're essentially drawing a big red flag" that points to those data fields holding sensitive information.

To resolve this problem, said Schmelzer, some programmers have turned to a strategy of obfuscation -- creating a field called XJ12 as the tag for credit cards, and splitting the credit card number into four fields or even hashing the number.

The Platform for Privacy Preferences is a popular XML-based effort that defines privacy policies in machine-readable formats and generates such policies. According to Schmelzer, attempts at offering customers P3P-based, user-centric services to store and access personal information, such as Microsoft Passport, the Liberty Alliance, CPExchange and Oasis CIQ, at best create as many questions as answers; at worst, they are doomed to failure.

All these plans have one thing in common: They use XML tags to standardize customer information. But, said Schmelzer, "if it's hard to [get agreement on] standardized simple address fields internationally, then think about how hard it will be to tag other, more complex forms of customer information."

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

September 2, 2002 message from James L. Morrison [morrison@mivu.org] 

Hi Bob,

Below is a description of the September/October 2002 issue of The Technology Source, a free, refereed e-journal published by the Michigan Virtual University as a service to the educational community at http://ts.mivu.org/

Please forward this announcement to colleagues who are interested in using information technology tools more effectively in their work.

As always, we seek illuminating articles that will assist educators as they face the challenge of using information technology tools in teaching and in managing educational organizations. Please review our call for manuscripts at http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=call and send me a note if you would like to contribute such an article.

Many thanks.

Jim

James L. Morrison
Editor-in-Chief
The Technology Source
http://ts.mivu.org
Home Page: http://horizon.unc.edu

IN THIS ISSUE:

Editor James L. Morrison interviews Peter Suber, a leading figure in the “free online scholarship” movement. Suber describes the technological, legal, and philosophical aspects of this exciting movement, and assesses its future development within the academy. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1025

When instructors need to promote communication and collaboration online, are there better alternatives than threaded discussion boards? In his commentary, William R. Klemm argues that a “shared document” approach offers significant advantages, and illustrates this in his use of a customized software program. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1015

In an interview with editor James L. Morrison, Carl Berger discusses the potential of integrated software development in instructional technology. Through his concept of the “killer app”—-a software application that assimilates a range of diverse functions—-Berger anticipates a future in which technology becomes further integrated in the daily experience of learners. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=995

Thierry R. H. Bacro illustrates how online technology allowed him to deliver an anatomy course to a broader geographic range of students. By illustrating the online component of this course, Bacro provides an “incisive” account of how distance education can be adopted within highly specialized forms of instruction. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=977

In their case study, Gene Abrams and Jeremy Haefner describe their use of the MathOnline system, through which they were able to combine traditional and online methods of mathematics instruction, and thereby provide a more flexible range of learning options for their students. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=970

When building a distance education program, some institutions may already have a substantial community of students and faculty—-but still lack financial resources. Carol Stroud and Brenda Stutsky show how they addressed this challenge through a sharing of community resources, which allowed them to develop an online course for regional nurses in Manitoba. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=939

Jerome R. Koblo and Casey Turnage offer an overview of current efforts to use technology to enhance faculty development programs in higher education. After considering a range of different approaches, they offer a prospectus for future efforts. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=943

Michael M. Danchak illustrates how he has addressed the problem of creating affective relationships in Web-based instruction. Recognizing the difficulty of establishing instructor personality without face-to-face contact, Danchak suggests several ways in which instructors can reassure students of their presence and concern. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=962

For our Spotlight Site, Stephen Downes reviews LearnScope Virtual Learning Community (VLC), an Australian site that focuses on the use of information technology in education. Through its multiple features, LearnScope VLC lives up to its name by providing a comprehensive online learning community to its participants. See http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1035 

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

Pop-up ads may be annoying, but they're not going away. Some sneaky advertisers are even trying to get around ad-blocking software --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54903,00.html 

From Syllabus News on September 6, 2002

How does an institution develop strategies and encourage cooperation across the academic community to meet the technology needs of students, faculty, staff and administrators? You'll learn about successful efforts from Gerard Hanley, Syllabus fall2002 keynote speaker and Senior Director of Academic Technology Support in the Office of the Chancellor at California State University. Affiliated with MERLOT since 1997, Hanley has worked to develop learning communities that foster professional development and cooperation among faculty, staff, students and administrators. Syllabus fall2002, an education technology conference and vendor fair, will be held November 3-5 at the Boston Marriott Newton Hotel in Newton, Mass.

For more information and to register, go to http://www.syllabus.com/fall2002 

---

Online MBA Eases Conflicts For Managers

Lansbridge University and the American Graduate School of Management (AGSM) announced a dual degree program offering joint degrees in Master of Business Administration and Master of Management. The program, which also offers specialties for the automotive and healthcare industries, is designed for working professionals. Students work online in small groups within a class of about 20, and interact daily with faculty and peers. A weekly online synchronous interaction is scheduled for faculty and students. Classes began in August, and will be offered in November, February and May. John McLaughlin, Provost, Lansbridge University, noted that the "online format closely parallels the real world environments in which our students work." AGSM president Richard Oliver, added, "Students from around the world become teammates in classes that explore today's best management practices."

For more information, visit: http://www.lansbridge.com 

---

McGraw-Hill Offers Online Writing Tool

McGraw-Hill unveiled a web-based classroom writing assessment tool that it says will give students an method of practicing their writing skills with immediate feedback. Writing Roadmap will provide teachers analytic information and options for monitoring student and class progress, the company said. The application covers descriptive, narrative, persuasive, and informative styles of writing. Scores are reported on five analytic traits, and users can choose between holistic or summative scores, which can be downloaded into existing student information systems. The system, which uses an automated essay scoring engine from Vantage Learning, allows students to create a portfolio of their essays, which teachers can review via options that provide personalized guidance.

Message from Fathom on September 6, 2002 --- http://www.fathom.com/ 

FALL COURSES CLOSING SOON
The back-to-school spirit is in the air at Fathom -- hundreds of new semester-length courses are currently open for enrollment. Most of these online courses can be taken for credit, and a not-for-credit option is often available for a lower enrollment fee.

BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

* Mathematics for Management This online course from UCLA Extension provides a fundamental background for administrators in the public and private economic sectors, as well as a solid review of pre-MBA mathematics. Class starts September 25: http://www.fathom.com/course/3133/1140 

* How to Open a Restaurant This online course from School University is designed to assist aspiring restaurateurs embarking on the ultimate food fantasy. Learn about site selection, staffing, capital requirements and how to secure investors. Class starts September 16: http://www.fathom.com/course/14701567/1141 

* Survey of Personal Financial Planning This online course from UCLA Extension examines the business and professional practicalities of establishing and running/working in a financial counseling practice, including ethics, marketing, fee setting, and staff development. Class starts September 25: http://www.fathom.com/course/3169/1142 

BIODIVERSITY LEARNING CENTER
Discover a wealth of information about the relationship between the global economy and the environment in the special learning center "Exploring Biodiversity." With dozens of new features, free seminars and online courses illuminating the complex issues related to biodiversity, this learning center is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in learning about the interconnectedness of earth's diverse ecosystems and populations, and economic strategies to protect limited resources through sustainable development. http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=1143&page=special/biodiversity 

SEPTEMBER 11: BEFORE AND AFTER
One year after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Fathom has expanded and updated this learning center with dozens of new features, seminars and courses on past and present regions in conflict. Explore the latest scholarship and research from experts at leading academic institutions from the Fathom consortium, and learn about the economic impact of terrorism, the international political landscape and the history of religious extremism and political violence. http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=1144&page=sep11 

FREE SEMINAR

*Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia The tale of the East India Company is a fascinating combination of economic, cultural and personal histories, and of individual and imperial ambitions. British Library curator Anthony Farrington outlines the history of the East India Company and its central place in the commercial links between Britain and Asia. The seminar is free; simply follow the checkout process to enroll: http://www.fathom.com/course/21701760/1145 

EDUCATION COURSES FROM FATHOM

* Computers for Educators This online course from the University of San Diego is designed to enhance your knowledge of spreadsheets, desktop publishing, multimedia, internet-based research, and much more with strategies and skills you can apply immediately in your classroom. Class starts September 24: http://www.fathom.com/course/12701078/1148 

* Language Structure and Usage This online course from UCLA Extension covers the major theories and factors related to language structure and usage, as well as universals and differences, including those in the structure of English. Class starts September 24: http://www.fathom.com/course/1270110/1149

* Teaching and Learning Models for Online Courses Explore a plethora of models that can be used as the structure for online courses, programs, seminars, and other virtual classroom needs. This online course from UCLA Extension starts September 23: http://www.fathom.com/course/3171/1150 

ARTS AND HUMANITIES

* Multigenre Writing This nine-week online course from the New School University looks at innovative writing techniques including letters, verse, or elements from history, the sciences, or arts in examples of prose poems, short stories and novels. Class starts September 16: http://www.fathom.com/course/14701523/1134 

* Macromedia Flash 5 Animation This online workshop from UCLA Extension provides a comprehensive exploration of Flash, one of the most popular multimedia software applications. Learn how to build multi-layered animations containing interactive buttons, movie clips, and graphics. Starts September 26: http://www.fathom.com/course/3128/1135 

* Art Deco Examine Art Deco's expression in architecture, interiors, furniture and the minor decorative arts. Students will analyze the work of notable designers from Ruhlmann to Deskey, and learn about the value of Art Deco objects in the marketplace today. Class starts October 21: http://www.fathom.com/course/56706202/1136 

 

September 4 Message from Fortune

IN YOUR NEW ISSUE OF FORTUNE (September 16, 2002):

* COVER STORY: THE ENFORCER: He nailed Merrill. He's after Citi. Eliot Spitzer is just getting started.
* IT'S CLEANUP TIME: Is Corporate America finally a changing the way it does business?
* 9/11 SPECIAL: Are we safe yet?
* AMERICA'S 40 RICHEST UNDER 40: We envied them once--okay, we still do.
* IS WALL STREET GOOD FOR ANYTHING? Here's how it could be.
* AIRLINES: Why United's crisis is good for flying.
* THE UN-CEO: A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble doesn't believe in the vision thing.
* DETROIT'S USED-CAR BLUES: The Big Three are drowning.
* INVESTING: How to be your own hedge fund.

ELIOT SPITZER: THE ENFORCER

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has become the most feared man on Wall Street. What he wants is change--top to bottom. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209347

See Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" threads at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#Cleland 

IN CORPORATE AMERICA, IT'S CLEANUP TIME

Under pressure, a slew of companies are now changing the way they do business. Will it last? http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209348

9/11: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

While much has changed since the terror attacks, much remains to be done. We look at several key challenges--from making America safer and our economy less vulnerable, to the moral tangle of compensating victims. http://www.fortune.com/sitelets/september11/index_september11.html

AMERICA'S 40 RICHEST UNDER 40: EASY COME, EASY GO

We envied them once--okay, we still do. (A net worth of more than $100 million isn't exactly chicken feed.) But many of them have taken an even bigger shellacking in the market this year than we have. Plus, we find out what's become of the grizzled veterans of the dot-com disaster since those dizzying market-cap highs. http://www.fortune.com/lists/40under40/index.html

IS WALL STREET GOOD FOR ANYTHING?

Not lately. But it could be if it lost the cartel mentality, learned some ethics, and remembered the little guy. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209355

WHY UNITED'S CRISIS IS GOOD FOR FLYING

Waning hope of a taxpayer rescue is forcing the airline leader in bloated costs to face reality. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209357

THE UN-CEO

A.G. Lafley doesn't believe in the vision thing. All he's done is turn around Procter & Gamble in 27 months. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209361

DETROIT'S USED-CAR BLUES

Detroit's Big Three tried to beat imports with 0% financing and cut-rate leases. Now they're drowning under a flood of used cars. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209371

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN HEDGE FUND

Arm yourself with these basic hedging techniques, and you can protect yourself the way the pros do. http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209372

My September 10, 2002 updates on the accounting auditing, and corporate governance scandals are at  
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud091002.htm 

The main purpose of this message is to note the link forwarded by George Krull that provides a great series on Andersen. George is a professor (MSU PhD) who became an executive research partner for many years in Grant Thornton. He has been a long-time dedicated member of the American Accounting Association and is now teaching at Bradley.

However, I thought the old Michigan State University faculty and alumni might appreciate publicizing his entire message. For some of us, those were the good old days of academe --- we thought we knew the answers in those days.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: Krull, George [mailto:gkrull@bumail.bradley.edu]  
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 12:02 PM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: The Fall of Andersen Four-part Series in the Chicago Tribune

September 2, 2002 12:02 CDT

Bob,

Here is a link to an excellent series that appears in the Chicago Tribune ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/showcase/chi-andersen.special  ). The series started yesterday and concludes on Wednesday, September 4.

It was good to see you in San Antonio. I was running to a meeting when we chatted for a brief moment. Let me add my congratulations to the many you received for your Outstanding Accounting Educator Award. Your remarks were moving 
( http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm  ).

I do remember those great discussions and conversations in the Teak room at the east end of Eppley Center. I was blessed to be a member of a truly great bunch of graduate students at MSU. Those students considered the faculty ( you, Arens, Miller,Salmonson, Edwards, Windal, etc.) as our friends and our professors. That created a very special learning environment, the likes of which I have not experienced many times since.

Best regards,

George

Bob Jensen's threads on the Andersen explosion are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

Folks up north are entering the autumn and winter season.  If they would connect the dots, it will help to bring on another summer --- http://sugar3.com/sugarcards/cards_sq/HDsum/ykap_SummerTime.swf 

Accurate to the Penney But Stupid Nevertheless

On September 4, my wife received a refund check from a medical provider.  The check has two signatures (R. Milton Johnson and Dale Andersen).  I don't know how much it cost the company to prepare the check, but it did cost 37 cents to mail it to us.
Guess the amount of the check?
Two cents!  If you don't believe me, I have tacked the check to the bulletin board beside my office door.

My barber, Dennis Wilson, purchased a ring for his wife a number of years ago.  He was later contacted by a law firm inviting him to become part of a class-action lawsuit for usury on the financing charges connected with his purchase.  Over the course of five years, he received form letters stating that he was still part of an active nationwide lawsuit.  
When the judgment came, guess the amount of his settlement?
27 cents!  The lawyers got millions and Dennis, the injured party, got 27 cents.

Unfortunately, accountants now have the image of being accurate to the penny with customers up front while millions of investor resources are falling through the cracks out back.

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

Bob, 
This happened to Paperboard Industries while I was corporate controller. Our payroll clerk wrote a check to the IRS for our weekly payroll deposit. The tax withheld was about $30,000, and when she cut the check on the old check-writing machine (remember those embossing check writers?) she accidentally got the cents off by one penny. One penny mind you! So it was short by a penny. The IRS computer kicked it out, and charged us the $0.01 unpaid taxes, plus the statutory penalty, which as we all know, is 10% of the taxes due, or $3,000 in this case! It took us 9 months, twenty or so phone calls, and a half-dozen letters from our attorney to get that penalty waived. And that doesn’t count the time and effort by the IRS personnel! All over a $0.01 shortage!

Ain’t technology wonderful?

David Fordham
James Madison University

Reply from Robert Holmes Glendale College [rcholmes@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US] 

Please cash the check. Think of the poor accountants having to include your two cents' worth in their bank reconciliations for months, and then having to make an entry to increase profits by your two cents when they give up on the check. Or perhaps their rules call for them to contact you in person if you have not cashed the check or maybe even going to the bank and putting a stop payment on your check and reissuing one to you.

Reply from Derek

This thread reminds me of an incident some years back. I paid a department store account one day date, and was charged one day's interest on the balance, amounting to 12 cents. I did not use that store again, and I kept getting accounts for the 12 c (at a postage cost of 40c per month). I even got a lawyer's form letter threatening to sue me. I was tempted to go to court and defend myself, but I gave in and paid up when it became apparent that my overdue status had been reported to all the credit bureaux, and a credit card issuer were threatening to pull my card as I was deemed a delinquent debtor.

Derek Speer 
The Univerist of Auckland, 
Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

 

Hi Jed,

This looks like a good information site with some added humor, although I'm not certain about such descriptions as "Economists gone Wild! You will see a lot of these sexy beasts this week giving punditry to the numbers released below." --- http://marketcrush.com/Timelines.htm  

It was nice to see that they featured my fraud document at http://marketcrush.com/zSPOTSITEr.htm  (alongside a feature on "Splinter Free Bath Tissue")

Bob Jensen

Original Message----- 
From: Jed Morocco [mailto:JedMorocco@marketcrush.com]  
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 10:41 PM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: 
Meant to send this some time ago.

Professor,

I have followed your site since the spring of 200. It rules. I wanted to send you this link to the Timelines I did on ENE, Q, WCOM, GX, and the Dow to get your opinion. Know your busy, hope you enjoy.

http://marketcrush.com/Timelines.htm 

Jed Morocco

Question
What was it like to live in Clacton in the 60's? What was it like to live where every weekend the seafront buzzed with the sound of 2-stroke engines? 

Answer:
Fashion, music and lifestyle from a woman who was there --- http://www.uppers.org/article.asp?article=424 

Question:
How can a person become a trivia expert (at least in front of friends at parties)?

Answer:
Go to Idiom Site --- http://www.idiomsite.com/ 

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Subject Younger than our classmates

While waiting for my first appointment in the reception room of a new dentist, I noticed his certificate, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered that a tall, handsome boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40 years ago.  Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was too old to have been my classmate.

After he had examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended the local high school. "Yes," he replied. "When did you graduate?" I asked. 

He answered, "In 1944."

"Why, you were in my class!" I exclaimed.

He looked at me closely and then asked, "What did you teach?"

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Kid's Prayers

I had been teaching my three-year-old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord's Prayer. For several evenings at bedtime, she would repeat after me the lines from the prayer.

Finally, she decided to go solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer:

"Lead us not into temptation," she prayed, "but deliver us some E-mail. Amen." 

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

One Sunday in a Midwest City, a young child was "acting up" during the morning worship hour. The parents did their best to maintain some sense of order in the pew but were losing the battle.

Finally, the father picked the little fellow up and walked sternly up the aisle on his way out.

Just before reaching the safety of the foyer, the little one called loudly to the congregation, "Pray for me! Pray for me!" **************************

And one particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."

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

A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it.

I'm having a real good time like I am."

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

A Sunday school teacher asked her little children, as they were on the way to church service,

"And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"

One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping."

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

The preacher was wired for sound with a lapel mike, and as he preached, he moved briskly about the platform, jerking the mike cord as he went.

Then he moved to one side, getting wound up in the cord and nearly tripping before jerking it again.

After several circles and jerks, a little girl in the third pew leaned toward her mother and whispered,

"If he gets loose, will he hurt us?"

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

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, Ryan, 3.

The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.

Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.

"If Jesus were sitting here, He would say 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'"

Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"

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

A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand.

"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.

"He died and went to Heaven," the dad replied.

The boy thought a moment and then said,

"Did God throw him back down?"

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

A Sunday school class was studying the Ten Commandments. They were ready to discuss the last one. The teacher asked if anyone could tell her what it was.

Susie raised her hand, stood tall, and quoted,

"Thou shall not take the covers off the neighbor's wife."

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

At Sunday School they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Johnny, a child in the kindergarten class, seemed especially intent when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs.

Later in the week his mother noticed him lying as though he was ill, and said, "Johnny what is the matter?"

Little Johnny responded, "I have a pain in my side. I think I'm going to have a wife!"

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

"Our father, who does art in heaven, Howard is his name...."

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

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales. The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human, because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.

The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was impossible.

The little girl said, "When I get to heaven, I will ask Jonah." The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"

The little girl replied, "Then you ask him."

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Senior citizens are constantly being criticized for every conceivable deficiency of the modern world, real or imaginary.  We know we take responsibility for all we have done and do not blame others.

HOWEVER, upon reflection, we would like to point out that it was NOT the senior citizens who took:

     The melody out of music,
     The pride out of appearance,
     The courtesy out of driving,
     The romance out of love,
     The commitment out of marriage,
     The responsibility out of parenthood,
     The togetherness out of the family,
     The learning out of education,
     The service out of patriotism,
     The Golden Rule from rulers,
     The nativity scene out of cities,
     The civility out of behavior,
     The refinement out of language,
     The dedication out of employment,
     The prudence out of spending,
     The ambition out of achievement, or,
     

Murphy's Laws Site --- http://www.murphys-laws.com/ 

All the laws of Murphy:

• Murphy Law Origin :: The history and true story of Murphy law
• Murphy's Laws :: If anything can go wrong, it will
• Love Laws :: All the good ones are taken
• Tech Laws :: New systems generate new problems
• Computer Laws :: Any given program, when running, is obsolete
• Commerce Laws :: To err is human, to forgive is not company policy
• Real Estate Laws :: At least one check will be "lost in the mail" every month
• Teaching Laws :: You never catch on until after the test
• War Laws :: Friendly fire - isn't
• Cops Laws :: Bullet Proof' vests aren't
• MP Laws :: No street-wise unit ever passed inspection
• Sewing Laws :: The scissors cut easiest past the buttonhole
• Murphy Volunteer Bush-fire Brigade Laws :: If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid
• Photography Laws :: Auto Focus - won't
• Nurses Laws :: Doctors only ask your name when the patient isn't doing well
• Buses Laws :: If your running late the bus will be too
• Lotto Laws :: You match 4 numbers, but you lost your ticket
• Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS) Laws :: Peep sights don’t.
• Cars Laws :: An oil leak will develop.
• Toddler Laws :: When you forget the stroller they will want to ride.
• EMT Laws :: All bleeding stops... eventually.
• Life by Murphy :: Is your life a good example of Murphy laws?

And that's the way it was on September 10, 2002 with a little help from my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 30, 2002

Quotes of the Week

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of masters.
Adam Smith, as quoted by Jack Martens in "For the Ease of Masters," Barron's, August 26, 2002, Page 31.
The article complains that colleges should be more open about the post-graduate qualifying examinations (GRE, MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc.).  Instead they hide behind a conspiracy of secrecy.  

Colleges, . . ., should lead the way to full disclosure, not set the bad example of avoiding accountability and fearing what test results might reveal.
Ibid

If you love what you do, it will never be a job.
Confucius

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made!
Bloch Arthur

The secret of happiness is to yield to temptations.
Oscar Wilde

If you live long enough, you'll see every victory turn into a defeat.
Simone de Beauvoir

The main cause of divorce is marriage [Might we also say this about recent "marriages" (mergers and acquisitions) in business?]
Groucho Marx

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Berenson Bernard

We're born princes and the civilizing process turns us into frogs.
Berne Eric

My August 30, 2002 updates on the accounting auditing, and corporate governance scandals are at updates on the accounting scandals at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud083002.htm  

What accounting journal do I especially recommend that you look at in these times of accounting, auditing, and corporate governance scandals?

What article in that journal suggests to me what I will phrase “An Accounting Paradox: When will accounting for an asset destroy the asset?”

Answers to both questions are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud083002.htm  

Anyone with a modem and some spare cash can buy a fake degree over the Internet. But it's often difficult to distinguish between a legitimate distance-learning university and a diploma mill.

"Down by the Diploma Mills Stream," by Kendra Mayfield, Wired News, August 28, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54596,00.htm 

Welcome to Harrington University (also known as the University of San Moritz, University of Palmers Green and University of Devonshire, among others), where anyone can purchase a bachelor's or master's degree -- no tests or coursework required -- for the bargain price of several thousand dollars. The "university," owned by an American resident in Romania, uses mail-drop addresses in the United Kingdom, printing services in Jerusalem and banking options in Cyprus. The operation has sold 70,000 diplomas in the United States alone, raking in over $100 million, according to diploma mill expert John Bear.

"No country seems willing or able to do anything," said Bear, founder of Degree.net.

While Harrington may be the world's largest diploma mill, it's just one of hundreds of operations on the Web offering degrees that are seemingly legitimate, but often worthless on paper.

The onslaught of spam, online advertising and overnight electronic payment services has made it even more difficult to distinguish between legitimate distance-learning institutions and diploma mills.

"The problem has worsened, owing to the ease of advertising via the Internet and the ability of diploma mills to operate from offshore and still get payment from U.S. users," said Alan Contreras, administrator of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization.

"Where it used to be some obviously fraudulent operators offering academic degrees in exchange for money and minimal amount of paperwork, it has morphed into a more sophisticated model, where the degree mill offers tutoring and all the trappings of an academic program, but in fact it is still an avenue to getting a degree quickly," said Michael Lambert, executive director of the Distance Education and Training Council.

Not all unaccredited colleges are necessarily degree mills. In the United States, an accrediting agency must be recognized by either the Department of Education or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation.

"Unfortunately, the degree mill operators have seized on the use of the word 'accreditation,' and there are several dozen unrecognized and probably worthless accrediting agencies being used to provide legitimacy," Lambert said. "So there is an accreditation mill problem as well now."

In the United States, individual states must decide whether or not to permit diploma mills to operate within their borders.

States have made some headway in regulating diploma mills over the past few years.

"Although the level of enforcement varies from state to state, I think that there has been great progress made across the board," Lambert said. "States like Louisiana, Hawaii and South Dakota -- all once known as degree-mill havens -- have adopted laws that now require recognized accreditation for any institution in their state wishing to offer a degree."

Oregon and New Jersey disallow use of degrees from institutions that are not accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or approved by the state's authorization agency.

While Oregon's policy is among the strictest in the nation, other states, like Wyoming and Montana, permit unaccredited universities as long as they have a physical presence in the state.

"The Montana legislature does not seem to care that their state has become the sinkhole for bogus degrees in the U.S.," Contreras said.

Continued at  http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54596,00.htm  

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

"Tech Keeps Tabs on School Kids," by Julia Scheeres, Wired News, August 26, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54604,00.html 

Before little Suzy skips out the door swinging her Powerpuff Girls lunchbox, her parents can lock a Wherify GPS-enabled bracelet on her wrist that works like a personal LoJack, pinpointing her exact location as she walks to class. If she's tardy, her parents can jump on the Internet and check her coordinates using aerial or street maps. And if she runs into a strange man asking for help finding a lost kitty, she can press two buttons on the bulky device to dial 911. The bracelet also notifies the cops if someone tries to forcefully remove it.

"We want to be that next level of security," said Wherify founder Timothy Neher. "Right now when your child is missing, all you can do is call the police and wait. Our system tells you where your child is in less than a minute."

Wherify launched its $399 product, which doubles as a pager, at the end of July and has already received over a thousand orders, fueled in part by the recent rash of child abductions, Neher said.

Once Suzy traipses safely through the doors of Hometown Elementary School, she hands her lunchbox to an attendant and steps through a metal detector to make sure she's not packing heat next to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

As she jostles her way through crammed corridors to her homeroom, she is followed by a maze of pivoting cameras made by Axis Communications that beam her image over the Internet to the principal's Palm Pilot or the database of an outside security firm.

The electronic eyes, which pan, tilt and zoom, allow school officials to continuously monitor campus activity, eliminating the need for a security guard in many cases, said Axis director of business development Frederick Nilsson. The cameras can be equipped with two-way microphones that allow school staff to interrogate Suzy if she is caught in the hallway without her potty pass.

The primary function of these cameras in schools is to cut down on vandalism and fights, said Roy Balentine, director of educational sales for Camera Watch, which installed and monitors Axis cameras at Canton High School in Canton, Mississippi.

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54604,00.html  

The James Bonds of This Century

Accountants Favored Over Lawyers in Dating Poll --- http://www.smartpros.com/x35086.xml 

Accountants are still licking their wounds from the recent stream of corporate scandals and Arthur Andersen's collapse. Perhaps this will speed up the healing process ...

A recent poll conducted by Date.com, an online dating community, found that singles would prefer to date an accountant rather than go out with the perennial butt of sarcastic jokes, the trial lawyer.

Furthermore, to show just how far accountants remain from the bottom of the dating pool, they might be happy to learn they are preferred as dates by a better than four-to-one margin over the lowly house burglar.

We should point out that Date.com gave the survey participants just three choices of occupations: house burglar, trial lawyer and accountant.

Put into perspective, perhaps it's not such great news after all!

As was pointed out in a recent cartoon in The New Yorker, women/men are drawn to men/women who live on the edge of danger.  That explains the results in the above poll.

In preparation for a forthcoming presentation in Mexico, I tried to answer the following questions:

Questions 
What are the most significant changes expected in higher education by the Year 2025? 
What major universities are now experimenting on the leading edge of such changes?

Answers
The first draft of my answers can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#Future  
You can probably guess my Answers 2 and 3, but I bet none of you can guess Answer 1.

I would appreciate any suggestions you may have that will improve the above document.

Question
How is the education of accountants being changed and reformed?

Answer
"Beyond the “Old School:  By the Numbers," Journal of Accountancy, September 2002 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/edu.htm 

The 2001 report, The Supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits, documents the demographics of the accounting profession. Anyone will find the report useful. It is available online at www.aicpa.org/members/div/career/edu/sagdpar.htm .

The data are based on an AICPA survey of colleges and universities that offer accounting degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s or PhD level and of public accounting firms and sole practitioners affiliated with the Institute.

SUPPLY DATA FROM COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES 

In 1999–2000, approximately 37,000 students received bachelor’s degrees in accounting and 8,000 earned master’s degrees. Compared to 1998– 1999, the number of bachelor’s degree recipients decreased 10%; however, the number of master’s degrees awarded increased 19%.

Schools in the Southern and Pacific states held steady compared to previous years while schools in the East and North Central regions awarded fewer bachelor’s degrees.

Considerably more females than males received bachelor’s degrees (58% to 42%), about equal percentages received master’s degrees (51% females to 49% males) while more males than females received PhDs (61% to 39%).

Minorities accounted for 20% of accounting bachelor’s and master’s graduates and for 22% of PhDs.

Approximately one-third of 1999–2000 bachelor’s degree recipients took positions with public accounting firms and about one-fourth began their careers in business and industry. A majority of master’s degree recipients (62%) went into public accounting. These proportions parallel 1998–1999 degree recipients.

Enrollments in accounting bachelor’s programs continued to drop (4.5%) from 1998–1999. However, enrollments in master’s programs increased by 10% and in master’s-in-taxation programs by 20%.

The number of candidates sitting for the CPA exam continued to drop. Exam candidates for 2000 totaled 115,493.

DEMAND DATA FROM PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRMS

Continued at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/edu.htm  

THE REVISED CURRICULUM
In place today, the curriculum is a five-year program in which students graduate with a bachelor’s degree at the end of four years but are expected to stay and complete a master’s-in-accountancy degree. The five-year approach was chosen because the faculty realized a fifth year was necessary to achieve its objectives and not to comply with the advent of the 150-hour requirement.

The curriculum revision was based on two criteria: that students should understand simple topics before more complex topics and content would be based on how students learn, using Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills. (Bloom’s hierarchy begins with knowledge and comprehension, followed by application and analysis, synthesis and evaluation.) In contrast a traditional curriculum schedules courses based on the order topics appear on the balance sheet; the result is that the first course is intermediate accounting, which many consider the most difficult in terms of content. In the revised curriculum, therefore, topics were sequenced so students did not have to apply a higher skill level than their learning background supported. In addition integrated into every course were activities that promoted the skills the profession demands:

• Group projects, which promote interpersonal skills.

• Written assignments and presentations, which promote communication skills.

• Research projects, which promote critical-thinking skills and learning how to think independently.

The curriculum also uses five levels:

Introductory-level courses have a “user” vs. a “preparer” perspective (because most students are not accounting majors), and also, these courses lend themselves to the recruitment effort described later. They focus on how the accounting system captures events and how accounting information is used for planning and evaluating.

Foundation-level courses provide the basis for all subsequent courses. They detail how the accounting system works and the theory and history of accounting standards.

Content-level courses introduce students to how various users employ data from the accounting system to meet their information needs.

Research-level courses are case-based, team-taught courses that cover tax, financial accounting and auditing and teach students how to use research tools to resolve ambiguous problems.

Graduate-level courses provide students with the opportunity to design a course of study with either a tax, financial, managerial or systems emphasis. An in-depth look at the curriculum is available at www.cba.ksu.edu/cba/grads/macc/curriculum.htm.

THE RECRUITING PROGRAM
Rather than use the “build it and they will come” approach, KSU said an objective of the new curriculum was to attract and retain the best possible students. As a result, the department developed an extensive program.

Two faculty members and the Accounting Advocates, a group of 10 to 12 graduate and undergraduate students, administer it. The Accounting Advocates are an essential component; they act as ambassadors for the department by making presentations to high schools, talking to visiting high school students and meeting with visiting dignitaries. Accounting students apply to be advocates in their junior year and serve throughout their graduate program.

The recruiting program targets high school teachers, counselors and students and undecided college freshmen and sophomores. Every school district in the state receives a recruiting video created by the accounting department. The recruiting program reaches

High school teachers and counselors. The schools-to-careers conference educates high school teachers about the opportunities an accounting career offers. It is a collaborative effort of the College of Business and the business education department of the College of Education.

High school students. The high school careers conference brings together high school students who are nominated by their teachers to attend. Students visit with young accounting professionals and go through team-building exercises and go to a tailgate party and football game. Students see positive accounting role models, learn about the career flexibility an accounting career has to offer and have fun.

College students. The professional accounting careers exploration dinner offers an opportunity to the best students in the introductory courses to meet with young professionals from public accounting and industry and an advocate to learn about careers.

SUCCESS
Compared to 1989, there are now 35% more accounting majors and the quality of students (as measured by ACT, SAT and GPA) has increased. Enrollment in the master’s program increased 500% over the same time period. This increase occurred in spite of the fact that the GPA required for admission to the accounting major was significantly increased.

—Dan Deines, CPA, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas

Continued at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/edu.htm  

Teaching the Teacher

The teacher internship program (TIP) educates high school teachers about the accounting profession. Through TIP, state CPA societies connect teachers with firms and businesses in summer internships to provide them with “real world” business and accounting experience. Providing educators with professional business experience that can be incorporated into their classroom curriculum and learning activities results in well-educated students, which benefits business and the workforce as a whole.

The AICPA Foundation provided seed money to help develop a training program for state societies and to assist firms in paying for internships. In the summer of 2001 the Indiana state society piloted the TIP with great success. Heather Bunning, the society’s communications and public relations manager, worked with the IRS and Ernst & Young to provide internships respectively to Paulette Lewis, a high school business-education teacher, and Charlene King, a high school mathematics teacher.

Continued at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/edu.htm

"COOL" STUDENT WE SITES:
www.cpazone.org—Created by the Pennsylvania state society, the site contains interactive games, career information and prizes.

www.tomorrowscpa.org—The Maryland society’s site contains information for students about the accounting profession.

www.incpas.org/Students/index.htm—Using a nautical theme, the Indiana society’s Web page helps students “guide their way” to becoming a CPA.

www.calcpa.org/community/careers/index.html—The California society’s student Web page contains excellent profiles of young CPAs. The site also offers to tailor articles based on your needs.

www.futurecpa.org—The Illinois society’s Web site is full of fun and important information.

CPA2Be.org—Web site of the Kansas state society, a comprehensive site for students.

Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010304Careers%20in%20Accountancy 

Congress continues its efforts to make college more affordable with a new round of tax incentives.
"Smart Education Tax Moves," by Ron West, Journal of Accountancy, September 2002 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/west.htm 

IN THE 2001 TAX ACT CONGRESS INCLUDED A NUMBER of expanded and improved education tax incentives. The differing limitations, definitions and interactions of these provisions with existing education benefits make it crucial for CPAs to plan carefully to ensure clients receive the maximum tax savings. CONGRESS EXPANDED QUALIFIED TUITION PROGRAMS (QTPs), adding private institutions as eligible sponsors of prepaid tuition type plans. The most important change to QTPs provides a complete tax exemption for distributions made after December 31, 2001 used to pay for qualified higher education expenses (QHEE). BEGINNING IN 2002 THE ANNUAL PER-CHILD contribution to education IRAs increases to $2,000 from $500. The act also makes these accounts more accessible to individual taxpayers by increasing the phaseout range for contributors who are married filing jointly to $190,000 to $220,000 in 2002. Taxpayers now also can make contributions to education IRAs and QTPs for the same beneficiary in the same year. UNDER THE NEW LAW ANY AMOUNT SPENT ON QHEE for which the taxpayer claims a Hope or Lifetime Learning Credit is not eligible for tax-free treatment as a QTP or education IRA distribution. Taxpayers can claim the credits in the same year they take tax-free distributions but not on the same expenses. Taxpayers must also reduce QHEE for any tax-free scholarships or employer-provided education assistance. THE EXCLUSION FROM GROSS INCOME OF UP TO $5,250 of employer-provided education assistance is now permanent. Congress extended the exclusion to include graduate-level courses. Other improved education provisions in the 2001 act include changes to the above-the-line student-loan-interest deduction and a new above-the-line deduction for higher- education expenses.

Ron West, CPA, JD, LLM, is an assistant professor of law and taxation and tax program director in the masters of taxation program at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey. His e-mail address is west@fdu.edu.

Plagiarism Alternatives
From Yahoo Picks of the Week on August 26, 2002

Pirated Sites --- http://www.pirated-sites.com/ 

Ever find yourself on a web site that looks virtually indistinguishable from another? This site showcases such online indiscretions, making "side-by-side comparisons of web sites that are suspected of borrowing, copying or stealing copyright-protected content, design or code without permission." Many web designers have taken unfathomable liberties with their online filching -- some companies even do it twice. Pirated Sites uses a cool pop-up window script that makes it easy to compare web sites large and small. If you think you've run across a site that has been hit by web-style biters, don't hesitate to submit the URLs of the pirate and the victim. And if the moral isn't clear, we'll repeat it: Do Not Steal Websites.

In a trend that should delight amoral entrepreneurs everywhere, sales of online term papers are picking up as the school year approaches.
"Where Cheaters Often Prosper,: by Joanna Glasner, Wired News, August 26, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54571,00.html 

The history of the Internet is filled with stories about companies that tried to make a positive change in the world and ended up failing miserably.

And then there are online term-paper sites. Despite inspiring nothing but scorn from educators, purveyors of collegiate prose are finding life on the dark side of online commerce quite lucrative.

"They're the only ones besides casinos or porn really making money on the Internet," said Kenny Sahr, founder of SchoolSucks.com, a free homework site that makes money posting ads for fee-charging term paper providers. If his advertising customers are any indication, Sahr said, online term-paper mills are weathering the dot-com bust remarkably well.

With the new school year about to begin, research paper companies are gearing up for peak season. It appears academicians' attempts to eradicate these hotbeds of plagiarism have done little to stifle their growth.

SchoolSucks is no exception. Although the 6-year-old site hasn't made him rich, Sahr says it does provide enough money "to pay for my habits" and doesn't require full-time work. He runs the site with a staff of two, each working out of their homes and periodically holding meetings on a beach in Tel Aviv, where the operation is based.

Sahr attributes the site's longevity largely to the fact that it gets its material for free, mostly through submissions from students. This keeps the cost of running the business quite low.

SchoolSucks draws about 10,000 unique visitors on a typical day and has been growing steadily, Sahr said.

Meanwhile, traffic to competing sites isn't slowing either.

"I don't think we've had a year so far where we haven't grown," said Jared Silvermintz, college student and co-founder of Genius Papers. The site, which Silvermintz started as a junior in high school six years ago, charges $20 for a one-year subscription to a soon-to-be-upgraded database that he says will contain more than 40,000 papers

Conatinued at http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54571,00.html  

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

August 24, 2002 message from Paula Ward
The Metaplanets link is at http://www.metaplanets.com/ 
You must download the free Viewpoint Player by Clicking on the Help Menu at the Metplanets site (its free and very easy)
The 3-D animations are awesome!

Hi, Bob,

Just wanted you to know about a website, "Metaplanets," built by my son, Sean. He just found out that it was featured on BBC's technology show, Click Online.

It's a pretty spectacular site. Enjoy:

Paula

pward@trinity.edu -----
Original Message----- 
From: Sean Ward [mailto:planxty@stic.net]  
Sent: Sat 8/24/2002 2:58 PM 
To: Ward, Paula; 'Paula Kelley Ward' Cc: Subject: metaplanets

A personal project of mine, Metaplanets, was featured in Sevan Bastajian's Click Surf segment of the BBC's top technology show, Click Online, which is broadcast on television throughout the world. The show is hosted by Stephen Cole, one of the best known faces of international television news.

Metaplanets.com allows visitors to interact with streaming 3D models of the planets in our solar system. The 3D animations are based on USGS data gathered from NASA space missions. Despite large file sizes, new streaming media technology allows site visitors to enjoy and interact with its planetary content, even from a dial-up Internet connection.

A synopsis of the segment can be found on the BBCWorld web site.

If you’re interested in seeing the show from August 1, 2002, click on the link for the media player version you prefer below. Metaplanets appears at the 19:50 minute marker.

Sean Ward <sean@netriffic.com>
Netriffic LLC Web Design
Experts Make the Difference!
www.netriffic.com 
210.628.7392

Enron had 43 subsidiaries claiming Mauritius was their home base.  Where in the heck is Mauritius?

In the Enron and related scandals, all eyes are focused upon how investors got ripped off.  All along taxpayers were also getting ripped off in a number of ways, and especially this was the case of corporate income tax.  The corporate income tax as a proportion of total government revenues has been shrinking annually due to corporate lobbying efforts to build in loopholes.  One of the biggest loopholes is to move corporate headquarters offshore to places like Bermuda.  Enron found even a really obscure place to declare as headquarters for 43 subsidiary corporations.

"That's Outrageous:  Artful Dodgers," by Tucker Carlson, Reader's Digest, September 2002, pp. 47-48

When you think of Enron, you think of Houston.  You probably don't think of Mauritius, a tiny island republic off the east coast of Africa whose chief export is sugarcane.  But Enron was a major presence there, at least on paper.  By the beginning of 2000, the energy company had no fewer than 43 subsidiaries in Mauritius--quite a presence in a country with a population one-fifth that of metropolitan Houston.

Why was Enron doing so much business on an island in the Indian Ocean?  Taxes.  Avoiding them.  Enron may have failed as an energy company--it went spectacularly bankrupt earlier this year--but its accountants were masters at dodging the IRS.  Enron paid no federal income taxes for four out of the past five years.

How did Enron pull this off?  In part, by doing what many American companies have done: registering abroad.  Individuals pay income taxes on what they earn, no matter where they earn it.  Corporations play by different rules.  They pay federal income taxes only on money that enters the United States.  In other words, if your Mauritius-based company earns $10 million, and that money never comes back to the United States, you don't pay taxes on it.  It's a nifty deal if you're a corporation, infuriating if you're an ordinary taxpayer.  Over the next ten years, tax-dodging companies are expected to cost the U.S. Treasury $6 billion--money that will have to come out of your pocket and mine.

Don't be surprised if companies stiff Uncle Sam even worse. Countries that 15 years ago hosted far more cruise ships than corporations--Aruba, Barbados, the Bahamas, Bermuda--are now the legal home to a growing share of American industry.  The lightly taxed Cayman Islands have become so popular with American companies that it is now the fifth largest financial center in the world.

And it's no longer just about re-incorporating overseas.  Companies are also registering patents and trademarks in island hideaways, a clever way to keep royalties tax-free.

All this at a time when the United States is straining its treasury to fight a war against terrorism.  Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Kansas calls foreign tax havens an example of "profit over patriotism."  He's right.  But it's worse than that.  Not only does offshore tax dodging hurt the United States, it often hurts the very shareholders it's supposed to benefit.

Consider the case of The Stanley Works corporation.  Earlier this year, Stanley's shareholders voted to relocate the company's headquarters to Bermuda, joining fellow toolmaker Cooper Industries, and a number of other established American companies that have done the same in recent years.  Shareholders made their decision largely on predictions by Stanley CEO John M. Trani, who said that a move to Bermuda would save the company $30 million in annual taxes and boost the stock price 11.5 percent during the first year alone.

Trani's projections may be right.  And for him, that would be good news.  His stock options alone would increase in value by $17.5 million in a single year.  Add a higher salary, bonuses, a retirement package, and Trani's profit from the relocation could eventually total $385 million.

Meanwhile, many investors would initially get the shaft, in the form of capital gains taxes they would pay when the company leaves the country.  The New York Times calculated that even if Stanley's stock price goes as high as Trani says it will, these shareholders "will barely break even after taxes."  As for the government, it would lose $240 million in corporate income taxes from Stanley over the next eight years.

Bottom line: Taxpayers lose, shareholders lose, the CEO makes $385 million.  You do the math.

In fact, many did.  Stanley's decision to leave the country caused such an uproar, the company put it on hold.  Its shareholders will vote again later this year.

The rest of America can vote too--not on whether to flee to the Caribbean, but on whether to change the laws in their own country.  That's the patriotic solution to dodging taxes.

Bob Jensen's threads on tax fraud and scandals can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm#TaxFraud

August 21 reply from Fred Salzer [fsalzer@SEMPRE.COM] 

I had never heard of it (Mauritius) before, either. Interesting info at:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mp.html

August 21 reply from George Lan (University of Windsor) --- George Lan [glan@UWINDSOR.CA] 

I happen to be from Mauritius, a tropical island in the Indian Ocean (a couple of hundred miles off the big island of Madagascar). Mark Twain once said that "God created Mauritius first and made a copy for Paradise." Mauritius is also the land of the legend of Paul and Virginie (written in a book by Bernandin de Saint Pierre) and is famous for a rare English stamp. It's main claim to fame (up tro now) is that it was the land of the dodo bird. (It is extinct because it could not fly--the big birds did not have to fly because there were no humans on the island until the Dutch settlers came and started shooting them for fun). It seems that Enron has gone the way of the dodo!

George Lan 
Born in Port-Louis, Mauritius

The Pocket Calculator Show Website (History, Technology) ---  http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/ 

Bob Jensen's links to online calculators can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#080512Calculators 

Microsoft's New Word to Web Tutorials

If you can type in MS Word, you can put your course materials on the Web or into course servers such as Blackboard and WebCT.  Microsoft has some new tutorials to show you how to do it effortlessly.

The MS Word to Web Page: An Academic's Guide to Quick Web Page Construction http://www.archiva.net/mstutorial3web.htm 

MS Word can create very nice web pages entirely from within the program. (This mini-site, for example, is an MS Word product.) Because MS Word writes its web pages in XML, historians and other practitioners have much more control over the appearance of the text than they might have using an HTML editor. They are, moreover, working in a familiar environment, albeit with a few tools that they might not use on a regular basis. All is not “beer and skittles,” however. Older browsers will not be able to cope with Microsoft’s XML, so instructors should advise their clientele to use IE 5+ and NN 6+. A MS Word syllabus will display in older browsers but may not be very attractive and contain strange characters. Microsoft’s XML implementation also adds a good deal of proprietary code to the web page, resulting in a larger page, a bit longer download time, and purists’s disdain. With these constraints in mind, the goal of this tutorial is to provide the steps toward creating a well-designed, visually interesting, web-based syllabus entirely within MS Word.

Bob Jensen's XML threads can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm  

If you want to do anything fancy, it is really not difficult to move your MS Word skills into MS Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, although Dreamweaver has a few more features and a somewhat more complex learning curve. 

Keep in mind that any course materials placed on the Web can generally be found by anybody in the world even if you only share the Web address (URL) with a private set of students. If you really want controlled access to documents networked to students around the world, I suggest that you avoid a Web server and transfer these documents to a Blackboard or WebCT server. If your campus does not have a Bb or WebCT server, you can get the Bb or WebCt vendors to serve up your documents.   Bob Jensen's Blackboard threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 

But since my bias is for sharing academic works freely with the world, I prefer the Web server. 

The spirit for academic sharing is infectious.

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

Can "intellectual snobbery and elitism" be overcome in the era of emerging educational technologies?
Although Professor Deibert's field is film studies and television, his comments by analogy extend to the entire world of academe.

"Academics Should Tune In:  Snobbery has relegated a valuable teaching tool to the world . . .," Ronald Deibert (University of Toronto), The Globe and Mail (Newspaper in Canada), August 6, 2002, Page A15 --- http://www.globeandmail.com/ 

[Excerpt]
Why has academe resisted new media's advances?  Part of it has to do with the conservative nature of academics and academic institutions.  Universities typically determine merit on the basis of books and articles published and papers delivered at academic conferences.  This system of incentives hasn't changed in decades.

And then there's intellectual snobbery and elitism: Most professors and graduate students announce with pride that they never watch TV.  It's even more stylish to deny ownership of one.  It's okay to be a couch potato as long as you have a book, instead of clicker, in your hand.

Academics lament that what one finds on TV is the antithesis of intellectual development.  TV is full of sound bites, depthless comedies, superficial "reality TV" shows and sordid voyeurism, all of it commercially shaped and driven.  But similar charges could be made against paperback books; is the vapid content of most TV necessarily connected to its form?  Don't these laments confuse, to borrow a phrase from Mr. McLuhan, the message with the medium?

Laments about new media date back at least as far as ancient Greece.  In Socrates's time, elitists lamented the relatively new medium of writing; the great philosopher feared it would lead to the gradual deterioration of memory.

TV may lack the fixity and precision of the written and printed word, but it provides a powerful combination of imagery, orality, and music -- something Mr. McLuhan clearly recognized.  It is precisely because of this powerful combination that so much money and talent is devoted to crafting 30-second commercials that are designed -- whatever their content -- to persuade viewers to buy.  Academics leave the content of TV to ad execs and sitcom writers at our peril.

Teaming up with independent filmmaker Mike Downie, I produced a reality-based television series called Activist TV that aired last winter on TVOntario, and am in production of a second series called Into America, scheduled to air this fall with the same broadcaster.  Both involve students as the subjects and borrow in style from popular, youth-oriented "reality" programs.  For the production of Into America, we traveled through 26 states and visited Ground Zero, talked to congressmen and ambassadors, attended black gospel church services, and went on a six-hour tour of the El Paso-Cuidad Juarez border -- none of which would ever likely happen in a regular class.

The response has been remarkable.  After Activist TV aired, I received dozens of e-mails, letters, and phone calls from prospective students and their parents asking if they could enroll in a similar program or who said they were inspired to become activists themselves.

"What's an MBA Really Worth? It will cost more than $100,000 to earn a degree at an elite business school. Just one problem: There's little real evidence that it will enhance your career," by Andy Raskin, Business 2.0, July 2002 --- http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,41346,FF.html 

The most stinging criticisms, however, are emerging from within the business school establishment. In a draft report published internally this spring, the schools' own accreditation body, the St. Louis-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, roundly criticized its members. Business schools, it said, are hopelessly behind the curve on information technology, have an unhealthy obsession with their standing in magazine rankings, and, worst of all, proffer an out-of-touch, ivory-tower curriculum. "Preparation for the rapid pace of business cannot be obtained from textbooks and cases," the report scolded.

The rest of the article is at  http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,41346,FF.html 

August 28, 2002 message from Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM] 

There is an interview with Jeremy Pfeffer on NPR's Morning Report. See http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=08/28/2002&PrgID=3 

Bob Jensen's Commentary on Jeremy Pheffer's Assertions
Never overlook the value of networking that results from a prestigious MBA degree. If I had not set a goal on getting one of these 12-hour per week college faculty jobs, would I have gone for a Stanford MBA? You bet!  The MBA degree opens doors to success.  And I hate making snob-like comments, but the greater the prestige of the MBA program, the better the networking opportunities for success.  

Although I was in the free PhD program at Stanford (for five long years), my closest friends were in the MBA graduating classes across those years. I lived with MBAs, drank with MBAs, chased women with MBAs, skied with MBAs, and maintained postgraduate contacts with some of those MBAs. About the only thing I didn't do is take classes with them. Since I was a CPA with an MBA when I arrived at Stanford, I was forced to take courses from outside departments such as mathematics, statistics, economics, political science, and operations research in order to develop research skills.

For 30 years in the Stanford GSB Alumni Magazine, I have been following the job titles and other biography information about MBA graduates.

MBAs are something like what the military referred to as "90-day wonders" during World War II when college graduates could become officers in 90-day training programs.  What amazes me is how many of those Stanford MBAs became CEOs, CFOs, and other top executives. A great many started their own businesses and became multimillionaires.  And I like to think that most of them succeeded without being unethical.

Many of my MBA friends at Stanford were green and immature.  They had undergraduate degrees in humanities, engineering, and science. The MBA program did more than give them a two-year crash program in business. It helped them to mature and honed their competitive drive.  MBA graduates took pride in being admitted to Stanford's competitive program. It gave them self confidence that, in my viewpoint, helped many of them succeed when they started up their own business ventures.

Perhaps most importantly, the MBA program at Stanford bonded the MBA students to a point where many of them became life-long friends. I am sure the subsequent networking resulting from the MBA program helped many of these students to have opportunities to achieve success.

If I had not set a goal on getting one of these free doctoral degrees followed by a 12-hour per week faculty job, would I have gone for a Stanford MBA? 
You bet!

The MBA degree opens doors to success.  And I hate making snob-like comments, but the greater the prestige of the MBA program, the better the networking opportunities for success.  The education is not necessarily better in the prestige schools, but the networking most likely is much better.

Millions of dollars pour back each year  into prestigious universities from MBA alumni.  This is mostly because those alumni are grateful for the opportunities afforded by their opportunities in the MBA programs, especially the networking opportunities.  

Is there a need for improvement in the education content in MBA programs?  
You bet!  But course content is only part of the MBA program.

See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm 

An Award-Winning Ethics Professor Shares Many of His Course Materials 
Some accounting professors may want to build in some of the highly scholarly and classical philosophical roots of ethics and moral philosophy into their courses, especially courses or modules on ethics in accountancy, taxation, and auditing.

Professor:  Robert Cavalier --- http://www.phil.cmu.edu/faculty/cavalier/ 
Department of Philosophy --- http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/ 
Carnegie-Mellon University
Course:  Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Course Link --- http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/80130/Syllabus.html 
Note the topic listing on the in the frame on the left side of the page.

From the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Alumni Newsletter on August 23, 2002 

"[Teenagers are] always asking questions about moral dilemmas. My goal is for the students to go home feeling that they understand what it means to philosophize. I want them to get jazzed about the topic." - Robert Reich, PhD '98, an assistant professor of political science, describing the intention behind the Philosophy Discovery Institute that he co-founded to introduce teenagers to philosophical thinking. http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/july24/philosophy-a.html 

Also note Professor Cavalier's philosophy course noted above.

I really like this trend in academe!

"College Archives 'Dig' Deeper," by Kendra Mayfield, Wired News, August 2, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54229,00.html 

A scholar wants to present a groundbreaking working paper on teleportation to his colleagues around the world. 

Instead of submitting the paper to a print commercial journal and waiting months for results to be published, the researcher can simply pull up MIT's Center of Teleportation Research Web page and instantly submit the paper and data sets online, for all his cohorts to review.

This virtual intellectual asset sharing is part of DSpace, a joint project between MIT and Hewlett-Packard to create a long-term, sustainable digital repository.

This fall, MIT plans to open the DSpace archive to all its professors. The project will also release a set of free software tools so that any college or university can create its own online repository.

"We see this kind of system as a kind of public good," said MacKenzie Smith, associate director of technology for MIT's libraries.

As universities churn out vast amounts of research in electronic form, many are building immense digital archives to capture, distribute and preserve intellectual output.

"We really have to start thinking about alternative models, so we don't lose a record of scholarship from this particular era," Smith said.

"Technological obsolescence is a huge problem with keeping material viable beyond the next 5-10 years. It is yet to be proven that publishers who electronically publish this material will succeed in preserving it."

Other institutional archives include the University of California eScholarship Repository, Ohio State University's Knowledge Bank and Caltech's Library System Digital Collections.

These archives may provide more efficient, open access to research than costly commercial journals, which scholars often rely upon to publish their work and establish prestige.

"Today, institutions are paying unconscionably high prices to buy access to the research they support that is published in profitable commercially published journals," said Rick Johnson, enterprise director of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition.

"Institutional repositories can stimulate emergence of new publishing models that are more efficient and effective in serving academe."

A number of successful open-access e-print archives already exist. Physicists and mathematicians publish drafts of unpublished work in the Los Alamos Physics e-Print archive. Cognitive scientists self-archive papers in CogPrints. Engineers and scientists post pre-prints in the U.S. Department of Energy's PrePRINT Network.

Individual authors can use free self-archiving software to build online repositories that are compliant with the Open Archives Initiative.

Institutional repositories build upon this idea, allowing faculty to post everything from research data and data sets to images and audio files, theses and dissertations, conference papers, listserv archives and other "gray literature" online.

Faculty members are often desperate to find a safe online repository to post research data and other "born digital" material, Smith said.

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54229,00.html 

Certificate Program News

I have long contended that virtually all colleges and universities will one day see the light on the importance of adding online and onsite certificate programs to complement traditional degree programs.  Last week I featured the new certificate programs in the graduate school of business at the University of Rochester.  This week I will mention a new certificate program at Georgia Tech's Wesley Center --- http://www.newmedia.gatech.edu/ 
Universities such as Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, and Columbia have already discovered that certificate and other training programs can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in growth revenues, revenues that are growing much faster than traditional degree program revenues.

From Yale University: Advances in Knowledge Management

Excerpt from an August 16, 2002 Message from Charles White, Vice President of Information Resources, Trinity University 

In the Office of the Registrar and a few selected administrative offices we are experimenting with a new electronic document management system called Scopeware by Mirror Worlds Technology (http://www.scopeware.com).  If this has the propellers on your hats turning check out the web site for Mirror Worlds Technology and Scopeware.  They call it a knowledge management system. You may find the concept behind it interesting. 

You can read the following at http://www.scopeware.com/products/prod_overview.html 

Does today's IT infrastructure leverage corporate knowledge? Corporate information grows in volume everyday. Every minute of every day documents are created, e-mails sent, appointments scheduled, hard copy documents filed, information feeds accessed, and so on.

The vast majority of this information is not leveraged. This unstructured information-information that is not formally published-provides great value by enhancing insight, speeding decision making, and increasing quality, but is often overlooked in the day-to-day decision making process.

The barriers to leveraging corporate knowledge Until now the cost and complexity of harnessing unstructured information has prevented its use in everyday business operations. Information is scattered amongst a multitude of physical and electronic stores. The artificial constraints of taxonomies, application ownership, location, file folders, etc. make it difficult for individuals to find and use information.

An additional obstacle in harnessing enterprise information is individual behavior and corporate culture. Typical business initiatives, such as compliance, R&D and manufacturing process planning require users to push information into appropriate stores in accordance with pre-defined policies and procedures. However, users do not always comply and follow policies and procedures in putting information in the assigned location, further accentuating the challenges of finding and leveraging information.

Scopeware - A new approach for leveraging enterprise information Scopeware is a patented knowledge management solution that enhances existing business functions (customer service, sales and marketing, compliance, wireless, etc.) by automatically capturing unstructured information in real-time and making it available and useful to those who can profit from it.

The Scopeware solution is the result of 10 years of research by world-renowned Yale computer scientist and Scopeware Chief Scientist Dr. David Gelernter.

Scopeware provides out-of-the-box functionality, automatically integrating with standard business information systems. Implementation takes days, not weeks or months. Scopeware is designed to be easy to implement and simple to use. The intuitive interface provides even the most casual user the full benefit of a powerful knowledge management solution and requires little training. This means Scopeware's total cost of ownership is significantly less than typical knowledge management solutions.

Scopeware mines, in real-time, corporate network repositories for information without forcing employees to remember file folder names, locations, or the applications originally used. Scopeware dispatches "intelligent agents" which link to thousands of repositories (including OCRed scanned documents)-then logically and in a time-ordered sequence (known as the Stream of Information) displays what is relevant. Employees are not required to change their behavior; Scopeware automatically leverages all corporate information automatically and makes it available to those who need it.

Scopeware fosters global collaboration among employees with diverse functional perspectives, providing teams the most complete view of the information they require to perform at the highest level of quality. This alone gives a significant boost to productivity as most organizations typically spend 30-40% of their time just finding information.

Continued at http://www.scopeware.com/products/prod_overview.html 

Innovation of the Week 

"Eyes write: Typing without a keyboard just got faster and easier," by Tom Clarke, Nature, August 22, 2002 --- http://www.nature.com/nsu/020819/020819-5.html 

New software could allow computer users with disabilities or busy hands to write nearly twice as fast, more accurately and more comfortably than before. The software could also speed up writing on palm-tops and typing in Japanese and Chinese, its developers say.

The package, called Dasher, "exploits our eyes' natural ability to navigate and spot familiar patterns", says one of its inventors, computer scientist David MacKay of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK.

An eye-tracking device lets users select letters from a screen. Dasher calculates the probability of one letter coming after another. It then presents the letters required as if contained on infinitely expanding bookshelves.

Continued at http://www.nature.com/nsu/020819/020819-5.html 

New Tax Break for Teachers

If you are a teacher, please make certain that your tax return preparer/software takes note of the fact that teachers will now be getting some special tax breaks beginning in your 2002 and 2003 tax returns.  I worry that popular software like Turbo Tax or your nerdy tax return preparer my overlook the fact that as a teacher you can now get some special deductions not available to taxpayers in general.  It's no big amount of money, but every little bit helps on teacher salaries.

"New Tax Break for Teachers," Journal of Accountancy, August 2002, Page 65 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2002/tax1.htm 

New Break for Teachers 
Teachers and professional educators get a tax break for 2002 and 2003 that should ease the pain of many out-of-pocket classroom expenses. The Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002, section 406, allows teachers and other education professionals to deduct up to $250 of unreimbursed classroom expenses.

The deduction is above the line (deductible even when the taxpayer does not itemize), so it is valuable and covers a lot of expenses.

Qualifying expenses. The new law allows an above-the-line deduction up to $250 each year for certain expenses, which must have been for

• Books.
• Supplies (other than nonathletic supplies for health or physical education courses).
• Computer equipment (including related software and services).
• Other equipment and supplementary materials used in the classroom.

The expense must be one the taxpayer otherwise can deduct as a trade or business expense (an ordinary and necessary expense paid or incurred during the tax year to carry on any trade or business) under IRC section 162. Educators qualified to take the deduction must have been kindergarten through 12th grade teachers, instructors, counselors or principals for a minimum of 900 hours in the course of a school year. (In the act “school” is defined to be any institution providing elementary or secondary education, as determined under state law.)

The deduction applies only to 2002 and 2003 tax returns. While the deduction appears to be very broad, CPAs should encourage clients to keep receipts in the event the IRS questions a deduction.

Observation. The new law does not specifically mention certain issues. For instance, although it defines categories of qualifying educators, it does not mention substitute teachers or whether it covers summer school expenses. The IRS likely will clarify any ambiguities in future guidance.

—Lesli S. Laffie, JD, LLM, a technical editor of The Tax Adviser.

New wireless and mobile technologies --- http://www.thinkmobile.com/ 

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

New Alternatives to Google

I doubt that anything soon will replace Google as the main search engine for the world.  However, on August 12, Time Magazine featured some interesting alternatives.

"Searching for Perfection:  Google's still great, but newer search engines make finding things on the Web easier — and more fun," by Anita Hamilton, Time, August 12, 2002, Page 66   She gives her highest grade to altheweb.com

altheweb.com --- http://www.alltheweb.com/ 

Not only does ALLTHEWEB index more pages (2.1 billion!) than any other site, but it may have the smartest approach to turning up relevant results.

Whereas Google runs a virtual popularity contest that pushes to the top of its list pages that are most frequently and prominently linked to by other sites, AlltheWeb, based in Oslo, Norway, further tries to decipher the intent of the query by analyzing its language patterns and identifying common phrases.

kartoo.com --- http://www.kartoo.com 

If there were a beauty contest for search engines, Kartoo--developed in France by cousins Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier--would win the crown.  Rather than display its result in the usual dreary list format, Kartoo scatters them across a pretty blue background like stars dotting the evening sky.  (Color-coded links suggest how the results interconnect.)  Each dot represents a relevant Web page; when you rest your mouse over a site, it displays a brief description of the contents.

teoma.com --- http://www.teoma.com/ 

Wouldn't it be great if a search engine could read your mind and understand that when you type the word Madonna, you mean the pop star, not the mother of Jesus?  Teoma, which means "expert" in Gaelic, attempts to do just that by breaking queries into categories grouped by theme.  A search on seals, for example, returned results clustered in 15 categories, from Easter Seals to elephant seals.

LinksNet --- http://www.linxnet.com/ 
What I like about LinksNet are the categories (Directories)

LinxNet Directories

---

News

Sports

Weather

Magazines

Television

Web Exploration

Library

Science

U.S. Government

Amiga

Another site with similar categories is LookSmart at http://www.looksmart.com/ 

Metacrawler has the following categories at http://www.metacrawler.com/index.html 

Popular Searches Home Equity Loans Insurance Quotes Internet Access Mortgage Refinance Online Education Resources Maps Horoscopes MetaSpy Consolidate Debt Airfare Discounts Go Shopping Web Directory Computing Computer Science... Personal Family, Health... Work & Money Business, Companies... Entertainment Arts & Culture... Travel Destinations... People & Chat Chat, Email...

Google, LookSmart, Metacrawler, Northern Light, Alta Vista, Go.com, and various other search engines are compared in "So Much Information, So Little Time:  Evaluating Web Resources With Search Engines," by K.A. Killmer and N.B. Koppel, T.H.E. Journal, August 2000, pp. 21-29 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4101.cfm 
The above article reveals the search engine preferences of students at Montclair State University.  Interestingly, Google is not mentioned in the comparison table on Page 28 (Figure 2).  Without Google in the running, Alta Vista was the most popular.

Accounting Professional Site Links 
The CPA Team http://www.cpateam.com/  
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm

Information Systems Audit and Control Association and Foundation Web (ISACA) site --- http://www.isaca.org/ 

ISWORLD at http://www.isworld.org/isworld/isworldtext.html 

ISTE standards for safe sites for kids --- http://www.iste.org/standards/ 

Standards don’t have to feel like obstacles to overcome; they can be workable common goals. The NETS Project team does more than create standards—on November 18, 1999 they have introduced a new publication that demonstrates how technology standards can be implemented in classrooms in conjunction with national subject area standards. National Educational Technology Standards for Students—Connecting Curriculum and Technology is the product of collaboration of more than 2,000 educators who wrote, tested, and revised 36 learning activities and 8 multidisciplinary units to support classroom teachers preparing students to become technology-capable learners. The hands-on activities focus on subject matter and show how appropriate technology can be employed as part of the learning experience. Materials for each activity include the e-mail addresses of the designers and comments by teachers who have tested the materials in classrooms. Workshop materials for professional development are also included.

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

Chat Room Glossary
Chat Room Lingo --- http://www.netlingo.com/ 

Glossary for Investors
InvestorWords --- http://www.investorwords.com/ 

Bob Jensen's links to other glossaries are as follows:

Business, accounting, and finance --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm 

Technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm 

Weblog software use grows daily -- but bloggers abandon sites and launch new ones as frequently as J.Lo goes through boyfriends. Which makes taking an accurate blog count tricky --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54740,00.html 

Bob Jensen's threads on Weblogs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Weblog 

From SyllabusNews on August 20, 2002

Online Only Law School Graduates First Class

With the graduation of its inaugural class, the first wholly Internet law school said it has already hit several milestones for growth. In less than four years, the Concord University School of Law has grown from 33 students to more than 1,000 today enrolled in the school's Juris Doctor, Executive Juris Doctor, and Master of Health Law programs. The school's faculty has also grown, from six at the school's launch in 1998 to more than 60 currently. Concord said more than 42 percent of its current students already have one or more advanced degrees, including 67 MDs, 33 Ph.D.s and 23 CPAs. Moreover, its students recorded a 50 percent pass rate on California's rigorous First Year Law Student's Exam, compared to the statewide first-time takers' rate of 30 percent.

For more information, visit: http://www.concordlawschool.com

Bob Jensen's links to online training and education programs are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Question:
What are "special items" and what makes them so special?

Answer:
Press reports on Cisco's dramatic increase in "reported" earnings --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54369,00.html 

Note that Cisco is the Seventh Worst company after S&P core earnings adjustments --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#CoreEarnings 

No wonder we're all confused about accountancy!

Question:
When the CPA examination becomes a computerized examination, what is the most significant change in content that will eventually impact of accounting curricula in colleges.

Answer:  Greater Emphasis on Information Technology and General Knowledge
From Education News Digest, Journal of Accountancy, August 2002, Page 18 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/aug2002/news1.htm#4 

The AICPA and NASBA sign an agreement with Prometric, a designer of technology-based testing services, under which CPA candidates will be able to take a computerized uniform examination at more than 300 locations in early 2004 ( www.aicpa.org/news/2002/p052802.htm ). The electronic test will differ from its paper predecessor not only in format, but also in content, with greater emphasis on information technology and general knowledge. Other new features of the computerized version include an assessment of research and communication skills and a broader scope with respect to audit and attest functions. Candidates’ last paper-based exam will be in November 2003.

Question:
What has IFAC requested from educators regarding the  International Education Standards for Professional Accountants?

Answer
From IFAC News and Events --- http://www.ifac.org/News/LastestReleases.tmpl?NID=1026856601122133 

The International Federation of Accountants releases Guiding Principles for International Education Statements 
( www.ifac.org/News/index.tmpl ), which establishes a framework for the development of global standards governing precertification education and the continuing development of professional accountants. Comments are due September 30.

The PowerPoint slides from Bill Kinney's tearful presentation in Plenary Session 3 on August 17, 2002 at the American Accounting Association Annual Meetings in San Antonio are now available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/kinney8-17-02AAA.ppt 

Although Bill's presentation focused upon one of the three "winning" proposals for curriculum revision, his introduction centered on the accounting, auditing, and corporate governance scandals. I especially recommend the buildup to Slide 5 --- that buildup was outstanding.

As soon as I can find the time (which may not be soon given my present workload), I will put some audio of highlights of this year's AAA Annual Meetings at my Website, including the audio of our treasured Bill Kinney.

The "student group" he refers to dates back to olden and golden days when Bill was one of my doctoral students. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm 

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: William.Kinney@bus.utexas.edu [mailto:William.Kinney@bus.utexas.edu]  
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2002 12:52 PM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: AAA meeting

Bob,

It was great to see you in SAT and to watch you receive the Outstanding Educator Award. That was a well-deserved honor -- as a group we have not yet realized the potential in what you have been saying. It was also wonderful to be mentioned as part of the student group -- thanks.

Attached are my PPt slides from the talk on Saturday. I hope that they will be useful.

Bill

Innovation of the Week for the Hearing Impaired (Paula has a great idea)

From SyllabusNews on August 16, 2002

DePaul Develops Sign Language Translator

A team of faculty and students at DePaul University's School of Computer Science has created a computer-generated synthetic interpreter capable of translating spoken English into American Sign Language (ASL). The program, dubbed "Paula," uses speech recognition and sophisticated animation. Using the system, a hearing person speaks through a headset connected to the computer. The animated figure of Paula then translates intoASL through hand gestures and facial expressions on the computer screen. The project required four years and more than 25,000 hours worth of work by the project team. "Most people are not aware that ASL is not simply a signed form of English," said Rosalee Wolfe, professor of computer science at DePaul and one of the leaders of the research team. "It is a series of hand configurations, hand positions, body positions and movement and facial expressions that are used in certain specific combinations. Hence, creating an animated translator is a very intricate and detailed process."

For more information, visit: http://asl.cs.depaul.edu 

Bob Jensen's threads on speech recognition are at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Speech1 

An Ironclad Approach To Thwarting Spam CipherTrust's IronMail gets updated with new anti-spam features, including the use of signatures from third-party sources, by Tom Smith --- http://update.internetweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eIay0Bdl6n0V30BhEn0Ag 

While the magnitude of the spam problem continues to multiply -- business users can attest that volume and offensiveness of unwanted messages are up sharply this year -- big enterprises are stepping up their defenses with the help of new products.

Case in point: CipherTrust this week added to the sophistication of its multi-layered approach to keeping spam out of corporate inboxes with the ability to match spam signatures from outside organizations. These and other new features are being well received by CipherTrust customers, who say they're eager to stop spam dead in its tracks.

One big CipherTrust customer, banking automation systems provider S1 Corp., is a user of CipherTrust's IronMail e-mail gateway appliance and is eager to exploit the latest spam-thwarting features.

S1 uses IronMail both for the protection of its internal network and to protect a data center at which it hosts applications for hundreds of banks, said Jeff Lunsford, S1 senior vice president, corporate development.

"We are very serious about eliminating spam from our company, not only from the perspective of eliminating sexually explicit material but also to improve our level of productivity," said Terrance Gattis, S1's chief security officer. The company uses Microsoft Exchange servers and Microsoft Outlook Web Access clients.

Continued at http://update.internetweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eIay0Bdl6n0V30BhEn0Ag 

"E-Textiles Come into Style," by Eric Hellweg, Technology Review, August 1, 2002 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_hellweg080102.asp 

Next season's smart outfits will be wired.

Most people examine fabric swaths for texture and color; Maggie Orth checks them for voltage readings. Orth is the CEO of Cambridge, MA-based International Fashion Machines, a developer of electronic textiles in which fabrics act as electrical conduits, enabling data transfers within clothing.

A handful of small companies, including Orth’s, are racing to commercialize the concept, born in mid-1990s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab wearable computer group. And big-name manufacturers such as Dupont and defense contractor Lockheed Martin are starting to take notice. Says James Saultz, a business development manager at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Labs, “There’s always been a desire to put electronics into soldiers’ uniforms.” While manufacturers of so-called e-textiles set their sights first on military applications, they are also developing materials for medical use and even teen fashion. But manufacturers still need to prove both the viability and practicality of their products before they can expect the big government contracts.

That’s why, for example, Orth is trying to catch the interest of the military with fabrics that change color when conductive fibers stitched into the cloth heat and cool the material’s thermochromatic inks. “The army wants fully addressable, interactive camouflage,” she says, “so that when you’re standing in front of bricks, your clothing looks like bricks. When you’re in grass, you look like grass. Accomplishing that would be like a space program for e-textiles.”

Sensatex is another e-textile startup that is creating shirts that can be used to monitor soldier location and status in the battlefield, according to Ari Reubin, a senior vice president of business development for the company. One of the biggest problems for medics is locating a soldier’s wound and determining his vital signs amidst battlefield chaos. A uniform that monitors a soldier’s vital signs can wirelessly relay the exact location of the wound, saving a lot of valuable time--and lives. In the fourth quarter of this year, Sensatex will begin selling to hospitals a shirt designed for premature babies that can monitor vital signs and heat or cool the infant by up to .03 degrees Celsius. Sensatex’s future plans include a “SmartShirt” that monitors heart rate, EKG, and torso penetration. Others like Polartec have created jackets that heat up, using electrical conduits in the jacket itself. And Burton--the purveyor of must-have snowboard fashions--will introduce a jacket in October that contains a minidisc player sewn into the fabric with player controls woven onto the arm.

Continued at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_hellweg080102.asp

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

David Takes on Goliath

"'Politics of Control' Leads a Law Student to Challenge Digital-Copyright Act," by Andrea L. Foster, The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 2, 2002 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002080201t.htm 

Benjamin G. Edelman, a first-year student at Harvard University's law school, is the latest academic researcher to challenge the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Mr. Edelman, last month filed a lawsuit against N2H2 Inc., a Seattle-based Internet filtering company, in U.S. District Court in Boston. The suit asks a judge to prevent N2H2 from suing Mr. Edelman under the digital-copyright law should he decide to bypass the company's encryption, which prevents him from discovering its complete list of blocked Web sites. (See an article from The Chronicle, July 26.)

Q. How did you become interested in Internet filtering?

A. I had been aware of it generally for some years. It's hard to say when it all started. But the ACLU contacted me two years ago as they were preparing to challenge a variety of state laws requiring the use of filtering software in libraries. Alaska, for example, had such a law, and there were some other states. ...

These laws were unconstitutional and they were preparing to bring challenges to various state courts. Then the Children's Internet Protection Act was passed, mandating the use of such software nationally in all libraries and public schools receiving federal funding. And that became the ACLU's priority and mine.

Q. How did the ACLU hear about you?

A. I had done some expert work in at least one, maybe a few other cases prior to that time. I had been working at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society here at Harvard Law School, where I guess my name had gotten some exposure. Two years ago, of course, I was a sophomore in college. But nonetheless, I guess they called up and asked for me by name.

Q. Were you already interested in computers before you came to Harvard?

A. I had been interested in computers for about as long as I can remember. I had been doing some computer-related work in junior high school and high school, helping people choose computers, putting them together, designing databases and networks. And so I came to Harvard with a particular interest in that subject.

Q. When the lawsuit was filed, you talked about how it concerned "technology and the politics of control." What did you mean by that?

A. First, I should credit the phrase to Professor [Jonathan] Zittrain of the law school, who used it as a subtitle of his course, "Internet and Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control." And I think he would say it's his research interest, and it certainly is mine.

The core idea is roughly as follows: The Internet has a certain appearance to it, when you first connect to it, when people were first learning about it. And I suppose in 1996, 1997, 1998, it seems like the Internet could be whatever you wanted it to be, that no one could particularly change what it was, and no one could stop you from doing what you wanted to do. If you wanted to put a death threat on the Internet about your neighbor or your enemy, you could do that, and no one could really get you. If you wanted to steal music using the Internet, you could do that, and no one could get you. ...

The later idea -- my idea, and Zittrain's -- was that, in fact, there were a variety of forces that for economic gain, for political gain, for other reasons, might seek to restrict what people could and couldn't do on the Internet.

Continued at http://chronicle.com/free/2002/08/2002080201t.htm 

Bob Jensen's copyright threads are mainly at the following two sites:

• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright 
  
  
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

"Copyright bill will create vigilantes: critics," by Nathan Cochrane, TheAge,  August 6 2002 --- http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/03/1028157861719.html 

American movie, recording and software executives could be prohibited from entering Australia or extradited to face criminal charges if a copyright protection bill before the US Congress passes into law.

Californian Democrat congressman Howard Berman has proposed legislation to deal with the rising tide of copyrighted works illicitly traded over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks such as KaZaA.

Berman's bill immunises copyright holders from civil litigation or criminal prosecution if they invade US PCs connected to the international P2P networks to take down their own copyrighted materials.

But the global nature of P2P networks ensnares file sharers outside the US, with the unintended consequence of making it more difficult for copyright holders to pursue pirates in Australia.

Under section 9a of the Victorian Summary Offences Act (1966), "a person must not gain access to, or enter, a computer system or part of a computer system without lawful authority to do so". The penalty if convicted is up to six months' jail.

Computer, Internet and intellectual property lawyer Steve White says the Berman bill is "stupid and counterproductive", and he believes it will lead to an online arms race as PC owners and the networks seek to thwart the efforts of copyright holders.

He says US executives may be unable to enter the country to give evidence in court cases, attend conferences, speak to government, customers or possibly to make movies because afflicted PC owners could seek to have them arrested for unauthorised computer trespass.

"It would also raise serious issues under the Privacy Act in relation to information obtained whilst computers are being hacked," White says.

Australian subsidiaries of US companies could also face charges for aiding and abetting US corporate parents, especially if local assets such as PCs, personnel and communications networks were used in the hacking attempts, he says.

White's view is backed by Dean Kingsley, co-author of the AusCERT hacking survey and head of Deloitte's security practice who says the bill is "state-sanctioned vigilantism".

"What appears to be proposed is the computer equivalent of breaking into someone's house who you think has stolen some of your possessions to get them back with legal impunity, even if it turns out you broke into the wrong house," Kingsley says.

"I feel that state-sanctioned cyber-vigilantism is a dangerous development, both because of the high risk of innocent parties becoming collateral damage . . . and because of the implied suggestion that law enforcement authorities, who rightly hold the powers to properly investigate alleged crimes, can no longer adequately protect us."

The bill has not received the backing of the US Business Software Alliance, well known for its anti-piracy activities, although the IT trade group is continuing to talk to Berman about its impact.

"(We) . . . believe that Congress will act prudently after they listen to all the relevant parties," BSA president and chief executive Robert Holleyman says. "There's an important balance that needs to be taken into account for how users use software. My sense (is that) it is unlikely that the Berman bill will be adopted before Congress adjourns before the November elections."

Continued at http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/03/1028157861719.html 

Bob Jensen's copyright threads are mainly at the following two sites:

• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright 
  
  
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

Hey, I'm one of them, but it was probably too long ago for them to remember me (Denver Office, First National Bank Building, (1959-1961)

E&Y Launches Alumni Web Site for Former Employees --- http://www.alumni.ey.com/ 

From Syllabus News on August 27, 2002

Bells & Whistles: Speech-Enabling Campus Calls

The University of Maine, Orono, will speech-enable student, faculty, staff, and administrative directories, allowing callers to simply say the name of the person or department they wish to speak with or access a portal of information. Campus employees will be able to perform pocket pages, change their operational status (i.e., at desk, in meeting, do not disturb), or signal that they are reachable at certain times. The school chose the Intellispeech system from Manchester, N.H.-based System Development Co., which specializes in speech systems and computer-telephone integration. The company says the system eliminates over half of routine calls to operators, allowing them to provide a higher-level of support to callers.

At the XML Web Services One conference in Boston, IBM and Microsoft yesterday demonstrated Web services-based interoperability between IBM’s WebSphere and Microsoft’s .NET using a stock trading application as a prototype example. Both companies also this week made available updates to their respective Web services developer kits --- http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6646 

From SyllabusNews on August 13, 2002

Computerized Medical School Test Examined

The Association of American Medical Colleges is trying out a computer-based testing (CBT) format for its renowned Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). The computerized exam will be delivered in London, England this Saturday, August 17, 2002 at the same time the traditional paper and pencil-based version of the exam is being administered around the world. "Widespread CBT availability holds the promise of greater flexibility in test scheduling, a shorter testing day, and faster reporting of scores," said Ellen Julian, assistant vice president and director, MCAT. The AAMC picked Prometric, a specialist in CBT and assessment services, to deliver this mini-pilot. Official MCAT Scores for the students taking the CBT version of the exam are expected to be mailed in 30 days, as opposed to the traditional 60 days with the paper and pencil versions.

For more information, visit: http://www.aamc.org/newsroom 

It's been three years since officials phased out paper-and-pencil exams in favor of the computer-based version of the Graduate Record Exam, but critics say that computer-adaptive testing remains flawed.
"A D-Minus for Computer Exams," by Kendra Mayfield, Wired News, August 15, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54459,00.html 

Three years after they phased out paper and pencils and began administering computerized versions of the Graduate Record Examination, officials are going back to paper in some overseas regions. Computer-based testing was supposed to make test-taking more efficient, accessible and convenient.

But while computers have made test taking easier for some students, critics say that electronic testing is still susceptible to scoring errors, security breaches and other flaws.

Prompted by a sudden rise in GRE verbal scores from China, the Educational Testing Service launched an investigation on behalf of the GRE board that uncovered Asian-language websites offering questions from live versions of the computer-based GRE general test.

The GRE board instructed the ETS to temporarily suspend the computer-based GRE general test in China, Taiwan and Korea until security can be guaranteed. ETS will reintroduce paper-based versions of the exam in these regions that will be administered just twice a year, in November and March.

"(The GRE board) found that the only secure way (to administer the GRE in these countries) is to return to pencil and paper," said John Yopp, vice president for graduate and professional education for ETS.

"In this situation, (paper-based exams) provided us with a more secure solution," said Carole Beere, chairwoman of the Graduate Record Examinations board.

Critics of computer-based testing say the return to paper signals larger flaws and inaccurate scores that have plagued computerized tests since their inception.

"This is just the latest snafu in a string of problems since the ETS began the introduction of the computer-based GRE in the early 1990s," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest. "This is a technology that is not ready for prime time that has been forced on test takers because of corporate greed."

The ETS investigation, which covered more than 40 countries, showed security breaches occurring only in China, Taiwan and Korea.

Investigators found that verbal test scores in these regions increased each time a computer-based version of the test was replenished with a new pool of questions.

However, critics say the extent of the cheating could be even more widespread, since the Asian-language websites (which the ETS did not identify, citing security reasons) are accessible from the United States and elsewhere with native speakers and online translation services.

"The notion that, in the age of the Internet, this problem would be confined simply to Asia is ludicrous," Schaeffer said.

Cheating scandals aren't new to standardized tests. In one elaborate scam, GRE test-takers in New York allegedly phoned answers to a man in Los Angeles, who used the three-hour time-zone difference to encode answers on pencils.

But while the forms of cheating have changed, paper-based exams still provide a secure alternative to computer-based exams, since all items are used on the same day and then retired. With computerized testing, the same pool of items is used for two or three months.

"That provides a tremendous incentive for people to memorize part of it," Schaeffer said. "You can't re-use items for extended periods of time."

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54459,00.html  

See also:
•	An E-Hurdle to Grad School
•	Graduates Go Digital
•	Educators' Tough Access Test

From SyllabusNews on August 13, 2002

SMU Seeds Texas High School Tech Studies

The Infinity Project, a program sponsored by the Southern Methodist University School of Engineering and Texas Instruments to introduce engineering into the high school curriculum, is now accepting grant applications from public high schools in Texas to offer financial assistance to start the program. The program is funded by the office of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and administered by The Institute for Engineering Education at SMU. The Infinity Project is among the first in the country to help school districts incorporate state-of-the-art engineering and advanced technology into standard high school curricula. It is designed to help students understand the relevance of engineering, science and math, and spur interest in pursuing engineering degrees in college. "Our goal is to bring engineering to every high school in Texas," said Geoffrey Orsak, director of the project.

For more information, visit: http://www.infinity-project.org 

From SyllabusNews on August 6, 2002

California Unveils 'Master Plan for Education'

The state of California last week released the latest version of its "Master Plan for Education," the result of dozens of committee, working group, and town hall meetings, as well as email testimony from thousands of Californians. The plan is a "roadmap for policymakers for the next 20 years," said state Sen. Dede Alpert. Major changes in the plan, which tries to align all sectors of the state education program, cover accountability; collective bargaining; pay for temporary faculty; a model instructional system for novice teachers; and greater focus on career preparation and integrated learning. "The Master Plan places students at the focal point of the entire system with an eye toward ensuring they can successfully compete in labor markets, creating the potential for individual well being for all California students and powering our economy with the human capital it needs," said David Rattray, president of UNITE-LA School-to-Career, a local education policy group.

For more information, visit: http://www.senate.ca.gov/masterplan  .

---

Sylvan Learning Standardizes on Blackboard

Sylvan Learning System's online higher education division adopted the Blackboard Learning System as its online operating system. Under the agreement, Sylvan will use a customized version of Blackboard for course authoring, management and delivery. Sylvan, one of the leaders in for-profit consumer education, has broadened its position in the post-secondary e-Learning market to 3,127 enrollments in 2002. Sylvan will now use Blackboard across its online higher ed offerings, which include Walden University for working professionals in education, management, health, and psychology; National Technological University for engineering, management, and computer-related fields; Canter & Associates for education professionals; and OnlineLearning.net, a partnership with UCLA Extension, University of San Diego Continuing Education, and Andrews University.

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

From SyllabusNews on July 30, 2002

Small Colleges Collaborate on Online Degrees

Michigan-based Jackson Community College (JCC) and Walsh College signed an agreement to provide JCC students an opportunity to finish their bachelor's degrees via the Internet. JCC students will be able to obtain a bachelor of business administration degree online by transferring a maximum of 82 credit hours in business and general education courses from JCC and then completing 45 credit hours online with Walsh College. Majors in the new program would include general business, management, or marketing. Through the partnership, Walsh College, an upper division school offering only junior and senior level course work, said it would increase its strength in business education in the Jackson area while enhancing the quality of JCC's business program.

Bob Jensen's links to online training and education programs are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Is nothing constant?  
Was Einstein Wrong? --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54394,00.html 

SYDNEY -- A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity.

The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.

If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe.

"That means giving up the theory of relativity and E-mc squared and all that sort of stuff," Davies told Reuters.

"But of course it doesn't mean we just throw the books in the bin, because it's in the nature of scientific revolution that the old theories become incorporated in the new ones."

Davies, and astrophysicists Tamara Davis and Charles Lineweaver from the University of New South Wales published the proposal in the August 8 edition of scientific journal Nature.

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54394,00.html 

Three Free Webcasts of Possible Interest to Accounting Educators
From Financial Executives International (FEI) and Acorn Systems --- http://www.acornsys.com/register/fei/ 

Free
Increasing Profits in a Flat Economy with Robert S. Kaplan
September 25, 2002
1:00pm EST (Noon CST, 11am MST, 10am PST)

Join a growing number of companies that are bucking the trend of flat earnings in a down economy and taking a surefire approach to increasing their income. Dr. Robert S. Kaplan, Harvard professor and pioneer of Activity Based Costing and the Balanced Scorecard, will lead the discussion of measuring and managing business performance in order to identify and capture additional profits.

During this webcast, you will see how companies have successfully used this new methodology to transform their ERP, CRM and legacy system data into actionable information for improved profitability. These companies understand transaction, customer, product, vendor and facility profitability to confidently renegotiate with unprofitable suppliers and customers, grow their most profitable customer base, set cost plus pricing, replicate best practices, and cut costs without cutting people. Senior executives from Acorn Systems and a leading distributor, will discuss how the company clearly identified their incremental profit opportunities, targeted their corporate initiatives to capture those profits and dramatically improved their financial results. This webcast is eligible for CPE credit.

CPE Credits:
FEI is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State Boards have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be addressed to NASBA, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, TN 37219-2417, 615-880-4200.

• Recommended CPE Credit: 1
• Experience Level: Intermediate
• Prerequisites/advance preparation: None

Free
Profit Analyzer Demonstration and Discussion
September 26 & 27, 2002
1:00pm EST (Noon CST, 11am MST, 10am PST)

Steve Schulist, Pre-Sales Director
Acorn Systems, Inc.

This seminar will introduce you to the benefits of increasing profits through Acorn Systems' Profit Analyzer™. Discover how Profit Analyzer will enable you to identify where you are making and losing money and uncover opportunities for you to improve profits. Learn how to measure net operating profits—not just gross profits—at any given level of granularity, such as by customer, order, line item, or product, in order to dramatically improve shareholder value.

In this seminar you will:

• Learn how Profit Analyzer enhances your decision making
• Find out how companies are using Profit Analyzer to improve their product, customer and operations profitability
• Discover the impact of having new information about your profitability can have in better enabling you to renegotiate terms and conditions of contracts and/or identify and replicate best practices

There's no charge for the above events, although the sponsor will capture your email and phone number according to Chris Allen at FEI headquarters --- Allen, Chris [CAllen@fei.org] 

A Webcast from our lively Liv Watson

Free
XBRL Webcast
http://www2.openchannel.info/events/calendar-detail.cfm?EventID=8940

 The link will take you to a web cast on the question ....  XBRL: Will It Revolutionize Financial Reporting?

 Moderator: Liv A. Watson, Director, EDGAR Online, Inc.

Liv A. Watson is the Director of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) at Edgar Online Inc. EDGAR Online Inc is the leading Internet-based provider of business, financial and competitive information derived from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR filings.

Most recently, Liv was a managing partner with Gaither Technologies LLC, responsible for clients' e-business strategies and marketing needs. Prior to that Liv spent fifteen years in film and television production, multimedia training, and information technology consulting in the public and private sector. After developing, designing, and teaching several courses and seminars for IMA and other leading accounting organizations, she is widely recognized and respected in the information technology community as an informed consultant and instructor.

Participants:

Rob Blake, Director of XBRL, Microsoft
As group program manager of Finance and Administration IT at Microsoft Corp., Rob Blake is responsible for identifying and implementing new technologies and standards across the company and externally as they relate to financial reporting and planning. He oversees the company's utilization and development of the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and works to publicize the benefits of the financial reporting standard to partners, investors and other companies. In addition, Blake collaborates with product development teams across the company to ensure that Microsoft(r) products support and incorporate XBRL functionality. Blake currently holds several active positions on the XBRL International Consortium. He is the Software and Services Supply Chain representative on the XBRL International Steering Committee, is a member of the XBRL U.S. Executive Committee and is Domain Chair of the XBRL U.S. jurisdiction.

Zack Coffin, KPMG LLP
Zachary Coffin is responsible for integrating XBRL into KPMG's assurance, tax, corporate finance, and advisory services for clients of every industry worldwide. To this end, he's worked with executives ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 50, and with stakeholders ranging from the White House Conference Center to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision to officials in over twenty-five countries around the world. A founding member of the XBRL Consortium, Mr. Coffin serves as XBRL's Liaison Chair and is responsible for its strategic alignment-how XBRL fits into the global landscape, with other Internet standards, across industries, and along the entire chain of business reporting from companies and intermediaries to end-users, analysts and investors. Currently completing the book Introducing XBRL: Decision Making in a Digital Economy (Prentice Hall, October 2001; ISBN 0-13-060902-1), Mr. Coffin is a frequent speaker on business strategy, new media, e-standards and the future of the Internet. He graduated with an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California, and with a B.A., magna cum laude, from Columbia University

Walter Hamscher, XBRL International Chair
With over 20 years of experience in Computer Science research and development, Walter Hamscher helps organizations to exploit the cost savings and increased flexibility available to them through strategic commitments to technology standards, particularly with respect to XML-based standards for electronic commerce. His strengths are in communicating technical topics to diverse audiences in plain English, and in motivating technology teams to negotiate through their differences and follow through with action to achieve mutual objectives. In March 2002, Walter was elected Chairman of the Steering Committee of XBRL International, a non-profit consortium responsible for the eXtensible Business Reporting Language, an open specification for financial reporting using XML. Mr. Hamscher earned his Ph.D. and S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.A. in Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Texas at Austin.

Philip Walenga, Assistant Director, FDIC, Bank Technology Group
Philip E. Walenga began his FDIC career in 1973 as an assistant examiner in Grand Rapids, MI. After later serving as a commercial and information systems examiner, in 1986 he transferred to Washington, DC, where - among other responsibilities - he taught examiners how to use personal computers in the field. In 1990, he joined the RTC to develop and mange its nationwide local area network and client server systems. In 1996, Mr. Walenga returned to the FDIC to head the IT (Information Technology) Research and Development Section in the agency's Division of Information Resources Management. Mr. Walenga holds a BS degree from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, and is a graduate of the BAI Graduate School of Banking, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

 Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#XBRLextended 

I thank Neil Hannon for the lead on this article.
"Can XBRL Lessen Accounting Scandals?," SmartPros, August 26, 2002 --- http://www.smartpros.com/x35109.xml 

XBRL, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language, an electronic method for companies to report financial information in accordance with GAAP, may be the answer to the accounting scandal crisis, according to a recent article in Strategic Finance Magazine.

While XBRL cannot remedy fraudulent accounting, author Neal Hannon argues it will make data crunching faster and easier for organizations such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, so corporate filings stand a greater chance of a thorough review.

States Hannon: "With XBRL, all 14,000 corporate submissions could be read by analytical software, creating an increased probability that anomalies in financial reporting could be discovered much earlier. Industry data analysis could be performed on 100% of the filings ... Submission of SEC requirements in XBRL could go directly into a computer program for screening and further processing."

Recent milestones in XBRL include a pilot program launched by Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers that provides investors with remote access to XBRL financial data from five years of financial reports for 21 Nasdaq-listed companies.

The link to Strategic Finance Magazine is at http://www.strategicfinancemag.org/ 

Bob Jensen's XBRL threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#XBRLextended 

EphemeraNow.com (Advertising, History, Photography, Art) --- http://www.ephemeranow.com/ 

American Online (AOL) apparently round tripped revenue according to "Investment in Advertisers Was Key to AOL Income," by Julia Angwin and Martin Peers, The Wall Street Journal,  

For America Online, investing in companies that then advertised on the Internet service was about as crucial to its growth as taking in oxygen. Literally. Last year, AOL invested $30 million to $50 million in Oxygen Media Inc. and arranged for the women-focused cable channel to be carried on parent AOL Time Warner Inc.'s cable systems. At the same time, Oxygen agreed to buy about $100 million in ads that mostly ran on America Online -- a hefty amount for a start-up media company.

The Oxygen trades were one of the many complex deals that were a way of life at the America Online unit -- and many other technology companies -- during the boom years. At AOL, these deals sometimes included an investment. Other times, AOL squeezed its suppliers for advertising revenue. Either way, the deals weren't much of a secret -- AOL was proud of its ingenuity in crafting the arrangements and expected AOL partner companies to buy ads on AOL. "If we're one of their big customers, we expect them to be one of our big customers," Robert Pittman, the since-departed chief operating officer, said in an interview last year. That customer coziness, though, is now coming back to haunt AOL as federal investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department pore over dozens of deals AOL struck with its partners. Earlier this month, AOL said in an SEC filing it may have inappropriately recognized as advertising revenue $49 million from three transactions. At least one of these transactions was a round-trip deal with WorldCom Inc., which counted AOL as one of its biggest customers. While AOL declined to comment on specific transactions, the company's internal investigators are scrutinizing scores of deals done by the America Online unit -- including the one with Oxygen -- as part of an inquiry to determine the extent of the accounting problems at its Internet division. The company hopes to finish its probe by the end of the third quarter, at which point it could decide to restate past results. A key question in the round-trip deals is whether AOL and its partners placed fair values on the assets they were exchanging. Accounting experts say barter transactions are all right, but only if they are valued fairly. People familiar with the investigation of the AOL-WorldCom relationship say the transaction involved inflating of revenue on the AOL side of the deal. A WorldCom spokesman said investigators are reviewing all of the telecommunications company's accounting

Bob Jensen's threads on round tripping are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/eitf01.htm#RoundTripping 

From Fathom on August 14, 2002 (History, Education, Literature, Liberal Arts)

A new exhibition at the University of Chicago's Special Collections Research Center looks back at the days when Mortimer Adler, Robert Maynard Hutchins, William Benton and many others sought to establish the "Great Books" as the cornerstone of American education. "The Great Ideas: The University of Chicago and the Ideal of Liberal Education" ( http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/020711/greatbooks.shtml ) explores the intellectual idea in American culture, from small classrooms at elite universities to door-to-door salesmen selling expensive sets of the "great books" to middle-class families.

Learn more about the historical and ongoing debate over the canon of Western literature in the free feature "Why It Helps to Read Great Books: Texts, Society and Time" on Fathom. University of Chicago professor Constantin Fasolt explains why such works--and their provocative contradictions--are vital tools for contemporary readers to question and understand human society past and present: http://www.fathom.com/feature/60806/1/1084 

Question:
How are leading business schools changing course content and curricula in the wake of the recent accounting, finance, and corporate governance scandals?

Answer from Fortune Magazine
"Scandal 101: Lessons From Ken Lay:   Actual business school course excerpts and class highlights," by Julie Schlosser,  Fortune, September 2, 2002, Page 52 --- http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209148 

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
Business Ethics
Part 1: The Short Road From Unbelievable Success to Unmitigated Disaster
Part 2: Enron 101
"The class features a discussion of how Ken Lay became addicted to success. Students must write an ethical analysis of what went wrong at Enron using either an Aristotelian or a Kantian framework."

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Ethics and Management
"[The class] does not attempt to convert sinners to saints, preach absolute truths, or deter the morally vulnerable."

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Professional Responsibility
From a session called "Truth and Disclosure": "Exaggeration and bluffing are...part of the business game, but how much is too much?"

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE
The Enron Case
"One of the classes will be a lecture by [Sherron Watkins]." The alumni network will be funding an overflow room.

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Fraud: The Dark Side of Business
"Topics include legal aspects of fraud, Ponzi and pyramid schemes."

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY
Ethics and Law for Executives
"For the past ten years, 2% of students attending the three-day course have quit their jobs within seven days, citing ethical reasons."

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Moral Leader
"This course relies heavily on works of fiction, including Macbeth, The Secret Sharer, The Last Tycoon, Remains of the Day, and I Come as a Thief, to examine in-depth the practical moral issues that managers face."

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Management of Auditing and Control
One session has been titled "Executive Compensation: Is Jail Time Necessary?" Another session delves into Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth From an Enron Insider, which was penned by a University of Texas alum.

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Business Ethics (Spring 2003)
"A visit to a federal prison provides a unique opportunity to speak with former-executives-turned-inmates about the serious consequences of compromising ethical standards."

"Financial Misdeeds Go From Boardroom to Classroom at California Universities," Smartpros, August 22, 2002 --- http://www.smartpros.com/x35095.xml 

The Copeland Initiative --- http://www.deloitte.com/vc/0,1029,sid=2283&cid=4173,00.html 

Recovery in Our Capital Markets Linked to Ethics and Trust, Says Deloitte & Touche CEO Copeland

Contact: Paul Marinaccio
Deloitte & Touche LLP
+1 212-492-3703

Cleveland, OH, August 16, 2002 - James E. Copeland, Jr., the chief executive of Deloitte & Touche and its global organization, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, today discussed the importance of assets such as individual integrity to rebuilding public confidence in the U.S. financial system.

In a speech today at The City Club of Cleveland, a leading forum for public debate and discussion, Copeland said everyone who leads institutions needs to find ways to influence and encourage ethical, competent behavior.

He also made public new Deloitte & Touche initiatives to build on internal practices that engender high professional standards, and reiterated his call for creation of a National Financial Review Board -- an independent body to probe the causes of corporate failures.

"All leaders in the capital markets have a responsibility to create a positive expectation -- an expectation of ethical and technical excellence -- within their organizations," said Copeland.  "Our profession and our firm must continually consider new ways that we can better protect the public interest.  When you see the pain associated with any audit failure, it's clear we must do better -- and we will."

"We cannot and should not accept risk that is the result of illegal activity, unethical behavior or gross incompetence," he said.  And while it is necessary to prosecute and otherwise condemn the misconduct of the few, Copeland stated it is equally necessary to demonstrate the incentives to act ethically and earn the trust of the market.

New Initiatives

The first measure announced by Copeland is the deployment of Deloitte & Touche corporate compliance and ethics services professionals to perform an extensive self-examination of the firm.  For more than 10 years, the firm has helped clients establish or improve their ethics programs and ensure better compliance.  "Now, we're going to become our own client," Copeland said.

Specifically, these professionals will assess the firm's opportunity to:

• Improve the ability of its people to recognize behaviors and environmental characteristics that raise ethical issues, in client organizations and within Deloitte & Touche, and to respond consistently and properly every time.  
• Structure ethical compliance programs to facilitate more timely and consistent responses to ethical concerns.  
• Reexamine the content of its professional education curriculum to make certain ethics are sufficiently emphasized and our expectations properly communicated.

Second, in addition to rotating the lead audit partner every five years, as required by new legislation, Copeland said Deloitte & Touche will apply the five-year partner rotation policy to all audit partners who are responsible for auditing major international subsidiaries.

Similarly, he said Deloitte & Touche will enact a policy of applying rotation requirements to all professionals serving public audit clients in any capacity - even those below the partner level.

"Ethics, integrity and quality are the foundation of our culture," said Copeland   "We work very hard at applying those principles to the work we do on behalf of the investing public and on behalf of the clients who've placed their trust in us."

National Financial Review Board

During the speech, Copeland also shared his outline for the creation of an independent federal agency, modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board, to investigate major corporate failures.  Staffed with skilled professionals, the board would be tasked with performing reviews of each failure and issuing detailed public reports on the causes.

"The scope of the problems at Enron was first disclosed last October," he remarked.  "We are now nearing the end of the summer -- some 10 months later -- and we are still not sure exactly what caused the failure or how to prevent the next one."

To advance the concept, Deloitte & Touche assembled a team of professionals with deep knowledge of auditing, forensic accounting, risk management and public administration.  Under Copeland's direction, the group will explore specific potential models of how the agency could be structured, governed and financed.

"Investors are angry," he commented.  "Investors also expect to understand why so many business failures happened -- and what can be done to prevent similar failures from happening again."

The proposed board would not replace business investigatory roles performed by the Justice Department, Congress or the SEC, but would work in concert with these agencies and report to Congress on ways to avert future disasters.

The Fraud Advisory Panel in the United Kingdom --- http://www.fraudadvisorypanel.org/ 

The Panel's role is to alert the nation to the immense social and economic damage caused by fraud and help both public and private sectors to fight back. It is dedicated to a holistic approach and the long view. The Panel works to: 

• originate proposals to reform the law and public policy on fraud 
• develop proposals to enhance the investigation and prosecution of fraud 
• advise business on fraud prevention, detection and reporting 
• assist in improving fraud related education and training in business and the professions establish a more accurate picture of the extent, causes and nature of fraud

Established in 1998 through a public spirited initiative by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the Panel exists to challenge complacency and supply remedies.

The Panel is an independent body of volunteers drawn from the law and accountancy, banking, insurance, commerce, regulators, the police, government departments and public agencies. It is not restricted by seeing the problem from any single point of view but works to encourage a truly multi-disciplinary perspective. The Panel is given a serious hearing as a consequence and has contributed to the new, and more vigorous attitude in government towards fraud.

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

"Pro-Forma Earnings Reporting Persists," by Shaheen Pasha, Washington Post, August 16, 2002 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25384-2002Aug16.html 

While many on Wall Street are calling for an end to pro forma financial reporting given widespread jitters over corporate clarity, it's clear from second-quarter reports that the accounting practice is a hard habit to break.

Publicly traded companies are required to report their results according to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, under which all types of business expenses are deducted to arrive at the bottom line of a company's earnings report.

But an ever-increasing number of companies in recent years has taken to also reporting earnings on a pro forma – or "as if" – basis under which they exclude various costs. Companies defend the practice, saying the inclusion of one-time events don't accurately reflect true performance.

There is no universal agreement on which expenses should be omitted from pro forma results, but pro forma figures typically boost results.

Indeed, as the second-quarter reporting season dwindles down with more than 90 percent of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies having reported, only Yahoo Inc., Compuware Corp. and Xilinx Inc. made the switch to reporting earnings under GAAP, according to Thomson First Call.

While a number of S&P 500 companies, including Computer Associates International Inc. and Corning Inc., made the switch to GAAP in the first quarter, that still brings the number to 11 companies in total that have given up on pro forma over the last two quarters.

"It's disappointing that at this stage we haven't seen more companies make the switch to GAAP earnings from pro forma," said Chuck Hill, director of research at Thomson First Call.

Continued at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25384-2002Aug16.html  

Bob Jensen's threads on pro forma reporting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#ProForma 

Weapons designed to attack electronic systems and not people could see their first combat use in any military attack on Iraq --- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992654 

Pop-Up Warfare: Is Peace Possible? Last week, Tessa discussed the war against pop-ups. This week, she suggest a peace treaty. http://www.clickz.com/media/media_buy/article.php/1446441 

The President's Council on Bioethics http://www.bioethics.gov/ 

Question:
How are political candidates using the Web?

Answer
Politicalweb.info ---  http://politicalweb.info/ 

Attacks on the Press in 2001 (Media, News)  http://www.cpj.org/attacks01/pages_att01/attacks01.html 

A Unique Global Book Club
BookCrossing.com --- http://www.bookcrossing.com/ 

What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?  Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind.

Here at BookCrossing.com you'll find tens of thousands of book reviews, book ratings, and book recommendations, because each time a book changes hands our members can leave journal entries telling the world of their experiences. Our LeaderBoard has Book Lists that reflect the book trading activities of our members, showing the recently released books, the recently found books, and the most traveled books.

But let's get right down to it. You know the feeling you get after reading a book that speaks to you, that touches your life, a feeling that you want to share it with someone else? BookCrossing.com gives you a simple way to share books with the world, and follow their paths forever more!

The "3 Rs" of BookCrossing...

• Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
• Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
• Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!

Famous Locations (Geography) http://www.famouslocations.com/ 

United Kingdom Memory Lane (History, Photography)
Once were Heros --- http://www.yesterdayskids.co.uk/Page1.html 

Paul explains how the whole Domain Name System works then shows you how to set up a DNS server of your very own.
"Ins and Outs of DNS,"  by Paul Adams. Webmonkey, July 19, 2002 --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/31/index3a.html 

You are a savvy Net wrangler; doubtless you already know a bit about the Domain Name System. You know that it's why we are able to have nice memorizable domain names like snackfight.com, and not just numbers. You probably even know that when you type "snackfight.com" into your browser, your computer contacts a DNS server to find out what numerical IP address the domain name corresponds to. Let's take a closer look, though, at exactly how this all works, what exactly is going on, and even how to set up a DNS server of your very own. Wait, you say — your ISP already provides DNS service for you. Why would you want to set up your own? I knew you'd ask that.

There are a few reasons why it can be beneficial to run your own DNS server. First, it's fun and educational. Second, you are a control freak, and want to have as much of your site under your thumb as possible. If you are frequently or imminently changing machines, host names, IP addresses, ISPs, or other factors, or if you have a whole lot of Web addresses to maintain, it is much easier to update your own data each time rather than faxing forms to the various providers and hoping you get everything right and they get everything right and that a virtual tug-of-war doesn't ensue. Also, if you control your own DNS, you can do all sorts of neat tricks.

In this article, I'll explain the different types of DNS records, what they contain, and then go over the basics of running a name server on a Unix network.

Continued at http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/31/index3a.html 

Theban Mapping Project (Incredible Archaeology) --- http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/ 

Artring (Photography, Art) --- http://www.artring.co.uk/ 

Art in Public Places --- http://www.artinpublicplaces.com/ 

The low Internet penetration rate in impoverished Ethiopia hasn't stopped local entrepreneurs from getting into e-commerce. One sells everything from flowers to sheep --- http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,54360,00.html 

Art, Photography, and History
Steam and Electric Locomotives of the New Haven Railroad Digital Collection --- http://railroads.uconn.edu/locomotives/ 

Message from Ira Kawaller on August 4, 2002

Hi Bob,

I posted a new article on the Kawaller & Company website: “What’s ‘Normal’ in Derivatives Accounting,” originally published in Financial Executive, July / August 2002. It is most relevant for financial managers of non-financial companies, who seek to avoid FAS 133 treatment for their purchase and sales contracts. The point of the article is that this treatment may mask some pertinent risks and opportunities. To view the article, click on http://www.kawaller.com/pdf/FE.pdf  .

I'd be happy to hear from you if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks for your consideration.

Ira Kawaller Kawaller & Company, LLC http://www.kawaller.com 

kawaller@kawaller.com 717-694-6270

Bob Jensen's documents on derivative financial instruments are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm 

Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site (featured in Yahoo on August 26) --- http://www.marksverylarge.com/ 

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Educators' Review on July 27, 2002

TITLE: Accounting Rules Should Still Adapt 
To New Economy 
REPORTER: Alan Murray 
DATE: Jul 23, 2002 
PAGE: A4 
LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1027372405778385320.djm,00.html  
TOPICS: Financial Accounting, Financial Analysis, Goodwill, Intangible Assets, Research & Development, Accounting

SUMMARY: The value of many businesses in the current economy is largely determined by intangible assets. Accounting principles have not evolved to provide adequate financial information on these types of companies. Questions focus on the nature of intangible assets and the difficulties associated with determining the value that should be reported on the balance sheet for intangible assets.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) Under current U.S. GAAP, what is the definition of an asset? What determines if an asset is reported on the balance sheet?

2.) What is an intangible asset? Briefly describe the current accounting treatment for intangible assets. Are all intangible assets reported on the balance sheet? Support your answer.

3.) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of reporting intangible assets on the balance sheet. Be sure to include measurement issues in your discussion.

SMALL GROUP ASSIGNMENT: Propose a standard for reporting patents. Be sure to address measurement, operational feasibility, and marketability. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of your proposed standard.

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

Bob Jensen's threads on the booking of intangibles can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm 

An analysis of malpractice claims for 22,000 CPA firms reveals the most common mistakes in audits of non-public companies. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/89042 

Research by the Wall Street Journal indicates audit fees have increased approximately 5% per year in recent years, but the fee could increase as much as 25% this year at some companies. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/88386 

See updates on the accounting scandals at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud083002.htm 

In what appears to be a public relations disaster, customers are steamed that Palm offered no refunds, or even an apology, for selling m130 handhelds that displayed fewer colors than it claimed --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54647,00.html 

For CPA firms that audit nonpublic entities such as private companies, government units or not-for-profit organizations, understanding what leads to costly audit malpractice claims can help in managing and minimizing the risk of performing these audits
"A Perspective on Audit Malpractice Claims, by Sherry Anderson and Joseph Wolfe, Journal of Accountancy, September 2002 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/sep2002/anderson.htm 

 

---

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CPAs CAN USE DATA ON AUDIT MALPRACTICE claims filed with CNA, which underwrites 22,000 CPA firms in the AICPA professional liability insurance program, to help them avoid high-cost claims when they audit nonpublic entities such as private companies, governments or NPOs. MOST NONPUBLIC AUDIT CLAIMS ARISE FROM technical standards violations, failure to detect defalcations and failure to include appropriate disclosures on the face of the financial statements or in the footnotes. For example, of the 63% of nonpublic audit claims that arose from technical standards violations, almost half involved improper inventory valuation and more than one-third involved accounts-receivable errors. MANY CLAIMS INVOLVED CPA FIRMS WITH NO PRIOR audit experience in the client’s industry. The financial services industry is particularly hazardous for auditors lacking relevant experience—57% of audit claims involved banks and lending institutions, 34% involved insurance company audits and 9% concerned audits of securities dealers. A CLIENT’S BANKRUPTCY AND LIQUIDATION are significant factors in audit claims. Three things can increase damage exposure: Shareholders and lenders will seek to recover their losses, the decisions of bankruptcy court judges can adversely affect the pursuit of claims against auditors and bankruptcies often increase the duration and cost of malpractice litigation. CPA FIRMS CAN MANAGE RISK IN PERFORMING AUDITS by applying client acceptance and continuance procedures, maintaining training, supervision and professional skepticism, complying with technical and ethical standards and declining engagements they are not qualified to perform. SHERRY ANDERSON, CPCU, is vice-president and chief operations officer, global specialty lines claims for CNA in Chicago. Her e-mail address is Sherry.Anderson@cna.com. JOSEPH WOLFE is director of risk management, accountants professional liability group at CNA in Chicago. His e-mail address is Joseph.wolfe@cna.com. This article should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion on any factual situation. As legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstance of each case, the general information provided herein is not intended to substitute for the advice of professional counsel.

Related links of possible interest are as follows:

Practice and fees --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm 

Proposed reforms --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudProposedReforms.htm 

Foreign Terrorist Organizations http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/2002/12389.htm 

Thanks to advances in various types of recognition software, you're not even safe from prying eyes -- and greedy retailers -- when you wander around a department store.
"Smile, You're on In-Store Camera," by Erik Baard, Wired News, August 8, 2002 --- http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54078,00.html 

Johnny Q. Consumer walks into a national chain store, picks up diapers, pays in cash. He does not walk alone. One store camera captures his face, while another network of cameras traces his stroll through the aisles. The pressure-sensitive floor panels note how he lingers and nervously shifts his feet while browsing in the diaper section.

At the store's national headquarters, perhaps a thousand miles away, a machine quietly notes in Johnny's file that he may be a new father. That bit of data goes into an algorithm that a few days later cross-references birth records and finds that, indeed, Johnny has just become the proud father of twins. A card is sent out and special discounts will be offered the next time he enters the store.

This scenario, which could be a harsh reality in the near future, will not placate those who avoid shopping online and opt to pay in hard currency out of fear for their privacy. If you can't shop anonymously at your local retail giant, then privacy as we know it is dead.

The technology exists and its implementation could level the marketing playing field, letting traditional businesses do what Web shopping portals already do: follow their customers through the entire process. They would know a lot about you, including where you come from, what you linger over, what you add and remove from your shopping cart, what you ultimately buy, even what you recommend to your friends.

"This is not new-fangled hardware," said Zoher Karu, director of product management at Brickstream Corporation, a Virginia company that manufactures the technology. "It's just cameras hooked up to PCs (that) you can buy from Dell. We don't have proprietary hardware; we have proprietary software."

Karu explained how it works.

"The algorithm looks for shapes of people and (passes) the same individual off from camera to camera by, for example, looking for a yellow color leaving the left side of one camera view to enter the overlapping right side of the next. It can distinguish between shopping cart and person, but it doesn't know a man from a woman or a child from an adult. But certainly that's a possibility. From an architecture standpoint, the system is capable of that."

Continued at http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54078,00.html 

August 21 message from Scott Bonacker, CPA [scottbonacker@moccpa.com] 

I came across this while trying to find out how to disable the onunload function.

http://www.treemenu.com/ 

"The name is nearly self-explanatory. It's a JavaScript-driven menu that's made to look close to what Windows Explorer® does. Released under the BSD license it's OSI Certified Open Source Software which means it can be freely used and modified for both commercial and non-commercial websites.

On the site you should find all the information you'll need to get the menu up & running as well as contributed utilities, links to sites where it's being used and an in-depth look at the code."

Scott

A Social Security helper link in a message from Linda Pfingst, CPA [lcpfingst@SPRINTMAIL.COM] 

Thought I would share an interesting web page for calculating break-even ages for social security benefits. I am often asked "what would be more beneficial, to retire at 62 or 63, or wait until my full retirement age of 66?" The SSA.gov site does not consider all of the combinations, and after some searching I found a "neat" site by David Zinda: http://www.social-security-table.com/index.htm 

No fancy variables (present, future,inflation adjustments) just straight calculations. Save a ton of time working it out "by hand" or even with T-Value.

Linda C. Pfingst, CPA

After viewing the first page, click on "Next" to view the illustration table shown below:

After the table is displayed, scroll down the rows until you find one that has two numbers in light green cells as in the example below. The example has them in the columns headed by "age 62" and "age 64".

The far left number, on that row, is an age expressed in years and months. That age is the age you will be when your total accumulated benefits (assuming you retire at age 64) catch up to the total accumulated  benefits you would have received if you had retired at age 62.

In the example, that happens at age 76 years and 1 month. All the other  year combinations also have highlighted numbers. Just scroll down until you find the year combination you want.

Table Example

Your Age	Retire Age 62	Retire Age 63	Retire Age 64	Retire Age 65	Retire Age 67	Retire Age 70
75-12	118272	119028	118224	116160	108540	85968
76-1	118976	119791	119045	117040	109545	87162
76-2	119680	120554	119866	117920	110550	88356

The numbers with white (and light green) background, are the total accumulated dollar amount you will draw, as of the age at the extreme left of the row, given that you retired at the "Retire Age" in the top of each of the columns. For instance, if you retire at age 64, when you reach age 76 years and 1 month, you will have drawn $119,045 in accumulated benefits. If you retire at age 62, when you reach age 76 years and 1 month, you will have been paid a total of $118,976.

So what does that mean?

If you decide to postpone retirement until age 64, it means you will need to live beyond age 76 years and 1 month before that two year wait will start to pay off for you in terms of additional total benefits.

Please remember the age in the example does not apply to you! You will need to run the table, using your numbers, to find the ages that apply to you.

NOTE: Occasionally more than one year combination will equalize on the same row. That means four numbers would be highlighted on the same row. This makes it hard to tell how the columns should be matched - that is - which two belong together. You can usually tell by looking at those four numbers. you should find two of them that are very close. The other two should also be very close to each other. Using a second color constitutes a programming problem that I chose not to address because it would increase processing time which is quite long already.

Continued at http://www.social-security-table.com/index.htm 

Ben Plumber pointed out that the above site is somewhat misleading in that the time value of money is not factored in such that if a recipient invests the benefits at age 62 at 5%, the after-tax interest earned is ignored.  I pointed out that if us old guys spend it all on booze and Viagra, there is no interest earned.

August 28 message from Patricia Doherty [pdoherty@BU.EDU] 
Advice on teaching a student with dyslexia (Handicap, Learning) 

We have an excellent Disabilities Services department here at BU, and thus students with a wide variety of disabilities feel comfortable in coming here. I have taught a number of dyslexic students in a regular class, very successfully. A number of them relied on a note taker, because their handwriting was so bad that they themselves had difficulty deciphering it later on. Some could not even organize it on a page. They wrote up, down, and diagonally! No kidding. The answer to this for many was a laptop. They typed everything. Dis. Ser. even arranges for these students to take exams using a "clean" laptop (provided by DS for the exam) so that they do not face the writing problem on exams, and under time pressure.

We routinely receive letters requesting that students with disabilities, based on their specific conditions, receive time and a half, or even double time, for exams. I usually place these students in a separate room, because a room with 200 or 300 other students is distracting, and when the exam for the majority ends, the room is noisy and chaotic (people handing in exams, asking questions, etc) so that their exam is really badly disrupted. They often do not need all of the extra time, but removing the stress factor of having to perform under tight time pressure helps them relax and do better (and even write more clearly).

The student you are tutoring would also benefit from, in my experience, some pre started "forms" to do accounting problems on, similar to what you find in the traditional "working papers" for a textbook. They help to "organize" the work. I think it also helps, since the writing is a problem, that if they are going to do any handwritten (as opposed to laptop) work, the working papers be enlarged somewhat (on a photocopier), so that they do not have to write in very small spaces.

You might also try having the student use colored (say, red for credits and blue for debits) as a visual organizing tool. This could extend to other work, too, to sort out parts of a problem, or different techniques. I highly recommend pencil, by the way - it erases!! Writing with ink and then going through multiple cross outs confuses students without disabilities - they make errors by using old, incorrect information imperfectly crossed out. For a student with a perceptual problem, this is magnified many times. I know we were always told in school that accountants always work in ink, etc. etc. I know all the rules. But students are learning, and your student is learning under disadvantage. I think they should use all the help available to them.

I also recommend frequent "breaks" to regroup. Fatigue sets in for all of us in long accounting problem sessions, and for a student with a perceptual disability the fatigue magnifies the problems. Frustration sets in very easily. So not only is being rested beforehand necessary, but keeping alert by taking breaks is needed, too.

I also recommend that a dyslexic student mark up the problems in their book: rule off columns so the divisions are distinct (for example the dr and cr columns in a trial balance) and rule off rows (say, a line under every third row) to make the information easier to read and follow. For one student I had, he also photocopied and enlarged his problems, not because his eyes were bad, but because they tended to mix the signal to his brain. Enlarging helped him. I even enlarged his exams.

I don't know what your student's exam situation will be. Another student I had needed to have a "reader" in the room with him. This person would read back his exam answers to him, so that he could be sure he wrote down what he intended. The reader did not have to be an accounting person, because the idea was just to double check for communications misses. This reader would also help with difficult number situations, like long columns of figures, which this student found particularly difficult - they'd "drift" on him. The reader would read off figures to him as asked.

Hope this helps. I do not know of any books, but if you do not find any other sources, let me know and I'll give our people here a call and see if they can recommend something.

Hi Jim,

First consider whether you really need to take up server space for thousands of video frames. If you have captured speakers at a conference, video of a talking head is a complete waste of space. You can capture one picture of the speaker and accompany it with his or her audio presentation (along with Powerpoint or other computer files that the speaker may share with you). I illustrate this approach at the following links:

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001aaa/atlanta01.htm 

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm 

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm 

Sometimes all that is needed is the audio. See http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/133summ.htm 

I prefer to record all audio files in MP3. I do this with Roxio Easy CD Creator --- http://www.roxio.com/ 

For video capturing of my voice along with things that I illustrate in a computer screen, I like Camtasia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

Generally, I make a separate file for each video or audio module. I used to use ToolBook for making clips of avi files, but since ToolBook abandoned OpenScript I have not had much luck at clip making.

I have a super-duper Pinnacle video capture board in my new computer, and you can make clips with Adobe Premiere software that accompanies the Pinnacle System (you can use Premiere with other capture cards as well). However, I do not like my Pinnacle system because it will only capture full screen compressed video (no more avi capturing of smaller windows and lower frame rates). I hate having to capture and store full screen, full motion video that must be played back on special software. Hence, I don't really use my Pinnacle system very often. Whenever possible, I use still pictures with audio.

For further guidance, see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Hope this helps a little.

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: James  
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 12:58 PM 
To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Subject: video questions and lunch invitation

Hi Bob,

I'm not sure you remember me, but we've met and talked a couple of times. I'm writing today to ask you a couple of questions. (I have recently spent 7-8 hours on your web site and don't see the answers there.)

Here's the context of my questions. I want to begin (take one step) toward develop some online learning materials. For that step, I'm thinking of breaking a video of a talk by some expert or panel of experts into smaller parts, labeling the parts as to the topic discussed, and making them available to the students through the web.

Questions: 
1) When you record the typical sessions at the annual meeting do you use a digital video camera? If so, which model?

2) What software do you use to strip/copy smaller clips out of a longer video? (My understanding of Camtasia is that it's not designed for this purpose.) In your presentations a few years ago, you've said you show a still picture of the speaker and stream only the audio; is that what you still recommend, or has technology advanced enough to make the video idea practicable?

Are you interested in joining me for lunch during one of the AAA Annual Meeting days? I'll buy. In any case, I am registered for your Accounting for Intangibles and Internet Reporting seminar and will see you then.

Jim

"Hot Numbers for Middle School Math," by Nancy Tassler and Paul Fleisher, Technology & Learning, August 2002, pp. 10-12 --- http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/08/hotnumbers.html 
This article evaluates and compares the following math education systems:

• BoxerMath:  Secondary Math --- http://www.boxermath.com/ 
• Destination Math --- http://www.riverdeep.net/ 
• Interactive Mathematics --- http://www.academicsystems.com/ 
• Math & Music --- http://www.wildridge.com/ 
• Math Expeditions --- http://www.plato.com/ 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks on math education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics 

Hello John,

Thank you for the kind words.

After being out of town for three weeks, I have nearly 1,000 email messages to answer. Hence I do not have a lot of time to contemplate your suggestions, but I have made a few comments below.

May I quote your comments in my September 10 edition of New Bookmarks (a newsletter)?

Thanks!

Bob Jensen

-----Original Message----- 
From: John Tyler [mailto:jtyler@jata.com]  
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 10:24 AM 
To: Jensen, Robert Subject: Future of Reporting, Transparency, and the like

Hello Bob,

 

You don't know me, but your website does. I am a CPA who has practiced for over 25 years in a small Cambridge, Massachusetts firm. I have been involved in tutoring a client in Providence for the past six months [he manages family investments] about Enron, and the mysteries [!] of GAAP to the eyes of a non-accountant. [Our website is at jata.com]

Your website reminds me of an information octopus that grows arms at a geometric rate. Lore, Links, Opinions, Info=Cornucopia!

Some of my thoughts on the current status of reporting.

*******************
1. The indirect cash flow statement should be outlawed in favor of the direct cash flow. A step toward transparency. Our firm has been helping clients make a direct cash flow report for financial reporting purposes for many years. The idea is not as popular as it should be, but a direct cash flow

approach allows the entity to budget cash activity directly.

I AGREE COMPLETELY!

*******************
2. How are you going to get transparency for consolidated entities when you have 3000 subsidiaries [Enron] or 2300 [Tyco] ? The SEC requires companies to list their subsidiaries in an exhibit to the annual 10-K form, but making disclosure of the number of US and foreign subsidiaries as a GAAP disclosure would be an improvement.

SPES ARE NOT EXACTLY SUBSIDIARIES, AND IF THEY ARE PROPERLY DESIGNED SUCH THAT THE CURRENT VALUE OF ASSETS EXCEEDS THE CURRENT VALUE OF DEBT, I’VE NO OBJECTION TO SPECIAL

TREATMENT OFF BALANCE SHEET. BUT AN “ASSET” CANNOT BE EQUITY STOCK OF THE SPONSOR.

*******************
3. SPE's remind me of the Hans Christen Anderson story about the Emperor's new clothes. As far as I am concerned control= consolidation. You can provide separate asset and liability captions for SPE's whose assets have been "securitized" and whose liabilities are secured only but if an entity controls another entity, consolidation should occur.

CONTROL IS A BIT DIFFICULT TO DEFINE IN THE CASE OF SOME SPE ENTITIES. SPE CONCEPTS ORIGINATED WITH SYNTHETICLEASING, AND THERE IS SOME JUSTIFICATION FOR SPE ALTERNATIVES IN SYNTHETIC LEASING. SEE http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/speOverview.htm 

 

*******************
4. A lot of the confusion about stock options and purchase accounting arises from the GAAP rule that companies cannot report the difference between the book value of equity and the market value of the shares as part of financial statement value. EXCEPT for acquisitions purchased by the acquiring company's shares. At a minimum, how about the following disclosure for publicly traded companies:

Net equity under GAAP                  $XXXXXXXXXXXX 
Market value at Balance Sheet Date                                         $YYYYYYYYYYYY

Difference due to market perception of company value $Y-X

A PROBLEM HERE IS MEASURING MARKET VALUE OF EQUITY. MARKET PRICES ARE BASED UPON TRADES OF ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF SHARES. TOTAL VALUE IS LIKELY TO BE MUCH DIFFERENT, AND NONE OF THE VALUATION MODELS WORK VERY WELL.

*******************
5. Much of the controversy and confusion about the expensing of stock options results from the dichotomy cited in 4 above, and the IRS general rule that if one party, the option exercisers, has taxable income, another party has a tax deduction.  And, measuring the true cost of a stock option is a 20-20 hindsight calculation.

I THINK WE CAN VALUE THE OPTIONS WITH SUFFICIENT ACCURACY IN MOST INSTANCES AS LONG AS THE STOCK IS TRADED. WITH OPTIONS, WE ARE ONLY LOOKING AT A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF SHARES RATHER THAN THE ENTIRE EQUITY OF THE FIRM. SEE http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm 

 

I realize you are probably overwhelmed with daily email messages. If you do get to read this, I would be interested in your reactions, and leads to others who may be discussing the same areas.

Keep up your internet apple tree planting !

John Tyler

All about men --- http://www.eakles.com/babymen.htm 
Mother Taught Me --- http://www.eakles.com/momtaughtme.htm 
Kids Proverbs --- http://www.eakles.com/Kids_Proverbs.htm 

Sam Hicks forwarded a great site for some really funny political and economics cartoons --- http://cagle.slate.msn.com/ 

A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia --- http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words.html 

Human Body Parts Recall.
Check the numbers on your parts and see if they match --- http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54385,00.html 

QANTAS MAINTENANCE Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints by QANTAS pilots and the corrective action recorded by mechanics. By the way Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

P stands for the problem the pilots entered in the log, and S stands for the corrective action taken by the mechanics.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement. 
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except autoland very rough. 
S: Autoland not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit. 
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield. 
S: Live bugs on backorder.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-fpm descent. 
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear. 
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud. 
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick. 
S: That's what they're there for!

P: IFF inoperative. 
S: IFF always inoperable in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windscreen. 
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing. (note: this was for a piston-engined airplane; the pilot meant the engine was not running smoothly) 
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny. 
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Radar hums. 
S: Reprogrammed radar with words.

P: Mouse in cockpit. 
S: Cat installed.

Forwarded by Walter Bernards

Should kids witness a birth? A true story:

It was late at night and Heidi, who was expecting her second child was home alone with her 3-year old daughter Katelyn. When Heidi started going into labor, she called "911". Due to a power outage at the time, only one paramedic responded to the call. The house was very, very dark, so the paramedic asked Katelyn to hold a flashlight high over her mommy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby. Very diligently, Katelyn did as she was asked. Heidi pushed and pushed, and after a little while Connor was born. The paramedic lifted him by his little feet and spanked him on his bottom. Connor began to cry. The paramedic then thanked Katelyn for her help and asked the wide-eyed 3-year old what she thought about what she had just witnessed. Kaelyn quickly responded. "He shouldn't have crawled in there in the first place. Spank him again!"

One for Ceil

Coach:  "You --- Pillsbury!  Hike the ball to the punter."

The Pillsbury Doughboy bends down and complains:  "I can't see the punter."

Coach:  "What can you see?"

Pillsbury:  "Donuts."

Forwarded by Bob Overn

I went to the store the other day, I was only in there for about 5 minutes and when I came out there was a damn motorcycle cop writing a parking ticket. So I went up to him and said, 'Come on buddy, how about giving a guy a break?'

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him a pencil necked Nazi. 

He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having bald tires!! So I called him a horse shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the car with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket!!

This went on for about 20 minutes, the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

I didn't give a damn. My car was parked around the corner...

Forwarded by Bob Overn

Stressed out today? Cheer up! Modern medicine has come up with some great new stuff to make life easier:

St. Mom's Wort ... Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to six hours.

Empty Nestrogen ... Highly effective suppository that eliminates melancholy by enhancing the memory of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait til they moved out.

Peptobimbo ... Liquid silicone for single women. Two full cups swallowed before an evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and improves flirting.

Dumerol ... When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low I.Q. causing enjoyment of country western music.

Flipitor .. Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers.

Antiboyotics ... When administered to teenage girls, is highly effective in improving grades, freeing up phone lines, and reducing money spent on make-up.

Menicillin ... Potent antiboyotic for older women. Increases resistance to such lines as, "You make me want to be a better person ... can we get naked now?"

Buyagra ... Injectable stimulant taken prior to shopping. Increases potency and duration of spending spree.

Extra Strength Buy-one-all ... When combined with Buyagra, can cause an indiscriminant buying frenzy so severe the victim may even come home with a Donnie Osmond CD or a book by Dr. Laura.

Jack Asspirin ... Relieves the headache caused by a man who can't remember your birthday, anniversary or phone number.

Anti-talksident ... A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to share their life stories with total strangers.

Sexcedrin ... Bedroom aerosol spray for men. More effective than Excedrin in treating the, "Not now, dear, I have a headache," syndrome.

Ragamet ... When administered to a husband, provides the same irritation as ragging on him all weekend, saving the wife the time and trouble of doing it herself.

Men-Gay ... A rub-in ointment that enables single women to identify who to cross off the dating pool

Read about one man's Redneck neighbors --- http://www.knology.net/~carlos/redneck.htm 

Forwarded by Dick Haar

A. A. A. D. D. ===============

Do you have A. A. A. D. D.?

I have recently been diagnosed with A. A. A. D. D. (Advanced Absentminded Attention Deficit Disorder)

This is how it goes:

I decide to wash the car; I start toward the garage and notice the mail on the table.

OK, I'm going to wash the car, but first I'm going to go through the mail.

I lay the car keys down on the desk, discard the junk mail, and notice the trashcan is full.

OK, I'll just put the bills on my desk and take the trashcan out, but since I'm going to be near the mailbox anyway, I'll pay these few bills first.

Now, where is my checkbook? Oops, there's only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk. Oh, there's the coke I was drinking. I'm going to look for those checks. But first I have to put my coke further away from the computer, or maybe I'll pop it into the fridge to keep it cold for awhile.

I head towards the kitchen and my flowers catch my eye; they need some water.

I set the coke on the counter, and uh oh. There are my glasses. I was looking for them all morning. I'd better put them away first.

I fill a container with water and head for the flower pots.

Uh oh.....someone left the TV remote in the kitchen. We'll never think to look in the kitchen tonight when we want to watch television, so I'd better put it back in the family room where it belongs.

I splash some water into the pots and onto the floor, I throw the remote onto a soft cushion on the sofa and I head back down the hall trying to figure out what it was I was going to do?

End of the Day: The car isn't washed, the bills are unpaid, the coke is sitting on the kitchen counter, the flowers are half-watered, the checkbook still only has one check in it and I can't seem to find my car keys.

When I try to figure out how come nothing got done today, I'm baffled because I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY LONG!!!!!

I realize this is a serious condition and I'll get help, but first I think I'll check my email................

Please send this to everyone you know because I DON'T REMEMBER TO WHOM I'VE SENT THIS!!!!!!

Author Forgotten

Forwarded by Dick Haar

There is a lot of sadness in the world.

Right now, as you read this, 17 Million Americans are having SEX!

And you're on the computer!

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

  NEW WORDS FOR 2003 - Essential additions for the workplace   vocabulary:      

BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and no one was responsible.   SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise,   craps on everything, and then leaves.      

ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.      

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending entire day swimming upstream only  to get screwed and die in the end.      

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.      

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a Cube  Farm,   and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.       MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.      

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

STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and  whiney.      

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

XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.      

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

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the dickens out of  an electronic device to get it to work again.      

404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message   "404  Not   Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.      

GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the   same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.      

OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize   that  you've just made a BIG mistake.      

WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.  

Forwarded by our Maria

Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash

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

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

If the label on the cable on the table at your house 
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, 
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, 
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, 
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, 
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; 
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk, 
and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk, 
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM 
then quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

WELL! That certainly clears things up for ME !

Forwarded by Dick Haar

A mama mole, a papa mole and a baby mole all live in a little mole hole.

One day the papa mole sticks his head out of the hole, sniffs the air and says,"Yum! I smell maple syrup!"

The mama mole sticks her head out of the hole, sniffs the air and says "Yum! I smell honey!"

The baby mole tries to stick his head out of the hole to sniff the air, but can't because the bigger moles are in the way, so he says, "Geez, all I can smell is....

Scroll down.......

* * * * * * * * * Get ready.......

* * * * * * You may never forgive me for this one...

* * * * * * * * * MOLASSES!"

Forwarded by Earl Beatty

(1) What did the average Texas A&M player get on his SATs?  
..........Drool.    

(2) What do you get when you put 32 Arkansas cheerleaders in one room?
 ..........A full set of teeth.    

(3) How do you get a Nebraska cheerleader into your dorm room?  
..........Grease her hips and hold a Twinkie package three feet in front of her nose.    

(4) How do you get a Notre Dame graduate off your porch?  
..........Pay him for the pizza.    

(5) Why do the Texas Tech cheerleaders wear bibs?
..........To keep   the tobacco juice off their uniforms.    

(6) Why is the UNM (Univ of New Mex.) football team like a possum? 
 ..........Because they play dead at home and get killed on the road.    

(7) What are the longest three years of a Oklahoma football player's life?  
..........His freshman year.    

(8) How many Ole Miss freshmen does it take to change a light bulb?  
........None....That's a senior course.    

(9) Where was O.J. Simpson headed in the white Bronco? 
 ..........Albuquerque, New Mexico. He knew that the police would   never look there for a Heisman Trophy winner.    

AND FINALLY (drum roll and cymbal crash.....)    
(10) Why did Texas choose orange as their team color?
 ..........You can wear it for the game on Saturday, hunting on Sunday and   picking up trash along the highways the rest of the week 

And that's the way it was on August 30, 2002 with a little help from my friends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 20, 2002

Quotes of the Week

Now is the Time for Better Sharing
Top accounting researchers do not make an effort to use technology to communicate with accounting educators around the world.  Almost none have useful Websites and less than one third of them attend the conferences of the American Accounting Association.  Less than ten of the top researchers are active in sending out messages on the only active email discussion group (the AECM) for accounting educators.  I hope that in the future, top accounting researchers will become more sharing of their time, their research, and their talents in helping and guiding accounting educators.  All of the winning curriculum revision suggestions  (by Professors Fellingham, Penman, and Kinney) announced on August 17, 2002 in Plenary Session 3 of the AAA annual meetings in San Antonio strongly advocated building more accounting research into our accounting curricula.  Top accounting researchers could help by sharing their time and talent with accounting educators more involved in designing curricula and delivering the courses to the masses.  My suggestions include increased efforts by top researchers to create helpful Websites, participate in AAA activities, and send messages out to the AECM electronic discussion group.  Although college and university reward structures do not yet recognize the importance of daily sharing of knowledge with the outside world, the time has come for a greater spirit of sharing.  I think MIT recognizes this in that school's seminal Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI).
Bob Jensen
Acceptance Speech for the August 15, 2002 American Accounting Association's Outstanding Educator Award --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm 

As a body everyone is single, but as a soul, never!
Hermann Hesse

The Roots of Bad Ethics
One thing that I learned, during a presentation at the Year 2002 AAA Annual Meetings in San Antonio (I can't recall which speaker made this assertion), is that much of the pressure to minimize negative news about a given stock comes from the huge pension and mutual funds that hold large blocks of this stock.  Many of us assume that the pressure to cheat, cook the books, and stifle bad news about particular companies comes from the companies themselves.  In some cases there may be as much or more pressure coming from large investors who do not want their portfolios to take a big hit due to low earnings outcomes or other bad news.  Bad ethics and pressure tactics seeps beyond the corporations and auditors.
Bob Jensen