WebTop Search Rage Study
How long is too long until searching the web drives people crazy? On average, 12 minutes, the survey found. The survey also shows that if searching could provide results in 3 minutes or less, only 7 percent of people would be frustrated.

How long does it take before you get frustrated searching the Web for accurate information?

Longer than 15 minutes
49%
11-15 minutes
13%
6-10 minutes
15%
4-5 minutes
12%
2-3 minutes
3%
1 minute
1%
0-30 seconds
3%
Don't know
4%


In a separate question, "Do you feel that Web searching could be more efficient?," the vast majority said yes: 86 percent. Only 9 percent felt things were fine as they are.

WebTop http://www.webtop.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/02-searchrage.html

Going the Way of the Victrola
The same expanding technology that improves the capabilities of the PC also shrinks the size of the old recording hardware. Singers can use tiny microphones made of lightweight plastic. The sound quality will get better and you'll soon be able to buy them wherever batteries or blank cassettes are available. The daunting multitrack tasks that once could only be accomplished in the recording studio are now possible at home using innovative music software. Computerized mixing boards can already do more than the giant, complicated boards still found in most recording studios. The art of sequencing and sampling might well become a substitute for musical instruments, requiring a new sort of virtuosity.

Still in an embryonic stage, the making of music on the PC should eventually produce work rivaling that made by today's recording artists and composers — even surpassing them. The use of the PC isn't just a hobby anymore. The musical geniuses of tomorrow won't even have to leave their homes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/technology/11WAGE.html?pagewanted=all

Strike the Band: Pop Music Without Musicians
Once mere "records" of musical events, recordings were now something much more exotic and autonomous, painstakingly layered
confections. But even after multitrack recording had severed music making from real time, somebody still had to play that guitar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/11/technology/11SCHE.html?pagewanted=all

Students, Mindful of Columbine, Break Silence to Report Threats
Psychologists from the Secret Service, with whom Mr. Modzeleski works, found that in almost three-quarters of 37 school shootings since 1974, the assailant told someone in advance about his plan, almost always another student.

That means many school shootings could be averted if students shared information with teachers, administrators or parents, said Marisa Reddy, a director of the Secret Service's Safe School Initiative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/10RAMP.html?pagewanted=all

The Scout Report - February 9, 2001 Google Now Indexes PDF Files
http://www.google.com/
The indomitable Google has recently begun indexing content in .pdf files, allowing searchers a significant peek into
the "invisible Web," the large area of online content not covered by most search engines. PDF files are differentiated
by a [PDF] label and instead of a cached version, Google provides a link to a plain text version of the document.
Keeping a plain text version allows Google to apply its PageRank technology and integrate .pdf content with normal
search returns. Test searches did not turn up a large number of .pdf files, but adding "pdf" to the query produced a
more significant proportion in the returns, although they were not always the majority. [MD]
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/2001/scout-010209.html

Selection of Net Suffixes Defended Vinton G. Cerf, the chairman of
the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, or
Icann, said that the selection of
new suffixes, also called generic
top-level domains, last fall was
essentially an "experiment." The
objective, he said, was to proceed
slowly and get a "test case" of how
the new domains influence the
market.

But Dr. Cerf admitted that there
was room for improvement. "We
need to re-examine the procedures
that we used," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/technology/09ICAN.html?pagewanted=all

Kafkaesque? Big Brother? Finding the Right Literary Metaphor for Net Privacy
The slogan is great to toss around at conferences
and parties. But people who take books and ideas
seriously might well ask: is Big Brother -- the
personification of an all-seeing totalitarian
government depicted in George Orwell's novel
"1984" -- the best metaphor to describe the privacy
problems of the Internet Age?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/02/technology/02CYBERLAW.html?pagewanted=all

How to Create a Shortage In a Skilled-Labor Market
TO alleviate apparent shortages of computer programmers, President Clinton and Congress have agreed to raise a quota on H-1B's, the temporary visas for skilled foreigners. The annual limit will go to 200,000 next year, up from 65,000 only three years ago.

The imported workers, most of whom come from India, are said to be needed because American schools do not graduate enough young people with science and math skills. Microsoft's chairman, William H. Gates, and Intel's chairman, Andrew S. Grove, told Congress in June that more visas were only a stopgap until education improved.

But the crisis is a mirage. High-tech companies portray a shortage, yet it is our memories that are short: only yesterday there was a glut of science and math graduates.

The computer industry took advantage of that glut by reducing wages. This discouraged youths from entering the field, creating the temporary shortages of today. Now, taking advantage of a public preconception that school failures have created the problem, industry finds a ready audience for its demands to import workers.

This newspaper covered the earlier surplus extensively. In 1992, it reported that 1 in 5 college graduates had a job not requiring a college degree. A 1995 article headlined "Supply Exceeds Demand for Ph.D.'s in Many Science Fields" cited nationwide unemployment of engineers, mathematicians and scientists. "Overproduction of Ph.D. degrees," it noted, "seems to be highest in computer science."

Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer who served as vice chairman of the Commission on Immigration Reform, said in 1996 that there was "an employer's market" for technology workers, partly because of post-cold-war downsizing in aerospace.

In fields with real labor scarcity, wages rise. Yet despite accounts of dot-com entrepreneurs' becoming millionaires, trends in computer technology pay do not confirm a need to import legions of programmers.

Salary offers to new college graduates in computer science averaged $39,000 in 1986 and had declined by 1994 to $33,000 (in constant dollars). The trend reversed only in the late 1990's.

The West Coast median salary for experienced software engineers was $71,100 in 1999, up only 10 percent (in constant dollars) from 1990. This pay growth of about 1 percent a year suggests no labor shortage.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/09/biztech/articles/06lessons.html?pagewanted=all

Cyber-Serfdom
Then there was the panel about the 21st-century corporation, during which participants described this age of
digital Darwinism in chilling terms: The key to winning in business today is adapt or die, get wired or get
killed, work 24 hours a day from everywhere or be left behind. Finally, during the question time, Howard
Stringer, chairman of Sony America, stood up and said: "Doesn't anyone here think this sounds like a vision
of hell? While we are all competing or dying, when will there be time for sex or music or books? Stop the
world, I want to get off."
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/30/opinion/30FRIE.html?pagewanted=all

Violence Finds a Niche in Children's Cartoons
A pug-nosed thug kicks in an elderly
storekeeper's face. Then he punches a
young heroine in the eye and cracks her in
the small of the back with a heavy bar stool. Her
limp frame collapses to the ground as he stands over
her with his gun drawn and pointed at her head.

Two young boys are in a fistfight on a moving
boxcar. A friend tries to intervene. But an older and
very respected boy advises: let the fight continue.
Sometimes, he says, friends need to bare fists in
order to strengthen the bonds of friendship. They
resume.

A little girl karate-kicks another little girl so hard
that she flies through the air. Her head smashes into
a cement post. She is knocked cold.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/business/28TOON.html?pagewanted=all

ClickZ : Top Reasons for Abandoned Online Purchases
Apparently online retailers are losing approximately $3.8 billion in revenue due to the fact that four out of five consumers give up before completing an online purchase.

The reasons given for abandoning purchases are varied. Of consumers who bailed out of a purchase, 52 percent said that too much data was required.

http://clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/article.html?article=3178

A Vision for Books That Exults in Happenstance
… the World Wide Web, contrary to gloomy predictions, may be the best thing to happen to literature and book publishing since Gutenberg. While publishers tear their hair out over slender profit margins and worry that the Internet will be the end of books as people know them, Mr. Epstein says he believes that the Web will save the book business, enable books to be published more cheaply, and bring bigger royalties for corporations and authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/technology/13EPST.html?pagewanted=all

streamingmedia.com : business - technology - content
Once the nesting ground for a pre-pubescent South Park, the Web has become a bastion for animation. Contributor Steve Tanner tells us how animation has made its mark as the dominant form of entertainment content on the Web.
http://www.streamingmedia.com

Do You Stream in Color?

Then You Need This Website

streamingmedia.com : business - [technology] - content Creating Rich Media with QuickTime, Part I
http://www.streamingmedia.com/tutorials/view.asp?tutorial_id=107

Link Analysis Can Help (or Harm) Your Web Site

Search engines look not just at your site but at other sites that link to yours. The search engines count those linked sites toward your site's ranking.

All other factors aside, if one site has 10 sites linking to it and another has 500, the one with 500 does better in search engine
rankings. But that's not all.

http://www.workz.com/content/2094.asp

Something to Make You Go Hmm…

internet.com's Electronic Commerce Guide - EC Tips : Don't Try This at Home

Before you go ahead and buy the entire "Web Design for Dummies, Idiots, Novices and Amateurs" collection, realize that there is a better method for approaching this important component of your e-business.

Using a professional Web designer could add a tremendous amount of value to your online appearance. For instance, did you know that it has become a standard to click on a company logo to be taken back to the home page? Or it could be counter-productive to the efficiency of the site to make each click yield a new browser window?

Those are the type of details that contribute to the sum product of the Web site. A professional designer will invoke industry standards while incorporating the personality of the e-business to create a unique and efficient site.

http://ecommerce.internet.com/solutions/ectips/article/0,1467,6311_548951,00.html

An Interview with Paco Underhill Author of “Why We Buy”

BW Online | January 4, 2001 | "E-Commerce Failed on Its Own Merits"

Almost everything I predicted two years ago in terms of why we buy has come true. The Internet bubble has burst. And the things that sell well on the Web generally have no taste, feel, or smell. The Web has succeeded where there's a fundamental, profound disconnect between the manufacturer and the bricks-and-mortar retail chains. For example, books, where publishers are imminently closer to the authors than the reading public. Music, since the labels are closer to the producing artists than to the consumers. Movies. Pornography. And stocks.

People also felt the Net was going to be some global community, and that's proven not to be true. The future of the Web isn't global -- it's local. It's a way on a very tactical level for people to facilitate their lives as the technology exists wherever they are. For example, here in the U.S., we have a wonderful delivery system for products: mail, FedEx, UPS. Whatever criticisms we may level at it, it's remarkably effective and remarkably cheap. We have a nation that's spread out, and retail has to follow where people live.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2001/nf2001014_088.htm

A Source for Firewall Reviews on ZDNet

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner: Personal Firewalls Personal Firewalls
By Matthew P. Graven, PC Magazine
January 3, 2001 4:46 PM ET

While you browse the latest headlines or purchase a cashmere sweater on the Web, some hacker could be lurking in the background, stealing your credit card numbers or rifling through the data stored on your system. Simply put, your Internet connection is a wide-open path to your PC that anyone connected to the Web with malicious intent and technology skills can skulk down. Broadband connections, because they're always on, are most vulnerable, but dial-up access also carries risks.

http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/main/0,10228,2669359,00.html

Hemming in the World Wide Web
If the Internet is anything, at least according to its prophets, it is a place without boundaries. Real world geography, with tiresome passports and tedious border checkpoints, does not matter.

This is not an appealing notion to many of the world's governments, which would much prefer to control the flow of information across their national borders, just as they try to control the flow of everything else, from people to money. Their distaste for borderlessness, in fact, may soon give cyberspace the same jigsaw-puzzle appearance as the terrestrial world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07GLAT.html?pagewanted=allb

The Y2K Issue Shows Up, a Year Late The Y2K computer problem hit Norway's national railroad a year later than expected.

The problem was discovered when none of the company's 16 new airport express trains or 13 high-speed, long-distance Signatur trains would start early in the morning of Dec. 31.

Apparently, the computers on the trains did not recognize the date, something not anticipated by experts who had checked the systems thoroughly before Jan. 1, 2000, a spokesman for the train manufacturer said.

The problem was quickly solved temporarily by resetting the computers to Dec. 1, 2000, and the trains started upon ignition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/03/world/03NORW.html

The Search Engine Report, January 3, 2001, Number 50 Survey Finds Search Engine Referrals Low

New statistics from WebSideStory's StatMarket service show that search engines generate only 7 percent of traffic to web sites, far below the leading methods of direct navigation or following
links. The low figure is very surprising, because other surveys have consistently found that people report search engines as one of the top ways they find web sites.


The StatMarket survey found that either direct navigation or using bookmarks was the most popular way of reaching web sites, generating 47 percent of traffic. Following links was the
second most popular, generating 46 percent of traffic. Included in the links total were clicks on banner ads.

The statistics are gathered by measuring traffic to 200,000 sites that use WebSideStory's HitBox tracking service. These sites include everything from large businesses, to hobbyists, to porn
sites. The statistics are as measured on Dec. 17, 2000.

(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-smkt)
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

The Search Engine Report, January 3, 2001, Number 50 Paid Submission & Other Changes At NBCi

NBCi has rolled out a paid submission service that allows faster review of sites for inclusion into its main directory. In addition, the service, formerly known as Snap, has also made some
changes to how sites are listed in its results.
(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-nbci)


Go Gains Paid Inclusion System

Go.com has become the second major crawler-based search engine to roll out a paid inclusion program. Its new US $199 "Premium Service" will add any URL submitted to its crawler-based
results within 48 hours and revisit that URL on a weekly basis, for one year.
(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-go)

LookSmart Ups Basic Submit Price

The price of LookSmart's "Basic Submit" service has been increased from $79 to $99. Basic Submit guarantees that a site will be reviewed within eight weeks for possible inclusion into the directory.

Pay For Placement?
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/paid-listings.html

You'll find past articles about the LookSmart program and similar paid submit systems on this page.



http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - Disclosure Revisited
Sm@rt Partner: Very briefly, what is the disclosure debate all about, and why has it been so divisive?
Marcus Ranum:There are a few reasons I think my views are so unpopular. One, security practitioners are curious people and tend to be control freaks, so they really want to know what's going on. Two, there are a lot of folks out there who are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. Really what these people want to do is have all of the privileges and practices of being hackers with none of the downside. They want to play, they want to act tough, they want to go to DefCon and dress like goths. They want to do all of this nonsense, and they also want to get paid big salaries and be treated like responsible practitioners. I'm trying to call them on that, and they get defensive.
http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/column/0,4712,2664306,00.html

CNET.com - News - E-Business - For 2001, futurists are being a bit on the shy side "I predict the Internet...will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse," Bob Metcalfe, inventor and 3Com founder, said in 1995.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4238476.html"

Britannica.com
Enjoy a full season's worth of Britannica.com's "Annotated Dennis Miller"
This is totally wild!!
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/original/article/0,5744,12870,00.html

Big Brother Knocked in 2000
Workplace surveillance was the leading privacy concern in 2000, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based nonprofit that performs research and educates the public on privacy issues.
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0_4_4302729_00.html?pagewanted=all

ZDNet: News: eBay targets offline deal making
eBay is cracking down on offline business deals between its buyers and sellers that circumvent the fees normally paid to the online auction company.
Effective immediately, eBay will first warn, then suspend, members who use their eBay connection to conduct business offline. For example, it is against eBay rules for a person to contact a losing bidder on eBay to offer that person the same product without going through eBay.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2669105,00.html

Jan/Feb 01: The Technology Review Ten
What if you had a crystal ball that foretold the future of technology? Imagine, for example, if you had known in 1990 just how big the Internet was going to be 10 years hence.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/jan01/TR10_toc.html

Users cry foul with Netscape 6
Many users, turned critics, have reported that the product seems unfinished and the company would have better served users by waiting for the completion of the open-source Mozilla browser, set to be released in early 2001.

User complaints about Netscape 6 vary from lack of stability, to performance drags caused by new customizable "skins", to the lack of business-oriented functions.

Officials at AOL's Netscape subsidiary said they stand by the release of 6.0, and that it provides great improvements in personalization and user-requested features.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/12/22/001222hnnetscape6.xml

Five Questions: Renewing a Union in the New Economy Q. Considering that high-technology workers earn
more than most other workers and are so highly
skilled, why should they be interested in a union?
Q. With so many high-tech workers jumping between companies or working as freelancers, how can unions
help the high-tech work force?
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/24/business/24FIVE.html

PBS - JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns: Home
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/"

WebReview.com: Swaine's Frames: The A2Z of B2B B2B is big business, but P2P is where the action
is. To stay ahead of the curve, though, you
need to know what the next hot x2x will be. If
you're confused by all these numeric acronyms,
or acronums, here's a little list that you can
tack up on your cubicle wall.
http://webreview.com/swaine/2000/12_22_00.shtml

The New York Times: Privacy on the Internet
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/index-privacy.html

Canada Strengthens Internet Privacy A new law to
protect personal information disclosed
through electronic transactions will take
effect in Canada on Jan. 1, and it will eventually
affect all domestic companies and those in the
United States that have Canadian subsidiaries.

Initially, the new law, the Personal Information
Protection and Electronic Documents Act, will
cover only companies that are federally regulated —
mainly banks and airlines. But by 2004, anyone
doing business in Canada must comply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/technology/23PRIV.html?pagewanted=all

Traditional Chains Making Inroads in the Online Market Internet shoppers have flocked
increasingly to affiliates of conventional stores —
Wal-Mart Stores, Kmart, Toys "R" Us, J. C.
Penney and Best Buy — compounding the
difficulties of the increasingly endangered Web
start-ups that led the way last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/23/technology/23ONLI.html?pagewanted=all

Protest Over Web Filtering Business some of the filtering companies'
business plans include tracking students' Web wanderings and selling
the data to market research firms. In addition, one company's software
includes advertising to students on every screen.

"We have to ask, what are these companies' intentions with respect to
our kids, and are their activities solely dedicated to improving the
educational environment?" asked Nancy Willard, who heads the
Responsible Netizen Center for Advanced Technology in Education
at the University of Oregon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/21/technology/21FILT.html

ClickZ : Site Design With Advertisers in Mind You've got a niche-oriented site that has
at least 30,000 visitors a month. You have
the email addresses of at least 5,000 of
those visitors.
http://clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/article.html?article=3027

We Now Interrupt Your Browsing for This Commercial Message Until recently, most Internet advertisements have been relegated to
the margins of Web pages — and easy to overlook. What advertisers
want, these dot-coms have been painfully learning, are catchy,
riveting and compelling advertisements; in other words, impossible
to ignore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/technology/18STEL.html?pagewanted=all

E-Commerce Report: Internet Merchants Adapt to Survive one question for 2001 is whether
any pure-play Internet merchants will survive intact.
According to industry executives and analysts, few,
in fact, will. And those companies that do hang on
will look profoundly different from the predictions of
12 months ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/technology/18COMM.html?pagewanted=all

Outlook 2001: Can the New Economy Navigate Rougher Waters? This is the third or fourth new
economy since the 19th century — each one offering a similar
promise — and yet none could stop a persistent downturn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/business/18ECON.html?pagewanted=all

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - Personalization Bill Of Rights The dark side of web personalization is the potential for privacy violation, as
e-marketers amass more and more personal information on consumers.
http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/column/0,4712,2660835,00.html

The First One's Free, Kid / Refresh Daily / a column perpetrated by David Fiedler / WebDeveloper.com ® The First One's Free, Kid
Drug dealers attempt to get people hooked on their wares to insure
a healthy downstream market. Now a major Internet player seems
to be operating the same way, by planning to charge money for the
free services they built their reputation on.
http://webdeveloper.com/refresh/refresh_121500.html

Aliases Subject of Internet Libel Case "There are a lot of areas in law where the offline and online worlds are treated similarly," he said. "Libel is
one of those. If you libel someone anonymously and your ID is discovered, the law of libel is going to apply.
It's that way on the Net and that way off the Net."

Nor is anonymous speech, uttered on a wild and woolly online message board, subject to lesser standards of
care than anonymous speech published in a newspaper…
There's one big difference between defamatory speech in the online and offline worlds, however, said Professor
Lidsky of the University of Florida. On the Internet, the ordinary person is a publisher, and thus the
possibility that a small fry can become a defamation defendant is magnified.

After all, if the Internet didn't exist, the defendant in the Graham case may have simply talked around a water
cooler and no suit would have been brought…
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/technology/15CYBERLAW.htm

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - Microsoft Supports Windows Media Services On Linux Remember when Microsoft said that the only way any of its products would
ever show up on Linux would be over its dead body? Bring out your dead!

Microsoft isn't actually moving the Windows Media Services (WMS) server
to Linux. That's still a Windows-only play. Instead, they're doing the next
best thing: cutting a deal with a company to allow Windows Media Format
(WMF) streams to be served up from Linux servers.

Microsoft has licensed StarBak Communications, a small Ohio company to
deliver Microsoft's media streams on StarBak's Torrent streaming media
network appliance lines and streaming media cache products using its
reverse engineered WMF server.

The kicker? StarBak will be delivering Microsoft proprietary media services
from embedded Linux systems. Yes, that's right; Microsoft is officially
blessing Windows server functionality delivered from a Linux platform.
http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/news/0,4538,2664804,00.htm

Sell Goods or Services on your Web Site Sell Goods or Services on your Web Site
http://www.workz.com/content/446.asp

Study Finds That Caching by Browsers Creates a Threat to Surfers' Privacy Browsers speed up Web use by storing, or caching, recently viewed Web pages, or at least elements of them,
on their user's hard drive. The next time the user summons that page, the browser speeds up its retrieval by
pulling it from the hard drive rather than going out and extracting it from the Internet. (Not all pages can be
cached. Sports, news, weather and other pages that are frequently updated are designed in a way to block the
process, at least for content. But portions of even these pages, like logos and page design elements, are
generally cached to help speed up downloads.)

As a browser cache gradually accumulates pages, it effectively becomes a detailed electronic record of its user's
Web browsing. For that reason, Web browsers have several security elements to prevent outsiders from
reading their contents.

The cache attack method discovered by Dr. Felten and Mr. Schneider does not break that security barrier.
What they have found, however, is a way for outsiders to probe caches to see if they hold files from specific
Web pages. If attackers find the files they're seeking, it's a clear sign that the browser user has recently visited
the site that produced those files.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/technology/14PRIV.html?pagewanted=all

Stolen Credit Data Put Online An online security expert said such attacks could largely be avoided if companies kept sensitive data on
computers separate from those running their Web sites. "Your credit card is only as secure as the Web site
it's going on," said the expert, B. K. DeLong of Attrition.org, a nonprofit computer security site.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/technology/13HACK.html

As Boldest E-Commerce Ventures Fall, Modest Dreamers Fly On If anything is unarguable amid all the dashed hopes
and wagging fingers, it is that it takes longer to
change the world, or even build a business, than it
does to make a pretty Web site. The real effect of
the Internet remains to be seen.

Deregulation Called Blow to Minorities The 1996 landmark law that was
warmly embraced by the Clinton administration and many
Republicans as a way to begin deregulating the nation's
telecommunications industry has had the unintended effect of raising
substantial new barriers for companies controlled by minorities and
women, new independent studies commissioned by the federal
government have found.
"Today small firms face barriers erected by deregulation and consolidation in both wireless and broadcast," one of
the studies said. "Minorities and women confront those same barriers; and yet those obstacles stand high atop a
persistent legacy of discrimination in the capital markets, industry, advertising and community — and prior F.C.C.
policies, which worsened the effects of discrimination."

"The barriers to entry have been raised so high that, left standing, they appear virtually insurmountable," the study
concluded. "Minority, women and small-business ownership in these industries is diminishing at such an alarming
rate that many we spoke with felt we had passed the point of no return."

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/12/business/12BARR.html

ZDNet: News: Personal firewalls: Not so safe? many of these personal firewalls have a design that's
easy to compromise with just a few lines of code,
according to several sources. In fact, to prove the point, one
source sent code to eWeek with the claim that it
compromised Sygate Technologies Inc.'s Personal
Firewall. But the source said it would work on Symantec
Corp.'s Norton Personal Firewall and others, as well.
eWeek Labs tested the code and confirmed that it will open
a back door in several personal firewalls.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2663028,00.html

Is privacy possible in the digital age? How much can Internet companies learn about you while you're surfing? Quite a lot,
actually. As you surf, prying eyes can learn more and more about you -- your likes and
dislikes, your habits, your purchase history. Here's a hypothetical example of one surfer's
day online.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/498514.asp?cp1=1

ClickZ : How to Join the Online Conversation: Part 1 Consider rethinking the ways you've always done things.
These days, web consumers are much more savvy and aware
of time wasters and marketing ploys, so review those areas
that may grow unwieldy if left unchecked -- like FAQs and
in-depth content.
http://www.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/article.html?article=2755

ClickZ : What Makes a Site Link-Worthy? Because useful content gets linked.

Recent articles written by Eric Ward:
›› What Makes a Site Link-Worthy?
›› A Link Too Far: Understanding Link Depth Origination
›› What Your Link Request Should Contain and Why
›› Link Popularity Is Not Your Only Linking Goal
›› Building an Effective Linking Strategy

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Online Advertisers Pay Donors' Tabs The Hunger Site was the brainchild of John Breen, a computer programmer from Bloomington, Ind., who
created a site showing a map of the world, with one country darkening every 3.6 seconds to represent a death
from hunger. The sponsors agreed to pay the United Nations food program for each click on the "Donate Free
Food" button; only one click a day by each visitor would be counted. But as the number of visitors
skyrocketed, the time and costs involved in running the site rose, too, and by late last year, Mr. Breen was
overwhelmed. In February, he sold the site for an undisclosed price to GreaterGood, a Seattle-based online
shopping mall that gave part of its sales to charity.

Since then, the site has become more obviously commercial, offering extra donations if visitors buy holiday
wreaths or Hunger Site hats, or click the link to Amazon.com and make a first-time purchase there.

GreaterGood, which has created five more click-to-donate sites since buying the Hunger Site, takes a 25
percent cut of the donations to cover its costs, and has recently been having cash-flow problems.

Online Advertisers Pay Donors' Tabs It was so simple: Go to the computer, sign on to
TheHungerSite.com, click the "Donate Free Food" button, and, with
each click, every business advertising on the site would donate a
half-cent to the United Nations World Food Program, enough to buy
a quarter-cup of grain for the world's poorest people.

But these days, the Hunger Site has hit rocky times. In November, the United Nations World Food Program
suddenly ended its participation, concerned about the finances of the organization that now runs the Hunger
Site and troubled that the donations were being passed on more slowly. Though the Hunger Site now
supports two other food programs, it has fewer visitors and fewer sponsors, in part because of the new
competition it spawned.

The Soul of the Ultimate Machine Several times in the past, Dr. Smarr had equally radical ideas about where computing was headed, and each
time he correctly spotted the Next Big Thing.

He founded the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign in 1985, and helped to develop a network that linked it to the nation's other four supercomputer
centers.

His center also did pioneering work in scientific visualization, and one of its brightest scientists, Stefen
Fangmeier, went on to become a leading graphics animator in Hollywood. There, he helped to create special
effects for movies like "Jurassic Park" and "The Perfect Storm."

Yet those advances pale beside the fact that seven years ago, a small group of student and faculty researchers
working at Dr. Smarr's center created the first graphical Web browser, Mosaic, igniting the World Wide Web
and the electronic- commerce explosion.

The center's advances flowed directly from Dr. Smarr's passion over the last three decades: to use powerful
computers to improve the quality of science. His goal in developing the supercomputer centers was to give
tools to scientists that had once been available only to bomb designers and code breakers.

The Internet and the World Wide Web grew in part from his drive to build better computer tools to permit
scientists to collaborate and share information.

The Soul of the Ultimate Machine The Internet, he explained, is
evolving into a single vast computer fashioned out
of billions of interconnected processors. Then he
went another step: "The real question, from a
software point of view, is: Will it become
self-aware?"

U.S. Supreme Court Orders Florida Recounts to
Stop

The 2000 Election The bitter division on the court, awkwardly papered over only last Monday with an order to
the Florida Supreme Court to clarify an earlier ruling, burst into the open with the action this
afternoon.

About 15 minutes before the Supreme Court order, the United States Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit, in Atlanta, denied a request by the Bush lawyers to halt the recount. But the
court said said that the Florida secretary of state could not certify the results of the recount
until the Supreme Court ruled in the case.

The Supreme Court decision came just hours after lawyers for Mr. Gore had urged the United
States Supreme Court to let the counting of Florida's presidential votes proceed while the
court considers whether to hear Gov. George W. Bush's appeal of the Florida Supreme Court's
latest ruling.
It would be the
vice president, and not Governor Bush, who would suffer irreparable injury from a stay that
would push a final count beyond the Dec. 12 date set in the law known as Section 5, which
grants a "safe harbor" to electors chosen by that date.

"What a stay would do, of course," the Gore brief said, "is prevent Vice President Gore from
ever gaining the benefit of the Section 5 presumption."

Opera Software - Press Releases - Opera Software and Be Provide Enhanced Internet Experience for BeOS Users -Opera 3.62 for BeOS Launched Opera Software today unleashed Opera 5.0 for Windows, making its Web
browser available for free for the many millions of surfers around the world that are longing for a faster,
better Internet experience. With this move the popular browser enters the reignited Browser War in full force
as a third player besides AOL/Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The Last Green Mile when we wake up 20 years from now and find that the Atlantic Ocean is just outside Washington,
D.C., because the polar icecaps are melting, we may look back at this pivotal election. We may wonder
whether it wasn't the last moment when a U.S. policy to deal with global warming might have made a
difference, and we may ask why the party most concerned about that, the Greens, helped to elect Mr. Bush by
casting 97,000 Nader votes in Florida.

Are Parents Legally Responsible for Their Children's Internet Use? According to a state judge in Illinois, that parent can face trial in
court.

In a controversial decision issued November 28, Judge Ward S.
Arnold of McHenry County, Ill., ruled that the father of a high school
student accused of digitally grafting the picture of a female classmate's
face to a hard-core sexual image displayed on a Web site can be sued
for damages.

The Nexus of Privacy and Security Nick Mansfield of Shell Services
International, a computer services subsidiary of the
Royal Dutch/Shell Group, praised consumer
privacy rules passed by the European Union and
said that in contrast, "I don't see anything
intelligent in the privacy field in North America."

Do I have this straight?

If I lived in Florida, someone could say, "Have an early Christmas, here's a color TV,." and if it turned out to be stolen, I could keep it, because I'd done nothing wrong?

You've gotta love those Florida laws.

Or not!

ZDNet: News: Free-ISP closures strand millions Millions of users can't help
And Spinway.com Inc., which had signed up even more subscribers through
a collection of retail partners from Barnes & Noble.com to Kmart Corp. has
also made the untimely discovery that not even millions of users can
sustain a business if none of them are paying a dime.

ZDNet: News: Free-ISP closures strand millions Some 3 million customers who got onto the Internet for free through an
AltaVista-branded service will have that connection severed this Sunday as
AltaVista's ISP partner, a San Francisco company called 1stUp.com, goes
out of business

The 2000 Election Mr. Boies responded that the trial judge ``based his conclusions'' on errors of law, namely,
finding that a recount needed to be done statewide, rather than just in Palm Beach and
Miami-Dade Counties, as the Democrats want; that the canvassing board in Miami-Dade
County that stopped the recount had discretion to do so; and that Mr. Gore had to show a
``reasonable probability'' that the outcome of the election would change even before looking at
a ballot.

And that last issue, in fact, seemed to interest several of the justices most in questioning Mr.
Richard.

Justice Barbara J. Pariente questioned him closely on whether Judge Sauls should have
considered the disputed ballots, which are under lock and key at the courthouse in Tallahassee,
before ruling.

``Are you really saying the votes, the 9000 votes in Dade County ... should not be looked at
in contest action?'' she asked, a slight note of skepticism creeping into her voice.

The 2000 Election Vice President Al Gore's lawyers, in a
hearing before the Florida Supreme
Court, made what could be a final
plea today for a court to count 14,000
disputed votes, his best hope of capturing the
presidency.

The justices vigorously questioned lawyers for
both Mr. Gore and for Gov. George W. Bush
during a one-hour proceeding in which the
court heard oral arguments.

The justices' questions to Mr. Gore's lead
lawyer, David Boies, focused on whether the
court had the authority to order such a count.
And they asked Mr. Bush's legal team, led by
Barry Richard, whether a state Circuit Court
judge was right to ignore the disputed ballots
in Mr. Gore's contest of the election.

Keep Them Out! he tactics have changed, but the goal remains depressingly
the same: Keep the coloreds, the blacks, the
African-Americans — whatever they're called in the particular
instance — keep them out of the voting booths.

Do not let them vote! If you can find a way to stop them, stop them.

So here we go again, this time in Florida.

ISPs Find Free Internet Costs Them Online search portal AltaVista on Sunday will cut off some 3 million users from its free
Internet access service, the latest sign that freebies over the Web do not always pay.

The announcement comes after a host of smaller free Internet service providers shut down earlier this year and
as Kmart-owned BlueLight.com said Monday it is considering dropping its free service after the holidays.

``We're seeing a very necessary shakeout among the free ISPs,'' said Dylan Brooks, an analyst at Jupiter
Research. ``The ad-supported ISP business grew far too quickly for what was healthy.''

The demise of AltaVista's Web access giveaway is linked to the downfall of 1stUp.com, an Internet service
provider that funneled 3 million out of its 5.5 million paying and non-paying clients through AltaVista.
1stUp, which like AltaVista is a unit of CMGI Inc, is closing down by Jan. 31.

Only Netzero, Juno and Bluelight.com remain as the major free Internet service providers, with BlueLight's
giveaway potentially coming to an end.

Consortium Offers Unfiltered Advice on Filtering Software The consortium has established a Web site -- underwritten by filtering company N2H2, the Education
Networks of America and America Online -- that provides additional information about the Safeguarding the
Wired Schoolhouse iniatiative. The site includes information to help administrators to evaluate whether they
should install Internet filters, rely on acceptable use policies or use a combination of both. The consortium
advocates that, at a minimum, schools should enact acceptable use policies for all district computer users.
Acceptable use policies, typically signed by students, parents and school personnel, outline a district's rules
for using its computer equipment.

ZDNet: News: FCC to cause higher Net fees? The Association for Local
Telephone Companies (ALTS), which represents phone companies competing
with Baby Bells, says many of its clients handle calls for Internet service
providers, which tend to receive a lot of calls but not make many. These
telephone companies -- known as CLECs -- have come to rely on this
income from calls sent from Bell customers to ISPs, and they say that if
they're forced to give up this income, they'll raise the fees they charge
ISPs, which then might raise monthly fees for consumers.

Palestinian Economy in Ruins, U.N. Says Under economic arrangements negotiated as a corollary to the Oslo peace accord, the
Palestinians are entitled to customs duties, sales taxes and other levies on goods bought and
sold within their own autonomous territory. The Israelis, who control the seaports and
border crossings used for Palestinian commerce, collect the import taxes themselves, and
transfer the payments monthly to the Palestinian treasury. Most sales taxes are also
collected by Israeli authorities, and transferred later to the Palestinians.

Until recently, those payments averaged more than $50 million a month — enough to meet
the entire Palestinian government payroll, from doctors and schoolteachers to bureaucrats
and policemen.

In the seven weeks from early October through the end of November, official sources say,
the transfers came to no more than $8 million, as Israel reduced and delayed the payments
for political and bureaucratic reasons. The Palestinians had amassed unpaid debts and failed
to provide all the invoices and other paperwork needed for reimbursement, Israeli officials
said.

A Plan to Intimidate Judges the impeachment and removal of federal judges who issue rulings
that are objectionable to some conservatives has been very seriously
proposed by Representative Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful
members of Congress, and other right-wing extremists in the
Republican Party.

And Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan was blocked, has — even
more incredibly — called for a constitutional amendment that would allow decisions by federal and state
judges to be overruled by a simple majority in each house of Congress.

Gwendolyn Brooks, Whose Poetry Told of Being Black in America, Dies at 83 The Gwendolyn Brooks Chair in Black Literature and Creative Writing was established at Chicago State
University in 1990, and there is a Gwendolyn Brooks Center for African-American Literature at Western
Illinois University and a Gwendolyn Brooks Junior High School just south of Chicago in Harvey, Ill. She
was selected by the National Endowment of the Humanities as its Jefferson Lecturer in 1994 — "the absolute
award crown of my career," she said. And in 1995 she received the National Medal of Arts award.

Despite such praise, Ms. Brooks preferred to stay outside what she called "the hollow land of fame" and
quietly live and work on the South Side.

"All my life is not writing," Ms. Brooks once told an interviewer. "My greatest interest is being involved
with young people." To that end, she devoted much time to giving readings at schools, prisons and
hospitals and attending annual poetry contests for school-age youngsters, which she sponsored, judged, and
often paid for out of her own pocket.

Gwendolyn Brooks, Whose Poetry Told of Being Black in America, Dies at 83 Ms. Brooks said that her reputation was bolstered by a review of "Bronzeville" in The Chicago Tribune by
Paul Engle, a poet and founder of the Iowa Writers School. Mr. Engle maintained that her poems were no
more "Negro poetry" than Robert Frost's poetry was "white poetry."

Among the poems in "Bronzeville' was "the old-marrieds," a portrait of an aging couple:

But in the crowding darkness not a word did they say.

Though the pretty-coated birds had piped so lightly all

the day.

And he had seen the lovers in the little side-streets.

And she had heard the morning stories clogged with

sweets.

It was quite a time for loving. It was midnight. It was

May.

But in the crowded darkness not a word did they say.

Sale of Data Raises Privacy Worries So far, the Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys
general have intervened in at least two cases to prevent defunct
Internet companies from selling customer information, or to impose
conditions on how that data could be sold. But some lawyers now
argue that certain provisions of bankruptcy law may override F.T.C.
rules.

An Inside Story of Racial Bias and Denial, New Jersey Files Reveal Drama Behind Profiling The 91,000 pages of state documents released last week about
racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police offer a rare
look at one of the most contentious battlefields in the
nation's war on drugs.

Taken as a whole, the reams of memos, internal investigations,
complaint letters and confidential reports show how the institutions
of state government denied accusations of selective enforcement for
nearly a decade before grudgingly admitting it and making changes.

But the words written by the thousands of people involved —
troopers, civilians, attorneys general and state officials — also tell an
intensely emotional story: one of gung-ho troopers who saw
themselves as unappreciated as they risked their lives to protect New
Jersey's minority members from drug violence, and who sought
promotions based on high-visibility drug arrests; the anger and
defensiveness of police commanders who believed their tactics were
unjustly branded as racist; the outrage of minority troopers ordered to
view their own neighbors as drug suspects; the bewilderment of black
and Hispanic drivers who could not understand why they were
detained by the police simply because of the color of their skin.

The Digital Tea Leaves of Election 2000 While the Internet may not have played the transformational role in the election of the U.S. President in 2000 that some predicted, this new medium of political
communications suggested what an Internet-driven transformation in political communications might look like.

News Search EnginesIf you are still looking for news using "normal" search engines, stop doing it! You'll find the services below to be a
much better way to search for the latest news stories from hundreds of sources on the web. These services provide
exceptionally good results for current event searching, because they crawl only news sites once or twice a day. Thus,
the results are usually focused and timely.

Yahoo Drops Free Submit For Commercial Categories Yahoo has dropped the ability for sites to submit for free to the commercial portion of its directory.

Sites wishing to be listed within the "Shopping and Services" or "Business to Business" areas of the web guide must
now use Yahoo's $199 "Business Express" service. A free submission option remains for those submitting to other areas
of the Yahoo.com site or to regional commercial areas at Yahoo's non-US editions.

Yahoo becomes the second major directory to limit its free submission option. LookSmart made a much more expansive
move earlier this year, requiring all commercial sites to pay a submission fee. In contrast, Yahoo's remaining free
submission option remains much more liberal, still available in vast portions of the guide.

Yahoo said it was making the change so that it could affordably build out its commercial listings to be as
comprehensive as possible.

ClickZ : What Do Publishers Really Sell? There is no single factor more important to
a site publisher than audience. Your
understanding, knowledge, and awareness
of your audience, and your relationship to
it, defines your business. Period.

Political Cartoons and Cartoonists Judged on the basis of influence per square inch, it would be hard to find a match for the political cartoon in
the history of modern American journalism. Although the history of political cartoons in what is now the
United States dates back to the days of Benjamin Franklin, their use as a daily commentary on the news did
not begin until the end of the nineteenth century when advances in technology made it possible to reproduce
drawings without the laborious and time-consuming process of creating woodblock engravings.

An Ailing Russia Lives a Tough Life That's Getting Shorter In a country whose most overworked word is "krizis" — crisis — here is a genuine one: Russian life
expectancy has fallen in 6 of the last 10 years.

It fell every month last year alone, to an average of 65.9 years for both men and women — about 10 years
less than in the United States, and on a par with levels in Guatemala. Moreover, government statistics
through last August point to a further drop in 2000.

It is a sore-thumb symptom of a precipitous decline in Russia's public health, a spiral not seen in a
developed nation since the Great Depression, if then. Life expectancy is not just a medical issue but a
barometer of a society's health. In a sense it is a lagging indicator of poverty, of stress, of cohesion and
stability — and of a government's ability or willingness to take care of its own.

Since 1990, according to the most recent figures, the death rate has risen almost one-third, to the highest of
any major nation, and the birth rate has dropped almost 40 percent, making it among the very lowest.
Mortality from circulatory diseases has jumped by a fifth; from suicides, a third; from alcohol-related causes,
almost 60 percent; from infectious and parasitic diseases, nearly 100 percent.

Not all the toll was registered in deaths. The rate of newly disabled people rose by half.

Sharply Split Congress Faces a Herculean Job Mr. McCain, chairman of the Commerce Committee, predicted, "We're going to have to have 50-50
committees." He said he had told his committee's senior Democrat, Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South
Carolina, that "I am fully ready to accept an even committee" while retaining the chairmanship himself.

"We were shutting out the Democrats from their legitimate rights as a minority in the Senate, and there is a
lot of anger among the Democrats about it," he said. "We have to do business differently.

Sharply Split Congress Faces a Herculean Job Even those steeped in the history of Congress say
there has never been a situation quite like what
Washington is about to face. In 1953, a very popular president, General Eisenhower, dealt with an 83rd
Congress controlled by Republicans by only eight votes in the House and two in the Senate.

But those were easier times, when cooperation across party lines was instinctive on many issues, not just one
tactical alternative as it is today. The new president, whoever he is, will take office with the most tenuous of
electoral margins, considerable public doubt that he won fairly, and a severe level of rancor on Capitol Hill.

Through A Glass Darkly There was also a heavy irony in Mr. Olson's central argument that the Florida Supreme Court had changed
the rules after the game was played. Governor Bush and his people have accused that court of in effect making
an ex post facto law.

Yet at this very moment Bush supporters in the Florida Legislature are polishing up a plan to meet in special
session and choose the state's electors themselves, overriding the people's vote if it turns out to be for Vice
President Gore. That would be ex post facto with a vengeance.

One curiosity is that none of the lawyers seem to have noticed Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. Its framers,
to prevent any Southern denial of the vote to blacks after the Civil War, provided that a state lose
representatives in Congress if it denied the right to vote "at any election for the choice of electors for
president. . . ."

That clause has never been enforced to reduce any state's representation. But the language shows, at the least,
that when the 14th Amendment was adopted, in 1868, the assumption was that citizens, not legislators,
would choose presidential electors. It makes the Florida Legislature's plans look even more brazen.

ZDNet: News: Digital copyright battle sharpens The right to resell
The entertainment behemoths say they want to ensure copyright holders are
properly compensated for their works on the Web, but digital media
companies say Hollywood is trying to stifle technology to keep control over
distribution. Experts say billions of dollars could be involved.

At Wednesday's hearing, DiMA representatives and executives from new
media companies will argue that consumers must be assured that digitally
downloaded purchases enjoy the same flexibility and value as physical
media, including the right to resell, lend, or give away media products.

Specifically, these companies say that when a song, for instance, is
streamed, the webcaster should only have to pay a royalty on that
performance once.

Copyright holders, however, feel royalties should be paid on copies that
may be produced incidentally on the computer's buffer as a result of the
streaming.

ZDNet: Story: Top Tech News INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEBATE IN D.C.
The battle over intellectual property on the Internet goes in front of
federal officials today. Representatives of the Digital Media
Association and other new media companies will make their case today
before the U.S. Copyright Office and the National Telecommunications
& Information Administration. The groups will argue that consumers
must be assured that digitally downloaded purchases enjoy the same
flexibility and value as physical media, including the right to resell,
lend or give away media products. This puts them at odds with some
old media companies who they accuse of trying to control distribution.
Click for more.

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THE US DOMAIN OVERVIEW - Who Can Register Anyone can register under the US Domain as long as the naming structure is followed.

The US Domain currently registers businesses, individuals, federal government agencies, state government agencies, K12
schools, community colleges, technical/vocational schools, private schools, libraries, museums, and city and county
government agencies.

Any computer in the United States may be registered in the US Domain hierarchy. Generally, computers outside the United
States are expected to register in other domains, however, there may be exceptions when a computer is used as part of a
project or in a community with other computers in the US Domain.

THE US DOMAIN OVERVIEW

THE US DOMAIN All state and local governments (city, county, township, parish, village), K-12 districts and schools, community colleges,
technical schools, museums, libraries, organizations, businesses, and individuals can register under .us. The structure of the
US Domain is a hierarchy based on localities (e.g., name.los-angeles.ca.us). This structure provides for more unique names,
more easily located names, and national identification. The US Domain is the sixth largest domain after .com, .net, .edu,
.jp (Japan) and .uk (United Kingdom) [Internet Software Consortium Survey, January 2000].

The US Domain Registry is administered by VeriSign Global Registry Services.

The information on these Web pages takes precedence over RFC 1480 - The US Domain.

InternetNews - Web Developer News -- ISI Gives Up Administration of .us The University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI) Tuesday ceased administration of the .us
domain, a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) similar to those used by Canada (.ca), Germany (.de), Norway
(.no) and other countries. VeriSign Global Registry will temporarily assume administration of the domain until a
permanent administrator is selected.

VeriSign will administer the domain with no change in policies through the existing system of delegated
administrators across the country. The U.S. Department of Commerce (USC) will ultimately decide on a permanent
administrator for the domain and has set up a Web site for comments on the management and administration of the
domain.

HarpWeek | Hayes vs. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877 Read about the potential parallels between the presidential elections of 1876 and 2000,
and about the Congressional Plan of Settlement.

Online Buyers Gain Ability to Sue The European Union passed rules
today that would allow consumers to sue in their own
country an online retailer based in another union country.

European officials argue that such a consumer right is essential to
help get e-commerce off the ground in Europe.

"A lack of consumer confidence is the main thing holding up the
development of e-commerce here," said Leonello Gabrici, a
spokesman on judicial matters for the European Commission, the
executive arm of the European Union.

By handing jurisdiction of cross- border disputes to the courts in the
consumer's country, the regulation will encourage consumers to
purchase online, he said.

Self-Employment on the Decline n fact in many ways, running a small business or acting as an independent consultant has become harder
than it once was, analysts say. Health care costs have grown faster for self-employed people than for big
companies, and the increase in families with two working parents has made the demands of running a
business all the more difficult.

Self-Employment on the Decline Rather than booming in recent years,
self-employment has declined both in numbers and
as a share of the work force. In the strong economy, it seems, large companies desperate for additional
workers have managed to lure employees from all over, in part by offering some of the benefits of
self-employment. At the same time, the difficulties of entrepreneurship have become less tolerable.

New Role for the Supreme Court's Web Site Until last week, the court's official Web site was a stodgy place with
an un-rushed air. While new opinions have been posted relatively
quickly, transcripts of oral arguments have rarely been made available
until 10 to 15 days after the sessions. Briefs and other legal
documents submitted by lawyers have never been posted, and audio
recordings of oral arguments have only been made available to the
public via the National Archives, a process that can take year or
more.

But given the intense public interest in the Florida election case and,
perhaps, the outcry over its decision earlier this week to reject a
request to televise the argument session, the court has changed its
Web rules.

Supreme Court of Florida: The Presidential Election Case

This is an info junkies dream!

Florida Election Cases - U.S. Supreme Court

If you're an information junkie this is irresistable.