Report Says Whites Get Better Health Care
Whether it's a heart bypass, cancer surgery or pain management, minorities do not get as good
health care as whites, the Institute of Medicine concludes.

``We weren't unaware of disparities, but we were surprised at the depth and breadth of the
evidence,'' Dr. Alan Nelson, chairman of the committee that did the study, said Wednesday.

``Disparities in the health care delivered to racial and ethnic minorities are real and are associated
with worse outcomes in many cases, which is unacceptable,'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Minority-Health-Care.html

Israelis' Withdrawal Leaves Behind Little Hope
Like everyone here in the Gaza Strip, Mr. Zarga had heard that the Israeli Army ended
its raid into northern Gaza late this morning. And like almost everyone here, he was
singularly unimpressed because, even before the tanks rolled in early this month, Israeli
forces were so omnipresent that the withdrawal seemed like a token gesture at best.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/20/international/middleeast/20GAZA.html

Judge to States: Stay On Track
"I think that some of the areas the plaintiffs (are) starting to go into, there is going to
be a problem," said Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. "You're taking a very broad view of
same or similar conduct." If the states continue in this vein, the judge added, "then
we're in a liability trial, not a remedy."
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=1884&a=24359,00.asp

The Place for Public Documents: On File or Online?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/health/policy/19FAC1.html?todaysheadline&pagewanted=all

34 New West Bank Settlements Spotted
A survey published today by the Peace Now movement said that 34 new Israeli
settlement sites had been built in the West Bank since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was
elected more than a year ago.

The survey, based on aerial photographs, said the new sites were spotted at
distances ranging from a few hundred yards to nearly two miles from existing settlements.

Many of the sites are officially described as extensions of the existing communities or
new neighborhoods of those communities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19SETT.html

Kofi Annan's Blunt Words Criticizing Israeli Tactics
I am especially dismayed by the I.D.F.'s failure to protect and respect ambulances and
medical personnel. In recent days, several medical relief workers were killed when
Israeli soldiers fired on clearly marked ambulances, including Mr. Kamal Hamdan, an
Unrwa (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) staff member. In addition, Israeli
forces repeatedly declined to grant medical personnel access to conflict areas to treat
and evacuate the wounded, despite formal protests from Unrwa and the International
Committee of the Red Cross.

I am also troubled by the repeated and, to the best of my knowledge, unfounded and
unsubstantiated allegations by Israeli government spokespersons that ambulances
have been used to smuggle Palestinian militants and weapons. These allegations can
only result in further damage to medical workers and further impede their vital mission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19LTEX.html

U.N. Chief Says Israel Has Been Waging Full-Scale War
Secretary General Kofi Annan, employing his bluntest criticism of Israel in the latest
Middle East violence, has told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israeli forces have been
waging what looks like an all-out conventional war on Palestinian civilians.

In a forceful letter to Mr. Sharon last Tuesday, Mr. Annan said he wanted to call Mr.
Sharon's attention to "disturbing patterns" in the treatment of civilians, including aid
workers, by the military, known officially as the Israeli Defense Forces.

The secretary general said he was "especially dismayed" by the "failure to protect and
respect ambulances and medical personnel."

"Judging by the means and methods employed by the I.D.F. — F-16 fighter bombers,
helicopter and naval gunships, missiles and bombs of heavy tonnage — the fighting has
come to resemble all-out conventional warfare," Mr. Annan wrote Mr. Sharon. "In the
process, hundreds of innocent noncombatant civilians — men, women and children —
have been injured or killed, and many buildings and homes have been damaged or
destroyed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/international/middleeast/19LETT.html

This Time, 'Forgetting' Is Healthy
Most of us can watch jets overhead and walk near ground zero with little anxiety.
That's because forgetting is an effortless hard-wired ability; bad memories not
associated with trauma fade naturally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/health/psychology/19CASE.html

News: Nokia connects laptops, cell phones
Nokia on Monday will unveil a modem for laptops that can access both
802.11b networks, which laptops use to surf the Net wirelessly, and
cell phone networks.

The credit card-size device would let laptop users roam from an
802.11b network to a cellular network without having to shut down
their computers, insert a new modem, and then adjust the settings.
It also helps save on costs of buying two different wireless modems.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-861896.html

Opposition to Portable Numbers
Wireless carriers are supposed to install technology by late November that will
let customers keep their phone numbers when changing carriers. But the Federal
Communications Commission is considering a petition by Verizon Wireless to drop
that requirement — or at least delay the deadline.

Lobbyists following the issue say the F.C.C. is expected to make a decision as
early as this week. An F.C.C. official acknowledged only that the agency would
release its decision "sometime early this spring."

At issue is whether Verizon and other carriers that have filed documents in
support of its petition deserve more time to move toward "number portability,"
as it is called, or whether, as opponents argue, the carriers have failed to justify
further delays.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/technology/ebusiness/18NECO.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Atlantic Plans Book-Length Article
…A handful of publications still resist the shrinking attention spans of Americans,
however, and beginning this summer, one of the holdouts — The Atlantic Monthly
— plans to run the longest piece of journalism it has ever published, and one of
the longest in magazine history.

The article, "American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center," by a staff
correspondent, William Langewiesche, will stretch over three consecutive issues,
starting with July/August, and amount to 60,000 words. In October, Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, Mr. Langewiesche's publisher, will release a book of the same name under
its North Point Press imprint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/business/media/18MAG.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

How to Get a Company's Attention on Women's Pay
In a recently released study of the 10 industries that employed the most
women from 1995 to 2000, the General Accounting Office found that the
gap between the salaries of men and women had widened for managers in
seven of those sectors. The largest widening was in entertainment and
recreational services, where female managers were earning just 62 cents
for every dollar made by a male manager in 2000, down from 83 cents in
1995. Only three industries showed improvement for women — albeit slight.
The biggest gain was in educational services, where the figure rose to 91
cents on the dollar, from 86 cents.

The G.A.O. report is supported by other studies, including one conducted
by the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington showing
that overall managerial salaries for women slipped to 71.3 cents in 2000
from 73 cents in 1995.

An obvious question arises from these findings: Is it is ever ethically
justifiable for executives, men or women, who make compensation decisions
to pay women less than they pay men for doing the exact same job? There's
no gray area here. The answer is no.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/business/yourmoney/17ETHI.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Whales Rebound for West Coast Ritual
On the bluffs south of Los Angeles, spotting whales before they slalom
through oil rigs miles off the coast, researchers with telescopes have
counted more than three times as many calves in 2002 as they did all
last year. In the calm lagoons in Mexico, naturalists on motorboats
have documented roughly twice as many calves as they did in each
of the last three years, when the population began tapering off
substantially.

"It's nice to see the species recovering," said Gabriel Arturo Zaragoza,
the census coordinator for the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve, where the
whales spend the winter.

Though they are heartened by the surge in births, few scientists
believed that the population was at risk of extinction. After gray whales
came off the endangered species list in 1994, their numbers swelled in
three years to 26,600, perhaps as many as there were before whalers
began decimating the population in the 19th century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/17/science/17WHAL.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=all

Watch Out for Magenta Days
The White House is so happy with its new color-coded rankings for
warnings of terrorist threats — red for severe risk, blue for general risk
and so on — that plans are afoot to expand the system. Why stop at
a few colors — or one kind of risk? Americans need as much information
about potential dangers as they can get. Here's what a more complete
system looks like.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/16/opinion/16MART.html

Legal Rulings On Image Search & Meta Tags
In the right circumstances, image search engines don't violate copyright
and using another company's trademarks in meta tags isn't infringement,
two separate court cases have found.

In the case involving image search engines, the US Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled this month that displaying thumbnail images of pictures found
across the web was fair use. However, it also ruled that it wasn't fair use
to link directly to images or to show them on their own, within a frame.
Instead, links need to be to the page containing the image, rather than the
image itself.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/02/02-legal.html

SearchDay - AltaVista Offers "Shortcuts" to the Invisible Web - 11 Febuary 2002
AltaVista is making it easier for searchers to delve into reaches of the Invisible
web, providing "shortcuts" that point to high-quality deep web resources that
other search engines typically can't see.

Shortcuts are direct links to web resources that are difficult or impossible for
many search engines to crawl and index. While other engines include similar
links for some types of information -- such as Yahoo! maps, for example -- the
fact that AltaVista is incorporating a variety of links to these types of information
sources is a notable step forward in revealing portions the Invisible web.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0211-avshortcuts.html

Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version - The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
In a perfect world, a list like this would not exist. In a perfect world, businesses
would be run with the utmost integrity and competence. But ours is, alas, an imperfect
world, and if we must live in one where Enron, Geraldo Rivera, and Cottonelle
Fresh Rollwipes exist, the least we can do is catalog the absurdities.
http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/print/0,1643,38604,00.html

Nat'l Academy Press, Broadband: (2002), Table of Contents
This report is an enjoyably accessible introduction to broadband communications for an era in which the term itself is increasingly pitched as the mark of excellence in high-speed Internet access. Published by the National Academy Press, the publishing house of the National Academy of Science, this work closely follows the history and development of broadband technology from its inception to the present state of the art. Available online or for (hard copy) purchase, the work covers numerous aspects of broadband and other forms of high-speed communications, from the technical and practical to the critical issues of telecommunications regulation and governance. Consumers, students, and technology enthusiasts will all find something worth considering in this thorough study. [WH]
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2002. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309082730/html/

What's Behind the New Arab Momentum
The actual conflict between Israel and Palestine may or may not be at a turning point. But the ability of Arab states to deal domestically with the intensification of that conflict may indeed be at such a point. Arab League members are now speaking very seriously of normalizing relations with Israel. For the first time in this hundred-year struggle between Arabs and the Jewish state, a consensus exists in the Arab world regarding peace with Israel, based not on the previous land-for-peace formula but on full normalization of cultural, economic and political relations between the protagonists.

Today the Arab establishment, even former hard-liners like Syria and Libya, accepts a settlement that recognizes the existence of Israel and its integration into the regional landscape. The Saudi Arabian peace initiative, anchored within this new vision, has been embraced by pivotal Arab states, including Syria. Although the Syrian regime kept silent at first, President Bashar Assad has since fully endorsed the proposal. Neither the pariah Iraqi regime nor Iran, both of which oppose the current peace process, has criticized the Saudi plan. It is more than likely that the Arab League will ratify this consensus at its meeting later this month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/opinion/15GERG.html

'What Kind of Nation': Clash of the Titans
Abraham Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition (i.e., ''We hold these truths . . .''), and Jefferson wrote it. More accurately, it was founded on an argument about what that proposition means. You could also say it was founded on an argument between 1776 and 1787 as the seminal moments of the American republic. Or you could say that it was founded on a disagreement over whether the term ''United States'' was a singular or plural noun. The beauty of the dialogue between Jefferson and Marshall is that it contained all these renditions. The chief virtue of ''What Kind of Nation,'' no small achievement, is to recover that dialogue in all its messy grandeur.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/books/10ELLIST.html

Israel Begins Partial Withdrawal From West Bank
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html

On Both Sides in the Mideast, Fear and Stress Are Building
Dr. Beny Sapir, a veterinarian, kept seeing certain symptoms in dogs and cats who lived on Jerusalem's margins, where the days and nights are pierced by gunfire, explosions and sirens. They would shake or stop eating. Some stopped going outside, even hid under the furniture.

That was when Dr. Sapir began prescribing Valium for the animals. "The family is nervous, so the dog is nervous," he said. "There is a lot — a lot — of stress."

The psychic shakiness of some household pets does not amount to much in a conflict that has lasted more than 17 months and claimed more than 1,400 human lives. But it is a sign of how fear, and coping with it, have become stitched into daily life here.

For those who know what the sounds signify, the effects have been more damaging. In Ramallah, occupied by Israeli forces for three days, families have been sleeping in their basements, ordering their children not to go outside, stretching out groceries to last until the crossfire dies away. Israel said today that its forces would soon begin to withdraw from the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/international/middleeast/15MOOD.html

Israel Promises a Pullback as Death Toll Keeps Rising
Standing in the hospital lobby, Muther al-Shariff, the deputy minister of health for the Palestinian Authority, said 5 people had been killed and 17 wounded.

Hours earlier, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, had ordered a gradual withdrawal of troops from Ramallah.

The prime minister's office said the withdrawal would be phased over time, and even when it was complete, troops and tanks would still ring the city, which is the commercial and political center of the West Bank and home to about 200,000 people.

Defense Minister Benjamin Ben- Eliezer issued a statement in which he said the Ramallah operation was "successful" and had "achieved its ends."

Elsewhere, Israelis and Palestinians inflicted casualties on each other today in the steady violence and death that have become the norm. In Gaza early this morning, a powerful bomb ripped through the floor of an Israeli tank as it was escorting a convoy of settlers. Three soldiers were killed and two more wounded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/international/middleeast/15ISRA.html

U.S. Says Powell Demanded Pullout by Israeli Forces
As the Bush administration's special envoy arrived, senior officials in Washington said on Thursday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had delivered a blunt private demand to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Palestinian-controlled areas to help American efforts to broker a cease-fire.

Mr. Sharon indeed announced on Thursday that his army would begin a staged withdrawal from Ramallah, the unofficial Palestinian capital in the West Bank. Thursday night and early today, there were reports of initial tank movements, but Israel Radio said a withdrawal would take hours.

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, responded to Mr. Sharon by saying, "We do expect a complete withdrawal from Palestinian-controlled areas, including Ramallah, and the other areas the Israeli Defense Force recently entered."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html

Israel Begins West Bank Pullout, but Stops Short of U.S. Demand
In contrast to the high daily tolls of recent days and weeks, the day's violence seemed tame. The Israeli army said it killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including one who was purportedly trying to lay a bomb. Also in Gaza, a Palestinian mother and her four children were killed when a mine exploded under their donkey cart. The Palestinians blamed Israel, Israel denied anything to do with it.

In Ramallah, the last tanks Israeli tanks withdrew in the morning, ending a 72-hour occupation by a lethal Israeli force of armor and elite infantry that was marked by incessant gunplay. After lying low for three days, residents crowded into the streets to examine flattened cars, smashed-in doorways, tank-scarred streets and other debris of the operation.

Long funeral processions wound through central streets for the last four of the 13 Palestinians killed in the town. Following the flag-draped bodies, gunmen squeezed off long bursts of automatic fire into the air to reaffirm their daring and defiance after the three-day ordeal.

The tanks were nowhere to be seen. But Palestinians said they had only withdrawn to nearby settlements and bases, and could be back in minutes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/international/15CND-MIDE.html

ZDNet: Story: $%&*! They've assassinated my Web site!
I WAS ONCE the proud owner of a Web site. In fact, I was a proud owner as recently as this past Tuesday, when I gleefully showed off a newfound coding skill (JavaScript rollovers) to a friend. On Wednesday, when I went to my site, which is hosted by Interland, I got a blank screen enlivened only by an error message. Flummoxed, I FTP'd up to the remote host to see what was going on with my files...only to find that there weren't any. All my directory structures and files were gone. Poof.
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2855127,00.html

Technology Giveth, Technology Taketh Away
Their fear is that the lack of widespread, mandatory DRM (digital rights management) systems will stop content conglomerates from making money each time a new copy of a song or movie springs into existence.

But if the technology and content landscape envisioned in Hollings' proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act came to be, corporate film and music titans would control the sorts of computer gear that consumers are allowed to own, and we'd be awash in digital entertainment options. It would be Britney Spears video outtakes on demand, all the Bruce Willis we could ever ask for, and all it'd cost us would be our computers (as we know them) and our fair use rights.
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=702&a=24033,00.asp

Would You Believe Free Tests, Training?
Talk is cheap, but getting it certifications is anything but. Self-study certifications start at $900 and go up to $1,200. If IT professionals feel the need to sit in a class to soak up knowledge, those costs shoot up to between $5,000 and $11,000 per certification. What's a poor, cash-strapped individual or enterprise to do?

If Linux or IBM DB2 certifications are on your agenda, you can rejoice. For a limited time, IBM and Compaq Computer Corp. are offering free exams and training.

Through March 31, free training and testing for Compaq's ProLiant/Linux ASE (Accredited Systems Engineer) is available for systems engineers employed by Compaq channel partners, Compaq customers and employees, and Compaq ASE certification holders who want to acquire the Linux designation.
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=25214&a=23812,00.asp

P3P Yields Answers—And New Questions
With its Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, or P3P, the consortium is beginning to enable computers to automatically read the electronically translated privacy policy of any site. P3P would scan the privacy policies posted on sites and compare the answers to privacy settings in consumers' browsers. If the site collects data in a way consumers do not like, Internet Explorer 6.0 may block cookies based on P3P, and AT&T's Privacy Bird browser enhancement tool will notify users.

But there are catches for Web site operators: If you do not have a P3P-coded privacy policy that a browser can read, your site's functionality or traffic may be impaired.

Also take care in translating your privacy policy to P3P-readable form. The translation of your written guidelines could cause any number of misstatements, and a false statement in a Web site's privacy policy could violate privacy and/or anti-fraud laws. In translating existing privacy policies, you may even confuse your customers depending on how you collect and use information.…
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=706&a=23773,00.asp

Criticism of Flash grows with its popularity - Tech News - CNET.com
The easy-to-use animation tool made by Macromedia has slowly taken over the Internet, aided and abetted by bored designers and advertisers eager to hit consumers with bigger, more eye-catching messages. But Flash now faces a backlash as some Web surfers complain about how it's been used and designers reassess its value.

"About 90 percent of the work is terrible, and 5 (percent) to 10 percent is good," said Alex Pineda, a Web designer at The Retina, who recently developed the NCAA's Final Four Web site using Flash.

Beyond bad design, the Flash debate highlights questions about the benefits of making the Internet more TV-like--a development that is slowly taking shape alongside parallel moves to make television more like the Net. Advertisers and some Internet analysts say such an evolution is necessary to tap the medium's full commercial potential, but others believe otherwise.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-256717.html

ExtremeTech - Print Article
True Web Power: XHTML with CSS2

March 11, 2002
By: John C. Fish

Introduction, Basic Definitions, and History
The goal of this first tutorial on XHTML 1.1 (EXtensible HyperText Markup Language) and CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets, level 2) is to allow anyone using notepad, or any other text editor, to be able to build a simple web page in XHTML 1.1 that validates according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Validation Service, http://validator.w3.org, and CSS2 that validates according to the W3C CSS Validation Service, http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html. This initial lesson will be split into two parts, published separately, and will provide all the basics.
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3428,a=23853,00.asp

What They Know That You Don't
A patented invention, a great idea, a breakthrough innovation, a secret ingredient—every successful company has something that gives it an edge over its competitors.

But more often than not, that edge comes from a technology or service that any business could use—if they knew it existed. From business intelligence apps that let you spot trends before they happen to free software that will save you a bundle on your back end, getting ahead doesn't have to be rocket science.
http://www.smartbusinessmag.com/article/0,3658,s=103&a=23793,00.asp

Unjust Rules for Insanity
In the 1970's, a more realistic standard was adopted by many states, including Texas. Even if the defendant knew the conduct was wrong, he would not be found guilty if he had been "incapable of conforming his conduct" to the requirements of the law. This standard recognized that as a result of mental illness an individual might know he or she is doing wrong but lack the ability to keep from doing it.

Then John Hinckley, trying to murder President Ronald Reagan, shot and wounded the president and three other men in 1981. Mr. Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in 1982 shocked the nation. The next year Texas dropped the element of "conforming conduct" and reverted to a strict "knowledge-based" standard almost like the old M'Naghten rule.

In the case of Andrea Yates, the prosecution focused narrowly on the question of what she knew at the time of the killings. Her call to 911 and her admission to police officers that she expected to be punished by the criminal justice system were pivotal evidence for the prosecutors. The details of her knowledge were important; her mental illness at the time was not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/opinion/13BARD.html

Puzzling Timing: An Onslaught Before Zinni's Arrival
The word from Washington, as most people here suspected, was that the general was carrying nothing beyond the Bush administration's desire to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from interfering with business elsewhere — notably in Iraq.

That situation, analysts said, suited Mr. Sharon at this juncture. His strategy toward the Palestinians was no mystery. As he said himself last week, he hopes to batter them into getting rid of Mr. Arafat and sitting down to talks. That was why he placed restrictions on Mr. Arafat, and why he ordered the huge operation into the West Bank and Gaza.

But as a veteran of many military and political wars, Mr. Sharon has always been aware that he cannot proceed without support from his government, his public and Washington. In recent days it had begun to wane on all fronts.

In this context, General Zinni's mission offered an opportunity, even if there was a risk of an American rebuke. It gave Mr. Sharon time to carry out the military operations in the West Bank and Gaza and declare victory. An eventual withdrawal would appear as a gesture of cooperation with the American peace effort.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/international/middleeast/13ASSE.html

Italian Reporter Killed by Israeli Fire
An Italian photographer was killed by machine gun fire from an Israeli tank in Ramallah early Wednesday, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said. A French photographer was injured by shrapnel and an Egyptian journalist was shot at, also in the West Bank town.

The environment in Ramallah for journalists has grown increasingly tense since Israeli forces took over the West Bank's commercial and administrative center early Tuesday, enforcing a curfew.

On Tuesday, Ciriello was among about 40 journalists in a Ramallah hotel that came under Israeli tank fire. No one was injured, and the army said it was returning fire from a gunman on the upper floors of the hotel. Journalists in the hotel at the time said there was no gunman.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mideast-Journalist-Killed.html

U.N. Chief Tells Israel It Must End 'Illegal Occupation'
"To the Israelis I say: you have the right to live in peace and security within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must end the illegal occupation," he said. "More urgently, you must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians."

He continued: "To the Palestinians I say: you have the inalienable right to a viable state within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must stop all acts of terror and all suicide bombings. It is doing immense harm to your cause, by weakening international support and making Israelis believe that it is their existence as a state, and not the occupation, that is being opposed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html?todaysheadlines&pagewanted=alltion'

News: IM: No longer a haven from spam
IM vulnerable
Spammers have long considered e-mail their preferred medium for a variety of reasons. It costs little or nothing to produce. Its processes are easily automated, and despite a growing array of defenses aimed at shutting it out, delivery is all but guaranteed.

Instant messenger may be just as susceptible to marketing come-ons, according to spam watchers. They say it offers sufficient convenience and vulnerability to raise the specter of a major new front in the spam war.

In addition, the popularity of instant chat has made IM services and their millions of users prime targets. According to research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, Yahoo Messenger had 17.8 million unique U.S. users in January 2002, up 57 percent from the previous year. Other services including MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger also have been growing. ICQ Messenger was the only major service to register a decrease in users, according to Jupiter, falling to 8.4 million users last January from 9 million users in January 2001.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-857658.html

Money Follows Power in Fund - Raising
``Fund raising is as much about the present as the future. Groups are trying to influence what Congress does now, not just who the voters elect in November,'' Sabato said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Fund-Raising.html

Israeli Army Fires on Journalists
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli forces fired for 10 to 15 minutes from tank-mounted machine guns on a hotel where journalists were photographing armor targeting the al-Amari refugee camp early Tuesday.

No one was injured in the shooting, which sprayed the glass-enclosed stairwell and nearby rooms where about 40 journalists were working. An ABC television camera left running on a tripod when the journalists took cover was hit by seven bullets -- one directly in the lens.

The army said the tanks were returning fire from a gunman located somewhere on the upper floors of the hotel and that they were unaware journalists were working from the building. ``It was dark,'' a spokesperson said. An investigation was continuing, the army said.

The reporters said there were no gunmen in the four-story New City Inn, where about 40 television and photo journalists covering the army assault on al-Amari were working from the upper floor.

``If there is a gunman, I would not stay in the building for one minute,'' said ABC television news producer Nasser Atta, who has 13 years experience covering conflicts in the Middle East.

The journalists, working mostly for U.S. and European media outlets, had chosen the hotel some 300-400 yards from the camp's perimeter because it was well-situated to observe the army assault without being caught in the cross fire, Atta said. All the rooms were occupied by journalists, except for four rented to a Swedish company, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Journalists.html

Business of National Pastime Is Unpatriotic
By refusing to share, with the rest of the American business community, the secret of their greatest discovery: how to lose millions year after year, stay in business and even double their revenue.

Such selfish secrecy can only be called unpatriotic.

What with the war against international terrorism, our first recession in a decade, rising unemployment, increasing business failures, record bankruptcies (including a giant like Enron), falling stock prices and new pressures on workers and industries from global competition — at a time like this, they have found a unique formula for success through failure, which can be maintained indefinitely.

And they won't tell the rest of us how they do it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/sports/baseball/10KOPP.html

Will Fingerprinting Stand Up in Court?
\In 1993, when the Supreme Court demanded real scientific standards for expert evidence in federal courts, some critics correctly anticipated that several criminal identification techniques would be attacked in the courts with some success: microscopic hair comparison, bite mark analysis, handwriting comparison. Few, if any, predicted what is happening now: The bedrock forensic identifier of the 20th century, fingerprinting, has started to wobble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/opinion/09SCHE.html

Taking Our Liberties
War without end is likely to have — indeed is already having — profound consequences for the American constitutional system. It tends to produce the very thing that the framers of the Constitution most feared: concentrated, unaccountable political power.

The framers sought in three ways to prevent that concentration. They divided power in the federal government, so that one branch could check another if it grew too mighty. They made government accountable to the people, who, in James Madison's words, had "the censorial power . . . over the government." And, in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, they guaranteed specific rights like freedom of speech and due process of law.

All three of those constitutional bulwarks against concentrated power are now threatened.

War inevitably produces an exaltation of presidential power. The president is commander in chief of the armed forces — a distinctive feature of the American system — and in wartime people tend to fall in behind the commander. The horror of what happened on Sept. 11 intensifies that instinct.

President Bush's high level of public support is not surprising.
The danger lies in political use of that wartime popularity. Last week the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, offered a first mild question about President Bush's plans to carry the war around the world. He was rebuked by the Republican leader, Trent Lott.

"How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism?" Senator Lott asked. His crude attack showed how hard it will be to maintain the Constitution's premise of accountable government, subject to questioning and criticism, during a war without visible end.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/opinion/09LEWI.htmlberties

Going Beyond Mere Facts in the Study of History
History is hard to teach because students will not remember facts without a context, but they cannot comprehend the context without knowing the facts. As Mrs. Cheney suggests, if we all learn common facts, we can have a common conversation. But most of us learn facts only in the process of answering questions we find important. So good instruction draws students into historical controversies that they cannot solve without mastering the details of actors and events.

Sam Wineburg, a professor at the University of Washington, explores this conundrum in "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts" (Temple University Press, 2001), which was called the year's best book by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Dr. Wineburg says the study of history should lead to empathy with historical figures, much as the study of literature explores human dilemmas by weighing the practical pressures that characters experience as well as absolute ethical values.

Dr. Wineburg shows how students can join debates of adult historians about whether Abraham Lincoln had views that would now be considered racist. On some occasions as a candidate and president, Lincoln suggested that slaves, even when freed, should not have full civil rights.

Dr. Wineburg urges the use of original sources — letters and speeches — to help students imagine a world whose moral framework was different from today's. Such inquiry, which can engage students, raises problems that even philosophers cannot solve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/education/06LESS.html

Going Beyond Mere Facts in the Study of History
History is hard to teach because students will not remember facts without a context, but they cannot comprehend the context without knowing the facts. As Mrs. Cheney suggests, if we all learn common facts, we can have a common conversation. But most of us learn facts only in the process of answering questions we find important. So good instruction draws students into historical controversies that they cannot solve without mastering the details of actors and events.

Sam Wineburg, a professor at the University of Washington, explores this conundrum in "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts" (Temple University Press, 2001), which was called the year's best book by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Dr. Wineburg says the study of history should lead to empathy with historical figures, much as the study of literature explores human dilemmas by weighing the practical pressures that characters experience as well as absolute ethical values.

Dr. Wineburg shows how students can join debates of adult historians about whether Abraham Lincoln had views that would now be considered racist. On some occasions as a candidate and president, Lincoln suggested that slaves, even when freed, should not have full civil rights.

Dr. Wineburg urges the use of original sources — letters and speeches — to help students imagine a world whose moral framework was different from today's. Such inquiry, which can engage students, raises problems that even philosophers cannot solve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/education/06LESS.html

ZDNet: Tech Update: Security / The biggest flaw you never saw
A few days ago, Microsoft announced a security hole in its version of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). According to reports at the time, malicious code could be installed into the JVM that could report what Web sites had been visited or what names and passwords you'd entered. The reports were partly wrong.

First of all, the JVM vulnerability wasn't limited to Microsoft; it covered all JVMs, across many operating systems and distributions. The risk was therefore a lot greater than the reports would indicate. Second, by the time you heard about the problem, it was already fixed; Microsoft, Sun, and every other vendor that was distributing JVM code had already received the patches, integrated them, and had made them available to its users.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2853211,00.html

News: Computer spy methods found in LED lights
By monitoring the flashes of LED lights on electronics equipment and the indirect glow from monitors, scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom have discovered ways to remotely eavesdrop on computer data.

Optical signals from the little flashing LED (light-emitting diode) lights, usually red and dotting everything from modems to keyboards and routers, can be captured with a telescope and processed to reveal all the data passing through the device, Joe Loughry, a computer programmer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, told Reuters on Wednesday.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-854350.html

Bush Officials End Support of Sharon's Tough Stance
In interviews, officials said the administration decided on Tuesday that it had to respond strongly to Mr. Sharon, lest the Israeli prime minister interpret Washington's silence as implicit permission to intensify the conflict or declare an all-out war.

"We had to make clear to him that there is simply no evidence that approach will succeed," an official involved in the discussion said. "At a minimum, it is a policy that will not work; more likely it will be counterproductive."

That determination led Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to tell a House subcommittee today that the prime minister "has to take a hard look at his policies to see whether they will work."

Then, in a pointed statement that senior Administration officials prepared late Tuesday, Secretary Powell added, "If you declare war against the Palestinians thinking that you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know that that leads us anywhere."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/international/middleeast/07DIPL.html