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Enjoy your Reg free link.

http://archives.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/science/phy sical/14COLL.html?ets

cnet lays of 80 more on the way out?

it won't be nearly as difficult to repossess robbIE et AL?

eye DOWt he's bilt many towers of self-adulation, yet?.

what a sham/shame.

sanjayahuja - 02:39pm Mar 30, 2002 EST (#755 of 762)

It's exactly the sort of thing Microsoft tries to set up

AFAIK, MSFT is not too aggressive about pursuing patent violations. In as much polls, seem to be under discussion, MSFT owns the patent on web polls. See US patent below:

MSFT's web poll patent

They would be well within their rights in demanding that george pay them a royalty for the polls he ruins, or in the alternative shut him down. Teeheehee!

yuk. i mean yikes

sanjayahuja - 02:39pm Mar 30, 2002 EST (#755 of 762)

It's exactly the sort of thing Microsoft tries to set up

AFAIK, MSFT is not too aggressive about pursuing patent violations. In as much polls, seem to be under discussion, MSFT owns the patent on web polls. See US patent below:

MSFT's web poll patent

They would be well within their rights in demanding that george pay them a royalty for the polls he ruins, or in the alternative shut him down. Teeheehee!

yuk. i mean yikes

every time you vote Libertarian you are voting Republican

Wait, I'm confused. I thought voting for Greens was voting Republican. I thought voting Libertarian was voting Democrat.

When will they find bigfoot?

Who cares, when they found the Yeti somewhere in Jammu and Kashmir. But then, it being J&K, it's quite possible that the alleged Yeti is actually a terrorist trying to infilitrate into India...

(Context:- During rural India's earlier experiences with the muchnowa, a senior police officer actually said that he believed this thing was the handiwork of Pakistan's spook organisation, ISI.)

There is another article about this at NY Times.

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I read CNN website to read what news other people are being fed.

Then I read the following for real version of news:

* Washingtonpost (http://www.washingtonpost.com/),
* NewYork Times (http://www.nytimes.com/) and
* Google news (http://news.google.com/)

[link]

http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/2003/01/08/busi ness/09rods.span.jpg

Sure it's a "10 second car", but what do you see inside? It's completely stripped, not even a passenger seat.

where's the chicks you're trying to impress suppose to sit? In your stock 17 second Civic?

If you want to impress the ladies pick them up in this:
http://www.databasemann.com/final.htm
Still gets 10s *AND* there's a passenger seat
http://www.databasemann.com/images/int3.jpg

Nothing like a turbo V8!

Here you go, tiger.
get your reg-free link right here.

from up on the pacific crest, as it applies to the future?:

"Despite the hype that the Internet evolved from the Arpanet the reality is that Bill Gates invented the modern day Internet in 1995 when he launched Win 95".

"MS making money in the downturn to me shows that Microsoft's business is not in synch with the real world.

Well maybe it shows that to you, but to me it shows that Microsoft is master of their own fates and well able to steer a profitable course around the pitfalls that have swallowed up others. Oracle and Sun and EMC and Cisco and other darlings of the Unix-fueled .COM era have suffered substantially from their lack of foresight. How can you fault Bill Gates for avoiding the same fate? It seems to me that Microsoft has been most diligent in keeping their business focused on real opportunities rather than on the faddish bubbles that have betrayed the rest.

Uh Oh, there is a Gecko waiting.

In your dreams, craigster! LOL!!! Take a look above and tell me where the linux smerfs are going to ever come up with an end to end solution that can match the Windows servers, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows client platforms, and MS Office applications, all networked neatly within the .NET framework and extensible down to your backyard thermostat. They can't do it. They can't even come up with a decent client platform distinguished from the server platform. There's no Exchange, there's not even a reasonable SQL that integrates like SQL Server and .NET? ."

lol

from up on the pacific crest, as it applies to the future?:

"Despite the hype that the Internet evolved from the Arpanet the reality is that Bill Gates invented the modern day Internet in 1995 when he launched Win 95".

"MS making money in the downturn to me shows that Microsoft's business is not in synch with the real world.

Well maybe it shows that to you, but to me it shows that Microsoft is master of their own fates and well able to steer a profitable course around the pitfalls that have swallowed up others. Oracle and Sun and EMC and Cisco and other darlings of the Unix-fueled .COM era have suffered substantially from their lack of foresight. How can you fault Bill Gates for avoiding the same fate? It seems to me that Microsoft has been most diligent in keeping their business focused on real opportunities rather than on the faddish bubbles that have betrayed the rest.

Uh Oh, there is a Gecko waiting.

In your dreams, craigster! LOL!!! Take a look above and tell me where the linux smerfs are going to ever come up with an end to end solution that can match the Windows servers, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows client platforms, and MS Office applications, all networked neatly within the .NET framework and extensible down to your backyard thermostat. They can't do it. They can't even come up with a decent client platform distinguished from the server platform. There's no Exchange, there's not even a reasonable SQL that integrates like SQL Server and .NET? ."

lol

from up on the pacific crest, as it applies to the future?:

"Despite the hype that the Internet evolved from the Arpanet the reality is that Bill Gates invented the modern day Internet in 1995 when he launched Win 95".

"MS making money in the downturn to me shows that Microsoft's business is not in synch with the real world.

Well maybe it shows that to you, but to me it shows that Microsoft is master of their own fates and well able to steer a profitable course around the pitfalls that have swallowed up others. Oracle and Sun and EMC and Cisco and other darlings of the Unix-fueled .COM era have suffered substantially from their lack of foresight. How can you fault Bill Gates for avoiding the same fate? It seems to me that Microsoft has been most diligent in keeping their business focused on real opportunities rather than on the faddish bubbles that have betrayed the rest.

Uh Oh, there is a Gecko waiting.

In your dreams, craigster! LOL!!! Take a look above and tell me where the linux smerfs are going to ever come up with an end to end solution that can match the Windows servers, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows client platforms, and MS Office applications, all networked neatly within the .NET framework and extensible down to your backyard thermostat. They can't do it. They can't even come up with a decent client platform distinguished from the server platform. There's no Exchange, there's not even a reasonable SQL that integrates like SQL Server and .NET?."

lol

from up on the pacific crest, as it applies to the future?:

"Despite the hype that the Internet evolved from the Arpanet the reality is that Bill Gates invented the modern day Internet in 1995 when he launched Win 95".

"MS making money in the downturn to me shows that Microsoft's business is not in synch with the real world.

Well maybe it shows that to you, but to me it shows that Microsoft is master of their own fates and well able to steer a profitable course around the pitfalls that have swallowed up others. Oracle and Sun and EMC and Cisco and other darlings of the Unix-fueled .COM era have suffered substantially from their lack of foresight. How can you fault Bill Gates for avoiding the same fate? It seems to me that Microsoft has been most diligent in keeping their business focused on real opportunities rather than on the faddish bubbles that have betrayed the rest.

Uh Oh, there is a Gecko waiting.

In your dreams, craigster! LOL!!! Take a look above and tell me where the linux smerfs are going to ever come up with an end to end solution that can match the Windows servers, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows client platforms, and MS Office applications, all networked neatly within the .NET framework and extensible down to your backyard thermostat. They can't do it. They can't even come up with a decent client platform distinguished from the server platform. There's no Exchange, there's not even a reasonable SQL that integrates like SQL Server and .NET?."

lol

The "content" of a web page is nearly worthless, the cost of delivering it is irrellevant to that.

Umm... if the "content" of a web page is nearly worthless, why do you waste your time looking at them? I'm pretty sure I'd be willing to pay 1/2 a cent per article I read on the New York Times, and probably something similar to see all the comments on a slashdot article. While I might be a bit less tempted to click on random links that come up on Google if they cost 1/2 a cent each time, I'd still click on a lot of them. The occasional totally great, totally random site would make me willing to pay for most of those others.

And also, this scheme is meant for corporate sites like the ones I've already mentioned, not so much for personal home pages. Plenty of small sites on the web are put there just because the person has a desire to share this information (like much of the free software movement), but things like news services, weather forecasts, map sites, and others could all be easily supported by micropayments for each usage.

I did the same thing with a story I submitted recently - it was a NYT story so I submitted the google partner link. They didn't publish it though :) I urge all submitters to do the same in the future.

(Incidently, the story was about copyrights in Europe that will expire soon)

Another Indian - Do you have BOSE Speakers ??

For the Gadget Universe, a Common Tongue

For the Gadget Universe, a Common Tongue
By BARNABY J. FEDER

IT is too soon to describe the Bose (Indian) family as an audio-world version of the Bush and Kennedy clans in politics, but they are off to a good start.

In 1964, Amar Bose (his dad moved from Calcutta, India), a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and inventor, created the renowned high-fidelity sound systems company that bears the family name. Now, his only son, Vanu, is gaining recognition for radio-design technology every bit as novel as the sound systems that his father pioneered.

The younger Bose's four-year old company, Vanu Inc., is a prominent innovator in the effort to use software rather than hardware to control how radios, cellphones and all other wireless communications devices recognize and manage signals. Early versions of the technology, known as software-defined radio, are beginning to be deployed in military communications equipment and cellular base stations.

The goal is to develop software and related components that recognize various wave forms at any frequency in the radio spectrum and choose the appropriate applications to process them. A single device could provide cellphone service no matter what the format or frequency, exchange wireless messages with laptop or hand-held computers, and communicate with walkie-talkies or emergency services.

There is another potential benefit: being able to incorporate improved data speeds and features simply by downloading software, rather than replacing the customer's hardware or the company's network equipment.

"Why build a system to do one thing when you can build it with software to do many things and be upgradable to boot?" Mr. Bose said.

It is easier said than done. Software radio needs better antennas, advances in the chips that convert radio waves into digital streams of data and methods for using less power, among other things. But software radio's potential is so staggering that many experts say its spread over the next decade is inevitable.

Software-defined devices are too power hungry to make them practical for hand-held applications now, but eventually consumers will be offered cellphones that jump among the world's competing signal standards depending on which gives them the best performance or price wherever they happen to be. Unlike today's dual-mode cellphones, which are essentially two separate phones inside a single case accompanied by software that recognizes which one to turn on, true software phones would use the same hardware to interact with the incompatible networks.

Not only would a software phone have fewer components and, presumably, cost less to build, but it would also be easily reprogrammed to take advantage of improvements in the network. Consumers would not face decisions as they do today about whether to buy new phones to take advantage of advanced networks. Instead of facing vast, high-risk technology transitions once a decade, the cellphone industry could advance at a steadier pace, like the personal computer industry.

But there are more compelling uses for software radio technology that have drawn innovators like Mr. Bose and giant companies like Motorola and Boeing into the field.

The Defense Department in particular is counting on the technology to end the dangerous confusion that arises when different branches of the armed forces try to talk to each other, get data from satellites or control robotic weaponry with incompatible communications systems. Despite more than two decades of research and development, experts say, soldiers in combat often carry separate radio systems - one to talk to one another and another to communicate with air support.

Similar barriers plague police, fire and rescue agencies, many of which intentionally bought incompatible radio systems to minimize interference with one another. But after Sept. 11, many are looking to software radio technology to give them the flexibility to bridge incompatible systems when coordination becomes critical.

More recently, the Federal Communications Commission has singled out software radio as a possible means for expanding use of the radio spectrum while reducing interference in the most crowded portions. Such devices could, in theory, start a phone call in the portion of the spectrum currently assigned to cellphones and jump temporarily into unused parts of the television or public safety spectrum if more space was available there.

Mr. Bose's background and his enthusiasm as he shows off his prototypes make it hard to believe he ever considered

Here is the google news link to the article .

Or read all the coverage on google news here

Lest we want to happen to us what is now happening to Japan and Europe. Due to lowered levels of immigration those regions are experiencing an aging of the population.

No, that's not true. These countries are experiencing an aging of the population because their citizens are having to fewer children. See this recent article in the NY Times, and this table of the fertility rates around the world.

~Phillip

Yes, it's possible, and has been done recently by some guys in CS at Berkeley. Breaking captchas had always been posed as an open challenge to the AI/image processing community.

NY Times article

Berkeley press release

Computer vision pages (w/papers)

Greg's page on breaking Gimpy

"It's pretty well established that you and the linux crowd are fundamentally cheapskates and intellectual property thieves, but organized boycotts are a flirtation with commercial code violations and can cost you some real bucks! I'm sure Mr. Bill wouldn't bother with you, but there's no telling about Ballmer! HAHAHAHAHAHA! [nytimes.com] [nytimes.com]"

these owned ?pr? "guise", have been .controlling the NYT forums for over 4 years now. tell 'em robbIE.

• not very smart by Anonymous Coward Wednesday January 01, @02:31PM

"It's pretty well established that you and the linux crowd are fundamentally cheapskates and intellectual property thieves, but organized boycotts are a flirtation with commercial code violations and can cost you some real bucks! I'm sure Mr. Bill wouldn't bother with you, but there's no telling about Ballmer! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

these owned ?pr? "guise", have been .controlling the NYT forums for over 4 years now. tell 'em robbIE.

Also works ... kinda looks like a bug in the old partner code ;-)

NYT article

I'd be inclined to say "yes". This isn't just a random selection of decayed images (rtfa). Bill Morrison went through hundred (thousands?) of hours of film to find stuff that had an evocative combination of image and decay. Adding random decay on top of that is only going to mask some of the beauty of the original collection.

It's rather like the difference between the mastery of Picasso (who did some very good realist painting in his early days) and the worst of the neo-impressionists who's work could honestly be one-upped by good quality fourth-graders.

Actually, they are the problem, according to carefully designed scientific* studies:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/08/16/cell.phone.drivin g/index.html

I see your point, that rude, stupid people wil continue to do rude, stupid things with or without cell phones, but to say that cell phones are not a problem is simply wrong.

* - Oh, I'm sorry, are you one of those conservatives who circumvents science when it doesn't support your personal opinions and the political process has failed you?

To quote Jenny Holzer, "the future is stupid".

Nuclear weapons development? I don't get it. Nuclear weapons are 50+ year old technology. This is stuff that Boy Scouts can build in their mom's shed. This is stuff that college students can build for a Scavanger Hunt. I can't believe that nuclear weapons are that hard to build and develop that they need a super computer. The college students probably didn't use a super computer. The Boy Scout almost certainly didn't.

The New York Times violated the DMCA as well. In this article they post a picture of a T-Shirt which contains the DMCA code. If someone looks at the picture closely and then writes the code into the computer they can decrypt DVDs. That's illegal circumvention. Come on MPAA, sue the NYTimes! I dare you!

Try this one instead

Google news

here

That does not work for me, but this does

/. should start linking to the non reg ver like this.

With its huge economy stalled and state revenues plunging, California has descended into its worst budget crisis in a decade and is now facing an excruciating round of budget cuts and possible tax increases.

State officials are proposing deep reductions in education, health services and other programs to deal with a budget shortfall that could total $25 billion in the next 18 months.

"That's a hole so deep and so vast that even if we fired every single person on the state payroll -- every park ranger, every college professor and every Highway Patrol officer -- we would still be more than $6 billion short," said the Assembly speaker, Herb J. Wesson Jr., a Democrat.

-Fantastic Lad

With its huge economy stalled and state revenues plunging, California has descended into its worst budget crisis in a decade and is now facing an excruciating round of budget cuts and possible tax increases.

State officials are proposing deep reductions in education, health services and other programs to deal with a budget shortfall that could total $25 billion in the next 18 months.

"That's a hole so deep and so vast that even if we fired every single person on the state payroll -- every park ranger, every college professor and every Highway Patrol officer -- we would still be more than $6 billion short," said the Assembly speaker, Herb J. Wesson Jr., a Democrat.

-Fantastic Lad

Here is a free link to the news article.

Please post news.google or news.yahoo links instead. Thanks.

Come on, people. How fucking hard is it to post a partner link?

Hmmm, I must have read a severely truncated version in high school, because I only remember three supernatural creatures in "Beowulf" -- Grendel, Grendel's mom, and the Dragon.

Speaking of Grendel, there's a great novel by the same name written by John Gardner.

Back on topic, Gardner wrote an interesting article on Tolkien and his world.

From: "Henry Harpending"
Date: Sun Nov 3, 2002 5:41 pm
Subject: Re: [evol-psych] Majority against race concept (are they right?)

... There is a lot of visible denunciation of "the race concept", but when anyone is forced to say what the race concept is it invariably comes out sounding like species. It is all word play. The answer is a number, that number is about 1/8, and all the rest is word salad and sophistry.

Boyd and Silk ought to know better, but then again genetics is not their specialty. And Venter! We sequence a single genome and announce that there are no race differences: my little kid can figure out that that makes no sense.

In fairness to the genome jocks, we have to remember that they consume a lot of grant money and that the minute anyone starts crying racism they are at risk of losing that funding.

A colleague last week described a meeting at NIH where a prominent genome jock stood up and said humans were all the same, race differences were insignificant, and so on. My colleage said he "had a tear in his eye, one hand on his heart, and his other hand on his wallet".

Henry Harpending

Scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world have concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.

The study, based on scans of the whole human genome, is the most thorough to look for patterns corresponding to major geographical regions. These regions broadly correspond with popular notions of race, the researchers said in interviews.

Why doesn't anyone post these links in the original article?

Here are some newer ones, sorry: SFChron NYTimes Try here for more.

"In fact, had a novelist like Anthony Trollope, the 19th-century chronicler of English society at its best and worst, invented these characters, his readers would have rejected them as caricatures. Too improbable. Too grasping. Too contemptible.

But genuine they were, as investors found out to their dismay this year. Although their struts across the stage were spectacles, they were not alone as standouts. Others earned a part in this year's unforgettable bear market pageant.

In honor of their performances, it is again time to hand out the Augustus Melmotte Memorial Prizes, named for the swindler and schemer central to Mr. Trollope's novel "The Way We Live Now." Mr. Melmotte rose to the heights of London society on wealth he had raised ostensibly to build a railroad in North America but which instead went into his own pockets. He was found out, of course. But by that time, much of the money was gone.

Investors can be forgiven for feeling that much of their money has vanished in this, the third year of free-falling stock prices.

Following are the prizes and the winners.

THE SOMEBODY ELSE'S FAULT AWARD To Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who is busily ducking any blame for failing to prevent the stock market bubble and its awful aftermath. His latest attempt came this month during a speech at the Economic Club of New York. In his inimitable prose, Mr. Greenspan said: "Whether incipient bubbles can be detected in real time and whether, once detected, they can be defused without inadvertently precipitating still greater adverse consequences for the economy remain in doubt."

Translation: Don't blame me for watching blithely as the bubble grew and grew. It was so very pretty, and how was I to know it would blow investors away when it popped?

Clearly, Mr. Greenspan is worried about his legacy and how history will view his inaction in the face of an obvious stock market mania. But he seems to have forgotten that when he points his finger elsewhere in blame, three fingers remain pointed at himself.


THE THREE IS A CHARM AWARD To Irwin L. Jacobs, the Minneapolis financier, who came to the plate with a swagger in 2001 to bat against the short-sellers who had placed negatives bets on three stocks he owned. In newspaper advertisements and on his own Web site, Mr. Jacobs cheered on the shares of AremisSoft, a software company; Clarent, a telecommunications concern; and Conseco, the financial services giant. When Gary C. Wendt arrived to rescue Conseco, for example, Mr. Jacobs exulted: "We know God can't come down here and do this. But the next best thing to God is Gary Wendt."

Not quite. Unlike Conseco, heaven has yet to file for Chapter 11 protection.

Alas for Mr. Jacobs, in 2002, his trio tripped up. AremisSoft filed a Chapter 11 petition in March, and during one week in December, Conseco and Clarent both announced bankruptcy filings. Hockey fans would call that a hat trick for Mr. Jacobs; racing fans, a trifecta. In any case, going three for three is hard to do.

THE TIMING IS EVERYTHING AWARD To Jack Welch and Lou Gerstner, who left their chief-executive posts just before the bottom fell out of their companies' stocks. When Mr. Welch retired from General Electric in early September 2001, its shares traded at $39.66; on Friday, they closed at $24.75. Mr. Gerstner stepped down as chief of I.B.M. on March 1. Since then, its stock has lost 25 percent.

To quote Shakespeare, "Exit, pursued by a bear." ("The Winter's Tale, Act III, Scene 3, stage direction to Antigonus.)

THE DID I REALLY SAY THAT? AWARD To Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of G.E., who in an interview last Jan. 15, was asked which chief executives he admired. No. 2 in his pantheon, after Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft, was Jean-Marie Messier, the disgraced and lately dismissed Vivendi Universal chief. Since then, Vivendi's stock has dropped 68 percent. Let's hope Mr. Immelt's favorites inside G.E. fare better.

THE THAT'S MORE LIKE IT AWARD To Mr. Messier, who ran off to start a hedge fund in October after wreaking havoc on shareholders of Vivendi Universal. Come to think of it, this is actually Mr. Messier's second attempt at a hedge fund, because wasn't that what Vivendi turned out to be, under his direction?

THE EXPANDING LANGUAGE AWARD To Gary Winnick, whose actions as top executive of Global Crossing leave him in danger of earning the title looter in chief, and have given a new word to the lexicon. Recalling that he sold stock worth $734 million in the telecommunications concern before it filed for bankruptcy, investors who think they've been cheated now say they've been "winnicked." The new word has also been heard on golf courses, especially in the Los Angeles area, where Mr. Winnick lives. Golfers caught cheating on their score cards are told by their partners: "Don't you winnick me."

THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING AWARD To the Charles Schwab Corporation, for showing investors how stocks are really sold in the famous cinéma vérité television commercial entitled "Pep Talk." Talking up a stock to a roomful of brokers, a Wall Street executive says, "Don't mention the fundamentals; they stink." After promising courtside playoff tickets for the broker who sells the most stock, the executive says, "Now let's put some lipstick on this pig."

Bull's-eye.

THE DENIAL IS POTENT AWARD Bernard J. Ebbers, founder and former chief executive of WorldCom, whose creation crashed to earth in the nation's largest bankruptcy filing last July. Although his shareholders lost everything and thousands of his workers lost their jobs, Mr. Ebbers told Congress last summer that he was proud of his work at WorldCom.

Mr. Ebbers still owes WorldCom $408 million, which he borrowed to meet margin calls at his brokerage firm when WorldCom shares started their slide. For those WorldCom creditors worried that Mr. Ebbers will never be able to repay his loan, look on the bright side. The man has all kinds of experience in other industries. After all, before he built WorldCom he had been a milkman, a bouncer and a car salesman. But it might take a while to get the money back.

THE WHAT SCANDALS? AWARD To Hardwick Simmons, the chief executive of the Nasdaq stock market, which has lost 31 percent of its value this year, kept asking throughout 2002 what all the scandal talk was about. Mr. Simmons, who is against accounting for stock options as an employee cost, told a reporter at The Globe and Mail of Toronto that chief executives had recently grown too preoccupied with director independence. "All the academic literature I've ever seen -- and I mean there is none on the other side -- shows there is absolutely no correlation between the independence of one's board and the performance of one's company," he was quoted as saying. "In fact it works exactly the opposite."

And finally, a tip of the hat this year to Colin Devine, the Salomon Smith Barney analyst who warned investors away from Conseco stock in January 1999 and took a lot of heat from the company for it. His focus on the company's numbers kept Mr. Devine from buying into the company's spin. Even as investors cheered the arrival of Mr. Wendt -- a savior to some -- Mr. Devine kept his feet on the ground, proving that top-flight, skeptical analysis can indeed come out of a big Wall Street ?firm?...."

Perhaps you might want a few facts instead of making a snap judgement based on a 3-sentence description of these people found in a CNN article.

About 2 years ago, the New York Times Magazine had a serious (8000 word) article about this group. My impression from reading it at the time was that cloning might well be possible for a group that has enough money (they do), sufficient technical expertese (they've hired them), enough disregard for the moral implications (their beliefs support the idea), and enough volunteers to be implanted with cloned embryos (again, they do, due to the cult's ethos). Maybe only 1 out of every 100 embryos is viable, but when you actually have hundreds of cult members lining up as volunteers for implantation, how long is it until one of them succeeds?

If you are willing to pay $3 for some enlightenment, you can get the article here.

Will Auditing Reform Die Before It Begins?

For the accounting industry, 2002 was the year of capital punishment, in both senses of the term. But will prosecutorial vigor lead to real reforms in an oligopolistic industry?

The death of Arthur Andersen, which shrank the Big Five to the Final Four, resulted from a Justice Department prosecution that startled accountants. But in showing they were tough, the prosecutors also eliminated the possibility that a new Andersen, under Paul A. Volcker's guidance, could lead the way to reform.

That auditors have sometimes not lived up to their obligations was proved this year as never before. But what the public needs to know is whether spectacular audit failures are isolated events or reflect systemic problems, either in the way audits are conducted or in the financial pressures that confront the auditors.

What is clear is that the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act could not end the fundamental conflict facing auditors: the people who hire the audit firm, and can replace it if they choose, are from the very company being audited. The people who depend on the job being done by the auditor -- the investors -- have no say in the matter.

What is needed is for someone to audit the auditors regularly, to review the way they conduct audits and to essentially reaudit some companies. That could show what problems exist, leading to new audit procedures where needed. But the most important effect could be one of strengthening auditors' backbones. Knowing that all the documents might be reviewed by outsiders, auditors might be far less willing to cave in to their clients' demands.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act gave that responsibility to the new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. But Joel Seligman, the dean of law at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of the leading history of the Securities and Exchange Commission, says no change in securities law ever had "a slower or more inept" start. "They don't have a full board, don't have a budget, don't have a staff, don't have an office, don't have a plan," Mr. Seligman said. "It's as sad a beginning as one can imagine."

To both Mr. Seligman and John Biggs, the pension fund executive who was passed over for chairman of the board, setting off a controversy, the way the board conducts its inspections will be the most important issue confronting it. "The major function of the board will not be enforcement so much as working with the firms to develop better assurance of quality control," Mr. Biggs said. "The means for the board will be through the annual inspections."

The law establishing the board was full of compromises. Just how thorough those inspections will be, and even who will do them, is up to the board. Reformers want it to hire its own staff and to carefully review numerous audits each year. Many in the accounting industry would prefer that the board do little more than the "peer reviews" that used to be carried out under the auspices of the ineffective Public Oversight Board, in which one major accounting firm would bless another firm's work.

Unfortunately, the accounting industry got Congress to specify that when the board finds problems with the quality control systems of an auditing firm, that information will be kept secret if the firm addresses the issue within a year. Similarly, disciplinary proceedings may remain secret until the S.E.C. has considered appeals of the board's rulings, a process that could take years.

That secrecy means that investors will have limited ways to be sure that the board is doing a good job and makes it all the more important that the board's chairman be someone whose record provides assurances of a commitment to reform. William Donaldson's choice for that job after he is confirmed as S.E.C. chairman may determine whether the scandals of 2002 bring real changes...."

remember, dysfunction STARTS, at the "top".

Of course this is not limited to Engineers. Take a look at this story abouty Maytag closing a factory for cheaper labor in Mexico.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/national/26MAYT. html

People are very unhappy. Except in this case, it's a factory town, and entire families are getting nailed.