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Statement of Michael J. Astrue
Commissioner for Social Security Administration
Testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means
April 23, 2008
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for this opportunity to update you on our efforts to improve our service to the American public.
I would like to start with Social Security's front door, the field office. The past few years have been tough for field offices. As overall agency employment dropped from 63,569 in 2003 to 60,206 at the end of 2007, field offices felt the effect of staffing losses more intensely because so many of our activities mandated by law are performed in our field offices.
As staffing fell, workload burdens grew. The general population continued to grow, and it got older, which meant more retirement applications and more disability applications. New state laws aimed at illegal immigrants increased the number of people seeking replacement Social Security cards. New federal statutes required claims representatives, teleservice representatives, and other field staff to take on complex and time-consuming new responsibilities in Medicare Part D. This year, our field offices are processing additional requests for 1099s to help taxpayers file for payments under the stimulus bill.
Our field offices do their best, but simply cannot provide the level of service the public expects from the Social Security Administration at recent levels of funding. This Committee has recognized this problem and I would like to thank you for providing SSA with the resources to better fulfill our responsibilities to the American public. The 2008 appropriations was the first time that Congress has appropriated at or above the President's Budget request since 1993.
We are grateful to you for your support, and it is helping our field offices and teleservice centers provide improved service. We will use some of the extra funding to strengthen our direct service operation with the hiring of 3,900 employees, 1,300 employees more than the expected losses for this year. We are not going to be able to meet our challenges by continuing to ask for more money to maintain the status quo. Increases in personnel and infrastructure costs alone for the fiscal year that starts this October will be at least $400 million.
To cope with rising workloads and likely fiscal constraints, we have systematically reviewed the information that we routinely request from or provide to the public. We believe that if we can automate, reduce, or eliminate such information exchanges, we can improve efficiency as well as the quality of our service and the morale of our field employees. Our Ready Retirement Team has been leading this effort by focusing on streamlining the retirement application process, a logical choice because this past January the first of nearly 80 million baby boomers filed for retirement.
This team already has driven change by determining that retirees born in this country may not need to provide their official birth certificate to prove their age. Instead, if a retiree alleges a date of birth that satisfies our authentication standards, we will accept the allegation. This simple change will allow baby boomers to file more effortlessly over the Internet, telephone, or in our offices, employing a more efficient process that will accelerate payment of the first check. Furthermore, field employees will save time on a significant number of claims each year.
The Ready Retirement Team also has greatly improved the information available to people trying to decide the right date for their retirement. As we will soon announce, we are planning to provide people highly accurate on-line estimates of their monthly retirement benefits, which we compute by using their actual earnings records. Our current online estimators are difficult and time-consuming to use, and often fall short on accuracy. The new version will be simple, easy-to-use, and highly accurate. Our team worked hard with the technology and with privacy experts to ensure that the negligible risks of inappropriate disclosure of personal information justify the substantial benefits.
Although our electronic services are usually ranked as the best of all federal agencies, my judgment is they are far from good enough yet to deal with the imminent tsunami of baby boomers' claims. After broad consultation with experts and advocacy groups, next month we will be unveiling our new website, which will eliminate some of the visual clutter and be significantly easier for the public to navigate, especially if they are reaching out to us for the first or second time.
Our improved website will introduce the public to the next critical Ready Retirement initiative: a total overhaul of our online retirement application. Our current online form was put up quickly about 8 years ago. It is nowhere near best demonstrated practices, and for most of this decade only about 10% of the public has chosen to apply for retirement online.
In order to keep field offices from being totally overwhelmed, we are going to need to drive that online filing figure up from about 13% to 50% over the next 5 years. The Ready Retirement Team has a September 27, 2008 deadline for the first step of a two-step implementation, and it has already shown a terrific prototype to advocacy groups, and the Social Security Advisory Board. We found that we could eliminate or simplify the vast majority of the application questions, and that we could use cues, links, streaming video, and other techniques from the best financial services websites to give the public a friendlier, faster, and simpler experience. We expect the current 45 minutes for the average online retirement filing to drop to an average of 15 minutes.
The second step of the Ready Retirement process requires modification of 39 separate COBOL-based systems and will involve some additional improvements to the form itself. The key improvement will be that our computers will automatically send the claim to payment without the involvement of a claims representative. In the coming years, this one change could free up enormous amounts of staff time.
A similar work-saver that we recently implemented is iAppeals. As you know, State agencies, called Disability Determination Services, decide disability claims on our behalf at the first two levels of the adjudication process. Currently, to appeal an adverse Disability Determination Services decision, the claimant or the claimant's representative fills out a paper form and sends it to a field office, where the staff manually enters the appeal into a system.
iAppeals, which is now used on a voluntary basis in about 10-15% of all cases, eliminates this unnecessary manual work, reduces the likelihood of human error, and ends one source of delay that contributes to backlogs. For these reasons, in the coming year, we will propose a regulation that will require claimants' representatives to use iAppeals; the status quo will be available for unrepresented claimants.
We also are having a separate intercomponent team study the waiting areas in our field offices to improve both the efficiency of the office and the experience of the public. We expect to roll out many changes in the next year that will improve seating, layout, privacy, signage, and other small, but important, things that make visiting a field office a better experience.
Last month, I authorized the purchase of new intake kiosks for field offices that will provide a modern, fast, and user-friendly tool for the public to register the reason for their visit. These kiosks incorporate touch screen technology and are similar to those many Americans use for airline travel. We are also piloting the use of personal computers in the field office reception area to provide the public with connectivity to the SSA Internet website. These personal computers provide an option for those people who may not have access to a personal computer, or may not have understood our e-service options, to transact their business with us electronically.
We are looking at using an unobtrusive slideshow presentation to remind people of the documents they need in order to file a claim or receive a new or replacement Social Security card. Those people who do not have the necessary documentation with them can leave to get it and come back, or call a family member to bring it to them, so that they will have a fully successful visit. The slides will also provide information about our online and 800 number services so visitors know there are alternatives to visiting a field office the next time they need service.
Before I discuss our efforts to improve our disability process, I want to mention that immigration initiatives and demographic shifts have further strained some field offices with demands for new and replacement Social Security cards. To ease this pressure, we have moved to specialized card centers, mostly in densely populated and rapidly growing urban areas. These centers allow us to provide faster, more efficient, and more accurate service to the public. We are co-locating these new centers with field offices because doing so is cost-efficient, provides more career ladder opportunities to our employees, and most importantly, better serves the public.
Now, I would like to turn to the disability backlogs by starting with an update about our efforts to improve the quality and speed of Disability Determination Services decision-making. In a time of agency contraction, for most of this decade the Disability Determination Services have suffered even deeper cuts than SSA. We have taken steps to reverse this trend, and I am very pleased that the Disability Determination Services will be able to replace all staff who have left or will leave their agencies this year. This support is a key part of our effort to bring the number of pending cases at the State level down below 500,000 for the first time since 1999.
Additional resources are vital, but must be accompanied by our commitment to work smarter. A valid longstanding Disability Determination Services criticism of SSA is that our medical listings do not provide enough detail and do not keep pace with medical advances. In making disability determinations, SSA uses the Listing of Impairments (the Listings ) which describes impairments that are considered severe enough to prevent a person from doing any substantial gainful activity. Although the Listings are a critical factor in SSA's disability determination and have been used in millions of cases since their initial development in 1955, I discovered last year that some of the important listings had not been updated for decades. Updating the Listings on a regular basis will allow disability adjudicators to resolve disability cases more accurately and efficiently. We have already published several final Listing regulations, and we have developed a schedule to ensure that we update all of our medical listings at least every 5 years.
In addition, we have made a special effort to provide guidance to decision-makers on the rare diseases and conditions where we are most likely to delay decisions and make mistakes. This new emphasis on rare diseases and conditions is an important element of our effort to use computer technology to pull the straightforward cases out of the queue and resolve them in an unprecedented brief period of time. Our retrospective analyses indicate that a surprisingly high percentage of these cases are either decided incorrectly or take an unusually long period of time to adjudicate.
The first piece of what will be a two-track fast-track system is now up and running across the country. It is called QDD – for Quick Disability Determination – and right now about 2.3 % of all new claims are being identified for QDD processing, and over 96% of them are allowances. QDD allowances are being decided in an average of 6 to 8 days. During the next several months, we expect the proportion of cases being identified for fast tracking will increase as we continue to make adjustments to, and test the limits of, the computer model. These adjustments should not affect the processing time nor the allowance rate for QDD cases.
We are also getting close to piloting the second track, which we are calling compassionate allowances. These are cases where the disease or condition is so consistently devastating that we can presume that the claimant is disabled once we confirm a valid diagnosis. By deciding more cases based on medical evidence alone, we can reduce the number of claims that require further review.
Since this is new territory, we do not know what the eventual mix of QDD and compassionate allowance cases will be, but a reasonable guess is that by the end of 2009, about 4 % of our claims will be fast-tracked. By the end of 2012, that number could be 6% to 9 % of our claims. I stress, however, that right now these numbers are best guesses and that we will not really know until we have pushed this effort for a longer period of time.
We have also extended nationwide the Request for Program Consultation, a Disability Determination Services quality initiative that was incorporated into Disability Service Improvement. As we are speeding up our processing of cases, it is essential that we maintain our focus on accuracy. An institutionalized forum for communication between Disability Determination Services and SSA on problematic cases is an important part of that effort.
The Request for Program Consultation provides an electronic forum to resolve disagreements between the Disability Determination Services and our Office of Quality Performance. These disagreements may involve, for instance, whether a Disability Determination Services agency obtained appropriate documentation, applied policy correctly, or decided the case accurately. The Request for Program Consultation is a web-based application that is available to Disability Determination Services nationwide. The Request for Program Consultation website allows Disability Determination Services to submit requests electronically and those requests appear instantaneously for review by the Request for Program Consultation Team. The Request for Program Consultation Team analyzes and resolves cases within seven days. Prior to this consultation process, Disability Determination Services often waited several months for a definitive resolution on complex cases. The Request for Program Consultation allows us to gather data on each request and share it with all users so that they may use that information to write better policy and make better decisions.
As we work to improve the timeliness and quality of our disability determinations, we are also considering longer-term systems improvement. We will be having important discussions with State administrators in New Orleans next week to discuss a unified information technology system to replace the current 54 separate COBOL-based systems that are increasingly difficult to modify and expensive to maintain. A similar consolidation effort collapsed in early 1999, but we have been working toward this goal for nearly a year, and I am cautiously optimistic. If we can obtain a sufficient degree of consensus with our partners in the States in the next few months, we may move forward with this essential improvement provided we have sufficient resources..
We are working on a new software tool called eCAT (Electronic Case Analysis Tool) for use by disability examiners. eCAT will prompt examiners about questions they should ask and documentation that they need before making a disability determination. The initial model for eCAT was developed by the Pennsylvania Disability Determination Services. Unfortunately, eCAT was implemented prematurely as part of Disability Service Improvement and failed miserably. The Virginia Disability Determination Services is helping us refine eCAT so that we properly implement a good concept. While eCAT will not be ready to pilot earlier than next year, it offers the hope of using cutting-edge technology to make faster, more accurate, and better-documented decisions.
I would like to now turn to the hearings backlog. If you step back and look at the system as an economist would, we have had, for many years, issues of allocation and distribution of resources. The problem of allocation has been painfully clear – compared to 10 years ago we have about 176 % more disability cases. We have taken a big step toward resolving that problem by bringing onboard the 175 additional administrative law judges and additional staff to support them. If we can resolve space issues, we will also bring on another 14 National Hearing Center judges this year.
The resource distribution problem is neither obvious nor is its cause clear to me. Nonetheless, when you look at where we were a year ago, it is clear that there was a longstanding imbalance in Office of Disability Adjudication and Review resources. In particular, the Chicago and Atlanta regions were dramatically under-resourced compared to the rest of the country. The hearing offices in many of the most backlogged cities – such as Atlanta , Cleveland , and Detroit – were receiving 3-4 times as many filings per administrative law judge as offices in Southern California and New England .
We have moved swiftly to correct this problem. Where we can address it by changing jurisdictional lines in adjacent locations, we have done so. As an example, our suburban Pittsburgh office now serves Youngstown and other parts of eastern Ohio to take some of the burden off overloaded offices in Cleveland and Columbus . For the same reasons, we have reassigned responsibility for cases scheduled for video hearings to less busy offices. At our site in Toledo , we have video hearing capability, so that now administrative law judges in Boston assist the Toledo office with their video hearings.
Our new National Hearing Center (NHC), which holds video hearings from a central location, also gives us the capability to move cases quickly and flexibly to conduct video hearings in the cities with the worst backlogs. Right now, our NHC administrative law judges are focusing their efforts on the backlogs in Atlanta , Cleveland , and Detroit . We are planning to expand this NHC initiative as soon as we can and intend to address the backlogs in Miami , Columbus , Indianapolis , and other cities where claimants have been waiting the longest.
With the allocation of the 175 newly-hired administrative law judges, we have made equalizing resources a priority even though we have received some criticism for doing so. We are sending 10 to Ohio and just 1 to New England . That is not a regional bias – I am from Boston myself – but a data-driven decision that recognizes that there is a strong correlation between filings per administrative law judge and cases pending.
We have also received some criticism that we are not providing adequate support staff for our administrative law judge corps. In my opinion, that is a fiction designed to sidetrack some of our productivity initiatives. Since I began as Commissioner, I have increased the number of support staff per ALJ from 4.1 to 4.4. The number of staff needed to support a disposition will change as we fully implement the backlog plan, but at the moment that number is difficult to project with any certainty. We know that automating many of our clerical functions will reduce the amount of time spent by staff on more routine tasks, and allow them to absorb additional workloads. We are also working to standardize our business process, which should result in additional staff efficiencies. We will continue to monitor the appropriate staff to ALJ ratio as the new processes are implemented .
While we will still have a handful of offices that will be under-resourced due to various barriers, such as the cumbersome process for adding additional space, we are just months away from no longer being able to offer resource issues as a defense to poor productivity. It is time for everyone from senior management to the most junior support staff to commit themselves to finding the best ways to work together to make sure that nobody waits an inexcusable period of time for a final decision on an appeal. Performance varies greatly from office to office, and we are working toward having the least productive offices model themselves, to the extent possible, after the more productive offices.
While waiting for the new administrative law judges and support staff to be fully trained and productive, we have done our best to attack the backlogs with a series of administrative and regulatory changes that have slowed the increase in pending cases and slightly reduced average processing times. We could have made even greater progress, but chose instead to make the important commitment to clear out the most aged cases where the claimant has waited 1,000 days or more for a hearing. I would like to take a little time to explain why that decision is so critical.
For most of this decade, SSA created rules and incentives focused solely on the most prominent metric for measuring the backlog – total cases pending. As logical as this decision may seem at first, if you think about it harder you will see that it creates a perverse incentive to focus on the easiest cases and to set aside the difficult ones. That is what happened until the start of the 2007 fiscal year, when we had about 65,000 cases over 1,000 days old, some of which had been pending for as long as 1,400 days.
Even though these 1,000-day-old cases generally take 5-6 times longer than new cases to resolve, we set the goal of clearing them out by the end of the year. We came within 108 cases of that goal by the end of FY 2007, and I am happy to report that all of those cases are now gone. From a moral perspective, we had to dedicate our resources to clear out these cases because it is just wrong to let claimants wait an unconscionable length of time in order to meet a hearing-pending goal.
We were not satisfied with our initial success, and for FY 2008, we redefined our goal as cases 900 or more days old. We had 135,000 of the newly-defined aged cases at the start of FY 2008. I am pleased to report that we are ahead of schedule for completing all 135,000 of these cases this year; we have already completed 63% of them. Our intention is to reduce the tolerance level again in FY 2009, but I plan to wait until September before doing so.
I know you recognize that our ability to make continued progress with this workload in the next fiscal year will depend greatly on our fiscal position. If we do not receive a timely appropriation or must deal with the uncertainties and budget reductions created by a continuing resolution of unknown duration, our task will be much more difficult to accomplish.
Reduction of the aged cases should also produce, later this calendar year, a real benefit for everyone who is waiting. The aged cases represent a large percentage of the paper cases in the system, and it is extraordinarily inefficient to run two complex hearing office systems instead of one. What should give everybody on this Committee hope for next year is that the paper cases should be substantially gone by the end of the year – around the same time that most of the new administrative law judges are reaching full productivity. The convergence of these two events means that we expect to hit the "tipping point" –where both total cases pending and average processing time are declining– sometime in January or February of next year, with the caveat that progress may be slow if we are still under a continuing resolution.
We have other possible improvements in the pipeline. In June, we expect to start a 6-month pilot program with the National Organization of Social Security Claims Representatives, an association primarily comprised of lawyers. In this pilot, we are testing a program that will allow representatives to conduct video hearings from their offices. This initiative should offer convenience and comfort for many claimants, save time for attorneys, and cut down on our investment in bricks and mortar, a cost which increases above the rate of inflation year after year.
We are planning on a test in Michigan which will use the same type of case profiling mechanisms that we used in our successful attorney-advisor and informal remand initiatives to look at cases heading from the Disability Determination Services to Office of Disability Adjudication and Review. Michigan is a "prototype" State that does not have reconsideration, and we are looking at ways of providing a quick screening tool to enhance the quality of the initial determinations. What we learn from this screening activity may help us identify cases that can be triaged at an earlier point in the appeals process.
We have started a pilot on centralized processing of notices, which may sound dull, but in theory should save an enormous amount of time for hearing office support staff that then can be used for moving cases. Regardless of the success of this pilot, at a minimum it will be an opportunity to make Office of Disability Adjudication and Review notices more up-to-date, clear, and user- friendly.
We will continue to improve Office of Disability Adjudication and Review's basic electronic system. A new system to help support staff ready files for hearing should be rolling out state-by-state by the end of the year. We are working on systems that will improve docketing and allow authenticated attorney representatives to access the records to check files for such things as case status and evidentiary development. As I have said before, there is no magic bullet answer, just a multitude of small nitty-gritty improvements necessary to run a more efficient and compassionate process for the American public.
Before I close, I feel obligated to bring one aspect of last month's Trustees' Report to your attention. Although the combined OASDI trust funds do not reach exhaustion until 2041, the disability trust fund will be exhausted in 2025 under current assumptions. Although that date is later than the 2019 trust fund exhaustion date for Medicare Hospital Insurance, it is one more reason why Congress needs to work together on a bipartisan basis with the administration to give younger Americans reason to have confidence in the future of Social Security.
To conclude, we have made slow and frustrating progress in fixing our service delivery problems, but we are making progress, and I am grateful to each Member of this Committee for your support. As I have laid out in this testimony, changes that will take place between Labor Day and the end of the year – streamlined online filing, at least 175 new administrative law judges picking up steam, and the full shift from paper to electronic systems in Office of Disability Adjudication and Review – should produce considerably more improvement next year. Operating under a continuing resolution for a prolonged period of time would worsen a situation already made difficult by years of increasing workloads and limited resources. It is also essential that we receive the full President's Budget for FY 2009 in order to keep up with increasing workloads and meet our commitment to eliminate the hearings backlog by the end of FY 2013. So I ask for your timely support of the President's budget.
Thank you for this opportunity to lay out in detail our plans and progress, and I will be happy to answer any questions you have.


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WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - A Defense Department inquiry has found three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes, Pentagon and military officials said Thursday.
But the officials said investigators who reviewed thousands of documents and electronic files from a secret counterterrorism planning unit had not found the chart itself, or any evidence the chart ever existed.
The officials acknowledged that documents and electronic files created by the unit, known as Able Danger, were destroyed under standing orders that limit the military's use of intelligence gathered about people in the United States.
At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, four intelligence or military officials said investigators had interviewed 80 people who served directly with Able Danger, a team organized to write a counterterrorism campaign plan, or were closely associated with it.
Of those 80, 5 in all now say they saw the chart, including Capt. Scott J. Phillpott of the Navy and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Army, whose recent comments first brought attention to Able Danger.Continue reading the main story
At the briefing, the officials said that four of the five recalled seeing a picture of Mohamed Atta, the member of Al Qaeda who planned and carried out the attacks, while one said the chart contained only Mr. Atta's name.
The officials stressed that their inquiry was continuing, and that they still could not definitively prove or disprove whether the unit identified Mr. Atta -- and, perhaps, other members of the hijacking team -- before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The witnesses "are credible people," said Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst for the under secretary of defense for intelligence. But investigators "can't find the document," Ms. Downs said.
Another official who described the inquiry, Cmdr. Christopher Chope of the United States Special Operations Command, said there was no evidence that the destruction of Able Danger documents had been anything other than a routine application of privacy regulations.
Commander Chope also said there was no evidence that military lawyers issued orders preventing Able Danger personnel from sharing data they had gathered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as Colonel Shaffer has said.Continue reading the main story

subset: commoncrawl


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At the end of June another key risk was highlighted when the US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Chinese turbine manufacturer Sinovel and two of its employees with stealing trade secrets from US manufacturer AMSC, causing it an alleged loss of more than $800 million. A former employee of an AMSC subsidiary was also charged.
The AMSC-Sinovel case has been running for several years, largely in China's civil courts, but the entry of the US government raises the case to the level of international diplomacy. It came just weeks after US president Barack Obama used his meeting in California with Chinese premier Xi Jinping to raise concerns that Chinese computer hackers were stealing corporate secrets from US firms.
As well as upping the ante and turning the case into a major diplomatic incident, the DoJ's case revealed a huge amount of previously unseen detail about how Sinovel allegedly stole AMSC's intellectual property, offering insight for other manufacturers into the risk to their intellectual property.
The defendants are charged with stealing the source code for AMSC's PM3000 software, a part of its wind turbine electrical control system. The indictment alleges that Sinovel recruited Dejan Karabasevic, a former employee of AMSC's Austrian subsidiary AMSC Windtec, to join Sinovel, and secretly to copy intellectual property from the AMSC computer system.
As part of its indictment the DoJ revealed the levels of security in place by AMSC to protect its software. These included restricting access to its workstations and unique usernames and passwords to access the AMSC IT system. All employees were also required to sign a code of business conduct and ethics prohibiting disclosure of confidential business confirmation.
Despite this, Karabasevic is alleged to have copied the PM3000 software and sent it to Sinovel during a period in 2011 when he maintained regular email and Skype chat contact with Zhao Haichun and Su Liying, respectively Sinovel's technology manager and research department deputy director. The Chinese turbine manufacturer allegedly rewrote the software to operate in its own turbines as part of its low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) systems. A US Federal Bureau of Investigation team subsequently found evidence that AMSC's PM3000 software code had been used in four of Sinovel's 1.5MW turbines that had been installed in three projects across Massachusetts.
Karabasevic, who has pleaded guilty to charges of industrial espionage in an Austrian court, gave notice of his intention to leave AMSC Windtec in March 2011, yet still had access to the company's systems until his departure three months later. AMSC declined to respond to Windpower Monthly's request about any subsequent changes in what was clearly a weak element of the company's security measures.
Security breach
The combined risk of insider intellectual property theft and corporate hackers means all companies should make sure they know which data are their most valuable, and apply security procedures accordingly, says IT security expert Raj Samani.
"The foundation for protecting information is to establish the type of data an organisation has, and its value," says Samani, EMEA vice-president and chief technology officer for internet security firm McAfee.
"This sounds easier said than done, with reports suggesting that 80% of data within enterprises is unstructured. If you identify what is most important, apply appropriate security controls and limit access to the smallest number of people — the 'need to know principle' — then this is a good start. Simply using username and password for information that's the secret sauce for the company may not be appropriate."
Samani adds that creating rules around certain levels of data may mean that data classified as top secret cannot be sent outside the company. Instead of relying on employees to abide by conduct rules, specific blocks must be put on certain types of data to prevent their removal. And if those data are on a portable device, companies should ensure it is encrypted.
Secret sauce
This of course means first identifying what is most important to you as a company — your "secret sauce".
"If you don't know what's important then these types of incidents will occur because it becomes all too easy for people to access it," adds Samani.
Protection of intellectual property is one of the most important tasks facing his company, Henrik Stiesdal, chief technology officer at Siemens Wind Power, told Windpower Monthly. While central functions can be reached by all employees, restrictions are put in place on the most valuable information within each business unit.
"All information access must only be given on a need-to-know basis, monitored by the information owner. If the information is critical, two-factor authentication is enforced," says Stiesdal.
This two-factor authentication means the use of a combination of security measures such as a Siemens-wide public key infrastructure (PKI) key pair, which consists of a chip in employees' ID cards and a eight-digit PIN, plus an additional individual password.
Samani says that using employee-specific data access rights is essential to creating an audit trail that can help quickly clamp down data leaks. That applies to the supply chain too.
"Whatever good practice you do for yourself, you need to ensure your suppliers do, and make sure they tackle security as seriously as you because, as the saying goes, security is only as strong as the weakest link," he says. "For example, if you demand staff are vetted to access certain types of data, then this should naturally apply to suppliers/contractors that access the same data."
In addition to IP theft, another security risk for both turbine manufacturers and operators is the potential hacking of machines' supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) systems.
Aggressive hacking
According to recent work done by security researchers in Norway and Denmark, hackers are aggressively scanning Scada systems in order to find those still operating with default usernames and passwords. While Stiesdal points out that there is clearly valuable IP held within Scada systems, such as information on the performance of turbines, incidents in other industries indicate that it is more likely that attacks on turbine control systems would be made by terrorist organisations wishing to shut down the electricity supply for a facility, city, region or country.
As wind power's role in electricity generation increases, so does the risk posed by potential hacking incidents to national security. In the US, protection against hacking events is already required from turbines before they are permitted to access the grid, with all turbines meeting critical infrastructure protection standards issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which covers issues such as security controls, sabotage reporting and recovery plans.
Samani says that while the risks are potentially huge, Scada systems are in theory much easier to protect than a company's general computer network or enterprise system, because they are required only for one task — to feed back performance data.
"There is no need for Scada systems to change as much as enterprise systems, so using host and network whitelisting is a real opportunity," says Samani, who has co-authored a book on the hacking risk to electrical systems called Applied Cyber Security and the Smart Grid
"Whitelisting creates a baseline of network traffic and reports or prevents any anomalies thereafter. If you know what traffic to expect, you can see any anomalies."
With the only recorded incident of a wind turbine Scada system being hacked, in 2011 in Florida, having been revealed as a hoax, it is clear that the risk to wind turbine control systems is minimal at present. If turbine companies are going to focus their security efforts anywhere, the area currently worthy of most effort is their precious intellectual property.
Intellectual property
- Identify your most valuable data
- Give access to key data on 'need-to-know' basis
- Vet all staff for security clearance
- Apply same rules to supply chain workers
- Employ more than one method of authentication, ie username and password, PKI, encryption
- Encrypt all laptops that store valuable data
Turbine control systems
- Create baseline of network traffic
- Monitor traffic for unusual activity


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FAMU Seeking Support and Ticket SalesAugust 31st, 2012 by Mike Vasilinda
The Florida A&M Rattler football team plays its first game this weekend without the presence of the famed band. The Marching 100 have been suspended for at least a year following the hazing death of a drum major, and boosters and the University are trying to put the best face possible on the bands absence.
The FAMU band is often as big a draw as the football team, but band members will be sidelined this year following the hazing death of Drum Major Robert Champion. As players arrived at the airport for a flight to Nashville to play arch rival Tennessee State,
They were greeted by a first ever community rally to support the school and the team.
Cheerleaders shouted a FAMU cheer, while linebacker Brandon Hepburn says it is the teams chance to shine.
"Its an awesome opportunity to be a front runner at our own games" says Hepburn.
"When the dark clouds gather" is how Interim President Larry Robinson began another cheer leading session. University officials and community leaders acknowledged the bands absence makes this season unusual if not challenging.
"We're not unfamiliar with the notion that they were not going to be there and we've gotten ourselves prepared for that," says Robinson.
Boosters are calling on residents not to be fair weather fans. "Get behind the football team and purchase season tickets" was the request from former Alumni President Alan Williams. Boosters Vice President Selvin Cobb say football ticket sales are important because they fund other sports. "That's what gonna pay for the tennis team, the volleyball team, the non-revenue sports" says Cobb.
But even with low season ticket sales, attendance averages eighteen thousand
The athletic department says season tickets are on par with where they were last year, but they've never really been great, selling between thirty two and thirty five hundred a year".
The school is hoping an increase in season ticket sales will offset some of those walkups that only came for the band.
The band would have traveled to Nashville for the opening game had they not been suspended. The University and the family of Drum Major Robert Champion recently began negotiations to a settle the lawsuit filed in the drum majors death.
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Jeff Fisher: "OMG. SMH."
Now that Ndamukong Suh has had a few hours to reflect on the game, and by reflect I mean talk to his agent who was frantically trying to do damage control on the PR nightmare Suh has become, Suh had a change of heart regarding his behavior in Thursday's game against the Packers. He apologized. On Facebook.
And Jeff Fisher texted me when he heard about it, reminding me that real men don't put thumbs to smartphone with Facebook app when they need to stand up and be held humbly accountable.
Technorati Tags: Please go away so I can stop writing "Ndamukong", "Ndamukong" means "The King Kong of Damaged Reputations" in some other language, Detroit Lions, NFL, Green Bay Packers, I feel like Paul Newman at the end of The Color of Money: Old and a little ball-slappy


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After 48 days and 3,942 articles, Vonta Leach is back with the Baltimore Ravens.
Ravens coach John Harbaugh announced Monday that the fullback was re-signing with the team. Leach, who joined the Ravens in 2011, was released on June 11 after choosing not to take a pay cut. He hoped to find a better deal elsewhere as a free agent, but it never happened.
Leach's agent worked hard trying to drum up business for his client, which included an endless stream of leaks and reports that he possibly was signing with various teams like the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants. But the market never was overly strong for the three-time All-Pro because of his position. Teams just don't pay big money to fullbacks, especially those on the wrong side of 30.
All those reports, all those tweets, all that attention for the #SummerofVonta⦠and the result is he re-signed with the same team as before.â Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 29, 2013
"It was at times a frustrating process, but I know it's a business, and that's how it goes," Leach told the Ravens' official website. "Unfortunately I know all too well that it's a business. I had to be patient and continue to stay in good shape not knowing where I was going to be this year. But I'm glad I'm here."
This news will be welcome in the locker room, perhaps even cheering up a "disconsolate" Joe Flacco. The Ravens' offense will rely more on the running game following the loss of tight end Dennis Pitta, and Leach only should help matters there.
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.


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This week I attended the inaugural Location Based Marketing Summit in New York City.
The event featured an array of speakers from LBS platform companies like MyTown, Where, SimpleGeo and DoubleDutch to agencies like DeepFocus, VanyerMedia and Fleishman-Hillard
The quality and content was very good, despite the lack of much in the way of real case studies (New Jersey Nets and Booyah/Pantene and Deep Focus/HomeTurfFinder excepted)
Surprisingly absent was any representation from Foursquare, Google, Facebook or Twitter.
Here are some of the key take aways:
Game mechanics are a great way to grow LBS services. Just look at Xbox Live and Farmville
People are now "media channels" LBS makes word of mouth marketing measureable
GPS is not proximity – there's a difference between nearby and a specific location in a building
Where gets 11% response rates to ads driving traffic to the store
Placecast sees 25-65% redemption rates (fashion and retail)
Groupon is getting slammed on ability to drive sustainable traffic to stores beyond the initial offer
Media buyers are overwhelmed with choices. Consolidation and rate card are needed
Consumers will choose an LBS service that is complimentary to their lifestyle


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SS-500 Slingshot Half Cover
- 100% waterproof UltraMax polyester with heat taped seams
- Maximum UV protection against sun's harmful rays
- Quickly secures using an integrated buckle system and rubber coated hooks
- Fits with OEM windshields
- Packed in compact carry bag
- Not trailerable
Installing your cover
Installing your new Nelson Rigg cover is easy! To help, there is a "Back" tag that is sewn on the inside of the cover located at the rear tire. Once you've identified the back of the cover, you may start to secure the cover around the front tire first, then pull the cover over the top of the handlebars and secure around the rear tire last. *Note: the elastic around the bottom of the cover will hold in place under normal weather conditions. Be cautious when installing the cover on the vehicle which has been just driven to ensure the material does not come into contact with hot parts or pipes.
Removing the cover
- Lift both ends of the cover from under front and rear tires and fenders.
- Pull up the front part of cover over handle bars and mirrors then pull up the rear of the cover over the seat.
- Make sure the cover is dry and clean before packing inside of the storage bag.
The following information is only a recommendation. All cleaning products and methods should be tested on an inconspicuous spot before using it on the original stain/soiling.
For a light hand wash, remove any loose dirt and then dilute a mild liquid detergent in cold to lukewarm water. Lightly clean your cover with a sponge or soft brush. It is ok to submerge the cover in a bucket or container of water. Finally, rinse thoroughly until all soap residue is removed. Allow your cover to air dry. We recommend to NEVER place a cover in a washing machine or an automatic dryer.
For a deeper clean, like removing stubborn stains or mildew:
- Mix a cup of chlorine bleach with half a cup of mild detergent with a gallon of water.
- Clean the stain with a soft bristle brush and allow the mixture to soak into the fabric for several minutes, then rinse thoroughly until all cleaning agent is removed and the water runs clean.
- You can repeat the cleaning process if the stain is not completely removed.
- Allow your cover to air dry.
The warranty on a Nelson Rigg Motorcycle Covers is valid from the original date of purchase.
(Warranty period is indicated in the Description box under each cover model)
Nelson Rigg USA guarantees your product to be free from any manufacturing defects. We warrant to the purchaser that correction to any manufacturing defects in material or workmanship by either repairing or replacing the product free of charge within the valid warranty period. The warranty does not cover normal wear and tear or stains from dirt or pollutants. The cover must be properly utilized and maintained from the time of purchase.
- Vehicle to be dry before covering.
- Do not put cover on with hot pipes or parts.
- We recommend waiting 10 minutes for pipes/parts to cool down.
- Do not use cover while towing vehicle.
We are not liable for repainted surfaces or lacquer paint. Repainted surfaces should not be immediately covered. It is best to check with your paint body shop for the recommended "cure" time. Covering before the cure time has been reached may cause damage which is not due to the cover but due to the new paint.
To initiate a claim for a product still covered under the manufacturer's warranty, please carefully review our warranty policy on our Warranty Information page and then complete the claim form. After your claim is submitted, a representative from our warranty department will review your request and respond with instructions for returning the defective cover to us for repair or replacement, pending our evaluation. Nelson Rigg USA will cover the cost of shipping the repaired or replacement cover back to you.
Ground shipping is free for all orders over $50 shipped within the 48 continental United States. Due to the higher cost of shipping to Hawaii and Alaska, an additional shipping and handling charge is applied to these areas. The shipping charge varies depending on where the package is being shipped. Overnight, 2-Day, and 3-Day shipping options are not eligible for free shipping but is available at an extra charge. For more information on shipping to Hawaii or Alaska OR express shipping options, please email email@example.com with the product(s) and the shipping address. Our shipping department will send an emailed response with the best shipping rate available.
Orders are processed Monday through Friday and are generally processed within 24 hours if received before 2pm PCT. Orders placed on weekends or after 2pm PCT will be processed the next business day. Customers will receive an email from USPS or UPS with a tracking number once your order has been processed to ship. If you do not receive any emails confirming your order or shipping of your order, please email email@example.com with your order number and one of our friendly representatives will be happy to assist.
International shipping
Nelson Rigg USA currently does not offer International shipping. We also cannot process orders if your billing address is outside of the US and want to ship to a US address. Orders processed through our website must have a US billing address.


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Career Model
Are you undecided about what you want to do with your life?
Are you undecided about a major?
Do you need more career options?
Do you need to change your job and choose a new career?
Directions: The 4-Step Career Planning Model (found below) begins with the Self Assessment and continues through each module. You will be reminded at the end of each page to continue with the next stage.
What This Career Model Does For You:
Can help guide you in making realistic and satisfactory choices.
Follow this model at any point in life as you leave jobs, train for a career, make career transitions and plan for retirement.
The self assessment section will guide you through an analysis of your work situations, personality, values, interests and skills. It will take you from 1 - 2 hours to complete depending on how thoroughly you answer questions.
PRINT all of the work you developed as you work through this assessment. Your work will not be saved on these forms.
This website is for career planning. We recommend that when using this information that you make an appointment and work with one of the career prefessionals in the Career & Employment Services Department by calling (517) 483-1172.
4-Step Career Planning Model
Self Assessment
Career Information
Integration and Decision-making
Planning and Action
Career and Employment Services
Gannon Building - StarZone
Phone: (517) 483-1172
Additional contact information »


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Two senior members of the 2012 Hope College football team are being honored by the National Football Foundation for academic excellence.
Mark Karam of Grosse Pointe Woods (Warren DeLasalle HS) and Brian Lynn of Holland (Holland HS) have been named to the 2013 NFF Hampshire Honor Society which is comprised of college football players from all divisions of play who maintained a cumulative 3.2 GPA or better throughout their college career.
Karam was a three-year starter at a safety while Lynn started as a junior and senior at fullback. They were co-captains of the 2012 team. Karam majored in exercise science and Lynn was a communications major.
"Brian and Mark have been exceptional leaders for our football program," said coach Dean Kreps. "They lived by example, accomplishing on and off the field in true NCAA Division III form. Both have been great students, great athletes and great people. Our program and the college have benefited greatly from their presence."
The National Football Foundation established the Hampshire Honor Society in 2007 as a means of promoting the scholar-athlete. This year the organization is recognizing 703 players from 259 colleges and universitiies. The program was created through the establishment of an endowment from Jon F. Hanson, chairman and founder of The Hampshire Companies. Mr. Hanson is also a former member of the Hope College Board of Trustees.


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Rock legend Bruce Springsteen gave teen pop newcomer Lorde his official seal of approval on Saturday by covering her hit song "Royals" during a concert in her New Zealand hometown.
The music veteran was performing at Mt. Smart Stadium in Auckland, where he decided to treat fans to an acoustic guitar version of Royals, complete with additional notes on harmonica.
Springsteen also tweaked the lyrics to the Grammy-winning track, referring to himself as "King Bee" instead of the 17 year old's original "Queen Bee" in the chorus.
"Royals" is the latest cover song Springsteen has performed on tour – he also played AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" and the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" during recent shows Down Under.


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About Custom Baby Tags — Elements Chalkboard
Elements Chalkboard baby hang tags are printed on extra-thick cover weight white paper and come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including the basic square, a scallop-edged circle, ovals, and other shapes. Favor tags come pre-punched with a small round hole to thread string or your choice of tie material. They are punched out individually and packaged as a set in small bags. All you have to do is string them and hang on your items and you are set to go! Choose from our wide selection of shapes shown above to start personalizing your Elements Chalkboard baby hang tags.


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Talk:American Business
From MeritBadgeDotOrg
Incorrect numbering format
The requirements on the site match the book, BUT are numbered differently. No problem 1 through 4, but beginnning with requirement 5 on the site there is a mismatch. What is listed on the site as requirments 6 and 7 are actually part of 5 in the book. Number 8 on the site is number 6 in the book. (Per User Edjohnson1)
- Fixed. —RWSmith (Bureaucrat), 18:00, September 13, 2009 (EDT)


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Exit Games today announces that it has entered into a distribution agreement with The9, the leading online game operator and developer in China. According to the agreement, The9 will exclusively market and distribute Exit Games' Photon to developers and publishers throughout China.
Exit Games' Photon is a fast, reliable and powerful network engine and socket server for the development of realtime multiplayer applications, with SDKs for Unity, iOS, Android, Flash, HTML5 and others.
Photon's C/C++-based core, it's server extensibility in .NET / C++ reliable UDP, form a market unique feature set that is essential for scalable online games such as first person shooters (FPS) or massive multiplayer online games (MMOG's).
The9 Limited is one of the earliest providers of social networking services and online games in China. They're familiar with product distribution, marketing, operation, and community management specific to the Chinese game market, and are therefore well equipped to help game developers launch games in the important Chinese market.
Chris Shen, Vice President of The9 Limited, commented: "Developing and operating successful online games in China is a huge technical challenge as they must scale for an enormous amount of concurrent users. That is why we are happy to distribute Exit Games Photon, an online game engine that exactly tackles these challenges, allowing game developers to build robust and scalable online games on multiple platforms, and to operate them on a minimum amount of servers."
Christof Wegmann, CTO and founder of Exit Games, continues: "We are absolutely thrilled to partner with an online games powerhouse like The9. China is a fantastic opportunity for us, with many highly skilled online game developers, and the partnership with The9 opens up this market for us." He went on "We are convinced that their specific market knowledge will help to successfully establish Exit Games' Photon within the Chinese online game development community."


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lives! This project is the continuation of Phil Lewis's excellent work on get_iplayer
Unlike the web sites above, get_iplayer has PVR-like capabilities (like Sky+ / TiVo / Series-Link); You can save lists of programme searches which are automatically recorded when they become available so that you can watch them when you choose and on devices that cannot run Adobe Flash Player - even if you don't have adequate broadband speeds or if your broadband streams too slowly at peak hours when you want to watch a programme.
The iPhone H.264 feeds from the BBC are higher quality than in the Flash iPlayer (normal quality). See the beebhack wiki for a comparison. They are intended for the Apple iPhone and are consequently difficult to download for any other OS. The same goes for the iPhone MP3 radio streams. get_iplayer also allows recording of the high-quality (even HD 720p) flash based content using rtmpdump. None of the above content is 'protected' by DRM. get_iplayer cannot remove DRM.
Phil Lewis and a few others worked out how to work around these problems and now have tools which essentially simulate an iPhone as far as the BBC web servers are concerned.
get_iplayer does the recording, indexing and searching of the iPlayer TV/Radio programmes and podcasts available. It can even stream the iPlayer TV programmes while recording them to mplayer, vlc or xine, etc.
The latest changes can be found in the git version control repository, at https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer (browse).
Linux users should find that their distribution has a get_iplayer package which will automatically pull in all required dependencies (rtmpdump, ffmpeg, etc.). Fedora users, for example, will find get_iplayer in the RPM Fusion repository of packages for the "Free World". Just issue the command 'yum install get_iplayer'Life is, as usual, more complex for Windows users. There is no sane packaging system under Windows which lets software packages express their dependencies and arrange for other software to be installed to meet their requirements. Therefore, a Windows installer for get_iplayer is available:
For help using get_iplayer, and to submit or suggest improvements, use the support forums.
There is also a mailing list, archived here so you can see if your question has already been answered before you post it. When using this (or any) mailing list, please observe standard rules of 'Netiquette' — no HTML, no top-posting, no excessive quotations, etc.
If you submit patches for get_iplayer, please do try to make sure they apply cleanly to the current git tree, and that they're not mangled by your email software. Sending the patch to yourself first, then checking that you can save it to a file and apply it, is a useful technique.
Some documentation is available at:
The script is primarily intended for use for recording and playing back TV and Radio content on devices that cannot support Adobe Flash/Air/Silverlight, systems which run entirely on open-source software (i.e. no Adobe Flash/Air or Silverlight), recording content for mobile devices that have no access to broadband/wi-fi or running on devices that have such limited memory that running a browser with a flash player or AIR is not possible (or not permitted). For me this would be an Xbox running Xebian Linux with Freevo or XBMC. The Xbox only has 64MiB of memory and struggles enormously with Adobe flash (Adobe doesn't permit you run flash player or AIR on a games console either). One major use of get_iplayer is for those unfortunate enough to have slow broadband speeds; get_iplayer can pre-record the programme you wish to watch so that you do not get the endless re-buffering that you experience with the flash player. Some ISPs actually throttle iPlayer streaming during peak hours. get_iplayer can actually lessen the ISP's (and BBC's) traffic load if the PVR functionality is used off-peak. Please use this tool responsibly and don't try to download all BBC programmes for example. There is a built-in 'limit matches' option to stop get_iplayer doing this just in case you accidentally set it up wrongly.
Of course, to respect the content providers' wishes and fair-use legislation in your jurisdiction, you should keep the recorded content for no longer than is locally acceptable (30 days seems to be accepted in the UK for TV video recordings for example), not attempt to obtain it from outside of the UK and not redistribute it. get_iplayer is not intended for use in making illegal copies of copyrighted content. Please respect the rights of the content owners when recording. get_iplayer will attempt to remove its recorded content which is more than 30 days old. Podcasts and certain radio programmes can be kept for longer but you must investigate this on a case-by-case basis.


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Possible Duplicate:
How do I prevent a script from terminating when the shell exits?
I use gnome-terminal, and I run
emacs under the terminal in the background by executing
emacs &, but after I close the terminal,
emacs is also closed. How can I avoid this behavior? I know that
emacs is a child process of the shell.


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Porsche 991.2 GT3 RS
By Brett Foote - July 7, 2019
Brett FooteBrett Foote has been covering the automotive industry for over five years and is a longtime contributor to Internet Brands' Auto Group sites, including Chevrolet Forum, Rennlist, and Ford Truck Enthusiasts, among other popular sites.
Foote has been an automotive enthusiast since the day he came into this world and rode home from the hospital in a first-gen Mustang, and he's been wrenching on them nearly as long.
In addition to his expertise writing about cars, trucks, motorcycles and every other type of automobile, Foote had spent several years running parts for local dealerships.
You can follow along with his builds and various automotive shenanigans on Instagram: @bfoote.


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12 Ways to Keep Going
Even when you feel mired in fear and sadness, there are ways to persevere.
By Therese J. Borchard
A woman who lives with chronic pain said to my mom the other day, "You can't sit around and wait for the storm to be over. You've got to learn how to dance in the rain."
That's a perfect description of living with depression, or any chronic illness. But what do you do on the days you don't think you can take the pain anymore? When you want so badly to be done with the suffering? What do you do when anxiety and depression have spun a web around you so thick that you're convinced you'll be trapped forever in those feelings?
We've talked about this on various threads of Group Beyond Blue. From the discussions there and on the Beyond Blue blog, I've compiled a few tools for moving past that harrowing darkness, suggestions on how to emerge from a place of panic, and techniques for how to dance in the rain.
Learn how to keep going.
Therese J. Borchard writes the Beyond Blue blog for Beliefnet.


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"[PWC], the long-standing auditor of stricken software company Satyam, faces the prospect of disciplinary action by market regulator SEBI if it is found that it failed to verify the autheticity of financial documents furnished by the company. ... Independent auditors feel the regulator's approach may be too harsh. Officials at audit firms say that if they start verufying the veracity of all documents given to them, would become a full-fledged investigation into the company. ... 'How can we verify the authenticity of millions of pages while auditing a company with a turnover of thousands of crores in a few days?' said an auditor working with one of the big four accounting firms, who asked not to be named. Auditors certify that the financial statement reflect a "true and fair" picture of the state of affairs of the company, and not an accurate picture", he added. The SEBI official, however, rubbished this argument", my emphasis, Junior, 8 January 2009 at http://jraccountant.blogspot.com/2009/01/pwc-epic-indian-failure.html.
"Debate in Mumbai is now focusing on whether Satyam, India's fourth-largest computer software company, or its multinational auditors [PWC], was more to blame for what is possibly corporate India's worst scandal. ... Contrary to perceptions that this is a brand new financial scandal, the Satyam fraud appears to be the latest variant of financial scams involving manipulating information with the aim of duping investors, while involving regulatory and accounting practices not traditionally used in India. ... The general verdict of accountants in Mumbai is that Satyam's auditors blew it big time, whatever fraud and forgery the management could have produced to hoodwink them in a scandal that is estimated to have cost Satyam investors $2 billion on January 7 alone as the stock plunged by 77% on news of the fraud. ... PWC, formed in 1998 through the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand of London, faces a choice of either being found so utterly incompetent that it could not spot a $1.5 billion-sized accounting crater, or that it was party to the investor fraud that presented an annual 24% growth rate in Satyam balance sheets instead of an actual 3% growth rate. ... In other words, Satyam auditors have not apparently undertaken what traditionallly would have been the minimum independent verification of the client's accounts as a chartered accountant firm is supposed to do", Raja Murthy, 9 January 209 at http://www.atimes.com/.
"[PWC] , which signed off on [SCSL] finances for several years without detecting the fraud by Satyam's founder and chairman, defended its procedures on Thursday. [PWC] said, in a statement send by email, 'The audits were conducted by [PWC] in accordance with applicable auditing atandards and were supported by appropriate audit evidence.' It said it is cooperating with regulators. ... A [PWC] spokesman declined further comment. Srinivas Talluri, the [PWC] partner who signed off on Satyam's most recent annual accounts in Hyderabad in April last year, couldn't be reached. ... Also in his letter, Mr. Raju said the company's cash and bank balances had been inflated by more than $1 billion dollars. 'This is the easiest thing to verify,' said Vinesh Chandok, national managing partner of accountant Grant Thornton", JR and Scott Patterson at the WSJ, 9 January 2009.
"Indian authorities moved to contain the fallout from the fraud at [SCSL] by arresting the company's founder, firing its remaining board members and launching an accounting review of India's biggest publicly traded companies. ... In an unprecedented action, the government also said it will install directors on a new 10-member Satyam board that will meet within one week. A board meeting that had been scheduled for Saturday was canceled. ... The Securities and Exchange Board of India [SEBI], the chief markets regulator, said Friday it will review auditors' working papers relating to companies in the Sensex and the National Stock Exchange 50-share index in a bid to boost investor confidence in financial disclosures. ... C.B. Bhave, SEBI's chairman ... said recent results for big companies would be subject to peer review by another auditor; other company results will be subject to peer review by accounting firms on a random basis", Eric Bellman and John Kumar at the WSJ, 10 January 2009.
"If this scandal proves anything to transnational investors and corporations it would be that doing business in India may be less risky than doing so in the more criminal friendly USA. India is demonstrating that it has very little tolerance for white collar fraud and they are showing that corporate criminals will be swifly punished. It is yet to be seen if most of those arrested will bribe themselves out of trouble but so far the punishment is more severe than aything we see in the U.S. In contrast to India, the U.S. coddles its corporate criminals by allowing them to stay on the job with big pay raises, or giving them golden parachutes so that they can retire in the Bahamas", Rob Sanchez, 12 January 2009 at http://blog.vdare.com/achieves/2009/01/12/satyam-scandal-wont-change-anything/
"Suresh Senapathy, the chief financial officer of Satyam rival Wipro (WIT) said it was 'impossible to imagine that this could happen. I can't believe that five or six years' worth of misappropriated books and accounts missed the scrutiny of auditors'," Elliot Wilson at Barron's, 12 January 2009.
"The board at troubled [SCSL], freshly appointed by the Indian government, said it is looking for a new auditor. ... 'New independent accountants that we appoint shortly will restate the numbers and confirm the veracity of those numbers,' [Deepak] Parekh told a news conference in Hyderabad following the first meeting of the government-appointed board", Eric Bellman and JR at the WSJ, 13 January 2009.
"Indian regulators and police are trying to unravel how the chairman of [SCSL], who has admitted to falsifying corporate figures, may have managed for years to fool his top financial officer and the company's audit committee. ... Satyam's chief financial officer, Srinivas Vadlamani, was arrested over the weekend on suspicion that he was involved with fraud, forgery and other charges. In a written statement, presented in the local courts Sunday, Mr. Vadlamani said that while he wasn't directly involved in fudging the company's accounts, he knew that there was something suspicious for more than five years. The statement didn't say why he didn't report the suspicions. He said he wasn't in charge of keeping track of the company's deposits. 'I was specifically asked not to look into that area of operations,' Mr. Vadlamani said in the statement. ... Mr. Vadlamani didn't admit to any crime in the statement. ... Sandeep Parekh, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad ... said another clue came when an analyst from Mumbai-based securities firm Kotak Securities Ltd. [KSL] raised questions about why the company was keeping such large amounts of money interest-free current accounts rather than a 9% fixed deposit with a bank. Kawaljeet Saluja, a senior research analyst with the institutional equities arm of [KSL], raised the question during an investor call with Satyam in April, a [KSL] spokeswoman said", my emphasis, Eric Bellman and JR at the WSJ, 14 January 2009.
"[SCSL] began a search Wednesday for a new chief executive and new chief financial officer, while the software exporter's board named Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and KPMG as interim auditors to assess the company's financial health. ... The new board had said Monday it would name new auditors to assess the true financial condition of Satyam, based in Hyderabad, India. Satyam is India's fourth-largest software exporter by revenue. ... In a separate statement Wednesday, [PWC] said its audit opinion on the financial statements of the software exporter may be rendered inaccurate and unreliable. ... 'We placed reliance on management controls over financial reporting and the information and explanations provided by management and also the verbal and written representations made to us during the course of our audits,' the firm said", Romit Guha at the WSJ, 15 January 2009.
"Minutes from a crucial December board meeting at [SCSL] shed light on how the giant outsourcer's directors would up approving two deals that were a key part of the massive fraud that has since engulfed the company. ... The deals at issue were the acquisition by Satyam of two infrastructure companies--Maytas Properties Ltd. and Maytas Infra Ltd.--that are run by the sones of the founder and then-chairman of Satyam, B. Ramalinga Raju. Mr. Raju also had a financial interest in the companies. ... In a prepared statement, Ernst & Young said it had prepared the valuation for another purpose and was 'not given to understand by any party, explicitly or implicitly, during the valuation exercise, about Satyam's plans to acquire Maytas Properties.' ... 'The proposed acquisitions have two complicated aspects--unrelated diversification, and realted party transcation,' said Krishna Palepu, a Satyam director and a Harvard Business School professor of corporate governance,who participated in the meeting by telephone conference, according to the minutes", Niraj Sheth and JR at the WSJ, 16 January 2009.
Shut the World Bank.
This is too rich, a Big 87654 Indian Chartered Accountant doesn't think his clients financials need be stated accurately. He exposes a dirty secret of the CPA business, i.e., given the Big 87654's time constraints, many times they can't finish the work. It would take something lacking in Big 87654 partners to tell the SEC we can't finish audits when you want, a backbone. The damn SEC keep moving up SEC registrant filing deadlines. That's crazy. Indians use crores, 10 million and lakhs, 100,000 as counting units. 10 million rupees is $208,000 at R48.1 = $1.
I can't believe it either.
We'll see if the new auditors conclude PWC's audit was deficient.


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Arizona College of Allied Health
Arizona College of Allied Health exists to serve students that are seeking education in allied health occupations. The administration staff and faculty of the College understand the connection that exists between assisting student in reaching their goals and meeting our own. The staff and faculty are committed to creating and maintaining an orderly disciplined trusting and caring environment that fosters excitement and responsibility toward our students' future careers. Arizona College is continually seeking new and continued opportunities for its staff and faculty. These opportunities are createed by exemplary adherence to both qualatative and quantitative aspects of recruiting educating and placing our prospects students and graduates respectively.
School Information4425 W Olive Avenue Suite 300
Glendale, Arizona 85302
Locale: Suburb: Large
Open Admissions: Yes
Sector: Private for-profit, 2-year
Carnegie Basic: Associate's--Private For-profit
Religious Affiliation: Not applicable
Accrediting Agency: Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools
Common name(s):
Students & Faculty
Total Tuition $15,524.00
Degrees & Programs
|Dental Assisting/Assistant
|Massage Therapy/Therapeutic Massage
|Medical Insurance Specialist/Medical Biller
|Medical/Clinical Assistant
|Pharmacy Technician/Assistant


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Angelina Ballerina
Angelina Ballerina is a little star with big dreams of becoming a prima ballerina. This feisty little mouse works hard to reach her goals and along the way, always learns from her mistakes. When little girls share in Angelina's experiences, they're inspired to go after their dreams, too! In addition to the critically acclaimed story books created by Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig, Angelina Ballerina dances her way into the hearts of young girls in Angelina Ballerina The Next Steps. Check out Angelina Ballerina dolls, toys, clothes, DVDs, and more in our special shop!
Barney Heart Light Blue Playwear
reg. $29.99
Barney Heart Pink Playwear
reg. $29.99
Barney Starlight Starbright White Infant Bodysuit$19.99


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Nature FeatureI think I'm going to start doing features in my journals so that I can easily change them and link back to them for people. I don't know how often I'll be doing them, but I'm thinking once or twice a month. Or it might be completely random. Who knows, haha?
I can't decide whether I'd like to feature a few artists along with a few of my favourite pieces of theirs or if I'd like to just feature some pieces I love... with a general theme or not...? I just don't know. So maybe I'll give all of those ideas a try.
Alrighty, so I think I'll do it by theme today. Today's theme is...
In all of her glory, featured by photographers on DA. Enjoy!


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Golf Accessories
Learn More About Golf Accessories
Golf Accessories To Boost Your Game
It's the details that make the difference in your golf game. Shop golf accessories at DICK'S Sporting Goods for the game necessities you need for the round.
Golf apparel accessories keep you cool, comfortable and focused on the links. Block out the sun's glare with golf hats and enhance the fit of your golf shoe with golf-specific socks. Attack the pin in style with golf gloves that deliver a lightweight, second-skin fit and optimal grip. Find golf club grips for putters and other clubs.
Golf headcovers keep your clubset protected and golf towels and umbrellas are must-haves for your game. And with golf electronics-like rangefinder watches and hand-held golf GPS devices-you'll show your foursome that you've come to play.
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Cooliris is an interesting plugin that transforms your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari) into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos from the Web or stored on your computer in a cool new way. The program allows you to view 2D images and videos only (so far) with an intuitive and very cool looking 3D interface, and now you can turn the browsing experience into an even more fun experience with the perception of real depth with the help of nVidia's GeForce 3D Vision kit. There is already a profile in the latest driver version 186.18 that provides pretty good results in Cooliris, but not perfect. The program also has support for viewing JPS and PNS format 3D stereo images, but 3D videos support will be even more impressive and that may be possible in a later version, but who knows. Anyway nVidia rates Cooliris' 3D Stereo results as good with a notice that some objects render at wrong depth, but overall the results you'll get are very satisfying and it is a good improvement especially if you are a frequent Cooliris user. Have in mind that Cooliris 1.10 might not work if using older 3D Vision drivers, I haven't tried that, because I've read that the latest drivers are required and I'm using them. ;)
Cooliris with Official 3D Vision Support
June 20th, 2009 · 1 Comment · GeForce 3D Vision
→ 1 CommentTags:186.18·186.18 drivers·3d interface·3d vision support·cooliris·cooliris 3d·cooliris 3d vision·firefox plugin·image viewer·internet explorer plugin·safari plugin·video viewer


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Rep. Ted Poe said he is confident the criminals behind the assassinations of a Kaufman County District Attorney and two others will be caught and be held accountable.
"Law enforcement will eventually find the culprits that were involved," he said said during Newsmax TV's "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Tuesday. "[They] know that we're going to find out who did it — and we're going to hold them accountable."
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were shot dead at their home over the weekend. McLelland was investigating the death of his former assistant, Mark Hasse, who had been shot outside his courthouse office in January.
The Republican from Humble speculated the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, could be behind the homicides. He said the Kaufman County district attorney's office had previously launched an investigation into the Aryan Brotherhood. Poe also said a drug cartel could also be behind the killings.
Poe, who has spent years as a Texas prosecutor and judge, said the incident echos "exactly what the drug cartels do in Mexico." They trail a police chief or judge investigating the organization and kill them to intimidate or hinder the investigation.
"I do believe the drug cartels know, and in this case, we will find out who did it and we'll hold them accountable," Poe said.
Poe said he personally knew McLelland, who he called a real "law and order guy" determined to solve the murder of his former colleague.
"This is more than just a good guy being assassinated — this is an attack on literally the law, the rule of the law in this country," Poe said.


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NCLB Update
Service Learning
Condition of Education 2005
Funding Opportunities: Research
New Nominations
Multiple Institutions
Quote to Note
Upcoming Events
NCLB Update (http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/)
On May 22 and 23, Secretary Spellings became the first Secretary of Education to visit Jordan, leading a U.S. delegation to the inaugural meeting of education ministers from the G8 industrialized nations and the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, or BMENA. The ministerial was a follow-up to the G8 meeting last year (at Sea Island, Georgia), where the U.S. joined its G8 partners in committing to help the countries of the BMENA implement education reforms and expand literacy to 20 million more people over the next decade. "Although we come from many nations," the Secretary stated, "we share some things in common. We all share a passion for education and understand its critical importance. Not everyone is so blessed."
According to some U.N. estimates, 65 million Arab adults are illiterate, two-thirds of them women. Moreover, 10 million children do not attend school, a figure that is expected to increase by 40 percent by 2015. Yet, the Secretary readily admitted, "In my own country, over one-third of American fourth-graders and one-quarter of eighth-graders are not reading at what we have defined as the "basic" level.... We also face a large educational achievement gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' It's a challenge we all face in the global community." That is why, the Secretary continued, "This must be a region-led effort, with each individual nation determining its own priorities and needs. We're here at this ministerial to share ideas and set goals.... I believe America's experiences can prove useful to this effort. Three-and-a-half years ago, President Bush signed our education reform effort, the No Child Left Behind Act. It is restoring high standards and accountability...to our classrooms."
During the meeting, roundtables addressed four issues: critical success factors for education; literacy and access; equity and social inclusion; and quality and relevance. Ministers of education and other high-ranking officials from Jordan, Britain, Egypt, France, and Pakistan also made remarks. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/05/bmena.html. (The Secretary's remarks are available at http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2005/05/05232005.html.)
Service Learning
The last "Education News Parents Can Use" broadcast of the 2004-05 season (June 21, 8:00-9:00 ET) will focus on an explicit strategy to help young people grow up to be good, responsible citizens: service learning. Service learning connects the classroom to the "real world" by integrating meaningful community service with the academic curriculum. Such programs develop habits that are essential to civic life, by encouraging students to put their knowledge and ideas into practice to help solve actual community problems. However, establishing effective projects can be a challenge. To have a long-lasting impact on student citizenship and performance, service learning must engage students for a significant duration; expect students to interact with people and not work in isolation; require students to reflect on the work; and benefit the organization and the student. The broadcast will highlight examples of comprehensive service learning programs and resources available to help parents engage their children. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/av/video/edtv/. (You can watch live and archived webcasts at http://www.connectlive.com/events/ednews/.)
Also: In a recent Federal Register announcement, the Education Department outlined how it plans to implement Citizenship Day/Constitution Day, a teaching mandate passed by Congress last year. Essentially, every school and college that receives federal aid must teach about the Constitution on September 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787. (If September 17 falls on a weekend or holiday, schools must schedule a program immediately before or after that date.) Neither Congress nor the agency dictate a specific curriculum or particular interpretation, but the announcement does suggest some web sites, including one run by the National Archives, for assistance. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/2005-2/052405b.html.
Condition of Education 2005
On June 1, the Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released its annual report (required by law) on the condition and progress of education in the U.S. "The Condition of Education 2005" includes 40 indicators in six main areasparticipation in education, learner outcomes, student effort and educational progress, elementary and secondary education contexts, postsecondary education contexts, and societal support for learningand a special analysis that describes the teacher workforce and the movement of teachers into and out of teaching. Trends "continue to show promise and challenge, as well as underscore the importance of schooling." For instance, progress in reading achievement is uneven (between 1992 and 2003, the performance of eighth-graders increased but the performance of fourth-graders did not change), while achievement has risen in math (between 1990 to 2003, the performance of fourth- and eighth-graders increased steadily). Also, although the high school dropout rate declined from 1972 to 2002, it has remained fairly stable over the last decade. Meanwhile, while 17 percent of the teacher workforce in 1999-2000 were newly hired teachers at their school, only about a quarter of these teachers (or five percent of the workforce) were brand-new teachers. Each year, the majority of newly hired teachers are experienced teachers who have transferred from another school or who have taken a "break" from teaching for a year or more. And, the average age of brand-new teachers was 29, suggesting many of them did not enter the workforce "right out of college." For more information, please go to http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/.
Funding Opportunities: Research
NCES is one center in the Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which is soliciting applications under a variety of grant competitions for Fiscal Year 2006:
National Center for Education Research: cognition and student learning research; education finance, leadership, and management research; high school reform research; math and science research; reading and writing research; and teacher quality research.
National Center for Special Education Research: assessment for accountability research; early intervention and assessment for young children research; Individualized Education Program (IEP) research; language and vocabulary development research; math and science research; reading and writing research; secondary and post-secondary outcomes research; significant behavior disorders research; and teacher quality research.
For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ies/programs.html.
New Nominations
President Bush intends to nominate Henry Johnson to be Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education and Tom Luce to be Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. Johnson currently serves as State Superintendent of Education for Mississippi. Previously, during his more than 30-year career as an educator, he served as a teacher, a principal, a middle school director, and Associate State Superintendent of Education for North Carolina. Luce served as chairman of Just for the Kids and the National Center for Educational Accountability until late last month, when he resigned to accept his nomination. Previously, he was a founding and managing partner of Hughes & Luce, LLP, in Dallas, Texas. Under Secretary Spellings' reorganization plan, the existing Office of Elementary and Secondary Education is integrating all K-12 initiatives (i.e., the High School Initiative), and the new Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development will administer the functions of the Budget Service, Office of Educational Technology, Policy and Program Studies Service, and Strategic Accountability Service and coordinate and integrate policy development across the Department's principal offices. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/05/05202005.html and http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/06/06012005b.html.
Also: Raymond Simon has been confirmed as Deputy Secretary of Education.
Multiple Institutions
According to NCES' "The Road Less Traveled?," attending more than one institution during the course of undergraduate enrollment is a common practice. Among students enrolling in 1995-96, 40 percent had attended more than one institution as of 2001, while among 1999-2000 college graduates, nearly 60 percent had done so. Of course, transferring and co-enrolling were associated with longer average times to completion. For more information, please go to http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005157.
Quote to Note
"That we agree on education's importance is, in itself, a sign of progress. Decades ago, education might have been viewed as a luxury or a privilege. Today, it is an imperative. Learning and literacy are critical to fostering cultural understanding among nations, and they are critical to economic growth and trade between nations."
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (5/23/05)
Upcoming Events
The Department's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) is hosting a series of public meetings to solicit feedback on the proposed regulations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. (A Notice of Proposed Rule Making, or NPRM, is expected to be published very soon.) The meetings will be held 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Nashville, TN (6/17), Sacramento, CA (6/22), Las Vegas, NV (6/24), New York, NY (6/27), Chicago, IL (6/29), San Antonio, TX (7/7), and Washington, DC (7/12). OSERS will supply location information through the NPRM. For more information, please go to http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osers/osep/idea/public-meetings.html. (Note: The meeting in San Antonio, previously announced in the Federal Register for June 6, has been rescheduled for July 7.)
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Competitive Advantage of "Low-Wage" Countries Often Exaggerated
- Authors:
Publication Date:
October 2006
The cost competitiveness of emerging economies is not as strong as suggested by wage differences when labor compensation is adjusted for productivity. Lower wage costs go hand in hand with lower productivity. Generally, emerging economies have an advantage in unit labor cost if the gap in labor productivity between emerging and advanced economies is smaller than the wage gap. The key for emerging economies is to promote productivity through technological change and innovation to match wage increases which inevitably occur in a rapidly growing economy. Advanced countries need to keep labor compensation in check with productivity.