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Its been done ;)
AOL Sets Steep Broadband Price in U.K.
AOL is going above the market rate for broadband in the UK, believing in the superiority of its content. Will consumers pay twice as much for AOL’s offerings? [Article ID: 3490]
Quick!! turn on Junk yard wars, a few people from MIT that we know is on today!
I recived this on AOL
Dear atimins,
Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, people have been dismayed and at a loss for a reasonable explanation as to where such Muslim hostility toward the U.S. came from. Looking back now, especially with all the questions about "who knew what and when they knew it," it's becoming more and more apparent that something fishy is going on somewhere, but people still don't quite know what it is. Well, I have something I think you might find interesting. It's too much to explain in this email message, so I'm only going to scratch the surface, and then if you want to know more, I'll provide you with my web address where I've written all about it.
Basically what has happened is that the US and Britain secretly committed an international crime against Iraq in late 1996 that virtually no one knows about. Things did not go as planned, as Saddam did not respond as expected, and the complications from this have resulted in a gigantic mess you wouldn't believe. Nobody knows what's wrong, but Muslim extremists can see clearly that something definitely is wrong, and if they knew the whole story, they would be even more furious than they already are. Here's the clencher: Russia and China eventually became suspicious themselves back in 1997, and when they demanded an explanation from the US and Britain on the UN Security Council, the US was forced to privately confess. Nothing could be done about the situation at the time, but Russia and China were very mad about it, feeling that Russia's low world status following the collapse of the USSR was being unfairly taken advantage of.
Well, when Clinton committed this very serious crime and then began to realize he had royally screwed up and set the stage for WW3, he was as much aware of the end-times prophecies as most anyone else is. So you can imagine how intrigued he was when his attention was suddenly drawn to an astrologer on AOL who saw into everything that was going on and who then began broadcasting it through bulk email. I'm that astrologer. As a result of my email broadcasts and my detailed understanding of what has gone wrong between the U.N. and Iraq, I was under surveillance for awhile in 1998-1999. My hard drive was being scanned while I was online and my email was being monitored. As far as I can tell, these activities stopped when Bush took office.
When I discovered I was being watched however, I then broadcast my discovery of these surveillance activities to my newsletter subscribers and announced the protective measures I had begun taking as a result. In response, someone actually went so far as to slip into my house in the middle of the night during the very next month, in December 1999. I was asleep alone in the place while a government spy plundered my home office in the next room! I discovered the intrusion when a threatening prediction I had left lying on a notepad beside my keyboard that very night had vanished when I got up the next morning. During the following week, Washington issued a terrorism warning for New York City and Washington D.C. for the upcoming Millennium New Years celebrations. The prediction I had written was in code, and had to be interpreted, making reference to "the Last Arabian Knight" angrily driving his enemies from "the Capitol City." I soon realized that the terrorism warning was based on Washington's (mis)interpretation of this coded prediction, which I had intended to include in the upcoming edition of the monthly newsletter I was sending out at the time.
I realize this is startling information, and the average person might be quick to assume I'm lying, but you can believe it's true: I knew the President's secrets and started telling everyone, and because what he did was such a serious thing, he was powerless to stop me without only attracting more attention to me. So he had someone slip into my house while I was asleep and leave evidence of the intrusion in an effort to scare me into shutting up. Well I did shut up, and now the World Trade Center is gone and people still don't know why. So I'm actively telling people what I know again.
Sincerely,
Charlie Boyer@aol.com
from an AOL board
Subject: My neighbors celebrated after 9/11
Date: 6/11/2002 8:37 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Claudie4
Message-id: <20020611083719.08172.00000291@mb-ms.aol.com>
I live in a culturally diverse pocket of California and when 9/11 happened my neighbors celebrated for 3 days. (Yes they are from an Arab country) I called the FBI.
I want to send everyone packing that isn't a resident. I have no mercy. When that part of the world grows up and learns how to act like adults rather than spoiled children....then, and only then will they be accepted on our soil.
What have they been doing for 5,000 years---??? The US is only 250 years old and they are still stuck in the dark ages. Go figure.
A first grade teacher collected well known proverbs. She gave each
child in her class the first half of a proverb and asked them to come
up
with the remainder of the proverb. It's hard to believe these were
actually done by first graders, but there are some good ones
nonetheless
their insight may surprise you.
Better to be safe than......................punch a 5th grader
Strike while the ...........................bug is close
It's always darkest before..................Daylight Savings Time.
Never underestimate the power of............termites
You can lead a horse to water but...........how?
Don't bite the hand that....................looks dirty
No news is..................................impossible
A miss is as good as a......................Mr.
You can't teach an old dog new..............math
If you lie down with dogs, you'll...........stink in the morning
Love all, trust.............................me
The pen is mightier than the................pigs
An idle mind is.............................the best way to relax
Where there's smoke there's.................pollution
Happy the bride who.........................gets all the presents
A penny saved is............................not much
Two's company, three's......................the Musketeers
Don't put off till tomorrow what............you put on to go to bed.
Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and ..... you have to
blow your nose.
There is none so blind as...................Stevie Wonder.
Children should be seen and not.............spanked or grounded
If at first you don't succeed...............get new batteries
You get out of something only what you......see in the picture on the
box
When the blind leadeth the blind............get out of the way
And the favorite .....
Better late than .........................pregnant
Pennsylvania councilwoman has accused her borough's lone police dog of racial profiling, leading to calls that the canine be killed.
Dolpho, a 5-year-old German shepherd, can sniff out the difference between marijuana, heroin and cocaine. The dog came from Europe two years ago and is trained in drug detection and patrol.
But councilwoman Wanda Jones Dixon said Dolpho can also tell the difference between blacks and whites, and should be put to sleep.
On Friday, while K-9 officer Schawn Barger wrestled with a drug suspect, he said a quick-release button on his belt was activated, accidentally opening a door to the K-9 wagon.
The dog lunged from the vehicle and bit a 9-year-old boy on the leg instead of the suspect, dragging him for about 20 feet, family members said. The boy is black.
Councilwoman Dixon told the city council she has received six complaints about Dolpho in the past year. Three of the people who complained were involved with drugs. Three others were blacks who believe the dog jumped at or attacked them because of their race.
"I had received complaints from African-Americans saying they believe the dog only attacks African-Americans," councilwoman Dixon said Monday. "I think the dog makes the distinction."
Officer Barger, who has worked with Dolpho for more than two years and takes the dog home with him at night, said the dog has never gone after the wrong person before. He said Dolpho became confused during a tense situation.
"The dog saw movement. There was a lot of noise — a lot of screaming," Barger said. "It was basically just complete chaos and the dog, he just could not tell who the bad guy was and who the good people were."
The boy was treated for a dog bite and released Friday. He limped into the council meeting Monday with his mother, Lorraine Livingston.
"This is something that will take him a while to get over," Livingston said. "The officer had no control over that animal. That dog should be put to sleep."
Experts differ on whether dogs can discern race.
The owner of the Tom Brenneman School for Canines near Lawrence, Kan., has trained more than 600 dogs for police departments nationwide. He said dogs determine targets by scent alone and see only gray and white.
Tom Brenneman said the dogs can be trained to recognize the scent of drugs, explosives and also that dogs can smell fear.
"As far as it being black or white or Hispanic, that doesn't have anything to do with it," he said.
A national expert on animal behavior at Tuft's University School of Veterinary Medicine said dogs not only can determine race, but can develop prejudices similar to humans. Dr. Nick Dodman said that prejudice can be based on a lack of exposure to different people or because of a bad experience.
Dolpho has since been taken off active duty, but the department is standing behind him.
Chief Robert Martineau said the dog is good around children and even visits area schools and day care centers.
"To say the dog is racial ... that's ludicrous. That doesn't make sense," Martineau said.
No decision was made on Dolpho's future Monday.
Their religion dictates that they have wear that veil, it also dictates woman cannot drive cars. So take off that darn veil off if you want to drive!!!!
If she is so religious she's got to have a veil over her face in her driver's licence picture, she should be like her sister Arabs back home - forbidden to drive a car.
Right on brother, right on!!!
I will email a copy of this to all the places that count.
Oh, and I guess Cousin "IT" can get a driver's Lic now, lol
But what she did't know you were taking hits off the can ;)
Whoooo Hooooooo!!!!!
http://www.reddi-wip.com/img/past10.gif
Parents who spent years collecting cans to pay tuition see son graduate from MIT
By David Abel, Globe Staff, 6/8/2002
CAMBRIDGE - The plane was leaving at 7 a.m., and because the car taking them to the airport wouldn't come until 5, they figured they had enough time to fit in a night shift. So, like every other night of the year, Rogelio and Yolanda Garcia piled into their old white truck and went to work collecting cans in the back alleys of Los Angeles.
When dawn broke, it would herald a day like no other in their lives, one they never envisioned before leaving their small town in Mexico more than two decades ago.
After four years of hearing about the domed buildings along the banks of a river in a cold and faraway city, they would see them for the first time. Their son, a child prodigy they pampered as best they could, though they had next to nothing, would become the family's first college graduate, and not just from any college, but from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Yesterday, the Garcias, who gained national attention by collecting hundreds of thousands of cans over the years to help pay for their three children's education, watched as their oldest son, Rogelio Jr., graduated in style, pulling straight A's in his final semester and landing a lucrative job as an engineer.
'I never had any doubts he would do it,' said his father, beaming despite the downpour and bitter wind that drenched the more than 2,000 graduates in ponchos and mortarboards yesterday on MIT's Killian Court. 'We, of course, are very proud of him.'
Other than a brief trip to Miami last year, courtesy of a TV station, yesterday was the couple's first day off in as long as they can remember - perhaps since 1985 when Yolanda began fishing through dumpsters.
Despite their joy at seeing Rogelio Jr. graduate after four years of pinching pennies, living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and spending countless all-nighters cramming for classes that at first seemed impossibly demanding, the couple didn't have time to rest on their laurels. They had work to do.
Although their airfare and hotel bill was covered by alumni, the Garcias, who brought their two younger children, Angel, 15, and Adriana, a 20-year-old junior at the University of California at Riverside, were trying to make arrangements to return last night, a day ahead of schedule.
'Saturday is our best day,' said Yolanda, a tiny 52-year-old whose smile glows brightly against dark cheeks tanned from so many years toiling under the California sun.
National publicity about their story has helped the Garcias financially over the past two years, but it has also hurt them, the couple says. That they could earn as much as $1,600 by collecting some 45,000 cans a month invited copycats - and the competition has significantly cut into their profits.
They also say they took a financial hit after Sept. 11. With fewer tourists visiting LA, fewer parties, and the hotels half-empty, they say the number of cans, bottles, and plastic redeemables fell.
So, in February, the city offered the couple a part-time job cleaning Venice Beach - near the cramped one-bedroom apartment they called home until moving recently to a larger place in what they describe as a 'less noisy' part of the city.
The new job is good because it has allowed them to continue collecting cans - and to double their income to about $2,800 a month. The two continue cruising in their truck and collecting cans after midnight, but now, Monday through Friday, Yolanda leaves for the beach at 6 a.m. while her husband continues collecting cans. At 10 a.m., Rogelio, a slight, 5-foot-tall 54-year-old, takes over at the beach and his wife returns to collecting cans. At 2 p.m. on weekdays, the two meet up again and spend a few more hours working the alleys together.
'The good part is that the money is assured,' Rogelio said. 'But collecting cans is a job for life - we're our own bosses, there are no punch cards, and we can continue doing it as long as we like.'
With Rogelio Jr. coming home to work for Raytheon, getting paid $60,000 a year - more than three times what his parents earn collecting cans - the ebullient 21-year-old, who yesterday completed a degree in aeronautical engineering, hopes his parents will let him do the family's heavy lifting. But with $25,000 in debt, his sister still in school, and his brother two years away from college, the couple insist they won't let up much.
'We might reduce our hours a little,' said Yolanda, who bought a new dress for yesterday's commencement, 'but working is a part of our lives. If we stopped, I'm afraid we would die.'
Huddling in ponchos and sitting in the frigid rain from early morning until the afternoon, the Garcias weren't in the mood to complain. Nor were they bothered by about 100 protesters who came to show their anger at the day's keynote speaker, James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group, who spoke about rising poverty throughout the world.
When their son found them among the throngs of parents at commencement, Yolanda and Rogelio looked at him with his new haircut and in his cap and gown, smiled, and then smothered him with hugs.
'This is really a great day,' Yolanda said. 'We couldn't be any more proud.'
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/159/metro/A_labor_of_love_is_rewarded+.shtml
JH Email.....
Question to John
John,
I found this on a message board. Do you know of this information, could NV be apart of this, could this tech benefit from NVEI?
Thank you ,
AL
Answer from John
Al,
Since Ethernet is an upper layer protocol, it will benefit from our physical layer transmission method, which is different from DMT.
John
IKANOS COMMUNICATIONS TO DEMONSTRATE 50 MBPS VDSL-DMT AT UPCOMING FS-VDSL COMMITTEE MEETING
Features High-Performance, Standards Compliant Chipsets for Both Central Office and Customer Premise Equipment
FREMONT, Calif., February 26, 2002— Ikanos Communications, developer of Smart Silicon for Profitable Broadband™, today announced that it will demonstrate the first 50 Mbps VDSL-DMT solution at the upcoming FS-VDSL Committee meeting in Broomfield, Colo. Ikanos introduced its high-performance programmable chipsets in October 2001 and is the first silicon company to demonstrate a standards-compliant VDSL-DMT product based on "Plan 998," being promoted by the FS-VDSL Committee. Ikanos' demo, scheduled for March 4 and 5, 2002, will feature 50 Mbps VDSL-DMT running Ethernet traffic over a copper loop.
"Ikanos' demonstration of DMT line-coding is significant in proving both the viability and the availability of VDSL-DMT technology," said Richard Sekar, vice president of marketing of Ikanos. "Ikanos is taking carrier-proven DMT coding technology and applying it to new applications, including VDSL and Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM). By integrating VDSL-DMT into its programmable chipset architecture, Ikanos enables equipment vendors to simplify the design process, while boosting the efficiency of their VDSL platforms to support high-value, high-content applications with minimum overhead."
Why High-Performance DMT?
To date, worldwide carriers have deployed more than 10 million ADSL-DMT lines that deliver 1-6 Mbps broadband over existing copper loops. Vendors are now looking for ways to extend DMT line coding technology to VDSL, to achieve standards-based asymmetric connectivity up to 50 Mbps.
DMT technology is an appealing solution because carriers have already invested significant time and resources integrating DMT technology into their ADSL networks. Equipment vendors that integrate Ikanos technology can now leverage the same resources and processes with VDSL-DMT chipsets and can easily migrate their platforms into a carrier's existing infrastructure. Equipment based on this coding technology can also offer carriers a more attractive package, including products with higher speeds, longer reach, better performance under noisy conditions, and adaptability to emerging applications, such as EFM.
Ikanos' high-performance, standards-compliant VDSL-DMT chipset is the first to support all international VDSL-DMT standards for North America, Europe, and Asia, including ATM and Ethernet protocols, in a single chipset. Equipment vendors can use the Ikanos chipsets to develop end-to-end solutions for the Metro Fiber Extension (MFE), Multi-Tenant/Multi-Dwelling Unit (MxU) and Central Office/Remote Terminal (CO/RT) markets, while slashing time to market and lowering development, manufacturing, and inventory costs. The chipsets are based on a highly integrated architecture that allows Ikanos to offer industry-leading port density and enables the design of smaller, simpler products with lower chip counts.
FS-VDSL Committee Pushing for Standardization
The FS-VDSL Committee was founded to accelerate the commercial deployment of Full-Service Very High Bit Rate DSL technology (FS-VDSL), which enables the delivery of advanced applications including high-speed voice and data services, as well as video on demand over the copper loop. The goal of the group is to reduce the cost and facilitate faster deployment of VDSL services worldwide. The FS-VDSL Committee is made up of more than 70 of the world's largest communication carriers and equipment vendors.
"Since the FS-VDSL Committee's inception in July 2000, we have identified companies that have proven expertise and leadership to participate in the promotion of the committee's objective: completing the International Standards for VDSL and to work out all of the relevant technical specifications needed for an end-to-end solution," said Don Clarke, technical director of the FS-VDSL Committee and Head of VDSL Development at BTexact Technologies. "We welcome Ikanos as one of the first silicon companies to deliver a high-performance standards-compliant VDSL-DMT solution."
GlobespanVirata announces ADSL, symmetric DSL chip,
Companies hail ‘3G’ deployment in Montana,
Gilat Nosedives as StarBand Hits the Skids
Gilat took a hit after its U.S. broadband satellite venture StarBand filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy highlighting what a bust satellite-based high-services have been. [Article ID: 3460]
SBC and Yahoo! on their Way to Broadband
Priced as much as $8 lower than AOL, SBC Yahoo! gets off the ground in the dial-up arena. The companies will no doubt hope to eat into AOL’s prospective broadband base with low-cost high-speed services, taking a cue from Qwest and MSN. [Article ID: 3461]
Other Broadband Developments
SeaChange to announce earnings 6/5,
nCube gets certified on SA,
Vicom and Amara call off deal,
Navini’s non-LOS system available,
AOL and EarthLink launch in Memphis,
GlobespanVirata announces ADSL, symmetric DSL chip,
Companies hail ‘3G’ deployment in Montana,
SA boosts on-demand capacity,
Spyglass picked as system integrator by Midstream.
[Article ID: 3462]
This maybe helpful when liquid gets released to get an idea what we are making
http://movieweb.com/movie/top25.html
We are being ripped off people!!!!
I saw the preview in the theater today when I saw Undercover Brother. I must say it looks close to Liquid but not with the great footage.
Title Note: Early in development, this project was known as the slightly longer Surf Girls of Maui. The title may yet change again. (11/14/01) Or it may even revert back to that longer title. (12/31/01) Officially, it's still untitled... Universal may come up with another title yet. (3/13/02) Someone wrote in today to say that they saw this listed by Universal at ShoWest last week as Blue Crush, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. (3/18/02) Columnist Cindy Pearlman of the Chicago Sun-Times has confirmed the Blue Crush title.
Nothing gets between Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) and her board. Living in a beach shack with three roommates including her rebellious younger sister, she is up before dawn every morning to conquer the waves and count the days until the Rip Masters surf competition. Having transplanted herself to Hawaii with no one's blessing but her own, Anne Marie finds all she needs in the adrenaline-charged surf scene Љ until pro quarterback Matt Tollman (Matthew Davis) comes along. Like it or not, Anne Marie starts falling for him.
http://movieweb.com/movie/bluecrush/
This sound like something we heard before?
http://store.yahoo.com/pinklava/bluecrush.html
Blue Crush
A film by Bill Ballard
A local attorney I know gave me the info on this internet site. I thought you might find it interesting. You can check to see if the FBI has ever had a file on you. I was shocked to see that there was a file on me.
Do not use your Social Security Number when asked! Just check your state and put in your name. If a match is found they will ask for a year of birth to either narrow or confirm the search. You will get a case number, date of investigation (if any) and any photos on file.
This is a free site and will most likely be closed soon due to a recent federal court order. You should definitely check into this. It's amazing what they have on file. Just click on or go to:
FBI Records Search
http://www.policeguide.com/cgi-bin/criminal-search
Mosquito Deterrent
Pass this on to anyone who likes being out in the evening or is having a cook out
Here is a good thing for the summer, for those who like to sit enjoy the out of doors, but don't like those pesky mosquitoes. It was given at a gardening forum:
Put some water in a white dinner plate and add just a couple of drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dishwashing soap. Set the dish on a porch or patio. Not sure what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white color, or what, but mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead, or fall into the water, or on the floor within about 10 ft. Works just super!
Enjoy the mosquito free summer!!!!
EarthLink to Bundle Time Warner Cable Video Services
Hoping to boost its broadband penetration, EarthLink will offer a bundle that includes Time Warner Cable’s video services. Time Warner could get a boost too. [Article ID: 3438]
Time Warner Cable Can’t Afford to Lose Partnership Systems
Despite softening in its new services growth, Time Warner Cable is staying strong. But, partnership issues surrounding Time Warner Entertainment could cut two mil. subs. from the company’s ranks, leaving it a distant second to AT&T Comcast. [Article ID: 3439]
Other Broadband Developments
Comcast sells 42 mil. AT&T shares,
Qwest hits junk bond status,
OpenTV tops 25 mil. deployments,
Nokia takes Redback stake,
SA unveils caller ID application,
Time Warner to launch VOD in Binghamton,
hereUare Wi-Fi in 42 airports.
[Article ID: 3440]
http://www.broadband-daily.com/
Is this company of any interest?
http://www.openvob.org/
SBC DSL Deployments Grind to a Halt
Capital spending cutbacks have hurt SBC’s rollout of DSL technology. According to our calculations, SBC’s DSL footprint expanded by only 200K locations during Q1 02, compared to three mil. during Q1 01 and 1.4 mil. during Q4 01. [Article ID: 3423]
EchoStar Switches Broadband Gears
Following its failed satellite broadband ventures, EchoStar turns to DSL partnerships in an attempt to compete with cable’s ability to bundle video and data, hoping to protect its vulnerable status in urban areas. [Article ID: 3424]
Other Broadband Developments
Adelphia’s saga darkens and darkens,
OpenVOB calls fifth round of testing a success,
Paradyne buys Jetstream assets,
Redback supports Wi-Fi.
[Article ID: 3425]
OT- (Click here for a good story)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=336564
Good reading (Click here)
My work is never done, and Alf can attest to that! After receiving my Ph.D. on 2/22/2002 (interesting numbers, aren't they? my thesis was also 222 pages!), I continued working in the lab to get one last set of results to publish before leaving MIT in June. I also had to go to an American Association of Cancer Research conference on 4/5, and it just happened to be in San Francisco!
So that's where the title comes in! Alf decided to join me on that lovely Friday morning, when it was exactly freezing temperature in Boston. The 6.5 hour flight was uneventful (thank God), but neither of us really like flying. San Fran was overcast and in the 60s, but it shortly cleared up and we had some pretty good weather. Most of the time, I was at the conference, but we had time to do some sight seeing. When we arrived on Friday, we took a historic streetcar to Fisherman's Wharf. Wouldn't you know it, the streetcar was from Newark, NJ! We were not even in CA for 3 hours and we were already reminded of home. At the wharf, we ate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant, (with a nice view of Alcatraz) where there was a Tom Hanks look-alike proclaiming Gump-isms to passersby. We also took a tour of the marvelous city, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and Park, Nob Hill, the Haight-Ashbury district, the crookedest street, and the Cliff House. We also went to the cable car museum, which was truly amazing!
After presenting my work to a bunch of famous scientists (yes, some were Nobel Laureates!), it was time to head down to San Diego for some job interviews. We decided to take our time and drive down along the coast, stopping at the Monterey aquarium (we saw the jellies exhibit and petted sting rays!) and spending the night near the Hearst Castle. The castle was beyond belief. I want to be that rich someday! We drove the coastal route from there, experiencing breathtaking views and stopping to photograph every vista we could. We made our way inland and drove through Hollywood, taking pictures of the sign on the hill from someone's driveway! Then on to LA, and down to San Diego.
We arrived in San Diego on 4/10, and saw real surfers for the first time. I had full day interviews on the 11th and 12th, and came home in the evening to a cool pool and a warm hot tub. All the while, Alf was schmoozing with some fellow investors and the VP of New Visual Corp. in which he owns stock. On the 13th we enjoyed a tour of San Diego, stopping by (but not going into) the world famous San Diego Zoo (it was a zoo in there!). We saw Old Town, where we ate very authentic Mexican food and drank HUGE margaritas. We also bought some of the hottest hot sauces in the world! Next we got to see some aircraft carriers and the island of Coronado. And oh yeah, some of the places where Top Gun was shot! One of my favorite movies of all time! We met up with some of Alf's pals, Karen and Dave, who generously treated us to a nice dinner (complete with California chardonnay) and shared with us some of their experiences about living in San Diego. They took us to the famous Comedy Store, where comedians like Robin Williams got their start. It was a great show!
The next morning, we were supposed to fly back to Boston, but as I said, we don't like to fly. We decided to ditch the tickets and drive home! Here's where the real adventure begins…
Our first destination was the Grand Canyon, roughly 800 miles from San Diego. We set out around 9:30am, and saw A LOT of the Mojave desert. It got up to about 104 deg F! Eventually, we were just south of Las Vegas (we didn't have enough time to drive through) and at the Hoover Dam. Wow. What a marvel! We could only stand to look around for about an hour in the grueling heat before heading on. We continued through Arizona along the southern edge of the Grand Canyon, although we didn't see it till the next day. We climbed up to an elevation of over 7000 ft, which made our ears pop, our throats dry, and our heads a little woozy. But we arrived at our hotel at 8pm, with just enough time to have dinner and plan the next day's route.
We awoke early on 4/15 (don't worry, our taxes were done weeks ago!) and headed down to breakfast. Upon checking out, we learned that we had a $127 phone bill for a 2 hour call to the next town over! We argued and argued, but only got half the bill reduced. Alf and I were furious, and we were about and hour behind schedule. After calming down a bit, we headed out to see the Grand Canyon. We forgot about the bill instantly. There is no way to describe the beauty of this place. Pictures and post cards don't do it justice. We had a hard time believing it was real at all! It looked like a backdrop to the movies. After taking about 50 pictures (lucky we invested in a digital camera with a big memory chip!) we headed on to a winding road with lots of Native American roadside stands. Our favorite was Chief Yellowhorn's. Once you passed, there were signs that said "you missed us…nice Indians behind you…the Chief sez turn around"! We continued on along a very straight desert road once again, seeing lots of dust devils along the way. The dust devils soon turned into a huge and horrendous dust storm (no wonder why they had wind advisories on the radio!). At times, the visibility was less than 50 feet. We made it through, though, and headed on to the Four Corners. This is the only place in the US where four states intersect exactly. We then rode on the Devil's Highway (featured in the movie "Natural Born Killers"), Route 666, but we didn't pass by Alfie's Donuts. Oh well! We continued on through Moab, Utah where the rock formations were striking. We ended our day in Grand Junction, CO.
On Tuesday morning we set out to see the Rockies, and what a sight they were! We drove on the winding mountain roads, climbing higher and higher, and experiencing hail the size of my pinky fingernail. It was about 38 deg F. The hail soon ended to yield sunny skies and beautiful mountains. Vail Pass came next, bringing us some of the most spectacular views (and yes, the peaks were still snow-covered!). We reached a maximum elevation (on the highway itself) of 11,992 ft at Loveland Pass and photographed mountains that reached over 14,200 ft. We gradually decreased our elevation to about 5000 ft in Denver, and as we came down from the mountains, there were signs for the truckers reading "Don't be fooled! You are not down yet…", encouraging them to keep it in low gear. From Denver you could look behind you and see all the mountains in their grandeur, the snow-capped peaks rising above the lower, tree-covered "hills". After that there was A LOT of flat farmland, and as we looked to our left on the eastern border of CO, we saw ominous dark clouds turning the skies black. To the right, blue skies and puffy white clouds. We experienced a little wind and rain, but basically outran the storm before it became severe. Once in Kansas, the temperature rose up to about 89 deg F on the prairie. Lots of prairie. We did see lots of tumbleweeds, oil derricks, and tractors. We made it to Junction City just before a severe thunderstorm around 8 pm, putting in about 10.5 hours of driving.
Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore! I could finally say that after passing through Topeka and arriving in Kansas City, MO, where we saw Royals Stadium from the highway. Missouri was a little more interesting than Kansas. We passed through the Ozarks region, and saw many fireworks outlets and signs for cheap cigarettes on the way. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is located right on the Mississippi River, where we admired the riverboats as well. It was a quick stop, then it was on through Illinois and Indiana, which went relatively quickly (compared to Kansas!). We were headed to see Alf's friends in Cincinnati, or so we thought. Little did we know, we were actually going to Kentucky (just south of the Ohio border). So we took the long way around, but we admired nighttime views of Cincinnati on the way. We arrived in Kentucky (finally!) at about 10:30 pm, giving us a total of about 14.5 hours on the road that day. We needed a few drinks after that one, so we met up with Alf's pals around 11 pm at a local watering hole. Mike and Jason were there to welcome us with open arms, and they even got the barmaid to make a pass at Alf, surprising him and making him blush! We hung out till the wee hours of the morning (almost 3 am) and decided we weren't driving anywhere the next day. Thursday was for sleeping late, enjoying the hotel's indoor and outdoor pools, and soaking up some Kentucky sun. Jason met up with us again that evening, generously treating us to a nice dinner overlooking the famous fountain featured in the opening sequence to "WKRP in Cincinnati". We learned that there was no actual building or radio station though. Afterwards, Jason put the top down and chauffeured us around the waterfront, pointing out the sights and telling us a little history of the area. He then took us to a great spot were we could have an after dinner drink while overlooking the city. We returned to the hotel early that night, so we could get a fresh start in the morning.
Friday, 4/19, we headed out by 9 am. One thing we noticed since Indiana is that there are a lot of motor speedways between Indianapolis and Pennsylvania. The drive through Ohio was also mostly farmland, except for when we passed near Columbus. There we made a rest stop, and we actually bought some Krispy Kreme donuts! I'd been hearing about those for years, but never actually tried one. They are pretty darn good! We crossed the Ohio River and spent a few minutes (literally) in West Virginia before entering into Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania is also a pretty lengthy state, but the rolling hills and lush green pastures were pleasing to the eye. We passed though some "mountains" (the Alleghenies), which peaked around 2100 ft. Not very interesting compared to the Rockies! We encountered some traffic near the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, but it was pretty smooth sailing after that. Signs for Crystal Caves, Hershey, and Lancaster reminded me of childhood vacations. The Pennsylvania Dutch style actually runs up to the Appalachians in some places. After traveling through Bethlehem we approached the New Jersey border with eager anticipation. Finally, something we were familiar with! We continued to Newark, where our families awaited our arrival. Another 10.5 hour day on the road culminated not in a hotel room, but in my mom and dad's house. As much as we enjoyed the experience, it was nice not to have to pay for a bed.
delete please, problem with text conversion :(
ill see if i can fix the problem and repost it :)
Harvard Business School, or, Didn't we do this last year?
The game was delayed for a half hour or so due to overtime in a previous
game, so a lot of us sat around and watched the men's B final for a few
periods. We finally got onto the ice about 2:10. After a quick warmup
(with pucks this time!) we faced off at center ice. The first few minutes
were largely in the neutral zone, as we sized each other up. HBS opened
the scoring first with a wraparound goal from a bad angle, but MIT evened
it up on the ensuing faceoff, with the puck popping back to Lynne, who
passed it up to Sarah D, who passed it right to Michelle who went up and
scored on a very pretty wrister. The rest of the period passed with a
great deal of hard-played hockey, but no scoring or penalties. We did
learn to look out for #13 and #18! HBS started to get a little more
physical in the second period, including a fair amount of pointless
slashing. Since the ref wasn't calling much of anything, MIT didn't back
down, but Sam was sorely missed. ;) Again, the second period
consisted of close-fought hockey but no scoring or penalties. The third
period got even more exciting, with Michelle scoring her second goal a few
minutes in. With about eight minutes left in the game, Michelle scored a
beautiful breakaway goal, tumbling head over heels into the boards in the
process--check out that enthusiasm! With the team up 3-1 courtesy of
Michelle's hat trick (the third MIT hat trick in three consecutive games,
by three different players!) MIT closed down and played solid defensive
hockey for six minutes. HBS pulled their goalie with less than two
minutes remaining, and (after being reminded by the ref that they could
put a sixth skater out now!) managed to put the puck past a slightly
out-of-position-defense and Marita with just 29 seconds remaining.
However, MIT clamped down for the final seconds, and held on to preserve a
3-2 win and our third consecutive McArthur Cup title. Someone in charge
handed over the actual cup itself, and Marita and Michelle did a victory
lap and we took a team picture before they made us give it back.
Thanks to everyone who participated in a great season and a great
tournament! We look forward to seeing many of you back next year, and
wish the best of luck to those heading out for parts unknown.
Lynne
Sad story
> Last Christmas I was rushing around trying to finish shopping. I was
> > > stressed out and not thinking very fondly of the season. It was
> > > dark, cold and wet in the parking lot. As I was loading my car I
> > > noticed that I was missing a receipt that I might need later, so I
> > > retraced my steps toward the mall entrance.
> > >
> > > I was scanning the wet pavement for the lost receipt
> > > when I heard a quiet sobbing. It was coming from a
> > > poorly dressed boy of about 12. He was short and thin.
> > > He had no coat. He was wearing a ragged flannel shirt
> > > to protect him from the cold night's chill. Oddly
> > > enough, he was holding a hundred dollar bill.
> > >
> > > Thinking that he might just be lost, I asked if I
> > > could help. He told me his sad story.
> > >
> > > He said he came from a large family....three brothers
> > > and four sisters. His father died when he was nine.
> > > His mother was poorly educated and worked two full
> > > time jobs. She made minimum wage, but had somehow
> > > saved
> > > two hundred dollars to buy her children Christmas
> > > presents.
> > >
> > > 'She dropped off the young lad on the way to her
> > > second job. He was to use the money to buy presents
> > > for his siblings and save just enough to take the bus
> > > home. As he approached the mall a bigger boy grabbed
> > > one of the hundred dollar bills and disappeared into
> > > the night.
> > >
> > > "Why didn't you scream for help?" I asked. The boy
> > > said, "I did."
> > > "And nobody came?" I queried.
> > > The boy stared at the sidewalk and sadly shook his
> > > head.
> > > "How loud did you scream?" I inquired. The soft-spoken
> > > boy looked up and meekly whispered, "Help me!"
> > >
> > > I realized then that no one was ever going to hear
> > > that kid cry for help....so I grabbed his other
> > > hundred and took off!
> > >
> > > Signed,
> > > Kenneth Lay
> > > CEO, Enron Corporation
>
Check out the hate mail on this site, funny stuff.
http://www.cat-scan.com
hssmdpets sez...
how sad! I suppose it seemed like a "cute" idea when you originally thought of it, but remember there's always some "sicko" out there willing to take any
idea to the extreme. oh great, back to this argument... zzzzzzzz.... One only can hope that you do not start receiving "scans" of maimed or dead
cats, from those fools hoping to "top" your photos. ironic, I haven't received any yet. I guess You Are Dumb and your theory sucks.
Maybe you should add to your page the requirement that only scans of LIVE cats will be accepted.Though scanning any live creature does indeed seem
inherently cruel, because the creature will be exposed to the scanning light and it's damaging effects. skin cancer! aaaack! run! Why not run a contest for the cutest shots of LIVE cats/ dogs, or perhaps ones showing the most unusual breeds/ color combinations/etc. because that would be Dumb. Don't they do that shit on AOL? Unless, and it does seem likely, that like Howard Stern, you're just out to shock and horrify , thus providing your viewers with the opportunity to criticize and in turn be made fool of by you. Seems you have created a controversy and like a naughty child are enjoying the grown up's distaste. Not the most adult activity but then possibly we're not dealing here with an adult. It now seems to have taken on a life of it's own, this disturbing contest concept, and judging from your viewer responses no one seems to find the concept funny, but rather pathetic. Let's hope you'll tire of this and switch to something more humane and productive.
Humane Society member
Forty acres and a mule.
The words still resonate across the black community and are the nexus for a slavery-reparations lawsuit just filed in New York.
It's a concept that originated with Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman, whose Special Field Order No. 15 of January 1865 gave each freed slave's household a piece of land and the means to work it. But for many blacks, "40 acres and a mule" symbolizes promises made — and broken — by the U.S. government to slaves.
Slave descendant Deadria Farmer-Paellmann of New York City grew up hearing about her own family's crushed dreams. She brought the recent lawsuit against Aetna insurance, FleetBoston Financial and shipping company CSX, claiming those firms and others profited from slavery. She's seeking unspecified damages on behalf of millions of offspring of slaves.
"My grandfather always talked about the 40 acres and a mule we were promised and never given," she told reporters as she filed her suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. "I wanted to get to the core of why we didn't get it."
While scholars are divided on the ultimate legality of Sherman's order, they agree that America today would be a far different place had the freed slaves been settled onto lands they had worked for generations.
"Land is power — particularly in the 19th century," said Sam Anderson of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College and a member of the New York-based Reparations Mobilization Coalition.
"At the time of emancipation, people were promised the land they worked on. It was not only a governmental promise but it was deep in the heart and mind and soul of millions of people who had worked the land with no pay."
Claude Oubre disagrees. That promise "is a myth," said Oubre, author of "Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership" and a history and political-science professor at Louisiana State University at Eunice.
"Military orders are only valid during wartime," Oubre said. "If Sherman set land aside, he could only do it as long as the war was continuing."
Michael Holt, a University of Virginia history professor and co-author of "The Civil War and Reconstruction," said Sherman's order designated the coastline and 30 miles inland between Charleston and Jacksonville "for exclusive settlement of blacks who were to take up land in 40-acre plots."
Dylan Penningroth, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in black history, slavery and emancipation, said the land promise came "at the end of Sherman's famous march to the sea, when he notices he has 20,000 black people tagging along. That's a problem because this is an army, not a refugee camp."
So Sherman gathered "leading Negro citizens, most of whom were ministers in Savannah," Penningroth said, and asked what their community wanted.
Land, they replied.
"They knew that was the basis on which they could make freedom happen," Penningroth said.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman, left, promised land to former slaves. But President Andrew Johnson, right, under political pressure, later ordered that all black-held land be returned to former white owners who had been pardoned after the war.
Sherman's field order detailed the areas of land available to freed slaves, and said the government would see that "each family shall have a plot of no more than (40) forty acres of tillable ground" as well as assistance "to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement." Although the specific phrase "and a mule" does not appear in Sherman's order, Oubre said the promise was meant to include excess mules and horses from the Army.
Holt said that in March 1865, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau and gave it control of about 800,000 acres of abandoned and confiscated southern land. But by the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson, under political pressure from wealthy farmers, ordered that all black-held land be returned to former owners pardoned after the war.
Blacks were forced out by the end of 1865.
"Whites knew farming was a production of wealth, and that these folk who were formerly enslaved were now skilled laborers," Anderson said. "It was a dangerous precedent from the perspective of the construct of race and racism: Millions of black folk with land and the knowledge of what to do with it."
Oubre argued that ultimately, the field order would have been found unconstitutional.
"It was a bill of attainder," he said, meaning that the government had taken land from owners who had been declared guilty without trials during the war. "Most of the land in the South had been seized under the act, which the Constitution prohibits."
But Penningroth said there was a precedent: The Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160-acre lots of land in the American West.
"It's not like America had never opened up lands for its citizens," he said.
Richard America sees a larger issue: "The process of the diversion and transfer of income and wealth from blacks to whites over 400 years."
America, a Georgetown University professor, is author of "Paying the Social Debt: What White America Owes Black America" and a member of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, assisting Farmer-Paellmann in her lawsuit.
People "understand intuitively the phrase 40 acres and a mule, and it captures the underlying reality in a memorable way," Anderson said. "They intuit that there is indeed a debt, a social debt."
A debt that would not exist today, the argument runs, had freed slaves been settled permanently.
If that had happened, "the political reality and electoral politics would have shifted," said Anderson, of the Reparations Mobilization Coalition. "Serious landowners are seriously involved in political machinations."
Over time, given the widespread ownership of small parcels of land, "it might have changed people's minds about freed people," perhaps heading off or weakening racism, Penningroth said. "There was this image that the most virtuous person in America was someone who worked for himself, was independent: The sturdy, self-sufficient farmer."
For now, the slavery reparations lawsuit is a "starting point," Anderson said.
"A starting point to calculate the amount of labor that black people put into building this society, for which they were not paid," he said. "For the untold hardships and degradation of a people driven off the land or intimidated into working for nothing. Just a starting point."
How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland
Final Solutions
by Edwin Black
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, most of the world saw a menace to humanity. But IBM saw Nazi Germany as a lucrative trading partner. Its president, Thomas J. Watson, engineered a strategic business alliance between IBM and the Reich, beginning in the first days of the Hitler regime and continuing right through World War II. This alliance catapulted Nazi Germany to become IBM's most important customer outside the U.S. IBM and the Nazis jointly designed, and IBM exclusively produced, technological solutions that enabled Hitler to accelerate and in many ways automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies. Custom-designed, IBM-produced punch cards, sorted by IBM machines leased to the Nazis, helped organize and manage the initial identification and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and, ultimately, even their extermination.
Recently discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear that IBM's alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its German subsidiary. A key factor in the Holocaust in Poland was IBM technology provided directly through a special wartime Polish subsidiary reporting to IBM New York, mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue.
And that's how the trains to Auschwitz ran on time.
Thousands of IBM documents reviewed for the first edition of my book 'IBM and the Holocaust,' published early last year and focused mainly on IBM's German subsidiary, revealed vigorous efforts to preserve IBM's monopoly in the Nazi market and increase contracts to meet wartime sales quotas.
Since then, continued research and interviews have uncovered details, described here for the first time, of IBM's work for the Nazis in Poland through the separate subsidiary and of the Polish subsidiary's direct contact with IBM officials on Madison Avenue.
Documents were obtained from IBM files shipped to NYU for processing and from scores of other archival sources here and abroad. Not a single sentence written by IBM personnel has been discovered in any of the documents questioning the morality of automating the Third Reich, even when headlines proclaimed the mass murder of Jews.
IBM's German subsidiary was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, known by the acronym Dehomag. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated U.S. census information in the late 19th century and founded the company which became IBM. Hollerith's name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi "departments" that operated them.)
Watson tightly managed the lucrative German operation, traveling to Berlin at least twice annually from 1933 until 1939 to personally supervise Dehomag. Major German correspondence was translated for review by the New York office and often for Watson's personal comment. Before big new accounts were accepted, Watson had to assent. For deniability, he insisted on making direct verbal instructions to his German managers the rule rather than exception—even in place of major contracts. Once, when German managers wanted to paint a corridor, they awaited his specific permission. Watson's auditors continuously tracked the source and status of every reichsmark and pfennig—in one typical case, exchanging numerous transatlantic letters over the disposition of just a few dollars. Not infrequently, Dehomag managers objected to his "domination." Understandably, IBM's lawyers and managers in Berlin personally updated Watson constantly, and generally signed their reports, "Awaiting your further instructions."
No machines were sold to the Nazis—only leased. IBM was the sole source of all punch cards and spare parts, and it serviced the machines on-site—whether at Dachau or in the heart of Berlin—either directly or through its authorized dealer network or field trainees. There were no universal punch cards. Each series was custom-designed by IBM engineers not only to capture the information going in, but also to tabulate the information the Nazis wanted to come out.
IBM constantly updated its machinery and applications for the Nazis. For example, one series of punch cards was designed to record religion, national origin, and mother tongue, but by creating special columns and rows for Jew, Polish language, Polish nationality, the fur trade as an occupation, and then Berlin, Nazis could quickly cross-tabulate, at the rate of 25,000 cards per hour, exactly how many Berlin furriers were Jews of Polish extraction. Railroad cars, which could take two weeks to locate and route, could be swiftly dispatched in just 48 hours by means of a vast network of punch-card machines. Indeed, IBM services coursed through the entire German infrastructure in Europe.
The IBM Response
Asked about IBM's Polish subsidiary's involvement with the Nazis, IBM spokeswoman Carol Makovich in New York repeated the same official statement she issued more than a year ago: "IBM does not have much information about this period." Asked a dozen times, Makovich simply repeated the phrase.
The war broke out on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Germany annexed northwestern Poland; the remaining Polish territory in Nazi hands was treated as "occupied" and called the "General Government." That annexed northwestern quadrant was serviced by IBM's German subsidiary, Dehomag, mainly to handle the payrolls of Silesian coal mines and heavy industry. At about that time, IBM New York established a special subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, to deal with the General Government. It remained completely legal for IBM to service the Third Reich until just before America entered the war in December 1941.
The savaging of Poland was no secret to IBM executives. From the outset, worldwide headlines reported barbarous massacres, rapes, purposeful starvation, systematic deportations, and the resulting unchecked epidemics. As early as September 13, 1939, The New York Times reported the Reich's determination to make Polish Jewry disappear, a headline declaring, "Nazis Hint Purge of Jews in Poland." A subhead added, "3,000,000 Population Involved." The article quoted the German government's plan for the "removal of the Polish Jewish population from the European domain." The Times added, "How . . . the 'removal' of Jews from Poland [can be achieved] without their extermination . . . is not explained."
Germany had plans. Polish Jews, during a sequence of sudden relocations, were to be catalogued for further action in a massive cascade of repetitive censuses and registrations with up-to-date information being instantly available to various Nazi planning agencies and occupation offices. How much usable forced labor for armament factories could they generate? How many thousands would die of starvation each month? A spectrum of Nazi census, registration, and statistical tabulation was performed on custom-designed IBM punch-card programs and machinery.
On September 9, 1939, Dehomag general manager Hermann Rottke wrote directly to Watson in New York, asking for advanced equipment. Rottke reminded Watson, "During your last visit in Berlin at the beginning of July, you made the kind offer to me that you might be willing to furnish the German company machines from Endicott [an IBM factory near Binghamton] in order to shorten our long delivery terms. . . . You have complied with this request, for which I thank you very much, and have added that in cases of urgent need, I may make use of other American machines. . . . You will understand that under today's conditions, a certain need has arisen for such machines, which we do not build as yet in Germany. Therefore, I should like to make use of your kind offer and ask you to leave with the German company . . . the alphabetic tabulating machines. . . . "
Eighteen days later, a vanquished Warsaw formally capitulated. The next day, September 28, IBM's general manager in Geneva, J.W. Schotte, telephoned Berlin to confirm Watson's permission for the new equipment.
Meanwhile, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of Heinrich Himmler's Security Service, the SD, had already circulated a top-secret letter to the chiefs of his Einsatzgruppen, which evolved into mobile killing units. Heydrich's September 21 memo, titled "The Jewish Question in the Occupied Territory," laid out a plan of population control through a sequence of strategic censuses and registrations. It began, "I would like to point out once more that the total measures planned (i.e., the final aim) are to be kept strictly secret." First, Jews were to be relocated to so-called concentration towns at "either railroad junctions or at least on a railway." Addressing the zone from east of Kraków to the former Czechoslovakian-Polish border, Heydrich directed, "Within this territory, only a temporary census of Jews need be taken." Heydrich demanded that "the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen report to me continually regarding . . . the census of Jews in their districts. . . . "
Shortly thereafter, Heydrich sent a follow-up cable to his occupying forces in Poland, Upper Silesia, and Czechoslovakia, outlining how a new December 17 census would escalate the process from mere identification and cataloguing to deportation and execution. Heydrich's memo entitled "Evacuation of the New Eastern Provinces" decreed, "The evacuation of Poles and Jews in the new Eastern Provinces will be conducted by the Security Police. . . . The census documents provide the basis for the evacuation. All persons in the new provinces possess a copy. The census form is the temporary identification card giving permission to stay. Therefore, all persons have to hand over the card before deportation. . . . Anyone caught without this card is subject to possible execution. . . . "
Quantifying and organizing the deportation of millions of people from various regions across Eastern Europe could take years using pencils and paper. Relying upon the lightning speed of Hollerith machines, it took just days. Heydrich assured, "That means the large-scale evacuation can begin no sooner than around January 1, 1940." Nazi Germany employed only one method for conducting a census: IBM punch-card processes, each one designed for the specific census.
In Nazi Poland, railroads constituted about 95 percent of the IBM subsidiary's business, using as many as 21 million punch cards annually. Watson Business Machines was headquartered at Kreuz 23 in Warsaw. And one of its important customer sites, newly discovered since the first edition of my book was published a year ago, was the Hollerith department of Polish Railways, at 22 Pawia Street in Kraków. This office kept tabs on all trains in the General Government, including those that sent Jews to their death in Auschwitz.
Leon Krzemieniecki is probably the only man still living who worked in that Hollerith department. It must be emphasized that Krzemieniecki did not understand any of the details of the genocidal train destinations. His duties required tabulating information on all trains, from ordinary passenger to freight trains, but only after their arrival.
The high-security five-room office, guarded by armed railway police, was equipped with 15 punchers, two sorters, and a tabulator "bigger than a sofa." Fifteen Polish women punched the cards and loaded the sorters. Three German nationals supervised the office, overseeing the final tabulations and summary statistics in great secrecy. Handfuls of printouts were reduced to a small envelope of summary data, which was then delivered to a secret destination. Truckloads of the preliminary printouts were then regularly burned, along with the spent cards, Krzemieniecki told me in an interview.
As a forced laborer, Krzemieniecki was compelled to work as a "sorter and tabulator" 10 hours per day for two years. He never realized that his work involved the transportation of Jews to gas chambers.
"I only know that this very modern equipment made possible the control of all the railway traffic in the General Government," he said.
Krzemieniecki recalled that an "outside technician," who spoke German and Polish and "did not work for the railroad," was almost constantly on-site to keep the machines running, performing major maintenance monthly.
IBM's tailored railroad-management programs, several million custom-designed punch cards printed at IBM's print shop at 6 Rymarska Street, across from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the railway's leased machines were under the New York-controlled subsidiary in Warsaw, not the German subsidiary, Dehomag. The distinction is important. Since the disclosures about IBM's involvement in the Holocaust first surfaced in February 2001, the company has continually pointed to supposed lack of control of its German subsidiary. But Watson Business Machines was established in Poland by IBM New York itself, at the time of Germany's invasion.
"I knew they were not German machines," recalled Krzemieniecki. "The labels were in English. . . . The person maintaining and repairing the machines spread the diagrams out sometimes. The language of the diagrams of those machines was only in English."
I asked Krzemieniecki if the machine logo plates were in German, Polish, or English. He answered, "English. It said, 'Business Machines.' " I asked, "Do you mean 'International Business Machines'?" Krzemieniecki replied, "No, 'Watson Business Machines.' "
Dwarfing the railroad operation in Poland described by Krzemieniecki was a massive Hollerith statistical center at 24 Murner Street in Kraków, staffed by more than 500 punching and tabulating employees and equipped with dozens of machines. New research has uncovered the existence of a previously unknown Berlin agency, the Central Office for Foreign Statistics and Foreign Country Research, which continuously received detailed data from the Kraków statistical center.
By late 1939, the Reich's Jewish-population statistics wizard, Fritz Arlt, had been appointed head of the Population and Welfare Administration of the General Government. A Hollerith expert and colleague of Adolf Eichmann, Arlt edited his own statistical publication, Political Information Service of the General Government, which featured such data as Jews per square meter, with projections of decrease from forced labor and starvation.
"We can count on the mortality of some subjugated groups," one Arlt article asserted. "These include babies and those over the age of 65, as well as those who are basically weak and ill in all other age groups."
The data-hungry Nazis created an expanded Statistics Office in Kraków in 1940. The expansion was dependent on more leased machines, spare parts, company technicians, and a guaranteed continued supply of millions of additional IBM cards. IBM's European general manager, Werner Lier, visited Berlin in early October 1941 to oversee IBM New York's deployment of machines in Poland and other countries. In two detailed reports, written from Berlin and sent to Watson, as well as to other senior staff in New York, Lier reported moving a small group of Polish machines into Romania for the Jewish census there. The Polish machines would soon be replaced by others.
The expanded Statistics Office assured Berlin in a November 30, 1941, report that its Hollerith operation would employ equipment more modern than the old IBM machinery found in most pre-war Polish data agencies, thus allowing the Nazis to launch a plethora of "large-scale censuses." Also planned was a long list of "continuous statistical surveys," including those for population, domestic migration, and causes of death. Moreover, regular surveys of food and agriculture were "coupled with summary surveys of the population and ethnic groups." Tabulating food supplies against ethnic numbers allowed the Nazis to ration caloric intake as they subjected the Jewish community to starvation.
The Statistics Office's report concluded, "Our work is just beginning to bear fruit."
Once the U.S. Entered the war in December 1941, Germany appointed a Nazi devoted to IBM, Hermann Fellinger, as enemy-property custodian. He maintained the original staff and managers of Watson Business Machines, keeping it productive for the Reich and profitable for IBM. The subsidiary now reported to IBM's Geneva office, and from there to New York. The company was not looted, its leased machines were not seized. "Royalties" were remitted to IBM through Geneva. Lease payments and profits were preserved in special accounts. After the war, IBM recovered all its Polish profits and machines.
Since the war, IBM, having left Madison Avenue for new headquarters in suburban Armonk, has obstructed, or refused to cooperate with, virtually every major independent author writing about its history, according to numerous published introductions, prefaces, and acknowledgments.
But silence cannot alter the historical documentation. A tangle of subsidiaries throughout Europe helped IBM reap the benefits of its partnership with Nazi Germany. After all, "business" was IBM's middle name.
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Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation (Crown Books, 2001, and Three Rivers Press, 2002), just released in paperback with new information. He can be reached at www.edwinblack.com.
Tell us what you think. editor@villagevoice.com
Glow in the dark bunny
Eduardo Kac / Submitted by: Soylent
Mad science for Easter Sunday: "Alba, the green fluorescent bunny, is an albino rabbit. This means that, since she has no skin pigment, under ordinary environmental conditions she is completely white with pink eyes. Alba is not green all the time. She only glows when illuminated with the correct light. When (and only when) illuminated with blue light (maximum excitation at 488 nm), she glows with a bright green light (maximum emission at 509 nm). She was created with EGFP, an enhanced version (i.e., a synthetic mutation) of the original wild-type green fluorescent gene found in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria. EGFP gives about two orders of magnitude greater fluorescence in mammalian cells (including human cells) than the original jellyfish gene."
Found this on a web site
http://www.premierinvestor.com/tools/quotes/delayedquotes.exe?symbol=NVEI
NEW VISUAL CP - NVEI
COMPANY NAME - SYMBOL Exchange: OBB
Last Sale N/A Up/Down Tick EVEN
Change EVEN Prev Close 737.480
Day High N/A Open N/A
Day Low N/A Volume N/A
52 Week High 2315.344 52 Week Low 188.658
Quotes: delayed at least 15 minutes, NYSE & AMEX data delayed 20 minutes.
Symbol:
And the game played on....
Yale B School, or, Hey Mr Zamboni Guy, can I have some crack too?
Ah, the joys of Really Bad Ice. MIT started off strong against a Yale
team that lacked Michigan's ringer, socks, an understanding of how
suspenders are supposed to work, and in one case, pants. Although MIT was
clearly dominating the game, their very tall goalie had relatively good
reflexes and it took Ana at least four minutes to skate the puck up and
score unassisted. On her next shift, Ana set Patty up for a one-timer
right in the crease (and in the air, I believe!) in a really beautiful
play. A few minutes later, Michelle broke out of our zone with the puck,
skated through four Yalies, and passed to Katie H, who took the puck up
and scored with it. Patty almost made it 4-0 shortly after, blocking
Lynne's wrist shot with her rear end (I was aiming for the Yale player,
honest!) and then jamming the puck in around the goalie's foot. The goal
was waved off, for somewhat unclear reasons, and the score remained 3-0
after the first period.
In the second period, the ice had gone from bad to worse. Instead of
pucks just getting caught in certain areas, they were getting caught all
over the ice! Elaine in particular looked very surprised on her
breakaway when suddenly the puck was back in that sticky patch, and Sam
did a beautiful and protracted dance to keep from falling through four
bad spots (it was the fifth that got her!)...no relation to the
zamboni doors being open to the 60 degree outside weather, surely? There
was also an interesting bit when Lynne passed to Lara's helmet, rather
than the tape on her stick... MIT kept the puck consistently in the
Yale zone, and demonstrated the beautiful puck cycling and D to D passes
that we've been practicing all season. Unfortunately, the (very loud)
Yale fans seemed unimpressed, although they quieted momentarily when Ana
assisted on Patty's wraparound goal. The third period...actually looked
very similar to the second, except that the clock went to running time
after Patty (assisted by Ana and Brenda) completed her hat trick. Final
score: MIT 5, Yale 0; shots on goal for Yale from inside the blue line:
0.
Bring on HBS!
This was going on this morning at the hockey tournament. I work the defensive door to let the players on and off the ice. I also worked the door of the dressing room.
Michigan B School, or, Christine and Friends Meet the Midwest.
Michigan's goaltender had more than a week's experience under her belt
this time! After collecting our spiffy new baseball caps and having Al
hold off the men's team that wanted the dressing room back, MIT skated out
for a two-minute puckless warmup. The first period was a little slow, as
most of us tried to shake the cobwebs out of our brains (who the heck *is*
out next on D?) Our game started to come together a few minutes in, as we
learned not to give the puck to #33 in blue! Christine, assisted by Katie
F, opened up the scoring about six or seven minutes in to make it 1-0 MIT,
then grabbed a rebound two minutes later and put it into the empty side of
the net to put us up 2-0 after the first period. The second period saw
some good pressure by MIT, with several good scoring chances, but we were
unable to convert until Christine (assisted by Katie F and Alicia) put the
puck back in the net for a hat trick! Near the end of the period,
Christine was called for tripping and the MIT penalty kill unit went to
work. If the Michigan goalie was hoping for a break, she didn't get one--
Michelle won the faceoff in our zone to Elaine, who skated it up, and
between the two of them they got off about eight shots in one shift.
After successfully killing the penalty, MIT showed off its breakout, with
Vivian passing up to Patty, who scored a pretty wrister breakaway goal to
put us up 4-0 after the second. The third period was continued
excitement, but sometimes felt like a 5-on-3 in their zone, as the
wide-open defensemen didn't see a lot of rubber. Katie F capped off the
scoring (assisted by Christine, of course!) with a few minutes remaining
to make it 5-0, and Marita made a very nice save on a breakaway shot with
just 35 seconds left to preserve her shutout.
Final score: MIT 5, Michigan 0.
Next up is Yale--come get some! ;)
Lynne
JH email on Liquid :)
WOW what a week!
1. Will liquid be shown in the major movie theaters or the smaller theaters that show independent movies?
2. Would the movie receive any back lash from the Big boys in the Hollywood?
"Step Into Liquid was created entirely out of the clutches of the major studios."
3. Will there be movie trailers on major networks through out the day and prime time?
4. Who is funding the media coverage and how much?
Iv been hearing people on the street talking about NV and the movie, the word is getting out! :)
A comment that I hear makes me think this movie will be huge. "With all the dark stories in the media these days people need a movie like this to escape."
I just hope there is a big campaign to get the word out :)
Thank you,
AL
Al,
Rather than get into specifics, the plan is being played out by the LLC and NV is not really actively involved in those plans. I do know that distribution will be in major theatres and will be handled independeltly from the studios. We remain very excited about the revenue prospects and believe the timing is to our advantage.
John
JH email on Liquid :)
WOW what a week!
1. Will liquid be shown in the major movie theaters or the smaller theaters that show independent movies?
2. Would the movie receive any back lash from the Big boys in the Hollywood?
"Step Into Liquid was created entirely out of the clutches of the major studios."
3. Will there be movie trailers on major networks through out the day and prime time?
4. Who is funding the media coverage and how much?
Iv been hearing people on the street talking about NV and the movie, the word is getting out! :)
A comment that I hear makes me think this movie will be huge. "With all the dark stories in the media these days people need a movie like this to escape."
I just hope there is a big campaign to get the word out :)
Thank you,
AL
Al,
Rather than get into specifics, the plan is being played out by the LLC and NV is not really actively involved in those plans. I do know that distribution will be in major theatres and will be handled independeltly from the studios. We remain very excited about the revenue prospects and believe the timing is to our advantage.
John
Insight Communications Pursues the Full Bundle
Each quarter, Broadband Daily delivers to our annual paid subscribers data-rich analyses of leading companies in the broadband sector. The following is our Q4 01 analysis of U.S. cable operator Insight Communications, prepared by our broadband media research partner, Broadband Markets (www.broadbandmarkets.com). To look at our analyses of the other leading cable operators, AT&T Broadband, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Charter, Cablevision Systems and Mediacom, as well as a cross-company comparison of all the operators, please click on the Quarterly Reports button in the header or click on the Quarterly Reports graphic on our home page.
Insight
The nation's ninth largest MSO, Insight Communications was named "Operator of the Year" for 2001 by the now-defunct Cablevision magazine. Among the reasons cited by the publication for its selection were Insight's leadership role in deploying new bundled services, including VOD, and the MSO's consistently high rankings in customer-satisfaction surveys.
Insight's cable operations are located in four contiguous states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, the first three of which each contain more than 400,000 Insight subscribers. Most of its systems are located in second and third tier markets, including a heavier than usual mix of college towns.
Most of Insight's cable operations are owned by a 50-50 joint venture between Insight and AT&T Broadband. This venture nearly doubled its holdings early last year, when AT&T and Insight contributed 250,000 and 280,000 additional subscribers, respectively. Of the Insight subscribers rolled into the partnership, roughly 100,000 had earlier been purchased from AT&T. These, along with AT&T's 250,000 contributed subscribers, were located mainly in mid-sized Illinois cities.
To leverage its geographic concentration, Insight is consolidating its headends so that 95% of its customers are served by 13 headends: five in Illinois, four in Kentucky, three in Indiana and one in Ohio.
Insight has also been aggressively upgrading its plant. Excluding the 350,00 subscribers in Illinois systems previously owned by AT&T, Insight ended last year with 97% of its plant capable of delivering 750 MHz of bandwidth and two-way services. Including the Illinois systems, this figure falls to 74%, which means that the lion's share of these AT&T systems had yet to be upgraded by yearend.
Basic Subscribers and RGUs 4Q00 1Q01 2Q01 3Q01 4Q01
Homes passed 1,573,700 2,158,000 2,166,000 2,181,000 2,200,800
Basic cable customers 919,300 1,284,900 1,270,100 1,275,500 1,283,700
Basic cable penetration 58.4% 59.5% 58.6% 58.5% 58.3%
New Service Revenue Generating Units
Total new service RGUs 133,600 246,200 274,500 316,500 351,800
New service RGUs % of basic subs 15% 19% 22% 25% 27%
Digital video % of RGUs 77% 74% 73% 73% 73%
High speed data % of RGUs 23% 26% 27% 27% 25%
Like its joint-venture partner AT&T, Insight is one of the few top MSOs with a penetration rate below 60%. One of the reasons is that it faces competitive overbuilds covering a relatively high proportion of its service area.
During 4Q01 Insight added just 8,200 basic subscribers, as basic penetration slipped to 58.3% from 58.5% during the prior quarter and 58.4% during 4Q00. This marked the company's third consecutive quarter of declining basic penetration. According to company executives, Insight's basic customer base grew by roughly 1% during the course of the year, followed by a significant surge in sub growth during the first two months of this year. A factor contributing to the latter, they suggest, is that the company's multi-service offering is beginning to attract more customers, especially in its competitive overbuild markets.
During the company's 3Q01 earnings call, Insight executives emphasized their strategy of focusing on growth in advanced services rather than the more traditional metric of basic subscriber growth.
During the year, Insight's new service RGUs increased by 159%, from 133,600 to 345,800. At yearend RGUs as a percentage of basic subscribers had reached 27%, compared to just 15% at the end of 2000. Roughly three quarters of Insight's RGU's are accounted for by digital video customers.
On a pro-forma basis, Insight added approximately 150,000 RGUs during the year, a 47% increase over 2000. The difference in RGU growth between its upgraded and non-upgraded systems is highlighted by the fact that the Illinois systems, which are still in the process of being rebuilt, generated just one out of every twenty new RGUs during 2001, but account for roughly one in four basic subscribers.
Digital Video 4Q00 1Q01 2Q01 3Q01 4Q01
Digital-ready subscribers 777,000 1,099,000 1,116,000 1,121,200 1,144,400
Digital-ready homes % of total homes 85% 86% 88% 88% 89%
Digital customers 103,300 182,900 201,200 229,600 257,700
Quarterly net adds na 31,000 18,300 28,400 28,100
% change versus prior quarter -41% 55% -1%
Penetration of digital-ready subscribers 13.3% 16.6% 18.0% 20.5% 22.5%
Penetration of basic subscribers 11.2% 14.2% 15.8% 18.0% 20.1%
Penetration of total homes passed 6.6% 8.5% 9.3% 10.5% 11.7%
Monthly digital revenue per digital sub na $ 18.95 $ 20.06 $ 18.70 $ 19.13
Sequential quarterly growth rate 30.0% 10.0% 14.1% 12.2%
At yearend, digital video service was available to more than 1.1 million (89%) of Insight's customers, up from 777,000 at the start of the year, which was 85% of its base at that time. More significantly, the number of customers able to receive the company's interactive digital product--which includes VOD--increased from 145,000 to 950,000, or 74% of its base. Most of this increase occurred during 4Q01.
Insight added 28,100 digital units during 4Q01, down slightly from the prior quarter's 28,400. For 2001 as a whole, it added 105,800 digital customers. At yearend, Insight claimed a total of 257,700 digital subs, 22.5% of customers able to receive the service and 20.1% of total basic customers. In its non-Illinois systems yearend digital penetration was 26-27%, with several systems, including Columbus (35%) already north of 30%. Insight's target for yearend 2002 is 33% digital penetration.
Of its yearend digital base, roughly 210,00 (81%) were receiving the two-way Insight Interactive service. The average incremental monthly revenue generated by Insight's digital customers was $19.13 for the quarter, up slightly from the prior quarter's $18.70, but off from a 2Q01 peak of $20.06.
High Speed Data 4Q00 1Q01 2Q01 3Q01 4Q01
HSD-ready homes passed 1,204,100 1,567,600 1,607,200 1,673,300 1,708,900
HSD-ready homes % of total homes 77% 73% 74% 77% 78%
HSD customers 30,300 63,300 73,300 84,900 88,100
Quarterly net adds na 11,872 10,000 11,600 3,200
% change versus prior quarter -16% 16% -72%
Penetration of HSD-ready homes 2.5% 4.0% 4.6% 5.1% 5.2%
Penetration of basic subscribers 3.3% 4.9% 5.8% 6.7% 6.9%
Penetration of total homes passed 1.9% 2.9% 3.4% 3.9% 4.0%
Monthly revenue per HSD customer $ 43.96 na $ 41.34 $ 41.56 $ 42.45
Sequential quarterly growth rate 39.2% 15.8% 15.8% 3.8%
Insight's progress on the high speed data front was slowed during 4Q01, following the late September bankruptcy filing by Excite@Home. For two weeks after the filing, Excite@Home ceased provisioning new customers. Insight management subsequently decided to stop activity marketing the @Home service. As a result, it added just 3,200 HSD customers during 4Q01, down dramatically from the third quarter's 11,600 run rate.
Insight's HSD footprint expansion was also slowed by the @Home problem. During 4Q01 just 35,600 new homes gained access to the service, compared to 66,100 during 3Q01. At the end of the year, a little more than 1.7 homes had access to Insight's HSD service, roughly 78% of its base. The bulk of the homes without access to the service are located in the Illinois systems acquired from AT&T.
As 2002 began, 4% of Insight's total homes and 5.2% of homes with access to the service were HSD customers. Both of these figures were slightly more than double the yearend 2000 levels of 2.5% and 1.9%, respectively.
Insight's in-house HSD service will rely on AT&T's backbone. The company is serving 85% of its customer base from a single point-of-presence, with two more POPs serving the other 15%. It had been paying @Home roughly $13 a month per HSD customer, and expects to reduce its comparable internal costs to $9 or less.
Pursuing the full bundle
Insight aims to be the first major MSO to offer a complete bundle of digital video, VOD, high-speed data and telephone across its entire footprint. During the first half of 2001 it undertook a limited telephony launch in Louisville, KY. It followed this up with a 3Q01 launch in Evansville, IN, and by its March earnings call had also begun a telephony rollout in Columbus, OH. It ended the year with 6,000 telephony customers.
Insight management points to recent gains in basic subscribers in Evansville and Columbus, suggesting that the company's bundled-service strategy could provide a key competitive weapon in these overbuild markets. They also note that the vast majority of telephony customers (96% as of 9/30/01) choose a single-bill option and that penetration in some nodes exceeded 7% after just 5 months of marketing the service.
Monthly Revenue per Subscriber 4Q00 1Q01 2Q01 3Q01 4Q01
Monthly cable revenue per customer $ 37.90 $ 38.87 $ 37.34 $ 37.63 $ 37.70
% of total revenue per sub 84.7% 88.5% 81.6% 81.0% 79.0%
Monthly digital revenue per sub $ 1.72 $ 2.47 $ 3.02 $ 3.17 $ 3.64
% of total revenue per sub 3.8% 5.6% 6.6% 6.8% 7.6%
Monthly HSD revenue per sub $ 1.29 $ 1.51 $ 2.21 $ 2.58 $ 2.87
% of total revenue per sub 2.9% 3.4% 4.8% 5.6% 6.0%
Monthly advertising revenue per sub $ 3.85 na $ 3.17 $ 3.08 $ 3.50
% of total revenue per sub 8.6% 6.9% 6.6% 7.3%
Total monthly revenue per sub $ 44.76 $ 43.91 $ 45.74 $ 46.46 $ 47.71
During 4Q01 Insight generated an average of $47.71 per month per basic customer, up 6.6% from 4Q00 levels and up 2.7% sequentially. Part of the reason for this relatively modest increase is that Insight management has taken a conservative approach to rate hikes as it has upgraded its networks and launched new services. During the year it raised basic rates by only 2.4% even as it faced 8-10% increases in programming costs.
This year, with much of its upgrade and launch activity behind it, Insight is planning to increase basic rates by 5-6%, which should give revenue and cash flow growth a boost.
Excluding its Illinois systems, Insight's 4Q01 per-customer revenue fared somewhat better, with a monthly average of $48.64 and an annual increase of 8.4%.
Like its peers, Insight is seeing a changing mix in the components of its revenue base. Whereas traditional cable revenue accounted for nearly 85% of total per-customer revenue during 4Q00, its share fell to 79% in 4Q01. At the same time, the share contributed by digital video and HSD both roughly doubled. The former jumped from 3.8% to 7.6%, while HSD expanded from 2.9% to 6% of total revenue. Together, the two services accounted for 13.6% of the average 4Q01 customer bill, up from 6.7% a year earlier.
Operating Results ($000) 4Q00 4Q01 % change
Pro forma Pro forma
Revenues $ 172,576 $ 183,139 6.1%
Programming & other operating costs $ 61,887 $ 64,866 4.8%
SG&A $ 30,727 $ 34,120 11.0%
Operating cash flow $ 79,962 $ 84,153 5.2%
Cash flow margin 46.3% 46.0%
Monthly cash flow per subscriber $ 20.14 $ 20.57 2.1%
Insight's fourth quarter pro forma revenue was up 6.1%. Quarterly cash flow grew a little slower at 5.2%, as the company's margin slipped 300 basis points to 46%. Monthly cash flow per customer was up 2.2% for the quarter, at $20.57.
For the year, Insight's capital spending totaled $325.6 million, an amount it expects to decline to $300 million this year. Its guidance calls for annual revenue and cash flow to both grow by 14-16% this year, well ahead of its 4Q01 growth rates for both measures.
VOD is Coming to a PC and TV Near You
It’s been a long time coming, but video-on-demand will soon start appearing on both TVs and PCs. That much is certain, but there are still a lot of gray areas in the development of on-demand video, according to a group of top executives assembled to talk about the subject at a Thomas Weisel Partners conference in Napa Valley on 3/22.
Cable operators are in the best position to jump start the VOD market, according to Cox’s Lynne Elander, because they’ve got both the TV and PC platforms covered. “We believe that the robust nature of the two-way plant is absolutely the best platform to deliver and consume on-demand entertainment. We have a way of playing in the VOD to PC space as well,” she said.
Even though Cox is putting most of its VOD eggs in the TV delivery basket, with 40% of all Cox homes capable of getting VOD-to-the-TV this year, the company also has its eye on how to deliver on-demand video via its broadband Internet connections. “There are some consumers for whom it is appropriate to consume video on the PC that are not mass market. We do have a way of participating in that market through our high-speed Internet product,” she said.
Jim Ramo, CEO of studio-backed web-based VOD company Movielink said that although Movielink is working out the kinks in delivering VOD on the Internet, his company won’t turn down other methods of distribution. “We have two jobs. The first is to be a VOD provider for any platform and the second is to open up the Internet as a medium of distribution for this high value content,” he said.
At this stage, the VOD market still faces a lot of unknowns. For one thing, it’s unclear whether increasingly popular personal video recording technologies can peacefully coexist with cable and satellite operator dreams of charging per-view fees. TiVo’s Michael Ramsay thinks PVR and VOD are complementary, not competitive, but did concede that “time shifting does converge on VOD” and that some cable operators view TiVo as a threat.
“TiVo is perceived as not serving the cable industry. We preempt the front screen and we take over television. Cable companies talk about the last mile, but we talk about the last six feet. It’s a barrier to them adopting the technology from us,” he said.
Still, PVR technology can help cable operators grow other revenue streams, such as premium channels, and even boost per-viewing buy rates, he said. “The premium channel subscription rates for people who have TiVo are 50% higher. The PPV buy rates are going up by a factor of two. I’m excited about the idea about getting access to programming across multiple fronts,” Ramsay said.
For their part, cable operators aren’t sure what to make of TiV specifically and PVR technology more generally. “We have an investment in TiVo and we believe in TiVo, Cox’s Elander said. But, she admitted that “there is concern in the industry that the TiVo unit in the home taking the place of the standard interface. We have to figure the business model.”
Also unclear is whether streaming VOD is viable in the near-term. Most Internet-based VOD providers will focus on shipping product that can be downloaded onto hard drives, at least initially, according to the execs. Movielink’s Ramo” “The Internet is just not quite ready for a reliable quality streaming service at this stage. Downloading does give you that reliability and quality. If you’re trying to push piracy back in the corner, that’s one of the advantages of downloading.”
TiVo’s Ramsay: “We believe that download is the only way to get high quality content over broadband Internet. You don’t have a predictable Internet. With DSL, the Internet starts and stops all the time.”
Still dangling is digital rights management for VOD. “VOD opens up a whole field of Internet rights questions,” Movielink’s Ramo said. “There are so many DRM approaches floating around, all of which want to be standards, that will require us to launch with a proprietary standard this year.”
(A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer
heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(B) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and
also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or
Americans.
(C) The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer
fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
(D) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and
also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or
Americans.
(E) Conclusion: Eat & drink what you like. It's speaking
English that kills you.
Tech Stocks: Follow the Patents?
That's what one research boutique is doing--and its work suggests that investors should pay close attention to companies' patent activity.
Hungry for technology stocks? If that question leaves you feeling as if you just swallowed seafood of dubious vintage, I don't blame you. By any measure, the past two years have been enough to make even the stoutest investor shudder at tech. Yet abandoning technology companies, which account for one in five U.S. stocks, would be an obvious, if understandable, mistake.
That's why I was all ears when I heard recently about a novel approach to picking techs. It has nothing to do with counting eyeballs, checking book-to-bill ratios, or even estimating earnings per share. Instead, it's all about patents--first, trying to evaluate the potential of a company's patent portfolio, and then relating that measurement to the company's stock price. Early evidence of patents' role in picking winners is promising (chart).
Yes, many investors have long hazarded guesses about how key patents might pay off. But CHI Research, a consulting boutique in Haddon Heights, N.J., is pioneering a strictly quantitative method. CHI got started in 1968 reviewing patents for the National Science Foundation. It later nabbed corporate clients and, in 2000, branched out to Wall Street with a pricey stock-evaluation service it calls Investor Tech-Line. CHI each month examines nearly 400 companies with strong patent activity, ranking them on investment potential.
Far more important than just the number of patents a company holds, or even how many it is adding, are a battery of more subtle indicators. At the core of CHI's system is something it calls "citation impact." This is a measure of how often a patent is cited by later patent applications and, by extension, its importance. At the same time, CHI checks how many references a patent makes to scientific papers, as opposed to earlier patents. Its hunch is that patents flowing out of academic work are closer to basic science and likely more valuable. The firm also measures what it calls "technology cycle time," or the median age of patents cited in an application. Citing more recent patents can indicate a company is dealing in fresher technologies, with the possibility of greater future profit.
Tests of these theories, first reported in a 1999 paper published in the Financial Analysts Journal and later by CHI itself, are intriguing. CHI's back-test over the 1990-99 period found its picks outperformed the Nasdaq Composite Index in 7 of 10 years and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index in 8 of 10.
Investor Tech-Line, for which CHI last year received its own patent (you can view it at www.chiresearch.com), is slowly drawing the attention of institutional investors. Christopher Rowane, manager of the $60 million Huntington Mid Corp America Fund, attributes much of the fund's outperformance since its start a year ago--a 4.5% gain, vs. a 2.6% loss for its average midcap rival--to relying on patent research for a first cut through the clutter of stocks.
So, which stocks does CHI like? Some surprises, notably Ciena (table). The maker of optical-network gear topped CHI's yearend rankings, when it was $14.31 a share, and again on Feb. 1, at $12.70. Ciena (CIEN ) has since announced a merger with ONI Systems (ONIS ) and revealed a bleak outlook for the current quarter, sending the shares below $8. Other CHI picks include well-known giants (AOL Time Warner) and tiny unknowns such as Isco (ISKO ), a maker of flow meters. CHI suggests Isco's miniature, $54 million market value belies the close link of its patents to the science of "supercritical fluids"--part-liquid, part-gas substances created under very high pressure--that are used increasingly in the chemical and food industries.
An annual subscription to CHI's monthly reports carries a $15,000 price tag. But its way of thinking about patents, future profits, and tech stocks is free--a new tool to add to your kit.
I got the trailer to work!! Just click this link and down load quick time player or if you have quick time it will update your player.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
click free down load