Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia, tapped as the new prime minister, said Monday he will only accept the job if Washington guarantees Israeli compliance with a U.S.-backed peace plan, including a halt to military strikes.
Qureia told The Associated Press he does not want to set himself up for failure, an apparent reference to outgoing Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned over the weekend after just four months in office that were marred by wrangling with veteran leader Yasser Arafat.
However, sources close to Qureia said he has agreed in principle to take the job, and that his formal acceptance is expected in coming days. Qureia met with U.S., Russian and Egyptian diplomats Monday, discussing his requests and the possible composition of a new government.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Monday, September 08, 2003
Sunday, September 07, 2003
The Wailing Wall?
A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis — which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank — just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — the majority could be included inside the fence, said Mr. Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.
"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Mr. Makovsky.
If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking — and could be further adjusted in peace talks — while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.
If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.
Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary — not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/07FRIE.html
A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis — which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank — just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — the majority could be included inside the fence, said Mr. Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.
"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Mr. Makovsky.
If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking — and could be further adjusted in peace talks — while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.
If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.
Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary — not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/07FRIE.html
Saturday, September 06, 2003
MIT Everyware
When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required.
"It's a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive," recalls Anne Margulies, the former Harvard assistant provost and executive director of information systems who was hired to be OpenCourseWare's executive director. "At the time, the world was clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it." Soon foundation money was gushing in to support the initiative. MIT earned the distinction as the only university forward-thinking enough to open-source itself. To test the concept, the university posted 50 courses last year.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit_pr.html
When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required.
"It's a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive," recalls Anne Margulies, the former Harvard assistant provost and executive director of information systems who was hired to be OpenCourseWare's executive director. "At the time, the world was clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it." Soon foundation money was gushing in to support the initiative. MIT earned the distinction as the only university forward-thinking enough to open-source itself. To test the concept, the university posted 50 courses last year.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit_pr.html
Going the Extra Mile
California's Financial Information Privacy Act, known as SB1, is about to send shock waves through IT shops everywhere. The bill was overwhelmingly passed in the California state legislature Aug. 19 and was signed by Gov. Gray Davis last week. With the coming of the new law, IT departments need to get to work closing off applications and databases to ensure customer privacy.
In short, SB1 requires "opt-in." Financial institutions must get customers' authorization to share or sell personal and financial data with third-party companies with whom the customers have no prior agreement. Customers can also "opt-out," meaning that institutions will be required to offer customers a chance to prohibit the sharing or selling of personal and financial information with their affiliates or other financial institutions with whom they have agreements.
The bill also requires consent verification, which means financial institutions will have to take steps to ensure that those from whom they obtain personal and financial information about customers have followed similar notice and consent rules.
Meeting the tough requirements to prevent data sharing isn't the hardest work that IT will face as a result of the new measure. They must make company executives understand that unless they go beyond the law's measures, a confusing patchwork of state and federal laws is likely to come on the books.
How did we get into this mess? The 1998 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies, has fomented a frenzy of consumer financial information sharing. With the advent of affiliated-yet-separately-regulated financial services companies, consumer data now gets passed around so these different entities can cross-sell to one another's customers.
Just one thing's wrong. Companies haven't asked consumers for permission.
Sure, we've all been inundated with little slips of paper in our credit card bills, mortgage statements and brokerage reports telling us, as FleetBoston recently told me, "Protecting your privacy is important to us. We want you to understand what information we may gather and how we may share it."
These privacy notices provide, in practice, a license to circumvent customers' desire for privacy, thereby letting integrated companies sell them everything from insurance to retirement plans. Rather than taking a "Pirates of the Caribbean" approach to consumer privacy, companies should instead use technology to allow consumers to make decisions about how their private information is used.
SB1 is likely to become a model for future state and federal legislation. It doesn't preclude affiliated companies from sharing information; it simply requires consumer permission to share. Companies should jump on this opportunity, offering maximum control over their financial information as a competitive advantage. An example: Companies could put a link on their bill presentment screen called "privacy controls" that opens a page where consumers can indicate interest in sharing information to gain special deals on insurance. Since consumers review and pay bills monthly, financial institutions will have at least 12 guaranteed page views per year to appeal to consumers to share information in an informed way.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1238730,00.asp
California's Financial Information Privacy Act, known as SB1, is about to send shock waves through IT shops everywhere. The bill was overwhelmingly passed in the California state legislature Aug. 19 and was signed by Gov. Gray Davis last week. With the coming of the new law, IT departments need to get to work closing off applications and databases to ensure customer privacy.
In short, SB1 requires "opt-in." Financial institutions must get customers' authorization to share or sell personal and financial data with third-party companies with whom the customers have no prior agreement. Customers can also "opt-out," meaning that institutions will be required to offer customers a chance to prohibit the sharing or selling of personal and financial information with their affiliates or other financial institutions with whom they have agreements.
The bill also requires consent verification, which means financial institutions will have to take steps to ensure that those from whom they obtain personal and financial information about customers have followed similar notice and consent rules.
Meeting the tough requirements to prevent data sharing isn't the hardest work that IT will face as a result of the new measure. They must make company executives understand that unless they go beyond the law's measures, a confusing patchwork of state and federal laws is likely to come on the books.
How did we get into this mess? The 1998 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies, has fomented a frenzy of consumer financial information sharing. With the advent of affiliated-yet-separately-regulated financial services companies, consumer data now gets passed around so these different entities can cross-sell to one another's customers.
Just one thing's wrong. Companies haven't asked consumers for permission.
Sure, we've all been inundated with little slips of paper in our credit card bills, mortgage statements and brokerage reports telling us, as FleetBoston recently told me, "Protecting your privacy is important to us. We want you to understand what information we may gather and how we may share it."
These privacy notices provide, in practice, a license to circumvent customers' desire for privacy, thereby letting integrated companies sell them everything from insurance to retirement plans. Rather than taking a "Pirates of the Caribbean" approach to consumer privacy, companies should instead use technology to allow consumers to make decisions about how their private information is used.
SB1 is likely to become a model for future state and federal legislation. It doesn't preclude affiliated companies from sharing information; it simply requires consumer permission to share. Companies should jump on this opportunity, offering maximum control over their financial information as a competitive advantage. An example: Companies could put a link on their bill presentment screen called "privacy controls" that opens a page where consumers can indicate interest in sharing information to gain special deals on insurance. Since consumers review and pay bills monthly, financial institutions will have at least 12 guaranteed page views per year to appeal to consumers to share information in an informed way.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1238730,00.asp
An exploration of predatory behaviour in cyberspace: Towards a typology of cyberstalkers by Leroy McFarlane and Paul Bocij
Over the last few years governments, law enforcement agencies, and the media have noted increases of online harassment. Although there has been a great deal of research into 'offline stalking', at this moment in time there has been no formal research that attempts to classify cyberstalkers. This study aimed to identify a classification of cyberstalkers by interviewing victims. Twenty-four participants were interviewed and their responses logged on a 76-item Cyberstalking Incident Checklist. A typology of cyberstalkers was developed.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/mcfarlane/index.html
Over the last few years governments, law enforcement agencies, and the media have noted increases of online harassment. Although there has been a great deal of research into 'offline stalking', at this moment in time there has been no formal research that attempts to classify cyberstalkers. This study aimed to identify a classification of cyberstalkers by interviewing victims. Twenty-four participants were interviewed and their responses logged on a 76-item Cyberstalking Incident Checklist. A typology of cyberstalkers was developed.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/mcfarlane/index.html
On the evening of Aug. 19, Kurdish militiamen captured Col. Muhammad Rashid Dawdi, the man believed to be responsible for organizing hide-outs and getaways for a former vice president of Iraq.
Colonel Dawdi had been hiding in Mosul, in northern Iraq, not far from the spot where Mr. Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were found, shot and killed less than a month before.
Two hours into his interrogation, Kurdish officials here said in interviews, Colonel Dawdi said he could take them to his boss, the former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Two hours later he did just that, leading Kurdish fighters right through Mr. Ramadan's front door, where they found the man in his pajamas.
Mr. Ramadan was one of the biggest catches so far in the hunt for Mr. Hussein's top henchmen. But during the same interrogation, Kurdish officials said, Colonel Dawdi made an even more tantalizing offer. Each week, he told the Kurdish officials, he traveled to Baghdad to meet the man in charge of keeping Mr. Hussein safe.
Colonel Dawdi told Kurdish officials that the next meeting, in a Baghdad safe house, had already been scheduled. The Kurds jumped at the idea, insisting that the arrest of both Mr. Ramadan and Colonel Dawdi remain a closely held secret.
"He told us they met every week in Baghdad," said Kosrat Rasool, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who guided the operation.
Then, Kurdish and American officials agree, everything went wrong. But they agree on little else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06SADD.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Colonel Dawdi had been hiding in Mosul, in northern Iraq, not far from the spot where Mr. Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were found, shot and killed less than a month before.
Two hours into his interrogation, Kurdish officials here said in interviews, Colonel Dawdi said he could take them to his boss, the former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Two hours later he did just that, leading Kurdish fighters right through Mr. Ramadan's front door, where they found the man in his pajamas.
Mr. Ramadan was one of the biggest catches so far in the hunt for Mr. Hussein's top henchmen. But during the same interrogation, Kurdish officials said, Colonel Dawdi made an even more tantalizing offer. Each week, he told the Kurdish officials, he traveled to Baghdad to meet the man in charge of keeping Mr. Hussein safe.
Colonel Dawdi told Kurdish officials that the next meeting, in a Baghdad safe house, had already been scheduled. The Kurds jumped at the idea, insisting that the arrest of both Mr. Ramadan and Colonel Dawdi remain a closely held secret.
"He told us they met every week in Baghdad," said Kosrat Rasool, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who guided the operation.
Then, Kurdish and American officials agree, everything went wrong. But they agree on little else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06SADD.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Friday, September 05, 2003
Study: Millions hit by ID fraud
Identity fraud is a bigger problem than generally acknowledged, with an estimated 10 million Americans becoming victims in the last year, according to a new Federal Trade Commission survey.
But identity fraudsters appear to be traditionalists. The survey, released Wednesday, found that only a small percentage of identity fraud appeared to involve personal information gleaned from the Internet.
Instead, the details were typically obtained from lost wallets or from acquaintances and family members who knew Social Security numbers and account numbers, according to those respondents who had experienced identity fraud and who knew how their information had leaked out.…
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5071060.html
Identity fraud is a bigger problem than generally acknowledged, with an estimated 10 million Americans becoming victims in the last year, according to a new Federal Trade Commission survey.
But identity fraudsters appear to be traditionalists. The survey, released Wednesday, found that only a small percentage of identity fraud appeared to involve personal information gleaned from the Internet.
Instead, the details were typically obtained from lost wallets or from acquaintances and family members who knew Social Security numbers and account numbers, according to those respondents who had experienced identity fraud and who knew how their information had leaked out.…
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5071060.html
Court clamps down on e-mail searches
In a decision that buttresses electronic privacy rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that attorneys violate the law when they try to subpoena e-mail messages to which they are not entitled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last week that a lawyer was acting unreasonably when sending a subpoena to an Internet service provider, NetGate, that sought "all copies of e-mails sent or received by anyone" at a company called Integrated Capital Associates--the opposing party in the litigation.
"The subpoena power is a substantial delegation of authority to private parties, and those who invoke it have a grave responsibility to ensure it is not abused," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. The panel ruled that the attorney had violated two federal laws: the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
http://techrepublic.com.com/2001-1-0.html
In a decision that buttresses electronic privacy rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that attorneys violate the law when they try to subpoena e-mail messages to which they are not entitled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said last week that a lawyer was acting unreasonably when sending a subpoena to an Internet service provider, NetGate, that sought "all copies of e-mails sent or received by anyone" at a company called Integrated Capital Associates--the opposing party in the litigation.
"The subpoena power is a substantial delegation of authority to private parties, and those who invoke it have a grave responsibility to ensure it is not abused," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel. The panel ruled that the attorney had violated two federal laws: the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
http://techrepublic.com.com/2001-1-0.html
Sunday, August 31, 2003
The Shifting Internet Population Recasts the Digital Divide Debate
20% of non-Internet users live in a house with an Internet connection
WASHINGTON – There is far more fluidity in the Internet population than most analysts imagine.
About a quarter of Americans live lives that are quite distant from the Internet – they have never been online, and don’t know many others who use the Internet. At the same time, many Americans who do not use the Internet now were either users in the past or they live in homes with Internet connections.
Three new insights regarding patterns of Internet use and non-use emerge from a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
“The Internet population shows much greater churn than most realize – a lot of people are moving in and out of the online world pretty regularly,” said Amanda Lenhart, the Research Specialist at the Project who authored the new report “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet use and the digital divide.”
She continued: “It is too simple to talk about a digital divide based exclusively on problems with access when it is now clear that access issues change from month to month for lots of Americans. A surprisingly large number don’t want to be connected even though they have tasted what online life is like or live with the Internet literally in the next room.”
Lenhart’s report finds that 24% of Americans remain truly unconnected to the online world. They have never tried going online and are often quite removed from the connected population.
Moreover, there are still pronounced gaps in Internet use along several demographic lines: Older Americans are much less wired than younger Americans; minorities are less connected than whites, those with modest amounts of income and education are less wired than those with college educations and household incomes over $75,000, and rural Americans lag behind suburban and urban Americans in the online population.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey also found that there are social and psychological explanations why some Americans do not use the Internet. For instance, a person’s sense of personal empowerment can make a difference in her decision to go online or not. Those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online.
Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost three quarters of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28% of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online.
A portion of non-Internet users are socially disconnected from the Internet, with more than a quarter (27%) saying that they know almost no one who goes online. A similar group of non-users (22%) say they do not know of public Internet access points in their community. At the same time, it is also the case that more than half of non-users know people in their social networks who go online and most of them say it is not hard for them to get to public access points in their neighborhoods.
“The truly unconnected are the Americans that those who worry about the digital divide should understand,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “The reasons non-users stay away from the Internet are varied and complex. Many lack the resources to go online. Others don’t live in a social world where Internet use matters and still others have no notion that the communication and information functions of the Internet can help them improve their lives.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/releases/release.asp?id=62
20% of non-Internet users live in a house with an Internet connection
WASHINGTON – There is far more fluidity in the Internet population than most analysts imagine.
About a quarter of Americans live lives that are quite distant from the Internet – they have never been online, and don’t know many others who use the Internet. At the same time, many Americans who do not use the Internet now were either users in the past or they live in homes with Internet connections.
Three new insights regarding patterns of Internet use and non-use emerge from a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
“The Internet population shows much greater churn than most realize – a lot of people are moving in and out of the online world pretty regularly,” said Amanda Lenhart, the Research Specialist at the Project who authored the new report “The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet use and the digital divide.”
She continued: “It is too simple to talk about a digital divide based exclusively on problems with access when it is now clear that access issues change from month to month for lots of Americans. A surprisingly large number don’t want to be connected even though they have tasted what online life is like or live with the Internet literally in the next room.”
Lenhart’s report finds that 24% of Americans remain truly unconnected to the online world. They have never tried going online and are often quite removed from the connected population.
Moreover, there are still pronounced gaps in Internet use along several demographic lines: Older Americans are much less wired than younger Americans; minorities are less connected than whites, those with modest amounts of income and education are less wired than those with college educations and household incomes over $75,000, and rural Americans lag behind suburban and urban Americans in the online population.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey also found that there are social and psychological explanations why some Americans do not use the Internet. For instance, a person’s sense of personal empowerment can make a difference in her decision to go online or not. Those who feel less in control of their lives are less likely to go online.
Disabilities also keep some Americans from using the Internet. Almost three quarters of disabled Americans do not go online, and 28% of them said their disability or impairment made it difficult or impossible to go online.
A portion of non-Internet users are socially disconnected from the Internet, with more than a quarter (27%) saying that they know almost no one who goes online. A similar group of non-users (22%) say they do not know of public Internet access points in their community. At the same time, it is also the case that more than half of non-users know people in their social networks who go online and most of them say it is not hard for them to get to public access points in their neighborhoods.
“The truly unconnected are the Americans that those who worry about the digital divide should understand,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “The reasons non-users stay away from the Internet are varied and complex. Many lack the resources to go online. Others don’t live in a social world where Internet use matters and still others have no notion that the communication and information functions of the Internet can help them improve their lives.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/releases/release.asp?id=62
A Way to Break the Cycle of Servitude
…Twenty percent of the work force — 26 million people — earn $8.23 an hour or less. Most of them are not teenagers snagging pocket money, but adults supporting families. With so little income, too many Americans are pushed into poverty, and getting out of this trap is increasingly difficult.
As many studies have shown, rising income inequality has driven people apart. And low-wage workers, occupying the bottom rung in this ruptured society, have descended into what amounts to a servant class. It is not their work that makes them servants. We need factory assemblers, store clerks, child care workers and the telephone operators who field calls to "800" numbers, processing much of the nation's commerce.
What makes them servants is the miserable pay. Measuring status by wage, as many Americans do, no one — the employers of low-wage worker, the public or the low-wage workers themselves — seems to value this class of work. Promotion, or higher pay, would be a way out. Unfortunately, neither solution kicks in very often. More than in the past, low-wage workers are stuck in place.
"There is not any kind of sinister approach by companies or individuals to make this happen," said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of Manpower Inc., the temporary-help agency, which places many low-wage workers. "But it is the path that we are on."
That path has become self-perpetuating. Employers are under constant pressure to cut costs. Hospitals, for example, have to bid for good medical staffs, so they offset this cost by squeezing the wages of unskilled kitchen workers. Or they outsource food preparation to contractors who pay even less. In either case, the result is a constant, dispiriting turnover. But it is tolerated. The low wage more than offsets the cost of one or two days of training for each new hire.
So wages barely rise. Adjusted for inflation, the $8.23 an hour today is only 9 percent higher than the $7.55 that the workers in the 20th percentile earned 30 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of that improvement came in the very tight labor markets of the late 1990's, when even low-wage workers could command higher pay.…
FAR from lifting these workers, the unfettered American marketplace holds them down. They need help, ideally from employers, if only those employers could find their way back to the pre-1970's system of long-term employment in low-skilled jobs that included training, promotions and raises. In some places, unions still force this to happen — at New York City hospitals, for example — and no hospital is at a disadvantage because each is bound by the same wage scale. But in this era of disappearing unions, that is not likely to work.
Raising the minimum wage would be a quicker route, if only Congress and the administration would make that a priority. The minimum wage once went up regularly, peaking in 1968 at the equivalent of $7.08 an hour today, adjusted for inflation. That's nearly $2 above today's actual minimum of $5.15 an hour. Just restoring the minimum to its old value of $7.08 would also push up wages that are just above the minimum.
Suddenly, the bottom 20 percent of the work force would be making up to $10 an hour, instead of $8.23. That might be a large enough raise to justify training and job security, and new respect for the men and women in these jobs — respect as workers, not servants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/business/yourmoney/31VIEW.html
…Twenty percent of the work force — 26 million people — earn $8.23 an hour or less. Most of them are not teenagers snagging pocket money, but adults supporting families. With so little income, too many Americans are pushed into poverty, and getting out of this trap is increasingly difficult.
As many studies have shown, rising income inequality has driven people apart. And low-wage workers, occupying the bottom rung in this ruptured society, have descended into what amounts to a servant class. It is not their work that makes them servants. We need factory assemblers, store clerks, child care workers and the telephone operators who field calls to "800" numbers, processing much of the nation's commerce.
What makes them servants is the miserable pay. Measuring status by wage, as many Americans do, no one — the employers of low-wage worker, the public or the low-wage workers themselves — seems to value this class of work. Promotion, or higher pay, would be a way out. Unfortunately, neither solution kicks in very often. More than in the past, low-wage workers are stuck in place.
"There is not any kind of sinister approach by companies or individuals to make this happen," said Jeffrey Joerres, chief executive of Manpower Inc., the temporary-help agency, which places many low-wage workers. "But it is the path that we are on."
That path has become self-perpetuating. Employers are under constant pressure to cut costs. Hospitals, for example, have to bid for good medical staffs, so they offset this cost by squeezing the wages of unskilled kitchen workers. Or they outsource food preparation to contractors who pay even less. In either case, the result is a constant, dispiriting turnover. But it is tolerated. The low wage more than offsets the cost of one or two days of training for each new hire.
So wages barely rise. Adjusted for inflation, the $8.23 an hour today is only 9 percent higher than the $7.55 that the workers in the 20th percentile earned 30 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of that improvement came in the very tight labor markets of the late 1990's, when even low-wage workers could command higher pay.…
FAR from lifting these workers, the unfettered American marketplace holds them down. They need help, ideally from employers, if only those employers could find their way back to the pre-1970's system of long-term employment in low-skilled jobs that included training, promotions and raises. In some places, unions still force this to happen — at New York City hospitals, for example — and no hospital is at a disadvantage because each is bound by the same wage scale. But in this era of disappearing unions, that is not likely to work.
Raising the minimum wage would be a quicker route, if only Congress and the administration would make that a priority. The minimum wage once went up regularly, peaking in 1968 at the equivalent of $7.08 an hour today, adjusted for inflation. That's nearly $2 above today's actual minimum of $5.15 an hour. Just restoring the minimum to its old value of $7.08 would also push up wages that are just above the minimum.
Suddenly, the bottom 20 percent of the work force would be making up to $10 an hour, instead of $8.23. That might be a large enough raise to justify training and job security, and new respect for the men and women in these jobs — respect as workers, not servants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/business/yourmoney/31VIEW.html
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Thursday, August 28, 2003
This Is The Part of the Speech That's Never Quoted
…When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.…
http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html
…When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.…
http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The Chicago Public Library
has been hit hard by Sobig.F, and possibly by Blaster (LoveSan). From where I sit there was no reason forit at all. I have my suspicions about the demographics of the outage. Sulzer regional on the North (whiter) Side has at least some internet access. Woodson regional On the South (blacker) Side has been out for almost a week.
Since it takes about ten to fifteen minutes per machine to remove the virus, the worm, remove the registry keys, patch the DCOM vulnerability, and update the antivirus program. I wonder how the techs could spend hours at Woodson without bringing one of the ten access terminals online.
has been hit hard by Sobig.F, and possibly by Blaster (LoveSan). From where I sit there was no reason forit at all. I have my suspicions about the demographics of the outage. Sulzer regional on the North (whiter) Side has at least some internet access. Woodson regional On the South (blacker) Side has been out for almost a week.
Since it takes about ten to fifteen minutes per machine to remove the virus, the worm, remove the registry keys, patch the DCOM vulnerability, and update the antivirus program. I wonder how the techs could spend hours at Woodson without bringing one of the ten access terminals online.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
e-Calculus
e-Calculus is a Calculus I tutorial written in TeX and converted to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Features include verbose discussion of topics, typeset quality mathematics, user interactivity in the form of multiple choice quizzes, in-line examples and exercises with complete solutions, and pop-up graphics.
http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/e-calculus.html
e-Calculus is a Calculus I tutorial written in TeX and converted to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Features include verbose discussion of topics, typeset quality mathematics, user interactivity in the form of multiple choice quizzes, in-line examples and exercises with complete solutions, and pop-up graphics.
http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/e-calculus.html
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Monday, August 18, 2003
Factories Move Abroad, as Does U.S. Power
…America will still be a manufacturing power in our grandchildren's lifetime, but that status is gradually eroding.
Why does this matter? Well, the essence of a great world power is its edge in producing not services but manufactured products that other people want — Boeing's airliners, for example, Intel's semiconductors and Caterpillar's earth-moving equipment. To the extent this output passes to foreign manufacturers, or even to Americans operating abroad, we lose the means to buy what we, in turn, want from others.
More than half of the manufactured goods that Americans buy are made abroad, up from 31 percent in 1987. If we continue on our path of ceasing to make merchandise that others want to buy from us, the danger is that these imports will be unaffordable for our descendants.
For that to happen, "you have to assume that manufacturing will continue to disappear," said David Heuther, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. He does not make that assumption himself. He contends that America's high-tech advantage and its ingenuity will sustain the nation's manufacturing base.
Maybe. Right now, however, the exodus continues, at a stepped-up pace, government data show. The proportion of the work force employed in manufacturing has fallen to 11 percent from 30 percent in the mid-1960's. Two of the 19 percentage points disappeared in just the last 28 months. On another level, manufacturing's share of real gross domestic product — representing all the goods and services produced in the United States — has edged down, even including in the count the output of foreign manufacturers operating here. The share of real G.D.P. has dropped to between 16 and 17 percent, from 18 to 19 percent in the 1950's.
Given manufacturing's importance in maintaining our status as a world power, the downward trends are alarming. The public, nevertheless, focuses only occasionally on the dismantling. It does so when lots of people are suddenly hurt, as they were in the early 1980's, when an onslaught of high-quality foreign imports coincided with a severe recession. The combination forced plant closings and layoffs on a scale not experienced since the Depression.
"Rust belt" and "deindustrialization" were coined in the bitter debate that surrounded that frightening national experience. Those were the years when wage inequality became too persistent to ignore. Blame fell partly on the destruction of factory jobs, and the relatively high wages earned by those workers.
Two decades later, the shrinking manufacturing sector is again a source of public agitation, this time because so many American manufacturers are decamping to China and India, where they employ increasingly skilled but inexpensive workers to make merchandise that is then shipped back to the United States, swelling imports and subtracting jobs at home.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/business/yourmoney/17VIEW.html
…America will still be a manufacturing power in our grandchildren's lifetime, but that status is gradually eroding.
Why does this matter? Well, the essence of a great world power is its edge in producing not services but manufactured products that other people want — Boeing's airliners, for example, Intel's semiconductors and Caterpillar's earth-moving equipment. To the extent this output passes to foreign manufacturers, or even to Americans operating abroad, we lose the means to buy what we, in turn, want from others.
More than half of the manufactured goods that Americans buy are made abroad, up from 31 percent in 1987. If we continue on our path of ceasing to make merchandise that others want to buy from us, the danger is that these imports will be unaffordable for our descendants.
For that to happen, "you have to assume that manufacturing will continue to disappear," said David Heuther, chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers. He does not make that assumption himself. He contends that America's high-tech advantage and its ingenuity will sustain the nation's manufacturing base.
Maybe. Right now, however, the exodus continues, at a stepped-up pace, government data show. The proportion of the work force employed in manufacturing has fallen to 11 percent from 30 percent in the mid-1960's. Two of the 19 percentage points disappeared in just the last 28 months. On another level, manufacturing's share of real gross domestic product — representing all the goods and services produced in the United States — has edged down, even including in the count the output of foreign manufacturers operating here. The share of real G.D.P. has dropped to between 16 and 17 percent, from 18 to 19 percent in the 1950's.
Given manufacturing's importance in maintaining our status as a world power, the downward trends are alarming. The public, nevertheless, focuses only occasionally on the dismantling. It does so when lots of people are suddenly hurt, as they were in the early 1980's, when an onslaught of high-quality foreign imports coincided with a severe recession. The combination forced plant closings and layoffs on a scale not experienced since the Depression.
"Rust belt" and "deindustrialization" were coined in the bitter debate that surrounded that frightening national experience. Those were the years when wage inequality became too persistent to ignore. Blame fell partly on the destruction of factory jobs, and the relatively high wages earned by those workers.
Two decades later, the shrinking manufacturing sector is again a source of public agitation, this time because so many American manufacturers are decamping to China and India, where they employ increasingly skilled but inexpensive workers to make merchandise that is then shipped back to the United States, swelling imports and subtracting jobs at home.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/business/yourmoney/17VIEW.html
Saturday, August 16, 2003
typoGRAPHIC
typoGRAPHIC, an interactive experience informed by type and typography. It aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
http://www.rsub.com/typographic/
typoGRAPHIC, an interactive experience informed by type and typography. It aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
http://www.rsub.com/typographic/
New interactive narratives site
Online design guru Andrew DeVigal has launched a site packed with links to some great interactive narrative journalism, InteractiveNarratives.org.
http://www.interactivenarratives.org/
Online design guru Andrew DeVigal has launched a site packed with links to some great interactive narrative journalism, InteractiveNarratives.org.
http://www.interactivenarratives.org/
An Industry Trapped by a Theory
In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/16KUTT.html
In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities.
Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/16KUTT.html
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