ZDNet: Printer Friendly - E-Con 101 How would you like to have access to a reliable labor pool with 24/7 availability, practically no turnover, and no benefits? Welcome to the world
of prison inmate labor, a rapidly growing sector of the new economy where annual revenues have topped $1 billion since 1998.

Around 2 million people are currently behind bars in this country, a growth of more than 300 percent since 1980, reflecting the highest per capita
incarceration rate among all developed nations. Combine that with the lowest unemployment and tightest job market in 30 years and you've got
the formula for tapping into what might be the only low wage, labor-intensive workforce left.

In fact, inmate laborers could be the missing variable that pries assembly jobs away from the Third World and back into the American GDP. "The
benefit is that it provides a reliable, productive, motivated workforce that can reduce production costs—and that's the business bottom line,"
claims Knut Rostad of the Enterprise Prison Institute, a company that specializes in leasing inmate labor.

Made in Sing-Sing

Less talked about is what Jenni Gainsborough, communications director of the Washington, D.C.–based criminal policy analysis firm The
Sentencing Project (www.sentencingproject.org), calls a "modern business dilemma" (read: a huge publicity nightmare). Gainsborough, a former
public policy coordinator of the ACLU's National Prison Project, says, "It seems absolutely wrong that individual liberty and public safety should
be put out to bid to companies whose first concern is their shareholders and expanding their market."

South Africa to Ask for International Gem Certification South Africa plans to ask
all nations on Friday to back an international certification
system for gems, saying it is concerned not only that
diamonds are fueling civil wars among other Africans but also that
adverse publicity and calls for boycotts will hurt its own
diamond-mining industry.

Ambassador Dumisana Kumalo of South Africa, who will introduce a resolution in the 189-member General
Assembly, said in an interview today that piecemeal attempts to control diamond exports, which finance
rebel organizations like the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone and Unita in Angola, are not enough.

In two weeks, publication is expected of an expert panel's report to the Security Council on the illegal trade
in what are called "conflict diamonds."

"One thing that they will show in their report is that the same characters who are involved in trading in
Angola are the ones who pop up in the Congo, the ones in Sierra Leone," Mr. Kumalo said. "So there is a
very small network wherever these conflict diamonds are." He said that without concerted action worldwide,
there can be no hope of stopping the trade.

Netscape 6 Browser: Mixed Bag But if Web-page designers are mostly pleased with Netscape 6, ordinary mortals are in for a broad array of
disappointments. The program is a memory glutton, hoarding 20 to 25 megabytes of RAM. (Abandon all
hope, ye with 32-megabyte PC's.) Its speed is fine once you're online, but it takes nearly a minute to start
up, even on fast Macs and Windows PC's — long enough for you to say, "I wish this browser were built
into the operating system" 20 times in a row.

Once Navigator is finally ready to show you some Web, you may be surprised to discover that several
popular features of the previous version, Navigator 4.7, have disappeared. The print-preview feature is gone,
as is the ability to drag a Web site's address-bar icon directly into the Bookmarks menu. You can no longer
copy or paste a Web address in the Address bar by right-clicking there, either. And you have to resize the
browser window every time you begin surfing; Navigator doesn't remember how you had it the last time you
ran the program.

The most alarming flaw, however, is that you can't highlight the entire Address bar with a single click. You
must highlight the current Web address by dragging the mouse over it each time you want to type a new
address, an oversight blatant enough to make you wonder exactly how much time the program's designers
actually tested Navigator by, say, browsing the Web.

Nasdaq Continues to Fall Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 121.53 points, or
1.2 percent, to 10,629.11, but the Nasdaq composite index fell 28.05
points, or 1 percent, to 2,706.93. The Nasdaq's decline gave it yet
another new low for this year.

The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index advanced 5.82 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,341.91.

Despite the decline in technology stocks, investors traded with cautious optimism on new evidence that the
nation's economic growth was slowing, analysts said. The Commerce Department said yesterday that the
gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent last summer, the slowest rate in four years and a
steep decline from the 5.6 percent rate in the second quarter.

Lernout & Hauspie Files for Bankruptcy Within the last year, as its stock price soared above $70, Lernout & Hauspie bought two leading American
speech-recognition software makers, Dictaphone and Dragon Systems. But yesterday's bankruptcy filing
accelerated the company's long tumble from the top of the industry, which included the recent resignation of
its founders, Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie.

Lernout & Hauspie's shares were suspended indefinitely this month on Easdaq, the European stock market,
and on Nasdaq, where the price had dropped below $7.

ShopGuideNews

65 percent of shopping trips failed due to usability barriers. Despite the incentive of free money, two out of three efforts to
locate and purchase an item ended in an incomplete transaction.

Major obstacles interfered with completing a purchase. One example, a participant wishing to make his purchase using an
Amex card was forced to abandon his cart when the site only accepted Visa or MasterCard.

Minor obstacles can also get in the way of a completed transaction when enough of these problems pile up. The frustration
of a series of annoyances, especially during checkout, will cause a shopper to abandon the sale.

ShopGuideNews Can "voter intent" be determined in a fair and objective manner by a hand recount of ballots? In an effort to replicate a hand recount of
punch cards (exactly like those at the center of the current controversy in Florida) rejected by election machines, Boston-based online
legal services provider AmeriCounsel.com recently conducted an experiment to simulate the tabulation process.

In the AmeriCounsel election, 373 members of the public were asked to vote for their favorite ice cream flavor and season of the year.
The ballots were then sent to an official election tabulation center, where machines could count the votes. The machines rejected 10
percent of the cards, but hand counters determined that one-third of those ballots were actually valid because voter intent could easily
be discerned.

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - E-commerce Tax Update The e-commerce taxation debate, hotly contested for the past two years,
may be losing some of its steam.

The potential turning point? Barnes & Noble last month revealed plans to
integrate its brick-and-mortar and online (BN.com) businesses. The move
marks the end of the bookseller's earlier strategy of maintaining separate
physical and electronic storefronts to free its cyber operation from having to
collect sales tax. Currently, remote sellers—including e-tailers—are not
compelled to collect sales tax in states in which they lack a significant
physical presence. Barnes & Noble's online isolation kept BN.com an
Internet-only play, keeping it on the same tax footing as Amazon.com.

Interestingly enough, "eBrands: building an Internet Business at breakneck Speed" (Library of Congress Number HD69.B7C37) talks specifically about Barnes and Nobles' need to integrate its internet and brick and mortar brands to compete successfully. A book of Harvard Business School case studies, I think it's flawed. It overemphasizes the stock value of companies. All of the studies were done before the bottom fell out of the market.

Often, Parole Is One Stop on the Way Back to Prison Since then, Mr. Peterson has become an apprentice plumber, but he has had his parole revoked three more
times, department records show. Once it was revoked for possession of a dangerous weapon — a serious issue
to the department, given his original conviction — though his mother and lawyer say it was only a
plumber's knife his parole agent found in his toolbox when the agent searched Mr. Peterson's truck.

The next time it was again for possession of a dangerous weapon, what the parole agent described as a hand
grenade in Mr. Peterson's bedroom. Mr. Peterson's sister said it was actually a toy grenade she had bought
for her Halloween costume.

Then last spring Mr. Peterson was charged with assault and making a terrorist threat when he got into an
argument with a former girlfriend, who he said had been harassing his current girlfriend. A department
spokesman said the former girlfriend's mother testified against him, but Mr. Peterson's boss in the plumber's
union, who tried to testify for him, was excluded from the hearing.

So far, Mr. Peterson has spent a year and 11 months in prison on parole revocations, almost as long as he
did on his original two- year sentence. And the total could go on almost indefinitely, because under
California law, each time Mr. Peterson has his parole revoked, he stops earning credit toward his original
three-year parole term. The parole revocations themselves, in California, can last from a few weeks to a year.

Often, Parole Is One Stop on the Way Back to Prison Jason Peterson had lost 60 pounds when he was released after spending almost two years in solitary
confinement at Pelican Bay, California's super maximum-security prison, while serving a sentence for
possession of a pipe bomb.

When he returned to his mother's house in San Francisco, after months without human contact, he refused to
leave his bedroom, his mother, Jeannine Peterson, said in a lengthy interview recently. Her account was
supported by her son's lawyer and a psychiatrist hired by the family.

Concerned about his mental state, Mrs. Peterson, an elementary school special education teacher, called his
parole officer, who offered to take him to the hospital. Instead, she said, the parole officer arrived with police
officers, who handcuffed her son and took him into custody.

The next morning, the parole agent called to say that Mr. Peterson's parole had been revoked for psychiatric
reasons and he had been given an additional year in prison at San Quentin, his mother said.

Often, Parole Is One Stop on the Way Back to Prison This year, a record 600,000 inmates will be
released from state and federal prisons nationwide,
up from 170,000 in 1980.

As the former prisoners return, largely to the poor
neighborhoods of large cities, there is mounting
evidence that they represent what some
criminologists and prison officials now call the
collateral damage of the prison- building boom.

Because states sharply curtailed education, job
training and other rehabilitation programs inside
prisons, the newly released inmates are far less
likely than their counterparts two decades ago to
find jobs, maintain stable family lives or stay out of
the kind of trouble that leads to more prison. Many
states have unintentionally contributed to these
problems by abolishing early release for good
behavior, removing the incentive for inmates to
improve their conduct,

Sins of Emission Why is the United States such a big emitter? Energy use tends to be more or less proportional to gross
domestic product, and we have the biggest economy. But that's not the whole story: We release about twice
as much carbon dioxide per capita as other advanced countries, even though we don't have anywhere near
twice their per capita G.D.P. The main reason for that disparity is that we have much lower taxes on fuel,
especially gasoline. The image of the American filling up his living room on wheels with dollar-a-gallon
gasoline while his European counterpart carefully spoons precious petrol into his mini is a caricature, but gets
at an essential truth.

This comparison suggests that it should actually be much easier for the United States to reduce its energy
consumption and carbon dioxide emissions than it is for Europe. High taxes on fuel have already induced
Europeans to do the easy conservation steps; in America, where gasoline is literally cheaper than (bottled)
water, we haven't even tried.

Ahab vs. The Waco Whale President-elect(?) Mini-Me has not
yet started gnawing on his cat, as the "Austin Powers"
Mini-Me did to the hairless Mr. Bigglesworth.

But W. is starting to weird me out.

Why is our kinda-sorta chief executive the low man on his own
totem pole?

We knew that his political nannies told him stuff only on a need-to-know basis. But now that the guy is
seconds away from the White House, we learn that his handlers deal with him on a needs-not-to-know basis.

Last week in Austin, our Wannabe President George Bush, miniature clone of President George Bush,
happily told reporters that Dick Cheney had "had no heart attack."

The hospital, the Cheney family and Mr. Bush's press aide, Karen Hughes, knew that Mr. Cheney had, that
morning, undergone a heart procedure. But Ms. Hughes did not tell that to her boss before he spoke so rosily
and ignorantly about Mr. Cheney's condition.

When the election ended, Mini-Me was shocked that he had not won in a landslide. His strategists had
apparently failed to inform him that things were getting tight, just as they hadn't alerted him that he was
cratering in New Hampshire. Did they not trust him with the information, fearing he might get cranky?

Presidents get dangerously insulated in the White House. But this boy's in a bubble before he even gets to
the Oval bubble.

U.S. Wrote Outline for Race Profiling, New Jersey Argues New Jersey officials contend that the reason racial
profiling is a national problem is that it was
initiated, and in many ways encouraged, by the
federal government's war on drugs. In 1986, the
Drug Enforcement Administration's Operation
Pipeline enlisted police departments across the
country to search for narcotics traffickers on major
highways and told officers, to cite one example, that
Latinos and West Indians dominated the drug trade
and therefore warranted extra scrutiny.

Since then, the D.E.A. and the Department of
Transportation have financed and taught an array of
drug interdiction programs that emphasize the
ethnic and racial characteristics of narcotics
organizations and teach the police ways to single
out cars and drivers who are smuggling.

U.S. Wrote Outline for Race Profiling, New Jersey Argues New Jersey officials contend that the reason racial
profiling is a national problem is that it was
initiated, and in many ways encouraged, by the
federal government's war on drugs. In 1986, the
Drug Enforcement Administration's Operation
Pipeline enlisted police departments across the
country to search for narcotics traffickers on major
highways and told officers, to cite one example, that
Latinos and West Indians dominated the drug trade
and therefore warranted extra scrutiny.

Since then, the D.E.A. and the Department of
Transportation have financed and taught an array of
drug interdiction programs that emphasize the
ethnic and racial characteristics of narcotics
organizations and teach the police ways to

The 2000 Election "Has
anybody even been able to agree on the time of day

Uniting A Divided Nation, Op-Ed, By Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. Elections are supposed to be about choices, and the policy choices between Gore and Bush were relatively stark. In short, the
fundamental choice was between Bush's emphasis on a greater role for state governments and Gore's emphasis on the need for
continuing a significant federal role.

But, since both campaigns knew that the nation was divided over these very policy options, neither side was confident they could win the
national debate if they revealed their true selves. So instead of making the choices clear, both candidates campaigned to conceal their
differences by tailoring and blurring their message for a relatively narrow voting market of undecided suburban independent voters.

The election confirmed the obvious. We are a divided nation. But what was the divide. The professional pundits have focused on the
division between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. But, if one looks at the electoral map, the division was as old as
the Civil War itself -- North and South. Bush won the old states' rights Confederacy and the states of small western cities and rural
communities whose politics reflect a similar ideology -- plus Ohio, Indiana and New Hampshire. Gore won the Union states of the North
and Northeast, the larger western states of California, Oregon and Washington, plus New Mexico.

The American people chose a virtual tie for governing in the White House, the U.S. House and Senate. If compared to a chess game,
Gore and Bush, Democrats and Republicans, took no chances, played a perfect conservative game and the result was a stalemate. While
the two presidential and party mates checked each other in the campaign, and neither can really be declared a winner or a loser, the
American people may very well end up the losers with neither person or party able to accomplish much. Our politics could end up in an
ugly mess and a nasty feud.

ABCNEWS.com : Nightline Index TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28

What do members of Congress think about the
never-ending presidential election? Ted
Koppel traveled to Capitol Hill to find out

Jekyll and Hyde If Mr. Bush wins the post-election, it will be,
in part, because he reverted to his true self,
and his party to its true self, after a campaign in which they persuaded
voters that they had become a kinder, gentler, more inclusive G.O.P. If
Al Gore loses the post- election, it will be, in part, because he was never
himself during the real election, but rather somebody else every week.
Therefore he could never ignite the enthusiasm of America's young, or his
own party, so he had to personally solicit supporters for his post-election
campaign.

The 2000 Election

Gore Asks Public for Patience; Bush
Starts Transition Moves;
Administration Withholds Aid

Screen Savers as Artists' Medium "Refresh: The Art of the Screen Saver" is an online
exhibition of 22 artist-created screen-saver programs,
all of which can be downloaded free. The
exhibition, curated by Mr. Buckhouse, opened Nov.
4 on the ArtMuseum.net site.

Police Seek Record of a Bookstore's Patrons nvestigators believe that if they can tie up one loose end — confirming that the books were received by the
person named on the envelope — they can be certain the recipient was the laboratory owner and they can
arrest him. Lt. Lori Moriarty, the task force commander, said that would "turn a probable cause case into
proof beyond reasonable doubt."

And the surest way to do that, Lieutenant Moriarty added, is by retrieving the sales record from Tattered
Cover, which investigators have tried through a search warrant.

But using sales receipts of books to solve a crime has raised concerns among booksellers, publishers and
privacy groups, who are watching the case closely for its implications on the First Amendment's rights of free
speech and privacy. Because of this, the store owner, Joyce Meskis, has refused to comply with the warrant,
arguing that customers, even suspected felons, have a right to privacy no matter the subject of the books they
buy.

Presidential Appointee Initiative: Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees: Table of Contents

Distributor of Flu Vaccine Comes Under Fire
The distributor, Henry Schein Inc., and its
subsidiaries are the exclusive suppliers in the
United States of vaccine made by Medeva, a British
company that is the only flu vaccine producer that
has not had manufacturing problems this year.

Some Schein customers that ordered early, at low
prices, said in interviews over the last week that
they had received only partial shipments or no
vaccine at all. At the same time, Schein is taking
new orders at higher prices, and at least some of
those orders have been quickly delivered.

ZDNet: News: ICANN names new dot-competition
The Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN)
approved seven new top-level domains
(TLDs), the suffixes attached to a Web
address. Winners are: .name for
personal Web sites; .pro for
professionals; and .museum, .aero,
and .coop for specialty Web sites run
by museums, airlines, and cooperatives, respectively. In addition, the .info
suffix would be available for any Web sites; and .biz would initially be for
businesses and would later be expanded for general use.

Britannica.com
Election Analysis and Commentary: A Selective
Guide from Britannica.com

Grassroots.com Snags Former White House Official
Political services Web site Grassroots.com has signed former White House press secretary Mike McCurry to
be its leader.

The privately held company, based in San Francisco, Wednesday appointed McCurry as its new chief
executive officer, as it gets set to launch its new line of Internet-based products and services.

McCurry, 46, who most notably served as press secretary for President Clinton from 1995 to 1998, also will
remain a Grassroots board member. McCurry replaces co-founder Craig Johnson, who served as the interim
CEO.

Founded in September of last year, Grassroots is a political news site where voters can download video of
candidates' speeches or engage in chat-room discussions about hot-button political issues. The company also
offers online services for candidates aiming to raise money, recruit volunteers and motivate last-minute voters.

The Tally on Dot-Com Deaths
The sun has set for nearly 130 Internet companies since January, leading to about 8,000 layoffs, according to
a new report.

Roughly 21 dot-coms closed down in the first half of November, nearly matching a monthly high of 22 in
October, according to a study from Internet research site Webmergers.com.

E-commerce sites, such as Furniture.com and Toysmart.com, accounted for 60 percent of the casualties.
Business-to-business companies accounted for about 20 percent of the total, with content companies such as
APBnews.com making up a quarter of that group.

The 2000 Election
Former State Senator Tom Brown, a Democrat who was chairman of the Florida Senate
Committee on Ethics and Elections in 1989 when the Legislature passed the bill creating the 5
p.m. deadline, said lawmakers assumed the secretary of state would apply common sense to
deciding when a recount was warranted.

"If we are going to allow somebody to request a recount, the intent obviously is that you
expect a recount to be included," said Mr. Brown, who is now retired and living in
Tallahassee. "That would be an extenuating circumstance."

Regarding the secretary of state's earlier position that the deadline must be enforced with
exceptions only for acts of God, Mr. Brown said, "I think that is ridiculous. She obviously
has discretion. You don't write a law giving people the ability to request a manual recount and
then say you can do the recount but then not have it counted. That is obviously an absurdity."

Candidates Use Web to Garner Support During Recount
Republicans say Gore wants to count and recount the votes until he gets the results he wants.

But on his Web site, Gore provides a seven-paragraph explanation for his decision.

"We want the true and accurate will of the people to prevail, and that means letting the legal system run its
course," the notice says. "If at the end of that process, George Bush is the victor, we will respect that result."

Fairness for Whom?
Fairness for Whom?

By BOB HERBERT

Take a deep breath. Whatever happens in this election —
whichever candidate is unfortunate enough to win — the
country will survive.

The 2000 Election


By DAVID GONZALEZ and DEXTER FILKINS

WEST PALM BEACH, Nov. 12
— Ron Klein, a Democratic
state senator here, thought
something was amiss minutes after he cast
his vote and left his polling place in Boca
Raton at 7:05 Election Day morning. He
had done a double take when he saw that the
second hole in his punch- card ballot did not
align with the names of the Democratic
candidates, Al Gore and Joseph I.
Lieberman. He voted for the Democrats
anyway and drove to another precinct to
campaign.

"There were a group of people walking out,
and they were totally upset," Mr. Klein said.
"They said they didn't know who they voted
for."

Citibank Debuts Online Person-to-Person Payment System
Citibank this week launched its own online person-to-person payment system in an attempt to
rival popular services such as PayPal.
The new system, called C2it, allows people to transfer funds to others by using the Internet.
Such services have proved popular among online auction users, small businesses that don't accept
credit cards and people who want to pay bills to vendors that can't receive other electronic payments.

C2it users can move funds from any bank account, brokerage account or credit card in their name
at any financial institution and have those funds credited to any credit card, deposited into any bank
account or issued in the form of a check, said Sami Siddiqui, head of the new service.

Ballots Need an Upgrade -- Duh!
Down in Rio, they're laughing at big, powerful America.

Thousands of Brazilians, who vote using ATM-style machines at their
precincts, must be sending incredulous e-mails to their expat pals in Palm
Beach County, Florida: "You fellas use punch cards?"

BW Online | November 9, 2000 | Is It an Encyclopedia or a Web Site?



When Eric Weisstein was a forgetful freshman at Cornell University, he began
jotting down useful facts in an effort to better remember fine details. These
notes covered everything from music to math, from the meaning of the bass clef
to the number of times physicist John Bardeen won the Nobel prize. Weisstein
scribbled through his master's and doctoral studies in planetary astronomy. By
1995, his math notes had become the basis of a popular Web site dubbed Eric's
Treasure Trove of Math.

Figuring he had plenty of solid material, Weisstein asked a number of publishers if they might be interested in
publishing his math encyclopedia. Technical publisher CRC Press took the bait and published the 1,969-page,
Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics in 1998.

MATH PROBLEM. But the once-amicable relationship between CRC and Weisstein has since disintegrated into
a litigious slugfest. After technical software company Wolfram Research Inc. (WRI) began sponsoring Weisstein's
Treasure Trove site in June, 1999, CRC claimed that Weisstein's continuing work on the Web infringed on CRC's
copyright. On Oct. 23, a U.S. District Court in Illinois, at the behest of CRC, forced Weisstein to close down the
math portion of his site.

ClickZ : Developing a Pricing Strategy: Part 1
This is the first of two articles on
developing a pricing strategy for Internet
products and services.

There is a continuum that is used to develop a pricing
strategy. On one end is your cost to develop the product and
your profit targets (margins). Customer demand, competition,
and other market forces define the other end of the
continuum.

This first article focuses on margins, the measure of cost and
profitability of a product. It is the basis for determining the
financial success of your products and therefore your
responsibility as a product manager.

ClickZ : The Commodification of Online Media
Is media a commodity or not? Are price and
service the only distinguishing factors that
a buyer should take into consideration
when putting together a media buy? Is
there ever a consideration for quality, and does that quality
make a difference to an advertiser's bottom line?

ClickZ : Finding Advertisers for Your Publication
Finding advertisers and sponsors ain't easy.

Think about it. Most of the ad money being
spent these days -- at least the online ad
money being tracked -- is going through interactive agencies
or divisions of ad agencies.

The decisions are being made by media buyers, planners, and
directors who have game plans that you're not privy to,
budgets that you cannot know, rules that you'll find out
about when you break them, and clients whom they would
prefer you never contact.

The 2000 Election
Door by door in the sprawling Lakes of Delray complex, north of Fort Lauderdale, and south of
West Palm Beach, it was the same story. Many of them did get it right, they said.

In the precinct, made up largely of the Lakes of Delray condominiums and similar
communities, an even 1,500 people voted for Mr. Gore, 151 voted for Gov. George W. Bush
of Texas, and 47 for Mr. Buchanan.

Residents here complained about the ballots long before the polls closed, refuting the argument
by some Republicans that they were trying to deliver Florida for Mr. Gore long after the polls
closed.

But people here said they had criticized the ballots long before they knew that Palm Beach
County would become such a big story in the race. On Election Day, they called newspapers
and radio and television stations, complaining that the ballot was confusing. They called
election officials and state and local politicians.

Electoral College-Home Page


Federal Register
Home Page

Techweb > News > Digital Millennium Copyright Act > Librarians Slam Digital Copyright Ruling > October 30, 2000
Library associations contend that a Library of Congress ruling
last week destroys the "fair use" principles that govern
published materials.

Copyright Office Issues Unusual Rule
Copyright Office Issues Unusual Rule

By CARL S. KAPLAN

t's not every day that the federal government gives its blessing to
hacking. But that's what happened last week when the U.S.
Copyright Office issued a special rule clarifying a new federal law
that governs copyright in the digital age.

In a nutshell, the Copyright Office said that the new law, the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, permits people in certain
circumstances to break through the technological barriers that
safeguard lists of blocked Web sites maintained by many types of
filtering software.

This means that critics of filtering software are free under the new law
to hack their way past encryption schemes to get their hands on the
so-called blacklist of banned sites. The loophole for censorware
hackers is designed to further the public debate about the use and
value of blocking software, according to the Copyright Office

Bill Gates Turns Skeptical on Digital Solution's Scope
The premise was that "market drivers"
could be used "to bring the benefits of connectivity
and participation in the e-economy to all of the
world's six billion people," according to conference
materials, but the speaker would have little of it.

"I mean, do people have a clear view of what it
means to live on $1 a day?" the speaker, William
H. Gates, asked. "There's no electricity in that
house. None."

When a moderator brought up solar power, Mr.
Gates shot back, "No! You can't afford a solar power
system for less than $1 a day." And, "You're just
buying food, you're trying to stay alive."

It is a theme to which Mr. Gates, the world's richest
man, returns in an interview at his office here at the
Microsoft Corporation, the giant software maker he
founded. Pacing the room, waving his hands, he
conjures up an image of an African village that
receives a computer.

"The mothers are going to walk right up to that
computer and say, My children are dying, what can
you do?" Mr. Gates says. "They're not going to sit
there and like, browse eBay or something. What
they want is for their children to live. They don't
want their children's growth to be stunted. Do you
really have to put in computers to figure that out?"

ClickZ : Building an Effective Linking Strategy
Thursday :: 10.12.2000
Building an Effective Linking
Strategy
› › › BUILDING LINKS

What's New With Search Engine Watch
The Pay For Placement page has received a major update that summarizes major non-banner advertising programs that
are in place at various services.

Submitting For Free
"Submitting For Free" has been updated

Paid Inclusion At Search Engines Gains Ground
Paid Inclusion At Search Engines Gains Ground

Inbox
The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format:

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/

Inbox
In The News

LAPD to be Policed
"Outside Supervision of LAPD Approved" -- AP (via YahooNews!)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001103/us/lapd_consent_decree_2.html
"Defense in Los Angeles police corruption trial to finish Friday" -- CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/11/03/lapd.trial/index.html
"One Bad Cop" -- New York Times Magazine [free registration required]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001001mag-lapd.html
"Rampart Area Corruption Incident" -- LAPD Board of Inquiry [.pdf, 362p.]
http://www.lapdonline.org/pdf_files/pc/boi_pub.pdf
"An Independent Analysis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Board of Inquiry Report on the Rampart Scandal"
http://www.usc.edu/dept/law/faculty/chemerinsky/rampart_finalrep.html
LAPD Homepage
http://www.lapdonline.org/index.htm
U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/
"Cochran takes case of actor killed by officer" -- Mercury News
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/costume01.htm
Yesterday, the mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, reluctantly agreed to allow an outside monitor to oversee the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for the
next five years rather than face the federal civil rights lawsuit threatened by the Department of Justice (DoJ). The consent decree is the latest development in what has
come to be known as "the Rampart scandal," a corruption scandal that came to light last September when officer Rafael Perez gave testimony against the police as part
of a plea bargain. Since then, more than 100 criminal convictions have been overturned, thousands more are still being looked at, and over 70 police officers are being
investigated. The first corruption trial against four LAPD officers may draw to a close as early as next week, and meanwhile, some have raised new criticism against
the department after the recent fatal shooting of actor Anthony Lee at a Halloween party.

AP (via YahooNews!) and CNN cover the latest news, with the former reporting on yesterday's agreement between the city and the Justice Department and the latter
reviewing the progress of the trial of the four officers charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and false arrest. The New York Times Magazine's lengthy article
from last month, "One Bad Cop," gives the background on the Rampart scandal and Rafael Perez's career and testimony. On March 1, the LAPD Board of Inquiry
(BOI) released the results of its investigation, "Rampart Area Corruption Incident." The report determines that "the Rampart corruption incident occurred because a
few individuals decided to engage in blatant misconduct and, in some cases, criminal behavior." Nonetheless, the BOI recommended 108 changes to departmental
policy and procedure (see the March 10, 2000 Scout Report for a full description of the report). In turn, the Police Protective League commissioned an analysis of the
BOI report in which University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky argues that the BOI minimizes the issues it was tasked to address and "fails
to recognize that the central problem is the culture of the Los Angeles Police Department." The LAPD and the DoJ Websites offer extensive coverage of their
activities above and beyond the Rampart scandal. Finally, the Mercury News reports that Johnnie Cochran is representing Anthony Lee's family in their case against
the LAPD. [TK]
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The Scout Report for Social Sciences - October 31, 2000





One Week Before the Election, Nader's Potential Impact Looms Large
1. Yahoo! Full Coverage: "Greens' Nader on a Tear in Toss-Up States" (Reuters)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001030/pl/campaign_nader_dc_8.html
2. The New York Times: "5-State Tour Seeks to Shift Nader Voters to Gore Camp"
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/30/politics/30NADE.html
3. The Christian Science Monitor: "Nader's voters: steadfast . . . or switchable?"
http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/wh2000/stories/topnews.htm
4. Salon.com: "Gore Goes Green"
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/27/green/index.html?CP=YAH&DN=110
5. Salon.com: "Unsafe in Any State" http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/28/nader/index.html
6. Counterpunch: "A Vote for Nader Is . . . A Vote for Nader"
http://www.counterpunch.org/
7. New York Times_ Special Section: The 2000 Election
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/elections/index.html
8. Voteswap 2000
http://voteswap2000.com/
Over the weekend, Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman urged Nader-supporters to consider that a vote for Nader could well end up giving George W.
Bush the White House. Lieberman was echoing the thoughts of a growing number of liberals, including Gloria Steinem and the presidents of the Sierra Club and the
National Organization for Women, who are stumping for Gore in selected toss-up states. Such concerns are justified by recent polling data that give Nader sufficient
support in states like Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan to tip the balance from Gore to Bush, assuming, as most polls show, that Nader draws
more from potential Gore voters than potential Bush voters. In this same vein, some earlier prominent, Nader-led activists, dubbed "Nader's Raiders," have shifted their
loyalties and, at the prospect of a Bush presidency, turned to Gore. But the Green Party's candidate is himself undeterred, stating frankly on ABC News's This Week
Sunday that "if he [Gore] cannot defeat the bumbling Texas governor with that horrific record, what good is he? It should be a slam dunk." Analysts are divided over
whether would-be Nader voters will break at the last minute for Gore, accepting the thinking of democratic leaders that only a vote for a potential winner means anything,
or whether they will stick with Nader, using their vote, it would seem, to express a fundamental dissatisfaction with the current political system.

Yahoo! posts a Reuters's article (1) summarizing Nader's surge in key battleground states. The New York Times (2) offers coverage of a campaign by prominent
progressives to convince Nader voters in Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin to vote for Gore. An article in the electronic edition of The
Christian Science Monitor (3) highlights voters on the left and their struggle to choose between the electable, but very moderate, Gore and the apparently unelectable, but
staunchly progressive, Nader. In their "on the road" coverage of the campaigns, Salon.com (4) describes Gore's efforts to highlight his environmentalism on the stump to
persuade swing voters to choose him. Social historian and former sixties activist Todd Gitlin, makes the argument (5) that a vote for Nader is irresponsible, given the
consequences of a Bush presidency, and Alexander Cockburn's online edition of Counterpunch (6) disputes such an argument. The New York Times has posted a special
section (7) on the campaign with links to articles on not only the Presidential race but congressional and gubernatorial races nationwide; of special interest are the ongoing
estimates drawn from tracking polls of the electoral college count (click on "political points"). Voteswap 2000 (8) allows Nader and Gore supporters in different states to
agree to "swap votes" and offers links to similar sites and Websites about the candidates and the Electoral College. [DC]
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From The Scout Report for Social Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/