1174176000Content Wireadminaccumulated,browser,collaboration,content integration,content management,Content Management,content management applications,content management platform,content management solutions,Content Technologies,document management,integration platform,intranet,java,JBoss,lifecycle,management applications,management platform,management solutions,new release,Nuxeo,open source,portals,records management,Records Management,user interface,venture capital,vice president,web applications,web content,web content management,workflow,ZopeOpen source ECM platformNuxeo ECM solutions are built on the experience accumulated for 5 years by Nuxeo and community members building mission-critical ECM applications (web content management, document management, records management, collaboration, intranet portals and workflow) for major customers, using previously Zope technologies, and now Java EE 5, JBoss Seam and OSGi. The new release includes: * Full document lifecycle, including versionning, check-in / check-out, etc. * Access rights management. * Workflow, including document approval. * Relations between documents. * Audit trails. * Drag'n'drop document management inside the web browser. * User-convenient desktop and office suite integration using plugins for IE, Firefox and MSOffice. www.nuxeo.orghttp://www.content-wire.com/open-source-ecm-platform1139097600Content Wireadminaccumulated,Business,business information,business users,content management,enterprise portal,financial services,Internet,internet,new business,new research,one of the few,pioneer,revenue growth,revenue share,service revenue,share information,ThailandThailand: Internet Service Providers in the RedIn the paper "Financial Analysis of Thai Internet Service Providers" Rear Admiral Prasart Sribhadung of Assumption University analyzed the financial status of Thai Internet Service Providers (ISP) after ten years of operation. "It has been openly speculated all along since the early days of ISPs in Thailand that most of the ISPs with few exceptions are not making any profit since they started operation. Nobody really knew the truth, how bad the situation was, or what was thecause, but some ISP ceased operation, and some sold out their businesses" he says Internet usage in Thailand is increasing, and the report confirms that revenue of ISPs are increasing, but also increasing is the operating cost of ISP services. There are several variables that can be used as indicator of Internet growth, e.g. Internet Users, Internet Revenue, Internet Domains, and both Internet International and Domestic Telecommunication Links used in Thailand. ISP Financial Information of the seventeen ISPs indicate alarming results which confirm that most ISPs are experiencing accumulated losses, except for Internet Thailand, which has some special privileges, because it was a government agency from start, and all shareholders paid their own share including CAT. It started with a very tiny loss (30,000 baht), which was a bit unrealistic for a new star-up business, then recorded huge profits every year, accumulated profits to 473.5 million. It is the only one of eighteen ISP making huge profits with stability. KSC the pioneer company limited ISPto joint venture with CAT (32% freeshares of 15 million) was even more unrealistic, made profit from the first year of operation and continued for six years then suffered significant losses and ended with a sizable accumulated loss. ANET operated normally, started making profit the fourth and fifth year approaching the break-even point, then three years of huge losses, after that recovered with two years of profit. It is still in the reds, the paper concludes So why is this possible? How is this huge discrepancy taking place? "Government enterprises enjoy more favourable financial conditions, resulting in lower operating costs. More research is going to be needed to assess implications and find a solution" www.ebusiness2005.comhttp://www.content-wire.com/thailand-internet-service-providers-red1109462400Content Wireadminaccess control,accumulated,application developers,application development,architecture,browser,Business,business applications,business content,business development,business need,business user,business users,CMS,collaboration,content authors,content delivery,content management,Content Management,content management application,content management applications,content management platform,content management software,content management system,Content Technologies,core business,delivery platform,Development,development environment,document management,functionality,images,individually,intuitive interface,intuitive user,key business,management application,management applications,management environment,management functionality,management platform,management product,Media,Microsoft,new business,new product,news content,news site,news sites,notion,open architecture,Open Text,People,project management,proprietary,software applications,software developers,software platform,streamline,take advantage,user experience,user interface,user interfaces,users experience,web applications,Web CMS,web content,web content management,web content management system,web pages,web users,workflowWYSIWYG in-context managementtelerik, vendor of software components for the Microsoft.NET platform, announced Sitefinity - an innovative Web Content Management System for ASP.NET that introduces the notion of "100% WYSIWYG" site construction. The application establishes an environment that enables even non-technical business users to build sites, contribute content, and perform workflow tasks in a truly visual manner. Sitefinity, however, is built with the developer in mind. Thanks to its open modular architecture and a fully-exposed API the product enables developers to modify the provided out-of-the-box functionality, reuse existing code from non-CMS driven sites, and add new modules in the form of standard ASP.NET controls. "Sitefinity comes to challenge the typical CMS shortcoming of focusing almost entirely on the business user, without considering the needs of responsible for the deployment, customization and administration of the system", says Vassil Terziev, Business Development Manager of telerik. "Building on our strong expertise in Microsoft .NET technologies we’ve created a unique system for web content management - one that delivers great developer experience without sacrificing the end-user functionality." A key advantage of Sitefinity is the open application architecture, which is comprised of self-contained modules, according to the developers They are not strongly tied together, but rather communicate by implementing common interfaces that are fully documented. This empowers developers to either build upon the existing modules (i.e. user management, workflow, etc.) or add custom ones and integrate them with the core application. For example, you can take a data-driven control, like an article manager, and implement the workflow interface. As a result, all articles will pass through the workflow cycle and will not go live until they have been approved. The application customization with Sitefinity is taken to another level thanks to the ability for side-by-side development in Visual Studio .NET. Every Sitefinity web-site has an automatically generated VS.Net project file, which can be accessed from the Sitefinity Project Manager. It allows developers to write code in the IDE and test the results on-the-fly in the working project, by simply refreshing the browser window. A unique feature of Sitefinity is a tool called Property Grid. It enables developers and end-users to configure user controls directly from within the browser. The tool looks similar to the Properties Window in Visual Studio .NET and eliminates the need for off-line configuration and upload of control files. For example, you can modify the dimensions of a certain editable area or change the expand effect of a menu without writing any code. If a control can be configured off-line in Visual Studio .NET you can configure it on-line with the Property Grid and see the result immediately. As a result, the major part of a web-application customization can be performed directly from the browser. The pages can be assembled from a list of approved reusable user controls, like HTML editable areas, navigation controls, news, articles, etc. Content authors can contribute text or HTML using the integrated r.a.d.editor control – the high-end WYSIWYG editor for ASP.NET. It features an intuitive Word?-like interface and enables regular business users to format text, build tables, and insert images, Flash, and Windows Media as easily as writing a document. Existing content can be copy-pasted from other applications with options for stripping of formatting that is not suitable for the web. To streamline collaboration and enable separation of tasks and roles, Sitefinity offers an expedient linear workflow with three independent types of content – layout content, page content, and controls content. They pass through the workflow individually so that people with different roles and access can work together. For example, a graphic designer can adjust the size of the site header, a system administrator can place an editable area in the central cell of a page, so that a content contributor can then type in the text for the assigned editable area. All outstanding tasks for a given user are accumulated in his/her common workspace, known as the Intray. Furthermore, conditional content delivery and content locking ensure that a change will not be visible to other users until it is approved. www.sitefinity.comhttp://www.content-wire.com/wysiwyg-context-management1098140400Content Wireadminaccumulated,Business,business information,business solutions,demand technology,development environment,direct marketing,email,email marketing,information technology,Internet,internet,key business,mandatory,marketing,Marketing,new business,new data,new technology,public sector,rationale,relationships,reseller agreement,source of information,Technology,technology alliance,technology provider,technology solutionsSingle-Source Reseller Promotes email securityTumbleweed Communications, provider of e-mail security and data security solutions, has formed a distribution agreement with Zones, a single-source direct marketing reseller of name-brand information technology products. The new alliance enables Zones to respond to the growing demand for more secure email communications by offering Tumbleweed's email security solutions to their growing list of customers. Zones, and its subsidiaries are single-source, multi-vendor direct marketing resellers ("DMR") of name-brand information technology ("IT") products to the small to medium sized business market, enterprise, and public sector accounts. Zones offers over 150,000 products from more than 2,000 vendors, and sells these products through outbound and inbound call center account executives, specialty print and e-catalogs, and the Internet. "Given the enormous demand for email security, Zones will be a key partner in our channel expansion," said Jeff Ready, VP of Marketing for Tumbleweed. "They are committed to providing the best technology, truly build trusting relationships with their clients and fully understand the value and effectiveness of our security solution." www.tumbleweed.com www.zones.comhttp://www.content-wire.com/single-source-reseller-promotes-email-security1095116400Content Wireadminaccumulated,adoption,assets,assets management,Business,business content,business development,business information,business need,business users,central repository,Companies,content integration,content management,Content Management,content management platform,content management services,content management software,content management solution,content management system,content management systems,content management tools,content repository,content technology,customers need,Development,development tools,Documentum (EMC),Education,email,enterprise content,enterprise content management,enterprise systems,Enterprise Web,global content,global technology,help companies,information assets,Information Management,information technology,integration platform,integration software,knowledge base,knowledge management,Knowledge Management,management market,management platform,management requirements,management technology,management tools,market leaders,Media,Media Assets Management,new business,new technology,provide tools,records management,Records Management,repository,retail customer,retrieve information,rich media,rich media content,smart,software platform,Standards,strategic alliance,strategic technology,system integration,Systems Alliance Inc,Technology,technology alliance,technology companies,technology integration,technology platform,users experience,vice president,virus protection,web content,web content management,web content management system,web pages,web users,WorldEnterprise Learning and Content Management SolutionPathlore Software Corporation, a global leader in providing learning management software and services to industry and government, has joined EMC Corporation's Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Alliance Program. EMC is the world leader in information storage and management. As a result of the alliance, Pathlore will resell the industry-leading EMC Documentum Enterprise Content Management platform and deliver an integrated enterprise content management and learning management system. The new system will eliminate the need for multiple content repositories -- including those dedicated to learning and development -- enabling companies to have one, central content repository, which users can access to create, manage, deliver and archive learning content. "As training becomes more strategic, there is a need to capture and retrieve all of the knowledge assets a company has accumulated and leverage those resources to build the most effective learning experience," said Leonard Greenberg, chief technology officer for Pathlore. "Using an enterprise content management system where the content already resides, instead of recreating the content in a separate learning content management system silo, will assure the most up-to-date information is delivered in training courses, while reducing the cost of developing training." "Integrating enterprise learning and content management into the smart enterprise suite can help organizations reduce the cost of creating, disseminating and archiving online education; this integration may well cause learning content management systems to become obsolete," said Kathy Harris, group vice president, Gartner Inc. The EMC Documentum platform consists of a common content platform and repository that enables organizations to collaborate when managing unstructured content -- such as documents, email, web pages, records and rich media -- that drives business operations and enhances learning. Content from the Pathlore learning management suite can be accessed and published by the Documentum platform, which interfaces with popular authoring tools from industry leaders like Macromedia as well as various other tools for capturing, storing and assembling content. The Pathlore solution will not only deliver the training but also track its completion. "Pathlore brings market leadership, a significant customer base and experience in developing standards for the training industry," said Barry Ruditsky, vice president of indirect channels for EMC Software. "Our customers have told us that they view learning content management systems as a transitional technology and have asked us to provide a solution that will simplify, standardize and centralize the management of all types of content. Working with Pathlore extends our ability to meet additional customer requirements."http://www.content-wire.com/enterprise-learning-and-content-management-solution1077062400Content Wireadminaccumulated,application development,application servers,bankruptcy,Business,business applications,business case,business development,business intelligence,business need,Companies,competitive advantage,computer,corporations,critical business,customers need,Denmark,Development,development infrastructure,development time,email,financial management,global economic,global network,hackers,headlines,home networking,infrastructure,infrastructure software,intellectual capital,intellectual property,intelligence,intention,Internet,internet,Italy,key business,large corporations,leading the way,malware,management application,management applications,management infrastructure,management market,market research,market share,Microsoft,migration,money,network infrastructure,networking,new business,new generation,new research,next generation,perspective,pipeline,private capital,proliferation,real time,repeatedly,repository,research and development,risk management,senior research,signs,six months,software applications,source code,Sweden,Switzerland,targets,time and money,time to market,worldwide marketSilently preparing for the $100 billion cyber-catastrophe riskChief executives and board-level decision makers within S&P 500 and FTSE-100 component companies are seriously evaluating the possibility of taking out insurance against a $100 billion global cyber catastrophe risk event for their worldwide operations that could cause massive business interruption for days and lead to insurmountable property and liability, breach of contract and workers' compensation claims alongside the potential for serious intellectual property theft and online financial fraud. Specialist law firms and General Counsels' offices have been busy over the last two weeks reviewing the terms of reference of existing insurance policies in regard to large scale cyber risk and catastrophe cover. Both captive insurance companies and general insurance companies have been approached for clarification on cataclysmic digital events and associated fallout leading to large scale loss of revenues or claims. Reinsurance companies, in turn, have been approached by insurance underwriters and brokers in the last ten days, especially because every form of digital risk and terrorism has been studiously excluded from all types of general property and casualty insurance and associated reinsurance policies post 9/11 often with the use of "side letters." Up until August 2003, it was generally believed that cyber catastrophe was a non-starter and therefore not worth insuring against. Then the global MSBlast and SoBig malware epidemics struck alongside the largest power outage in history across North East America - affecting New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Toronto and Ottawa - followed by further outages in London (UK), parts of Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and most of Italy. As a result, strategic corporate interest in large scale digital catastrophe, associated damage to critical economic infrastructure and multi-day power outages has been rising in the last six months. From the Chief Executives' perspective, the events of the last two weeks have not been promising as they have included the worst malware epidemic - the MyDoom proliferation - as well as successive announcements from Microsoft in regard to critical flaw patches followed by the leak of 13.5 million lines of source code for Windows 2000 and NT4 just before the weekend. There is bound to be at least one exploitable feature, bug, +/-1 correction, or buffer-overflow vulnerability per 10,000 lines of source code leading to at least over a 1,000 potential hacker activated code or malware entry points. This is concerning board level IT-minded executives in particular. Windows 2000 and NT4 are still widely used within a range of customised mission critical applications across most industries that have yet to migrate to newer versions of Windows' servers and clients. Typically, there is a prohibitive financial cost associated with the migration of that magnitude. It is the unenvisaged and as yet unidentified $100bn global cyber-catastrophe threats in particular, that concern chief executives, CFOs and CIOs of S&P 500 and FTSE-100 component companies. If a large scale risk is not yet known or quantifiable then these decision makers ought to be able to transfer the financial component of that risk through insurance or some other form of alternative risk transfer such as a catastrophe bond put together by a consortium. There is an obligation to share holders that all identified large risks ought to be reported to the board and economically viable transfer-of-risk mechanisms ought to be leveraged. Although low level cyber-liability insurance exists in embryo form, very little has been modelled or productised by insurance and reinsurance underwriters at the $100bn global cyber-catastrophe scale. The premium for such cover is also likely to run into millions of dollars per quarter per corporation insuring against $2bn to $5bn of exposure, and have excess limits of $100 million or more because the probability of incidence of cyber catastrophe is rising with every passing month since August 2003, although still below 1%. The leaked Microsoft Windows 2000 and NT4 source code contains the vital Winsock Application Programming Interface (API), Internet Explorer 5 (IE 5), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), networking and some Software Development Kit (SDK) code as well as the way in which Internet Explorer liaises with the rest of the operating system. These components are critical to maintaining safety, security and stability across a global digital network. There is concern that multi-nationals could face bankruptcy if their digital points of vulnerability were targeted repeatedly at some stage by hackers or malware authors, who could gain unfair competitive advantage to attack Microsoft computers by studying the source code leak and then carry out a large scale intellectual property theft or financial fraud in parallel with a denial of service attack. Along with the demand for $100bn collective cyber-catastrophe risk cover, comes the need for capital to cover for the eventuality. Increasing specialist capacity in global insurance markets is incredibly important. Whether there is a natural disaster-prone state like Florida or California, or a state like New York - with terrorist-targeted properties by way of track record - it remains to be seen how much in the way of accumulated losses the private insurance and reinsurance market can absorb before the entire market is put at risk. Large insurers and reinsurers have been downgraded by rating agencies as markets continue to harden, so the appetite for new risks without scientific modelling and track record can be low. Given that specialist insurance capacity or appetite may not yet exist for $100bn type of cyber-cataclysmic events, catastrophe bonds are actively being considered by large corporations as a way forward. A catastrophe bond is a high-yield debt instrument that is usually insurance linked and meant to raise money in case of a traditional catastrophe such as a hurricane or earthquake. It has a special condition that states that if the issuer - insurance, reinsurance or captive company - suffers a loss from a particular predefined catastrophe, then the issuer's obligation to pay interest and/or repay the principal is either deferred or completely forgiven. There are signs with every new outbreak that the next generation of malware - the Distributed Intelligent Malware Agent (DIMA) - could begin colonising global computer networks much faster. [mi2g original research into DIMA, 13th January 2003]. Even though large organisations may shore up their defences, they can no longer be certain that their employees' and customers' home computers are entirely up-to-date or there is no malware or hacker attack in the pipeline based on the as yet officially unidentified vulnerabilities. The MyDoom family of malware has led to the creation of a ready-army of a million plus zombie computers, which are still ready and waiting to direct a Distributed Denial of Service attack against any online computer network. MyDoom, which already has 70% of the characteristics of a DIMA, has continued to cause some global disruption and irritation as the volume of debris email and infected computers reached an all time cumulative high across 215+ countries but it has now begun to wane post 12th February. For all its disruptive traits, MyDoom is still manageable. However, future DIMA iterations may prove to be far more destructive as they get closer to becoming 100% capable and exhibit traits of intelligence and evolution in real time, just as counter-measures to fend them off are introduced. Future DIMA may also have unique channels of communication with their originators that may be used to commandeer their zombies towards new and highly vulnerable targets such as the capability displayed by Deadhat recently, which colonises MyDoom infected machines and then owns them through a cryptographic key enabled upload facility. Behind closed doors, senior http://www.content-wire.com/silently-preparing-100-billion-cyber-catastrophe-risk1043625600Content Wireadminaccumulated,China,content management system,India,Japan,landscape,market research,new data,new research,recent research,segment,sooner,specifically,World,worldwide marketOptical Fiber and Cable Industry Major RestructuringBeginning in mid-2001 and extending through 2002, fiber and cable manufacturers have had to confront the collapse of the telecom market, which has led to a steep decline in fiberoptic cable sales. The industry is meeting this challenge by shutting-down and "moth-balling" factories, consolidating facilities, and reducing staff. The result is a rapidly changing landscape for fiber and cable suppliers. Among new findings from KMI Research, plant closings have reduced the number of fiber-manufacturing facilities from a peak of 65 in 2000 to 46 that were operational for at least part of 2002. Recent plant closings mean that the number of facilities could decrease again in 2003. Patrick Fay, lead author of the KMI report, notes that it's not just the smaller facilities being closed down. He said, "Some of the larger market participants with fiber plants in different countries have decided to close one or more plants, consolidating company-wide production to fewer facilities. Some of the factories being closed had capacity of several million km." Mr. Fay noted that the recent industry turmoil is revealed not only in capacity and production data, but also in the report's assessment of installations, sales, inventories, prices, net imports and exports, and application and geographic segments. For example, he noted that worldwide fiberoptic cable sales dropped from $8.7 billion in 2001 to $3.5 billion in 2002, a decline he attributed to several factors, chiefly the steep decline in cable demand, and price erosion due to excess capacity as well as competition, and a change in the mix of applications. The shift in applications and its effect on the market is due mainly to the collapse of long-distance telecom markets, especially in the U.S. and W. Europe. In 2002, terrestrial (not submarine) long-distance applications used 12 million km of cabled fiber, down from 26 million km in 2001 and 36 million km in 2000. This segment largely used more expensive non-zero dispersion-shifted (NZDS) fiber, so the changing mix of applications has had a major impact on the market in terms of sales ($). Mr. Fay said another important aspect of the market's restructuring is the shift away from North America and Western Europe to Asia. For most of the 1990s and in 2000, the U.S. was 37% of worldwide fiberoptic cable installations. In 2002, this percentage had fallen to 21%. The amount of cable installed in the U.S. and Western Europe was 59% of the worldwide total in 2000, and this dropped to 34% in 2002. The fiber installed in the Asia-Pacific region was 54% of the worldwide total in 2002, and this percentage will remain above 50% throughout the five-year forecast. Mr. Fay said the strong demand in China, India, and Japan mean the Asia-Pacific region has three of the world's top four markets. Another factor affecting the market in 2002 was the build-up of cable inventories during 2000 and 2001. The KMI report shows that more than 16 million km of cabled fiber have accumulated in inventory since 2000. Some of this inventoried cable was installed in late 2001 or 2002, and affected new cable sales, but not all of this inventory will be used up, due to its location, ownership status, fiber count, fiber type, and other factors. Mr. Fay said KMI forecasts continued industry restructuring next year as the U.S. remains a weak market and as worldwide installations of fiberoptic cable show only gradual growth. Slower growth means that in 2007, the worldwide fiberoptic cable market will still be well below that of the peak in 2000. But by then, industry participants will have responded to the market changes, and there will be a better balance between the number of suppliers and the demand. www.kmiresearch.comhttp://www.content-wire.com/optical-fiber-and-cable-industry-major-restructuring1021330800Content Wireadminaccumulated,Advertising,business users,consumption,customers need,disappoint,economy,Economy,editors,headlines,improvements,India,information exchange,intellectual property,love,marketing,Marketing,one of the few,People,product line,syndicate,The Secret,wireless solutions,World,worryTaking Food Content Very Seriously: Content-Wire Editor Eats QuornOver the last few days I have seen some headlines crop up about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,714491,00.html">Quorn</a> We like controversy and are very familiar with the substance. We also read that our icons, the editors of <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,51842,00.html">Wired</a> are being pulled in the discussion, so we thought to add 2 nuggets. I had a been a vegetarian for a about a year in my teens, following the idea that vegetarianism is more appropriate for those who want to perfect their senses, as vegetables are more subtle and carry less karmic weight than animal products. Fair enough. Of course I want to perfect my senses, I thought, and stopped taking meat, to the great disappointment of my mother and friends who could not understand how something so radical be undertaken other than for a psychological affliction or deep guilt. Then I travelled extensively in the East, and saw that people in India and other eastern countries where I visited eat chicken and mutton regularly. So when I came back to Europe I started eating meat again, in particular chicken and fish which I really liked, and watched television regularly while having meals. At one stage, towards my mid twenties, I had developed a real chicken addiction. I had to eat chicken everyday and the first thing I thought in the morning when I woke up was ‘gotta go and buy some chicken’. I would then never stop thinking about the bird 'til after I had had my daily dose. I soon realized that it was not the chicken that I was addicted to, but the growth hormones and additives that chickens are fed with that were being accumulated in increasing quantities in my body. I probably started behaving and thinking like a chicken too, and wondered, would anyone notice the subtle change. Then after years of struggle trying to refine my senses and evolve from my mortal condition into a better being capable of higher attainments (more to follow) I became vegetarian again in 1995, and except for a few morsels of fish – have a shrimp or a bite of smoked salmon once a year when I really crave for it – I have not been eating animal flesh since. A combination of pulses and carbohydrates was fine for a few years, but then my metabolism changed and I had to reduce the carbohydrate intake – yes, starting putting on weight – and had to look for a high protein, low fat, low carbohydrate alternative to satisfy my appetites with. I cut down on Soya products, and ‘seitan’, the fleshy high protein gluten extracted from wheat (I love seitan), is not always available where I live and is also rather expensive. Then I found QUORN, I could not believe how good it was. It was like a manna. When I first started feeding on it, Quorn was very flavourless and bland, mycoprotein is actually rather tasteless. I could have sausages and chicken recipes, without the karmic burden of meat, and guess what, they did not taste like sausages or chicken either, and would simply take the flavour of what I cooked them with. Yum. I made enquiries as to the content, you never know – What is it? I phoned the company and they explained roughly the process of growing the thing much like a yeast – they reassured me that is not genetically modified and that the recipe is kinda secret. It contains egg white, which is not in my normal diet, as I do not like to eat eggs either. But there you go, it's in minimal quantities and I just have it I hear that it appears to be high in estrogens, but never found information to support or disprove these rumours, and I also have no information as to what levels of estrogens are acceptable, so just don't worry about it. After a couple of years of regular use, the producers started putting out ‘REAL SAUSAGE FLAVOUR’ and ‘REAL CHICKEN FLAVOUR’ in all Quorn products. I got sick. I could not believe that after years of vegetarianism, when the sole smell of meat makes one sick - yes I cannot bite flesh anymore, and the smell of burning flesh and blood on kitchen stoves disturbs me – I could eat something that was fabulous, not meat, and had to have a false meat flavour with it. I could not believe it. It was so absurd. Didn't make sense. I phoned the manufacturers expressing my disappointment and demanded that they keep on shipping at least one line of product which is tasteless, because I like my fleshy bits to have the protein, and take the flavour of whatever condiment I cook them with. That’s what I want and I am the customer, right? I think now there is one line that is less flavoured than others, and by now I also got used to the fishy fake chicken taste. Quorn for the world I am convinced that Quorn, or quorn–like-products, could be a staple food to be fed to all nations, it’s inexpensive to produce and probably if dried can be shipped to hot countries where freezing is constrained. The company holding the intellectual property should license the recipe with very favourable terms to World Health Organisations for them to distribute to populations that need protein. It should be inexpensive and available globally. It could solve some of the world food and health problems. Quorn with a bit of rice and veg is what I eat everyday to stay healthy. Lots of people need to make improvements in their diets I guess - especially those who don’t have much to eat either way. Marketing Tips For the company I shall exchange some free marketing advice and this good free advertising for my favourite food manufacturers (keep it flavourless please), in exchange for a lifetime supply of the thing (I consume approx 300 grams daily of the stuff, corresponding to 40 grams of protein, 15 grams of carbohydrates and virtually no fat ). 1) Make the research about the nutritional aspect available on the website I have tried to find info and not found it. I understand you want to keep your IP secret, but now that <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news2002/0501-01.htm"> the dogs</a> are after you, make sure your product is optimized – even make changes to the recipe if necessary – and publish as much information as possible about it. 2) Drop the ‘mushroom’ versus ’fungal’ origin thing. Don’t say anything on the package, just say that it's Quorn, a product made so and so – I am so very curious about the process – with such and such ingredients. 3) Don’t push the flavours. Real vegetarians may like something fleshy to bite on, but despise, despise totally the smell and taste of pork, beef and 'chickin'. And it takes several years of vegetarianism before we get to this stage, now you don’t want to disappoint your long-term customers right? Yes, the meat and meat product suppliers may spread misinformation because they know that they are going to lose out in the long run. Imagine if Quorn really is better than meat. It's going to be a big deal. As the majority of us hope for improvement in world health and the economy, the biggest changes start from individual consumption habits. Long live the chickens.http://www.content-wire.com/taking-food-content-very-seriously-content-wire-editor-eats-quorn1015545600Content Wireadminaccumulated,corporations,earnings,editors,EVER,headlines,industry news,inevitable,Internet,internet,invitation,journalism,Journalism,market demands,Media,music,new release,news site,newspapers,publishers,respect to,War,WorldWhen Famous Writers PlagiarizeOn a Sunday morning, I was scouring the Internet seeking the best college newspaper directory I could find for presenting a news release regarding a new E-Book targeted to women that I am representing. Arriving at the UWireToday.com site, I figured it was probably one of the better resources, since it distributes national headlines to college newspapers daily. And, there it was...like a cold glass of water tossed in my face, chased by a thirty-degree wind chill. The top news headline (authored by Andrew J. Miller) of the previous Friday read, "Plagiarism controversy costs historian Goodwin speaking engagements." Don't look now, but it appears that noted Historian and author, Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin has, allegedly, created one of Writing's cardinal sins and snafus via her book "The Fitzgerald's and the Kennedys." As a result, the University of Delaware immediately withdrew its invitation to Ms. Goodwin to speak at the graduation commencement. How would you like to have forever, this incident as the most memorable of your college experience? And, particularly, if you majored or minored in any of the following; History, English, Journalism, or any combination of the above? Allegedly, it was Lynne McTaggart, author of a book on Kathleen Kennedy, who discovered extensive copying in Goodwin's book, subsequently, receiving a cash settlement and a confidentiality agreement after bringing the plagiarism to the attention of Goodwin's publisher, Simon & Schuster. Hmm...so much for "confidentiality." Incidentally, Simon & Schuster has, allegedly, destroyed all remaining copies of the book in inventory. And, while I have not read the book, I have certainly heard of it due to its mass media publicity. It is also important to note Dr. Goodwin's achievements to date in order to further question (and have the opportunity to become even more puzzled) as to why this incident has transpired: · Harvard Overseer · 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History ("No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II") published in 1993 · Author of "The Fitzgerald's and the Kennedys" (1987), which was made into a six hour television mini-series on ABC in 1990, and a New York Times bestseller · Author of "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (1976) · Worked as an assistant to President Johnson during his last year in the White House and later assisted him in the preparation of his memoirs. · Taught Government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American Presidency · Holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University · Regular contributor to PBS' "The News with Jim Lehrer" (Baseball expert) note: now, allegedly, on suspension, pending the outcome of this situation · Consultant for PBS' Ken Burns' documentary, "The History of Baseball" · Received the Harold Washington Literary Award · Received the New England Bookseller Association Award · Winner of the Charles Frankel Prize given by the National Endowment for the Humanities · Winner of the Sara Josepha Hale medal · Received the Ambassador Book Award · Received the Washington Monthly Book Award · "Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir" was published in 1997 (optioned by Edgar Scherick for a TV movie) Now, I have not listed Dr. Goodwin's above achievements in order to promote or honor her in any manner, but to, otherwise, present the obviously significant contrast between her 'shining star' accomplishments and this particular action. And, upon their review, at the very least, this incident both baffles and boggles the mind. Then, I think of all the truly and unquestionably honest and hardworking writers who would not dream of stealing another's work, but who do not even come close to the financial gain, notoriety and fame that Ms. Goodwin has obviously accumulated and attained as a result of her "work." Also, as a result of this incident, I find myself wondering just how many (if any) of her accolades were, in fact, 'gained honestly' versus 'ill-gotten'? This is truly an awful thing, not only for the Writing industry, but even more so for the incredibly large number of struggling writers who will, invariably, suffer peripherally in their respective careers as a result of this tragedy. At a time when honest (and, particularly, freelance andcontributing) writers endlessly battle to be paid what are mere pittances for their original work from reluctant publishers and editors, in comparison to Dr. Goodwin's earnings, this controversy has to, unfortunately, occur. Again, not from a yet undiscovered, ever desperate writer hell-bent on selling his soul to succeed as a professional commercial writer mind you, but from a noted, well established and famous 'long-termer'. This simply places another 'notch on the gun', so to speak, for non-paying and paying publishers alike, who can now and forevermore question how they can any longer trust any literary work to be original and rightly-owned by the contributor, all under the guises of "no pay" and "low pay." If it has been tough to break into Writing and garner well deserved recognition and respect thus far (and, indeed, it has), just watch how much colder its climate turns in the very near future. Because, this situation certainly will not positively contribute and do much to make it any better, nor easier. However, I suppose that the eventual emergence of a "Milli Vanilli" syndrome in the Writing industry, as which occurred in the Music industry several years ago, was inevitable (I'm only surprised at it having taken this long). And, to which my only further response is, "My, my, my...what will they think of next?" www.kennylove.nethttp://www.content-wire.com/when-famous-writers-plagiarize1010361600Content Wireadminaccumulated,assets,assets management,Companies,content management,Content Management,content management services,content management software,content management solution,content management tools,content syndication,Content Technologies,content technology,creative assets,data management,Data Management,data services,de facto,Development,development tools,economy,Economy,inevitable,information assets,Information Management,information technology,intellectual property,management market,management product,management technology,management tools,market share,marketing,Marketing,Microsoft,mobile services,models,necessarily,new data,new economy,new product,new technology,open source,open source world,open standards,Oracle,patent,People,project management,proprietary,proprietary technology,RDF,RDF,share information,software developers,source code,source of information,Standards,syndication,syndication services,Technology,technology companies,World,XML,XML content managementWho Owns XML? A standard is a standard, or isnt’ it? By Paola Di Maio 7 January 2002 What’s a standard, anyway? The IT industry over the last decades has been lead commercially by companies like Microsoft and Oracle, who tightly manage their kits and never even talk to people on the phone unless they are paying customers. Their respective proprietary technologies have become ‘de facto’ standards, in that everybody uses them, so that all commercial classes of products and services in the market must revolve around them to be viable. The open source movement, galvanized by the success of Linux, has been a motor of great changes for the IT industry in recent years, and it has directly or indirectly affected the way people think about IT. It turns out that there are some people out there with great skills and ideas who develop stuff for everybody to download, configure and use at leisure. This is likely to have an impact on content technologies and market growth. Very interesting open source tools have been serving the content management market. Packaged by software companies using free code, they are cool because ‘open source’ and offer several advantages, including the fact that they are ‘open’, but they are not necessarily cheaper to implement and manage, as they require large amounts of programmer's work hours to be worked in the project budget. Here, open source is sometimes an ideological choice, rather than a matter of convenience. The open source versus proprietary technology debate has now entered the content syndication domain, a relatively new and very important area of IT. Last week a few weblogs and syndication technology developers groups were alarmed by the fact that the Canadian company UFIL, Unified Data Technologies, have instructed their solicitors to warn users and developers of RDF and RSS technologies that the code is proprietary and its unlicensed use is an infringment of intellectual property. They are probably after some free publicity, and surely have no claim. The problem here is not the technology, nor intellectual property law, but the lack of affordable cross breed specialists who understand both. Clever, skilled lawyers are expensive, and a rather mercenary bunch. They work for those who pay better. The patents in question protect a unique ‘method’, that can be classified as proprietary and is as such legitimately entitled to intellectual property protection. (Us Patent #5,684,985, Method and Apparatus Utilizing Bond Identifiers Executed Upon Accessing Of An Endo-dynamic Information Node (EDIN). granted on November 4, 1997; filed December 15, 1994 and U.S. Patent #6,092,077, Binary-Oriented Set Sequencing. The patent was granted on July 18, 2000 and it was filed on December 18, 1998) However RDF and RSS are equivalent distinct ‘unique’ methods developed by common cooperation of several groups of users over the years, and ownership is shared by such community and by its users who further refine the method on a daily basis. Patents were never filed, but intellectual property right exists nonetheless. This problem is rather common in intellectual property law. Do I have to pay royalties to the Sacher family if I want to make and share a Sacher Torte with my friends and family, or even customers? Do I require permission to produce my own personalised Sacher Torte with a couple extra ingredients or low fat version? Do I have to ask permission or owe someone any fees when I make, eat or bake a Plate 'a la Wellington'? Once a piece of unique intellectual property becomes so popular and widespread to be adopted by a large portion of the population, it becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN. An intellectual property claim of this kind is strictly related to the commercialisation of a product, and the investment and efforts placed in protecting and monetizing its IP. The firm claiming infringment should have profited from the commercialization and marketing of a software product based on the patent within months or a year from filing the patent, to leverage its commercial potential. It is inevitable that new competitors emerge and even free products become available as a consequence of industry development to propose a solution to existing problem The question of patenting intellectual property is indeed a great challenge in modern economy, and legislation needs public attention and constant updating to protect the public good, and the progress of humanity at large. Creative and technical skills take great efforts to be cultivated and yes they should be recognised and protected, but some intellectual property assets are indeed common property, and public property should be recognised and protected by the people and for the people. Even more worrying are patenting issues relating to human bodies or parts thereof, and natural assets such as plants and animals that by definition are public goods. There are some very worrying trends out there, like the patenting of rice, plants, genes, as well as xml. It is likely that even greater intellectual property claims will have to be contrasted and the public interest will have to be defended in courts throughout the world.http://www.content-wire.com/who-owns-xml1004313600Content Wireadminaccommodate,accumulated,Afghanistan,business case,business information,business intelligence,business logic,business need,business opportunities,business partners,business process,business process management,business user,Cambodia,China,conflict,Congo,consumers,corporate data,corporations,Cuba,data access,data management,data sets,delegation,Democracy,diversity,easy access,El Salvador,failure,finance,game,global economic,global reach,global technology,Grenada,Guatemala,human rights,Human Rights,images,Indonesia,information technology,infrastructure,intelligence,international markets,investments,Iraq,landscape,Laos,Libya,logic,love,lucrative markets,mainstream,management environment,management infrastructure,management market,management requirements,management technology,market leaders,market share,matter experts,money,money to be made,music,new business,new data,new technology,newspapers,Nicaragua,no doubt,one of the few,Panama,People,Peru,pilot,pipeline,presence,public access,public sector,real time,respect to,retrieve information,rich media,risk management,second half,share information,six months,smart,speech,speech technology,spy,strategic alliance,strategic technology,Sudan,suicide,tap,target,target market,targets,Technology,technology alliance,technology deal,terrorist,three months,time and money,time to market,transformation,user experience,Vietnam,War,weapons,wisdom,WorldAmerica: Mastering The Art of Profitable War Making money at the expenses of poor people as an excercise of democracy and defense, could be prosecuted as passing off' in any civil court. But martial tribunal dont deal with that sort of problems. 29 October 2001 Arundhati Roy   As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamoring for new video games. The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes.(As Madeleine Albright once said "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition". After conferring, they announced that it didn't matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed. Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognized government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world. Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington. People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments. Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts. There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever. Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war - these words have taken on new meaning. Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban. When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America's favorite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people." So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace. Speaking at the FBI headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire." Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war: * China (1945-46, 1950-53) * Korea 1950-53) * Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), * Indonesia (1958) * Cuba (1959-60), * the Belgian Congo (1964) * Peru (1965) * Laos (1964-73) * Vietnam (1961-73) * Cambodia (1969-70) * Grenada (1983) * Libya (1986) * El Salvador (1980s) * Nicaragua (1980s) * Panama (1989) * Iraq (1991- 99) * Bosnia (1995) * Sudan (1998) * Yugoslavia (1999) Then Afghanistan. (The Iraq again. Who's going to be next? editor's note) Certainly it does not tire - this, the most free nation in the world. What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things. Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate - usually in the service of America's real religion, the "free market". So when the US government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the third world feel more than a tremor of fear. Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others. The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league. The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the cold war. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war. Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society. Young boys - many of them orphans - who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalize women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them. Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people. They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them. With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US government. All the beauty of human civilization - our art, our music, our literature - lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle- class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs. evil or Islam vs. Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony - every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural. Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It's like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open. One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets. "First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is ..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room. By the third day of the strikes, the US defense department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?) On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance - the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend - is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex- communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past. Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all. Love is hate, north is south, peace is war. Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes - support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy - with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?) Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both. As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food. Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public- relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile. First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race. Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions. After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description. Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to? Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created. Where will it all lead? Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another's freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence. Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world. The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the mojahedin who, in the 80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan - America's ally in this new war - sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka - the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism. (Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.) It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own. People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text - from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita - can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation. This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be. But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us? At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap? Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence - small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.) The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom - that precious, precious thing - will be the first casualty It's already hurt and hemorrhaging dangerously. Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested. The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti- terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them? Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread. Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury. President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth. Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group - described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management. Carlyle invests in the defense sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending. Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US defense secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumford's). Carlyle's other partners include former US secretary of state James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper - the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel - says that former president George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets. He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients. Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family. Then there's that other branch of traditional family business - oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry. Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil. Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney - then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry - said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough. For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in south and south-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US state department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now. Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration. Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance. In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defense deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed,whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilizations" and the "good vs. evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been - a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government. And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough? As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders - have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty? Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear - without thinking of the World Trade Center and Afghanistan? http://www.content-wire.com/america-mastering-art-profitable-war998262000Content Wireadminaccumulated,categorize,Companies,customer care,customer service,customers need,Day Software,deploy,effective communication,email,failure,management market,management technology,market research,one of the few,queries,research analyst,Technology,technology companies,technology research,unprecedentedEmail Management Systems to Boom You've got backlog... It could become a 2 billion market, says Frost & Sullivan 20th August 2001, 1 pm GMT Flooded with rising volumes of customer e-mail, companies face a problem with only two answers: assign more customer service agents to e-mail response duties, or deploy an e-mail management response system. Research by Frost & Sullivan reveals that more companies are implementing e-mail management software to battle customer e-mail backlog and consequently rocketing this market to an unprecedented $2 billion by 2007. "The dramatic growth rates in the e-mail management software market can be explained by the fact that the technology is an effective solution to a pressing customer service need," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Katrina Howell. "Companies are able to assign a fraction of the agents that would otherwise be required to respond to e-mail volumes reaching into the thousands." The backlog of e-mail accumulated during any given day has caused customer care centers to ask employees to stay overtime. Some companies even have e-mail parties at night and on weekends where employees struggle to respond to the customer queries. Moreover, companies are increasingly aware of the consequences of delaying a response to customer e-mail inquiries. Studies have revealed that the number one complaint of online customers is the failure of a company to respond to an e-mail message within three hours. "Within the space of a few years, e-mail has become one of the most common forms of customer communication" says Howell. "This has transformed e-mail into a severe pain point for numerous businesses, giving rise to the pressing need to adopt e-mail response management systems." www.fs.comhttp://www.content-wire.com/email-management-systems-boom989881200Content Wireadminaccumulated,aggregate,broadband,digital video,game,Internet,internet,penetration,researcher,web usersBroadband Users Buy More Online Broadband households are 60% more likely to make a purchase over the Web 15 May 2001, 6 pm GMT A new study published by Centris this week reveals that in the States there were 5 million broadband and more than 37 million dial-up households accessing the Internet each month during the fourth quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2001 -- the period from which the study sample is accumulated. Key Findings: Broadband households are 60% more likely to make a purchase over the Web and spend an average of 38% more than dial-up households. On average, broadband households pay nearly twice what dial-up households do each month for their Web connection ($35.40 vs. $18.05). But they can afford to, as twice as many broadband as dial-up households have an annual income in excess of $100,000. Broadband households also consume a lot of movies and video and have higher cable, digital cable and pay penetration (less DBS), more DVD activity and a 30% greater likelihood of ordering PPV. Directionally, it appears that DSL households are less TV oriented than are cable modem households. They have fewer TVs and big screen TVs, less VHS-rental activity, less cable penetration (twice as many former cable subs) and less video-game involvement. However, there is higher DBS penetration in DSL households with more PC devices in the home such as MP3 players and digital cameras, and they spend more on online. Newsdeskhttp://www.content-wire.com/broadband-users-buy-more-online989708400Content Wireadminaccess digital,accumulated,archiving,business partners,computer,data access,Day Software,easy access,email,images,Internet,internet,map,migration,money,money to be made,new data,new release,new technology,Ontology,People,real time,relationships,royalties,shape,single point,single source,source code,speech,speech technology,Technology,The Secret,time and money,train,virtual,virus,wisdom,WorldTechnology With A Mystical TwistThe Neo-Upanishad as a new source code, a manual of digital ontology 13 May 2001 by Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta We grew up hearing many kinds of stories. Stories of wise animals and stupid gods, arrogant kings and generous subjects, magical machines and speaking trees. We grew up hearing the story of the wise man called Yagnavalkya and a wise woman called Gargi. And their conversation is a section in the Upanishads - texts which started out life as being interesting and elegant conversations in places where those in retreat from the world could gather (not unlike some chat rooms on the Internet today), and ended up dead as part of a formal philosophical canon in later Hinduism. Both Yagnavalkya and Gargi were philosophers, natural philosophers, and while it was considered odd that Gargi, forgetting her 'woman' self should argue about the nature of 'being' itself, she did. And in this argument Gargi asks of Yagnavalkya again and again, so what is the web on which the world is woven. This fragment of the Upanishads, the sit-here-and-listen parable of secret wisdom, is here re-configured for the third millennium of the Common Era. This Neo-Upanishad is a new source code, a manual of digital ontology, a map of how we might come to be. Imagine a new Brhadaranyaka Section (The Debate at the Crossroads of the Great Forest of Cultural Code) where sit two re-configured avatars, gendered male and female, named Gargi Vacaknavi (The maker of new codes) and Yagnavalkya (Keeper of the sacrificial flame of pure code). What we want to say is like the small, unfinished conversation between two people who once allegedly occupied finite, distinct bodies - one male, one female. Yagnavalkya talks of how man invented self, and so brought about other. He speaks of how self, purusha, atman, Brahman,consciousness, mind pursues other, prakriti, speech, body, form and how she (other) changes her shape, re-writing her operating instructions, every time he (self) makes a new programme, a new release version of her. He encrypts, she decodes. She is software, a virus, free to roam and pirate herself, he stays hardwired, logged out and locked into himself. He pursues her, pins her, wins her, she runs away into the jungle of code again. He seeks her out yet again, and in the middle of his endless postulation of the real self and the self that is virtual, the other, her-self, he says to her: Gargi, silver tongued, chat room diva, endless whisperer, cyborg siren, look - the two of us are like two halves of a block, hardware and software, one and zero, man and machine, and between us dangles the web of the world. The World Wide Web. The mesh made of strings of code. Cyberia. Then Gargi Vacaknavi began to question him, "Yagnavalkya", she said, "tell me - since this whole world is woven back and forth on strings of knowledge, threads of code, what then is the net of code and knowledge woven on. Where on the map is Cyberia?" Y: "Knowledge and code are woven back and forth on the minds that made the code, on the accumulated electricity of millennia that went into the making of thoughts, that was written down, encrypted, encoded, streamed into machines, read and learnt and transmitted and taught and downloaded". G: "And on what was that woven on, that mesh of thought, how did that get fabricated?" Y: "On the little fissures where wealth and meanings, both of which we call 'artha', in Sanskrit, gather between keystrokes". G: "And where did money and meaning come from?" Y: "From the worlds of hands weaving back and forth, from the intermittent movement of eyes, both awake and rapidly dreaming, from neo-cortical storms, and from the stream of blood, within and without". G: "And what moves these joints, works these muscles and tendons, what makes this flow and ebb and stream?" At this point Yagnavalkya told her, "Don't ask so many questions, Gargi, or your head will shatter apart! You are asking too many questions about that (the deity) of which it is forbidden to ask too many questions. So, Gargi, don't ask so many questions" It is said then that "Thereupon, Gargi fell silent". This conversation arises from a recognition that cyberspace has suddenly posed strange and new questions even within those of us who live at it's farthest frontier, for whom connectivity and access to computers, and to the space they create between them, is not an easy dial-up option. We share computers, and e-mail accounts, and navigate the private spaces that we have created within our computer. We come from a situation where the scarcity of computers, the cussedness of phone lines, the fluctuating voltage and the simultaneous rush to be on a machine so as not to be rudderless in the world demands that several people share the same machine. At one time we were seventeen people logging on with the same ID. We are not mere cyborgs; we are evolving constellations of cyborgs. This makes for a proximity that is not unlike looking into each other's cupboards, and closets, catching the whiff of intimate traces of thought and feeling. This has made us look at each other and at ourselves in a new way. We, as a man, and as a woman, are beginning to ask of each other the question "What is the ground we stand on?" What are the conscious and unconscious flows of sensory and extra-sensory data between our bodies and minds, and within our common machines that shape our changing - neither binary nor unitary - natures. II Two clusters of images for two kinds of migration. A person steps off a train into a city of fourteen million people, looking for the comfort and the freedom of anonymity, wary of loneliness and the scrutiny of unwelcome surveillance. A person finds a patch of wall in a shantytown, off a busy street and builds a shelter with tin and packing cases, begins a new neighbourhood, changes the map of the city. A person clocks into a factory, makes up a new name and invents a new self, fills in forms saying: single, childless, temporary worker, migrant, no permanent address... A person switches on a computer, logs on and toys with a new password. She is looking for the comfort and freedom of anonymity and is wary of loneliness and the scrutiny of unwelcome surveillance. She builds herself a shelter, calls it a website; she begins a new neighbourhood, calls it an online discussion forum, she changes the map, she clocks in at work, and a new day begins at the virtual sweatshop. In a sense, all those who venture out into cyberspace for the first time are stepping out of a train into a new metropolis. They are looking for the freedom of anonymity, wary of surveillance, building shelters and neighbourhoods, clocking in, changing the map. Given that the Internet began as a playground for men in suits, lab coats and uniforms, all others - women and men without suits, lab coats and uniforms, and just about anyone else who is not a part of a networked transatlantic matrix, someone who lives in time zones and meridians on the outer reaches of cyberia, is really a recent immigrant. It is the malediction of many migrants in the real world that in the new destination they are too often forced to become exiles or indentured into the workforce, where the act of leaving becomes a gesture poised on the thin line between free will and despair. Many of us too may have left the everyday battles for survival, dignity and recognition somewherein order to chart a new continent of being, and the world. But when looking back from cyberspace into the everyday, what are the relationships between 'virtual' and real 'selves' that we now see and seek? Is the virtual self of the on-line person only an avatar, a multiplied polymorphous anhttp://www.content-wire.com/technology-mystical-twist