24August2004
Posted by Zane under: News; Technology.
Not sure what to say here? I knew it was only a matter of time before something like this came a long. Please remember my Hybrid Cable TV idea that I wrote about back on May 29th, 2004. I guess all I can really say is Aw shucks! I wish I had the the resources to develop something like this.
Microsoft has turned to a Swiss telecommunication operator for the first commercial trial of its system that delivers television signals to consumers over a broadband telecommunications network, it announced this week.
Beginning in September, Swisscom’s Internet service provider subsidiary Bluewin will deliver 25 TV channels to set top boxes in 600 homes. During the four-month trial, testers will have access to five pay-TV channels and a video-on-demand service through the set top boxes, which also function as a digital video recorder with a live pause function, Microsoft says.
Testers will have to pay for the service: $12 per month for 12 channels, or $19 for all 25, with pay-per-view films costing from $2 to $8 each.
Microsoft expects the trial to result in the launch of a Bluewin TV service over ADSL in 2005, it says.
Potential Customers:
At the end of June, Bluewin had 390,000 ADSL customers, while parent Swisscom had a further 269,000 ADSL in operation used by customers of other ISPs, according to Swisscom figures. Swisscom, the former state monopoly operator, has 3.1 million telephone lines in operation, according to company figures, for a population of around 7.3 million, according to the 2000 government census.
Microsoft and Swisscom are trailing the pack in the race to sign up customers to digital TV over ADSL. In France, several of the major ISPs already offer television programming over ADSL, notably Free SAS, a subsidiary of Iliad SA, which offers ADSL service at up to 6 megabits per second with free telephone calls and 100 TV channels for $36 per month to 355,000 of its 768,000 ADSL customers.
Some 4.5 million of France’s 11 million Internet connections are via ADSL, according to ART, the French telecommunications regulatory authority. The country has a population of 60 million.
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23August2004
Posted by Zane under: News.
The effect of new U.S. overtime rules that go into effect today are the subject of intense dispute between labor groups and the Bush administration.Labor groups are rushing to defend the mid-tier workers they say will lose their overtime pay rights by the millions, while the Bush administration claims that low-paid workers who were not paid overtime wages before will gain time-and-a-half pay.The basic change in the law is that workers earning $23,660 or less per year are eligible for overtime pay for working more than 40 hours per week. White-collar workers, on the other hand, who earn $100,000 or more per year, are newly exempt from overtime pay. There are also new regulations defining what employees are professional, executive or administrative and therefore exempt from overtime.
It’s hard to know in advance how these definitions will be applied in practice. The Labor Department says no more than 107,000 workers will lose overtime eligibility from the changes, while 1.3 million will gain it, the Associated Press reported. But labor leaders say the definitional change could cost up to 6 million workers their overtime rights.
There does not seem to be any reliable data on how many workers in fact receive overtime under the current rules in a given year. But whatever the effect of the new regulations, changes in the economy are likely to have had a far more dramatic effect on the payment of overtime overall.
First, there are far fewer factory workers than there were when the federal regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act were written more than a generation ago. Today, white-collar workers account for nearly 60% of the work force, according to the AFL-CIO, and that number is expected to increase. Blue-collar workers comprised less than 25%. The service sector accounts for more than three-quarters of all U.S. employment, compared to 17% for the manufacturing sector.
It is easier to count, and therefore pay, factory workers on standard shifts at General Electric than it is office workers at IBM or Microsoft who come and go at different times. In any event where workers are covered by union contracts, those contracts, and not the regulations, will determine overtime rights.
But the biggest barrier to overtime is that most people don’t work over 40 hours per week. The official data seems counter-intuitive with so many people claiming to work 10, 12, even 18 hour days. But according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average workweek in 2003 was 33.7 hours. Americans have not worked even 35 hours per week since 1984.
The average hours in some sectors, such as natural resource and mining, construction, and manufacturing are higher. But even in manufacturing, the average workweek was 40.4 hours last year. Since 1980, it has never averaged more than 41.7 hours.
For service workers, the weeks are shorter. The average was 32.4 hours per week last year, perhaps pulled down by the prevalence of part-time workers. Wholesale trade workers put in more time on the job–37.8 hours on average. But retail trade workers at the Wal-Mart Stores of the world worked less: 30.9 hours. Even financial workers put in just 35.5 hours a week.
These numbers are, of course, all averages and do not capture the outliers who may work much more. They are also reported by employers, who may tend to understate hours worked, not employees, who are likely to overstate. But the overall trend, both in terms of the nature of employment and its duration, seems to be working against overtime pay, regardless of what the regulations say.
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20August2004
Posted by Zane under: News; Technology.
Travel Web Sites Agree To Be Accessible To Blind - In one of the first enforcement actions of the Americans with Disabilities Act on the Internet, two major travel services have agreed to make sites more accessible to the blind and visually impaired.
Priceline.com and Ramada.com have agreed to changes that will allow users with “screen reader software” and other technology to navigate and listen to the text throughout their Web sites, according to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.Although the software and other devices, including a vibrating mouse that lets the blind “feel” boxes and images on the computer screen, have been available for years, Web sites must have specific coding that allows the equipment to operate, Spitzer said.”This is a precedent-setting decision,” said Carl Augusto, president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. “We hope it’s going to be influencing other companies throughout the United States so that the 10 million blind and visually impaired people can fully participate in our society at all levels.”"It’s the right thing to do, and it’s good business,” said Augusto, who is visually impaired.
Spitzer’s settlement follows investigations over the last two years to determine if Web sites conform to the federal act and state law that require all “places of public accommodation” and all “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations” be accessible to the disabled.
Priceline.com has already made the Web site accessible for the visually disabled to get airline tickets, said the firm’s spokesman, Brian Ek. By the end of the year, the entire travel site will be accessible, he said.
Ek said the firm encourages other firms to do the same. He said the firm isn’t releasing the cost of making the entire site accessible for the visually disabled, but said it won’t be enough to reduce earnings.
A spokesman for Ramada.com didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Accessible Web sites are the wave of the future and the right thing to do.” Spitzer said. “We applaud these companies for taking responsible and proper steps to make their Web sites accessible to the blind and visually impaired. We urge all companies who have not done so to follow their lead.”
Ramada.com and Priceline.com, which face no charges and make no admissions of guilt, will pay the state $40,000 and $37,500 to cover the investigation’s cost. Spitzer said both firms were cooperative.
19August2004
Posted by Zane under: Personal.
With Web Standards becoming more and more popular (ie. SprintPCS, The 86th PGA Championship, San Francisco Examiner ), I’ve decided that it was time for me to pursue my “Quest For Usability.” To achieve this quest, I’ve ordered two new books to further enlighten me on CSS. Up until now, I’ve mostly used CSS for font declaration (family, color, size, alignment, etc.) and have just recently read/learned about its hidden powers of a fully coded CSS website.
Here are the books I’ve ordered from Amazon for my pursuit:
18August2004
Posted by Zane under: News.
Nestle, the world’s biggest food and drink company, on Wednesday posted a first-half net profit of 2.84 billion Swiss francs ($2.28 billion), up 0.02 percent on the year-earlier figure of 2.78 billion francs (then $2.03 billion).”These results were achieved in the face of higher prices for raw materials such as milk, coffee, sugar, energy and packaging materials, poor weather conditions, and a difficult business environment in western Europe,” a company statement said.
The cool, rainy weather contrasted sharply with a heat wave last year, it said. “This had a particular impact on ice cream and water,” the company said.
Nestle, which reports earnings only for the half year and full year, said six-month sales were 42.45 billion francs ($34.13 billion), up from 41.44 billion francs (then $30.22 billion) for the first half of last year.
The owner of global brands such as Nescafe coffee said earnings before interest, taxes and amortization, or EBITA, rose to 5.12 billion francs ($4.1 billion) from 5.05 billion francs ($3.68 billion), but the operating margin slipped to 12.1 percent from 12.2 percent.
Nestle failed to meet its target for organic growth, one of its main performance yardsticks. This measure of volume growth, which includes price increases but not the effects of acquisitions, fell to 4.6 percent from 5.5 percent.
However, the company repeated previous projections that it will achieve full-year organic growth of 5 percent to 6 percent. It also said it expects to increase its full-year EBITA margin in constant currency terms.
“Our efficiency programs are on track,” said Chief Executive Officer Peter Brabeck.
Nestle share prices were down 5.8 percent at 295.50 francs ($237.62) by late afternoon on the Zurich exchange.
Nestle plans to cut costs by more than 6 billion francs ($4.82 billion) by 2006, with most of the savings coming in 2005 and 2006.
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