Internet Browser-Driven System Provides Intuitive Interface and Global Access
DEERFIELD, Ill., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ --
CORPTAX(R) ETS (Enterprise Tax System), the first fully integrated and browser-driven compliance and planning tax software system, is now available to corporate tax departments. The new software provides users with an intuitive interface and virtually seamless integration across functional tax areas, and is driven by an Internet browser, which allows for global access via a company's intranet. CORPTAX ETS is a product of Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies LLC, which is the tax technology division of Deloitte & Touche LLP, one of the nation's leading professional services firms.
The market's first enterprise tax system, CORPTAX ETS encompasses federal, state and international compliance and planning for corporate, partnership, Sub Chapter S, REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) and RIC (Regulated Investment Company) entities all under a single umbrella. By integrating essentially all aspects of compliance and planning within one system, CORPTAX ETS can replace the current industry method of relying on a combination of multiple software systems and manual processes to handle all of these different tax functions and duties in a corporate tax department.
"The ease of use, remote access capability and leading-edge functionality and flexibility of CORPTAX ETS will change the way tax departments function, allowing them to operate more strategically with advanced planning and process improvement capabilities," said Ray Lombardi, Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies. "Future releases of the software will include many new features and functions that do not currently exist in the marketplace. CORPTAX ETS is the foundation that Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies will build on to continue to deliver superior technology products to the marketplace for many years to come."
The browser-driven design of CORPTAX ETS provides for remote access capabilities on a worldwide basis. Tax departments can now prepare, review and print returns from any location worldwide that has a web browser and access to their company's intranet. This architecture gives tax professionals the flexibility to easily handle remote processing or multiple tax departments or locations, while also providing an efficient telecommuting solution. CORPTAX ETS offers tax professionals an easy-to-use system for accessing, reviewing, comparing and reporting domestic and international tax information. The system is grounded by the proven calculations and built-in intelligence of CORPTax, the most reliable, flexible and accurate system on the market. CORPTax is the multiyear tax compliance and planning system that helps corporate tax departments manage their company's tax liabilities and comply with the multitude of complex laws and regulations.
For more information on CORPTAX ETS, contact Pierce Thompson at (847) 236-8200 or via e-mail at pithompson@deloitte.com. More information about CORPTAX ETS is available at the Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies' web site at http://www.corptax.com.
About Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies
Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies, a subsidiary of Deloitte & Touche, develops, implements, supports, and provides education for specialty corporate tax software products under the brand name CORPTax Software. For more than 25 years, CORPTax Software has had a significant impact in the corporate tax software marketplace, allowing companies to automate, calculate and prepare their corporate consolidated tax returns and provisions in a streamlined, cost-effective manner. Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies employs over 350 tax and technology professionals and has an impressive client list that totals over 1,200 companies, including more than half of the Fortune 500. The company is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, with two additional regional offices in Dallas, Texas and Woodland Hills, California. For more information, please visit Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies' web site at http://www.corptax.com.
About Deloitte & Touche
Deloitte & Touche, one of the nation's leading professional services firms, provides assurance and advisory, tax, and management consulting services through nearly 30,000 people in more than 100 U.S. cities. The firm is dedicated to helping our clients and our people excel. Known as an employer of choice for innovative human resources programs, Deloitte & Touche has been recognized as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" by Fortune magazine for four consecutive years. Deloitte & Touche refers to Deloitte & Touche LLP and its related entities. Deloitte & Touche is the U.S. national practice of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein, and each of its national practices is a separate and independent legal entity. For more information, please visit Deloitte & Touche's web site at http://www.us.deloitte.com.
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Abbey National is setting up an IFA wealth management service for high-net-worth individuals by the end of the year.
The project, codenamed Prosper, will offer independent advice on a range of investment products. Abbey is intending to use Prosper to provide advice and access to products managed by leading fund managers worldwide.
The service is aimed individuals with [pound]50,000 or more to invest and will give investment management advice on a range of products.
Prosper is deigned to offer customers a flexible service, operating through a variety of communication channels.
Customers will be able to communicate and receive information regarding their investment through face-to-face advice, over the phone and via the internet.
Abbey has developed specially designed advice centres for Prosper to make the service more accessible.
The first advice centre will open in London's West End, with more planned for Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bromley and Watford.
Media relations manager Ciaran Baker says: "This service, based on a personal relationship, will attract a new segment of customers. We see this is an area where we can offer consumers a good flexible service."
Chase de Vere investment adviser Justin Modray says: "It is a good move that banks are offering independent advice. Anything that gives the public more access to independent impartial advice is excellent news on the part of the consumer.
"But it is too early to tell the quality of the advice that will be offered. It is a brave move but it will take Abbey National a while to fully take on board wholly independent advice."
Colocation Services Certified as Meeting Stringent Information Security Management Standard to Provide High Availability and Confidentiality of Customer Data
MIAMI -- Terremark, a Verizon Company, today announced its colocation services delivered from its Sao Paulo, Brazil data center have been accredited with the internationally recognized ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification. This certification provides third-party verification that the company's Brazilian colocation services conform to an information security management standard that helps protect the integrity of customers' critical and sensitive information.
ISO/IEC 27001:2005 is the international standard for the management of an information security management system (ISMS). The certification, which is valid for a three-year term, is a key component of Terremark's program to protect vital customer data from a wide range of cyber threats and vulnerabilities that can lead to data loss.
"This certification further reinforces Terremark's unwavering commitment to provide highly secure colocation services from our top-tier data centers," said Hector Hernandez, senior vice president of data center operations for Terremark. "To be certified to the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standard further demonstrates that we have implemented the systems and controls required to enable customers to fully safeguard mission-critical applications residing in our advanced in-region colocation center."
The ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification includes on-site assessments and encompasses security policies, organizational security, asset classification and control, personnel security, physical and environmental security, systems and network security, access controls, systems development and maintenance, business continuity management, and compliance. Certification to ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standards reinforces to customers that Terremark operates its colocation services in accordance with the ISO/IEC guidelines and general principles for information security management.
"ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification is a reflection of Terremark's significant commitment to the quality of its information security management systems," said Chris Schellman, president of Brightline, the ANAB accredited registrar that conducted the assessment. "Successfully completing the rigorous certification process is a key component of Terremark's effort to protect its customers' hosted systems."
Terremark's NAP do Brasil in Sao Paulo is home to its most important Internet exchange in Latin America with massive and diverse connectivity from the region's largest carriers. As part of the company's expanded global footprint of nearly 50 data centers, the facility delivers a broad range of services from Terremark's expanded IT solution portfolio that includes the combined leading cloud, security and IT capabilities of Terremark and Verizon. Since deploying its cloud computing infrastructure in the Brazilian data center more than a year ago, customers have been able to leverage Terremark's global cloud infrastructure for the secure and agile computing resources their business-critical applications require. The company also delivers its leading solutions across Latin America from some of the most connected data center facilities in Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
About Terremark
Terremark, a Verizon Company, is a leader in transforming and securing enterprise-class IT on a global scale. A subsidiary of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), Terremark sets the standard for IT deployments with advanced infrastructure and managed service offerings that deliver the scale, security, and reliability necessary to meet the demanding requirements of enterprises and governments around the world. With a global network of data centers and a comprehensive portfolio of secure solutions, Terremark is helping enterprise and government executives realize the power and promise of the cloud today. For more information, visit www.terremark.com.
This article first appeared in Entertainment Law Matters, a Frankfurt Kurnit legal blog.
- False authorship lawsuit hits West Publishing in the pocket parts. Recently, two law professors successfully sued West Publishing (Thomson Reuters Legal) for defamation after the publisher falsely attributed to them authorship of a pocket part treatise update. While Professors David Rudovsky and Leonard Sosnov had in fact authored the treatise and several annual updates after that, they had refused to write the update in question because West had reduced their compensation. After a jury trial, the plaintiffs each received $90,000 in damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages. A Pennsylvania district court subsequently denied West's motion notwithstanding the verdict, but did reduce the punitive damages award to $110,000 each because there was no jury finding that West acted with malice. The court order requires West to choose between either accepting the revised award, or pursuing its motion for a new trial, but not both.
- ASCAP appeals to Supremes for review of "public performance" decision. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ("ASCAP") petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that downloading musical works over the Internet does not constitute public performance under the Copyright Act. The Second Circuit concluded that the Act's "public performance" factor requires "contemporaneous perceptibility" of the work, such as Yo-Yo Ma "draw[ing] the bow across his cello," while downloading a song is merely transmitting music to a potential listener. The court drew a distinction between a download and a streaming transmission over the Internet, explaining that the latter is a public performance because the user perceives the song simultaneously with the transmission. Further, the download itself does not play the file and the user must take additional action to experience the work. In its petition for cert., ASCAP argues that downloading a music file amounts to public performance for which the author is entitled to additional compensation (artists already collect royalties for copies created by the download). ASCAP maintains that the Second Circuit's interpretation of the Act was inaccurate because a public performance can occur even if listeners receive it "at different times" and that the Circuit court had created an "unworkable and inequitable statutory scheme that fails to account for emerging technologies."
- BMG faces class action lawsuit over digital royalties. Rob Zombie, Whitesnake, and other music performers are leading a federal class action lawsuit against UMG Recordings, Inc., claiming the world's largest record company is shortchanging them on royalties from digital downloads and cell phone ringtones. The musicians estimate they have been underpaid by tens of millions of dollars per year and seek restitution and declaratory relief entitling them to future royalties. According to the complaint, UMG arbitrarily labels digital music downloads from online music providers like iTunes as a "sale" rather than a license and pays the artists a lesser royalty than the standard 50% payable in connection with a license to a third party. The class action follows a Ninth Circuit ruling that UMG underpaid Eminem and other performers for digital music download royalties. Rob Zombie's lawsuit is based on the same grounds, which tips the scales in the musicians' favor, especially after the Supreme Court refused to review the Eminem decision. As the New York Times predicted in the wake of that ruling, its implications may indeed prove life changing for many aging musicians.
- Polo wears Ralph Lauren. The United States Polo Association ("USPA") will not be able to place the word "Polo" next to its Double Horsemen logo on a new line of perfume for men because a New York court ruled that such use infringes on Polo Ralph Lauren's ("PRL") trademark. Federal Judge Robert Sweet found that USPA's logo featuring two men on horses swinging polo sticks (PRL's features one player in a similar posture) used in conjunction with the word "Polo" is likely to cause consumer confusion with the clothing designer's perfumes. USPA initially filed the suit in 2009 seeking a declaratory judgment that its logo does not infringe PRLs' trademark. The court denied USPA's request and instead granted PRL a permanent injunction against USPA's use of the logo. In its ruling, the court relied on PRL's consumer survey showing confusion in 27.8% of the participants. The court also determined that PRL's trademark is inherently distinctive and said that the USPA's choice of colors and wording on the product suggested that they "intended to capitalize on PRL's reputation and goodwill-instead of building their own."
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MICHAEL Fassbender has revealed he watched lots of internet porn - but it was just to research a new film of course.
The 34-year-old - who plays a sex addict in new flick Shame - says he is shocked sex addiction has never been officially recognised as an illness.
He said: "I definitely explored the realm of it. People can stay inside for 72 hours on end watching it."
According to recent research from University Park, United States, "In this paper, we present the GeoViz Toolkit (GVT), an open-source, Internet-delivered program for geographic visualization and analysis that features a diverse set of software components which can be flexibly combined by users who do not have programming expertise."
"The design and architecture of the GVT allows us to address three key research challenges in geovisualization: allowing end users to create their own geovisualization and analysis component set on the fly, integrating geovisualization methods with spatial analysis methods, and making geovisualization applications sharable between users. Each of these tasks necessitates a robust yet flexible approach to intertool coordination," wrote F. Hardisty and colleagues, Pennsylvania State University.
The researchers concluded: "The coordination strategy developed for the GVT, called Introspective Observer Coordination, leverages and combines key advances in software engineering from the last decade, such as automatic introspection of objects, software design patterns, and reflective invocation of methods."
Hardisty and colleagues published their study in International Journal of Geographical Information Science (The geoviz toolkit: using component-oriented coordination methods for geographic visualization and analysis. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2011;25(2):191-210).
For additional information, contact F. Hardisty, Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Geog, GeoVISTA Center, University Park, PA 16802, United States.
Publisher contact information for the International Journal of Geographical Information Science is: Taylor & Francis Ltd., 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, Oxon, England.
Keywords: City:University Park, State:Pennsylvania, Country:United States, Region:North and Central America, Information Science, Information Technology, Information and Data Science, Software Engineering
This article was prepared by Computer Weekly News editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2011, Computer Weekly News via VerticalNews.com.
Kuwait's Central Agency for Information
Technology on Thursday warned internet users of the looming dangers of e-mail
fraudsters -who aim to embezzle money from people.
A report issued by the agency noted to a recent surge in fraudelent e-mails
from copycat sites of international official bodies and banks, requesting
financial and personal information.
These messages include links to fake sites where hackers can receive this
confidential information, the report added.
The report said that means to overcome these dangers include ignoring these
e-mails, making sure these sites are certified and not copycat, installing
anti-spam and firewall software and notifying the rightful institutions being
portrayed.
All KUNA right are reserved 2011.
Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company
Central Indiana Power (CIP) will deploy a fiber-based smart grid in cooperation with Hancock Telecom, a local communications cooperative. CIP will use equipment provided by Tantalus to leverage Hancock Telecom's FTTH network.
The FTTH network will be used to support smart metering as well as prepare for the demand response initiatives proposed by Wabash Valley Power Association, which provides power to CIP and other utilities in the region.
Eric Murray, Tantalus president and CEO, predicts that mutually beneficial business arrangements between telecom providers and electric cooperatives will become common at utilities like CIP, which serves 12,000 homes, businesses, and farms in a fast growing community located 25 miles east of Indianapolis.
"It's natural for telecoms and utilities to work together," Murray said. "Many telecoms already supply their local electric co-op with wireless or wired connectivity to substations. By collaborating with Hancock, CIP can extend connectivity to other points in the distribution network via the telecom's existing infrastructure. It's a logical next step that will accelerate smart grid roll out, avoids the cost and complexity of building and maintaining two separate communications networks, and consolidates billing, customer service and many other business functions under one roof."
Although CIP did not receive federal grant money, Murray said the deployment ties together the objectives of both the Dept. of Energy's ARRA Smart Grid stimulus program and the Dept. of Agriculture's Broadband Initiative Program by bringing high bandwidth communications as well as advanced energy management capabilities to a rural community.
The Tantalus technology will help automate meter readings, outage detection, and disconnect/reconnect procedures. It also can help the utility optimize the network through 24/7 power quality monitoring at member homes and on distribution equipment in order to detect and often correct a potential problem before it impacts service, Tantalus asserts.
"Fiber supports data intensive applications including customer signaling and load control which require rapid and reliable two-way interaction between the operations center and each customer," Murray said. "Capacity is virtually limitless, so more and more devices such as smart appliances will be able to communicate over the network without the risk of data congestion. It's a future friendly solution."
CIP is the first rural cooperative to deploy a Tantalus Homerun Network, which leverages a FTTH backbone network for triple-play media (multichannel TV, voice-over-IP, and high-speed Internet) as well as full smart grid functionality. A growing number of Tantalus municipal utility customers--including EPB Chattanooga, Jackson Energy, and Pulaski Electric--are already using a city-owned FTTH network for advanced energy management.
Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. ix + 207 pp. $49.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).
Realize this. Every document you've written on your word processor and sent to someone electronically may have hidden in it old e-mail messages, addresses, and other information that was not overwritten properly. Think of the most embarrassing e-mail you've ever sent. Imagine that someone, perhaps hundreds of people, may be able to read it. Now imagine the consequences specifically for a lawyer, intelligence officer, caseworker, medical professor, or politician. So much for privacy, confidentiality and, if necessary, secrecy.
The advent of computers, the Internet, and cyberspace is one of the most thrilling and also chilling developments in American society. The titles I have chosen for this brief review are only a sampling of the exploding literature that deals with the impact of the digital revolution on Americans, a topic that political scientists and policy specialists must take very seriously indeed.
We start our story with the book At Large, the account of a young hacker a.k.a. Phantom Dialer (later Infomaster). He is physically and mentally handicapped. In 1992 he was able to break into the Portland State University computer system, which he then used as a wormpath to access hundreds of other systems throughout the United States including Intel, government contractors, nuclear weapons labs, and top-secret government databases. He is, one fears - one KNOWS - the first of an avalanche of virtual space bandits. Mann and Freedman paint a frightening picture of inadequate security and vulnerable systems. Although over-hyped, the threat of reclusive punk "crackers," schizophrenics, criminals, hate mongers, terrorists, and even foreign military establishments joyriding or seeking to do serious harm by penetrating sensitive and potentially deadly computer networks, is enough to take the gloss off the wonderful world of computers as being liberating and enlightening. This book reads like a thriller but leaves the reader stunned when, after catching the intruder, the FBI decides not to prosecute.
Kevin Mitnick, the world's most notorious computer hacker, comes on the scene a few years later, in 1995. He breaks into the personal computer of world-renowned computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura. Of the several books written about this case Shimomura's own account, Takedown, is the most detailed and authoritative.
If space permitted I'd also review other books from the growing list of this genre - for example, Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace, by Michele Slatalia and Joshua Quittner (1995), and Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, by Katie Hafner and John Markoff (1991). However, let me move on to several that are more germane to the readers of this journal.
The Hacker Crackdown is Bruce Sterling's classic on the 1990 crackdown by law-enforcement on hackers and other computer lawbreakers known as Operation Sundevil, following the crash of American Telephone & Telegraph's long distance switching system. It explores another dimension of law and order on the Internet. Sterling goes back to the invention of the telephone and the first hackers, who were young men hired as telephone operators who used the phone to engage in on-line pranks largely out of boredom. Sterling then moves on to the world of hacking and reviews the complex issues pitting civil liberties concerns against law enforcement interests that are posed by the Internet. (In the Operation Sundevil case, files, disks, and computers were confiscated from people who were never even accused of a crime.) The subculture of cybercops, who apparently often are people who have been victimized by hackers, is fascinating. Sterling's superb discussion of the on-line civil liberties movement, which arose partly from the counterculture surrounding the Grateful Dead, is worth reading and very enlightening.
Frantzich's two contributions, Computers in Congress and Political Parties in the Technological Age, are useful books on the subject. Steve Frantzich is a pioneer in the analysis of technology and politics as well as a long-time practitioner, having served as president of the American Political Science Association's Computers and Multimedia section. One hopes for a whole series of books on the impact of computers on selected aspects of politics and policymaking ("Computers and Agricultural Policy," "Computers and National Security," "Computers and Political Campaigns," etc.).
Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet is described by the authors (Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes) as:
the first real empirical study of how the Internet is used by not only by private citizens, but also interest groups around the world. We go beyond the hype and speculation of much recent work, instead putting various claims about the Internet and politics to the test (p. ii).
They find that even though Internet users who engage in politics on the Net are more liberal, educated, and male than the public at large, the content of political Usenet groups, Websites, and America on Line (AOL) chatrooms is overwhelmingly conservative. They also find that conservative and right-wing extremist Web pages are "... more high-profile and sophisticated than their left-wing and liberal counterparts" (p. 1). The authors reviewed thousands of Usenet messages, Web pages, and AOL chatroom discussions over a three-year period.
Still, one wonders how to assess a medium that recently announced "Bob Hope is dead!" (he isn't as of this writing) and claimed that a missile had shot down Pan Am flight 400 over Long Island. Finding that opposition groups around the world are more prominent on the net by a statistically significant margin is useful information, but hardly surprising. The Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, the Tupac Amaru in Peru, and Chinese dissidents all, of course, have a Web presence. Still, I wonder - does this give them "virtual political power," and how much of a consolation is that? Nonetheless, this book is a must read for every political and policy scientist.
Edwards' The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America traces how computers have emerged as the dominant technology as a direct result of Cold War politics and the defense research it engendered. Pentagon research assumed that warfare and intelligence would be seamless under computerized command and control. The irony, Edwards narrates, is that this early computer development began in total secrecy and has evolved into the largest, most porous, vulnerable, democratic, chaotic, anarchic information system in human history.
Cyberfutures provides an interesting collage of issues that are important as computers, networks, and technologies come center stage in the lives of citizens and organizations. The essays are written by specialists from a variety of disciplines. The book is of interest to people in fields such as cultural studies, anthropology, policy, and the mass media.
You will have a hard time finding Dinty Moore's book, The Emperor's Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth about Internet Culture. Perhaps that is because booksellers may have mistaken it for a cookbook about Beef Stew or filed it under the comic strip "Bringing up Father," which had a character with the name Dinty Moore. Perhaps it's because the publisher is obscure. Whatever the case, Professor Moore's (Penn State University, Altoona campus) book is a useful skeptic's humorous, cranky look at cyberspace - a whimsical tour of the Internet, focused on its lingo and foibles. His lead question, asked at the end of the preface, is:
[I]s the electronic culture revolutionary, transformational, dazzling, and will it change our lives? Is it the Next Big Thing? Or is it just the Emperor's New Clothes?
The answer seems to be that the Internet is a chaotic, important, twisting, tiresome, fake, not-very-satisfying, brilliant, fascinating, even exhausting medium. Moore clearly would like to ignore the Internet. He writes fondly of Thoreau's going off into the woods and living the simple life. At the end of the book he says he just wants to "drive out to a real forest, park my car, step outside, and take a good long look at the scenery." However, one page earlier (p. 202), he notes that
Escaping the progress of mankind, ignoring the inevitable forward movement, is a common enough fantasy, but not much of a reality. The simple fact exists, this is our future.
His tone is resignation - a Dr. Strangelove syndrome. The subtitle to the book should have been: "How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet." This would be an apt closing of the circle since some of the threats of the Internet discussed above are just as frightening as the atomic bomb!
As we look at computers, and especially the Internet, the crucial questions for political and policy scientists are related to privacy, to information quality and volume, and to the content of what is created, stored, and communicated. If we think about the fundamental order of modern society (over, say, the last 500 years), we suddenly realize that it depends deeply on the control of complex information and even of knowledge by sanctioned, rated, and legitimized institutions (normally huge institutions such as churches and governments). Nuclear technology and biological weapons, for example, are "manageable" only as long as we are dealing with finite numbers of actors who possess these - actors such as states that can be held accountable, inspected, and punished for violating generally agreed upon standards. Birth certificates, other personal identity material (the maiden name of your mother seems to be a popular one), passports, and other records also depend on its difficulty to find the information, or to duplicate or forge the documents, with the process controlled by "official" institutions, usually public bureaucracies. Printing currency (money), to be valid, must be the monopoly of the central bank. Large public records such as those for Social Security, pension funds, or insurance, also depend entirely for their credibility, reliability, and legitimacy on their "security." Educational records - transcripts of high school and college attendance - obviously are highly sensitive, too.
It seems to me that the digital revolution is, therefore, much more than we have recognized it to be so far. It is also goes much deeper into the core of modern society than any of the books I've reviewed here recognize. Information technology (IT) actually challenges the very heart of the assumptions about who controls power, the legitimacy of credentials and records, and the security of modern life. The millennium bug is an example of the extreme of potential unintended consequences of IT. It will be a problem, crisis, or catastrophe, depending on whom you read, which will result from computers and information systems not being able to recognize the "00" code for the year 2000 and may crash some of the most crucial systems in modern societies.
There also are two areas of euphoric predictions regarding the IT revolution. One is that it will fulfill the dream of mass participation democracy. The second is that it adds efficiency to management and policymaking. Both, I believe, are premature.
The speed and volume of information available is in and of itself not very helpful. In fact, we have reason to argue that information input overload actually is making it harder for citizens as well as policymakers actually to cope with the information and then understand and sort out the choices they have. A recent Gallup Poll (Grimsley, 1998) reported that Americans are overwhelmed with IT overload - pagers, beepers, cell phones, e-mail, faxes, voice mail, and all of the other IT sources are breaking up the workplace (and even private time) and actually making it less productive.
The information revolution is here, it's inevitable, it's growing, but so far it is still, I'm afraid, a very mixed blessing.
References
Grimsley, K. D. (1998, July 1). Beep her to get the fax about the voice mail on her e-mail: Workers are becoming overwhelmed by information overload. Washington Post Weekly Edition, p. 30.
Hafner, K., & Markoff, J. (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Slatalla, M., & Quittner, J. (1995). Masters of deception: The gang that ruled cyberspace. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Steffen W. Schmidt is a University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iowa State University.
Jerusalem--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 6, 1995--Accent Software International Ltd. (NASDAQ: ACNTF) announced the addition of its newly released multilingual browser with full support for browsing Japanese Web pages under any language version of Windows.
The multilingual browser is part of Accent's recently announced Internet suite, called Internet With An Accent.
Robert Rosenschein, President of Accent Software International Ltd., demonstrated the capabilities of the browser with Japanese pages at the Robertson Stephens/Evergreen Capital Technology Markets First Annual Technology Conference held in Tel Aviv, Israel.
"This is a tremendous breakthrough in true multilingual capability on the Internet," Rosenschein stated. "Internet With An Accent is the first and, to our knowledge, the only product that enables Internet users to browse the Web in more than 30 languages, including Japanese, under any language version of Windows," added Rosenschein.
Up to now, only users with Japanese Windows were able to browse Japanese Web pages. With Accent's unique multilingual browser Internet users can now browse the vast number of Japanese Web pages whether the user is located in San Francisco, London, Istanbul, Cairo, Moscow or Tokyo.
Internet With An Accent includes the Accent Multilingual Browser, the Accent HTML multilingual authoring tool, the Accent Multilingual Email add-on for creating messages and the Accent Multilingual Email reader. The beta version of the Internet With An Accent suite of products will be demonstrated at COMDEX/Fall 95 in Las Vegas Nov. 13-17.
"The availability of Internet With An Accent will enable Japanese companies, government departments and agencies, and organizations to communicate with and market to a worldwide audience. We want to be the number one supplier of Internet tools to both Japanese Web sites and to users who want to browse information created in Japanese," declared Rosenschein.
Accent also recently announced a seamless multilingual browser plug-in to Netscape Navigator 2.0 which will enable Netscape Navigator users to browse the Web in any of Accent's more that 30 languages, including Japanese, under any language version of Windows.
Accent Software International designs and develops multilingual Internet and word processing software products for retail, corporate, educational, government and OEM customers, and markets these products in more than 20 countries. Founded in 1988, Accent Software International is a publicly-held company (NASDAQ: ACNTF) and is headquartered in Jerusalem. -0-
Note to Editors: Accent is a trademark of Accent Software International Ltd. Netscape and Netscape Navigator are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. Windows and Windows 95 are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.
CONTACT: Accent Software International Ltd.
Norman Kreger, 011-972-2-793-723 Ext. 243
Normank@accent.co.il
Home page: http://www.accentsoft.com
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Mona J. Walsh or Gordon H. Wolfe
Joel Herskovits or Barbara Yu (Media)
212/370-4500
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Byline: Allison Bruce
Jun. 12--The founders of Xirrus Inc. share an office, with three desks made out of painted doors arranged around a room filled with white boards and papers charting out ideas.
They aren't alone. Most offices house three employees. Other space is set up with cubicles.
It has a start-up feel that the company wants to keep as it grows. The Westlake Village firm sent out the first shipments of its wireless local access network product last month.
But Xirrus is not just any start-up. The leaders are from Xircom Inc., a company launched in Thousand Oaks in 1988 -- and sold to Intel Corp. in 2001 for about $748 million. It is a young venture with a wealth of experience.
Dirk Gates and Kirk Mathews founded Xircom, which provided wireless technology to connect laptops to corporate networks and the Internet. By 2001, the company had grown to close to 2,000 employees with annual revenues of about $500 million.
After the Intel acquisition, the Xircom leaders went in different directions, with some going on to other start-ups. But in 2003, Gates started talking with Patrick Parker, former general manager at Xircom, about starting a company that would combine the separate components of a wireless network into a single device.
Parker said there was a "huge void in terms of a missing product out there."
By the end of 2003, they had started using about 1,000 square feet of space in a building leased by another company in the office park where Xirrus is now located. The company officially formed in 2004 with Gates as chief executive officer, Parker as chief development officer and Steven DeGennaro as chief financial officer. DeGennaro was senior vice president and chief financial officer at Xircom.
Before long, Mathews had signed on as chief technologist at Xirrus.
Gates said it was a hot market for an innovative product, but what really motivated him was that he could pull the old team back together.
"We have zero team issues," Gates said. "We've worked together so long, we know each other's quirks." The others laughed.
"We have zero team issues we didn't already know about," DeGennaro amended.
Xircom's legacy gets Xirrus in the door to talk with customers or vendors, as well as draws in interested employees.
The Xirrus name, which carries on the "X" from Xircom, lends weight to the company, said marketing director John DiGiovanni. The "X" is even subtly incorporated into the face of the units.
The company has grown from three employees to about 50. Its offices have about 5,000 square feet and an additional 800 square feet across the walkway that includes the testing lab.
Most corporate wireless local access networks, or WLAN, are complicated and expensive to install, DiGiovanni said. Xirrus' product integrates the access points, often scattered around a building with a wireless network, and controlling WLAN switch into a single device that can deliver four, eight or 16 channels for up to 864 megabits of radio frequency bandwidth. The channels work together without overlapping.
One public relations representative for the firm said the devices looked like "a smoke detector on steroids." Skepticism to success Mathews admits to being skeptical about the technology at first. "It's not obvious that you can put so many radios in such a small space and have them work," he said.
But the units have proved successful. Xirrus received the best start-up firm award at the NetWorld+Interop conference in early May.
The list price for the units range from $3,999 to $11,999, while the management platform goes from $4,999 to $24,999, depending on the number of WLAN Arrays they support, DiGiovanni said. The optional remote power system is $1,999.
Xirrus maintains that the systems allow less equipment to support more users, simplifying the network design and making the total cost to customers lower.
One of the test sites was at Viewpoint School in Calabasas. Two of Gates' children attend the school.
Paul Rosenbaum, associate headmaster and chief operating officer, said the 16-radio unit was installed prior to Christmas and has been a good solution for the school.
The single unit has a radius of about 150 feet and covers classrooms in a two-story, 7,000-square-foot building. Rosenbaum said the signal stretches out to the parking lot and doesn't create any blank spots without access in the building. With 142 laptops on carts that move all about the school, that's important.
It's an improvement over the system the school had before, which included access points scattered in closets throughout the school. "If it's working in one place, it's working everywhere," Rosenbaum said.
He's considering installing four units in a new 41,000-square-foot building.
About 60 percent of Xirrus' employees were once Xircom employees, Gates said. The other 40 percent have experience with other high-tech companies.
Gates said Xirrus benefits from being in an area where it can select from a group of prospective employees with experience working in start-up firms O and the expectation they will have to work 10- to 14-hour days for six or seven days a week.
There are pros and cons to locating in an area such as Westlake Village as opposed to the San Francisco Bay Area, Gates said.
The Bay Area has a larger labor pool of entrepreneurs, networks of venture capitalists and high-tech companies. But the labor pool is much more fluid, with employees moving from company to company.
"It would be very difficult to find a team that has got a decade of experience together," he said.
In the Westlake Village area, the labor pool is much more stable, he said. And the firm is removed from the fever pitch of Silicon Valley.
It's also easier to lay low.
"If you want to run stealth, you can really run stealth," Gates said. "We didn't want to create a buzz until now. We wanted to attract a buzz with the product." Gates said it is too early to be planning on a public offering or acquisition by a larger company.
"That (acquisition) tends to be the norm in technology," Gates said. "Right now, we are focused on building a business." The company is building distribution channels and seeking partners. It has 20 to 30 resellers and would like more than 100 by year end. The company also is expanding its European presence.
By next year, Gates expects to have partner companies established that will buy the systems and sell them under their brand.
Xirrus has the potential and market to grow into a company as large as Xircom was, but its leaders hope the company will keep a start-up culture.
"Communication between people makes things happen faster," Parker said. "That's the lesson we learned at Xircom. It's easy to wall out a facility and have very nice offices and everybody talks by e-mail." But that isn't how ideas are advanced, he added. The company benefits from employees knowing what their co-workers are working on and the self-motivation that comes with a small company.
"In the long run, it will help make the company successful," Parker said.
ON THE NET
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(Full text of statement. Contact details below.)
EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 20, 2004--Infonet Services Corporation (NYSE:IN), a leading provider of global communications services for multinationals, today announced its certification to deliver managed connections to the European Network eXchange (ENX) via IP VPN Secure, Infonet's multi-class MPLS-enabled IP VPN service.
Designed specifically for the automotive industry, ENX is the secure communications platform enabling manufacturers, suppliers and trading partners to benefit from a single multi-provider network. With this certification, Infonet is now the first tier one managed service provider to add the ENX service into a pre-existing MPLS IP VPN network, an integration that substantially decreases costs and improves performance and manageability of the service.
The Infonet IP VPN Secure ENX service uses multi-VPN technology to bring key high performance benefits like the separation of ENX data traffic from other enterprise data traffic, such as e-mail, e-business applications and voice/video service.
"ENX has secured critical mass and has successfully passed the adoption phase. With the certification of key providers to the automobile industry, the network is gaining traction," said Henning Dransfeld, senior analyst, Ovum. "It is now at a point where certification is a critical factor when securing an IP VPN deal with automobile manufacturers. Since a number of tier one providers are not yet certified, those like Infonet who are carry a distinct competitive advantage."
"We are pleased to welcome Infonet as our latest certified service provider," said Lennart Oly, managing director, ENX. "Efficient communication is one of the most important factors in the automotive industry and with the help of ENX service providers, our users are able to achieve rationalization, increase efficiency and gain a competitive advantage."
"Working with ENX is a strategic milestone for Infonet, further marking our presence in large inter-company markets and expanding our reach into the automotive industry," said Jean-Noel Moneton, vice president, IP Services for Infonet. "We are currently working with Toyota, among other multinational companies, to deliver significant results via our ENX services."
About Infonet
Infonet Services Corporation, known for its quality of service, is a leading provider of managed network communications services for nearly 3,000 multinational entities.
Employing a unique consultative approach, Infonet offers integrated solutions optimizing the complex relationship between enterprise applications and the global network. Extensive project management capabilities are the foundation for the services and solution offerings (broadband, Internet, intranet, multimedia, videoconferencing, wireless/remote access, local provisioning, application and consulting services) positioning Infonet as a single-source partner for multinational entities. In particular, Infonet IP VPN solutions offer multinationals a unique combination of Private and Public IP services as well as a full set of Managed Security and Mobility Services.
Rated "Best in Class" overall in Telemark's survey of Global Managed Data Network Services, Infonet has also won "Best Customer Care" and "Best Carrier" at the World Communication Awards. Founded in 1970, Infonet owns and operates The World Network(R), accessible from more than 180 countries, and provides local service support in over 70 countries and territories.
Infonet's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol IN. Additional information about the company is available at www.infonet.com.
Safe Harbor Statement: Infonet may have made forward-looking statements in this release. These statements, if any, are based on information available to the company as of the date of this release and Infonet undertakes no duty to update the information to take account of later events. The accuracy of our forward-looking statements will also be affected by the strength of the market for Infonet products and services, competition, the timely transitioning of new business opportunities to Infonet's network and the effect of currency fluctuation. Investors should bear these risk factors in mind as well as those elaborated on in Infonet's 10K, 10-Qs and other recent filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available through the investor relations portion of Infonet's web site at www.infonet.com.
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CONTACT: Infonet Services Corporation
Alex Rassey, +1-310-335-1144
Corporate Marketing
email: alex_rasseyinfonet.com
or
Stacie Hime, +1-310-335-2875
Industry Analysts
email: stacie_himeinfonet.com
or
Ruder Finn
Alicia Dollard, +1-212-593-6343
Public Relations/Media
email: dollardaruderfinn.com
ASIA PULSE 21-07 1228
Business Editors
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 7, 2003
Fannie Mae will redeem the principal amount indicated of the following securities issues on the redemption date indicated below at a redemption price equal to 100 percent of the principal amount redeemed, plus accrued interest thereon to the date of redemption:
Principal Security Interest Maturity Date CUSIP Redemption Amount Type Rate Date ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $150,000,000 MTN 2.250% Oct. 17, 2005 3136F3KH8 Oct. 17, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $150,000,000 MTN 2.750% Oct. 17, 2005 3136F2ND6 Oct. 17, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $1,000,000,000 UBEN 4.500% Oct. 17, 2006 31359MLC5 Oct. 17, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $25,000,000 MTN 3.350% April 17, 2007 3136F3JG2 Oct. 17, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fannie Mae is a New York Stock Exchange company and the largest non-bank financial services company in the world. It operates pursuant to a federal charter and is the nation's largest source of financing for home mortgages. Fannie Mae is working to shrink the nation's "homeownership gaps" through a $2 trillion "American Dream Commitment" to increase homeownership rates and serve 18 million targeted American families by the end of the decade. Since 1968, Fannie Mae has provided $5.2 trillion of mortgage financing for more than 55 million families. More information about Fannie Mae can be found on the Internet at http://www.fanniemae.com.
Style Usage: Fannie Mae's Board of Directors has authorized the company to operate as "Fannie Mae," and the company's stock is now listed on the NYSE as "FNM." In order to facilitate clarity and avoid confusion, news organizations are asked to refer to the company exclusively as "Fannie Mae."
