,hl=en,siteUrl='http://0ldfox.blogspot.com/',authuser=0,security_token="v_SeT2Tv8vVdKRCcG9CCW-ZdIfQ:1429878696275"/> Old Fox KM Journal : October 2005

Monday, October 31, 2005

A Good Lawyer®:


book

A Good Lawyer®: Secrets Good Lawyers [and their best clients] Already Know is an intentionally brief book I have written and copyrighted to be used by lawyers to help fill in the gaps that we don't currently learn in law school, or find in the rules of evidence or in the rules of procedure, but that we need to know to practice law and to do it honorably.

My goal was to create a small book to be for all who practice law what Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is for all who write. I hope it also will be used in law schools to give law students some guideposts for practicing law honorably and some compass points for ethics.

There are more than one million practicing lawyers in the United States today. Over 50,000 men and women enter law school each year and more than 40,000 become new lawyers each year. A Good Lawyer® says as succinctly as possible what I believe is rightfully expected of a good lawyer and hopefully it will be read, considered and talked about by all of those lawyers and law students. ...

Google concedes GMail trade mark


MIP 10/24

Ben Moshinsky, London


Google faces a struggle to hold on to its GMail brand across the EU, after settling a trade mark dispute in the UK over the name of its email service.

After an 18-month battle with Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), Google has renamed its email service in the UK. From October 19, new Google email addresses end with "googlemail" instead of "gmail".

IIIR applied for the G-Mail trade mark in the US on April 3 2004 – a few days before Google's April 7 application.

IIIR applied for a Community trade mark (CTM) in Europe on October 4 2004, citing the US application for a priority date

Neither company has so far received a CTM registration.

Google's decision to change the GMail name comes after negotiations aimed at a monetary settlement failed.

IIIR valued the G-Mail name at £25 million ($44 million), leading Google to say in a statement that it "went back and forth trying to settle on reasonable terms, but the sums of money [sought by IIIR]...are exorbitant".

Shane Smith, chief executive officer of IIIR, told MIP Week: "They made no attempt to come up with an alternative valuation. We actually offered a heavy discount, proposing a payment of $500,000 a year with a cap of 10 years."

Google now faces the same trade mark battle across Europe. Smith commented: "We're not terribly sure why Google made the change in the UK at all as we applied in the EU, not just in the UK."

IIIR may fail in their CTM application because Daniel Girsch, an entrepreneur from Hamburg, registered "Gmail – und die Post geht richtig ab" with the German Patent Office in 2000.

Smith said that, if the CTM application fails, he would seek national trade marks in the other 24 EU jurisdictions.

Mike Lynd, a trade mark specialist at Marks & Clerk, said: "On the face of it, Google might be better off biting the bullet and changing the GMail name across Europe"

Google's legal department has had a busy week. On October 19, five publishers filed suits against Google to block plans to scan copyrighted works without permission.

Publishing companies McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Viacom, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley & Sons lodged their complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The publishers claim that Google infringes copyrights when it scans books without permission.

But Google's legal advisor, David Drummond, denied the charges: "Creating an easy-to-use index of books is fair use under copyright law and supports the purpose of copyright: to increase the awareness and sales of books, directly benefiting copyright holders."

MIP Week welcomes your feedback on this or any other story. Please email the author with your comments. Letters may be published online.

Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too



By SAUL HANSELL
Published: October 30, 2005
Mountain View, Calif.

IN many ways, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem an unlikely pair to lead an advertising revolution. As Stanford graduate students sketching out the idea that became Google, the two software engineers sniffed in an academic paper that "advertising-funded search engines will inherently be biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers."

Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, top, with the co-founders of the company, Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page.

They softened that line a bit by the time they got around to pitching their business to venture capitalists, allowing that selling ads would be a handy safety net if their other, less distasteful ideas for generating revenue didn't pan out."...

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Minimum Wage Discussion


Samizdata.net

Here

A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspective. We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

McMillan


Option Strategist

Stock Market
Despite the positive seasonal period we are entering and the improving technical indicators, this market still has to prove itself with an upside breakout.

Looking at the chart of $SPX, which is representative of most of the broad market indices, we see that it has bounced back and forth between 1170 and 1205. A breakout from that range would be significant, in either direction. This most recent rally in the broad market -- the one fueled by the announcement of the new Fed Chairman nominee -- failed right near 1205 and very near the declining 20-day moving average as well. Thus, technically, the chart pattern of the major indices is neutral, as long as it's in this range. It is quite possible that the short-term seasonal bullish pattern will materialize into enough of a move to confirm an upside breakout, but it is not guaranteed, of course.

Equity-only put-call ratios moved strongly higher during the October decline, as traders loaded up on puts. This puts the ratios in "oversold" status, but they have not yet rolled over to confirmed buy signals. The weighted ratio (center chart, above) is slightly below its recent peak, but even though that might turn out to be a rollover point, our computer projections don't yet confirm it.

Market breadth has improved during the last couple of weeks. But the last two days' negative breadth has put a dent in that positive outlook.

Volatility ($VIX) has been, well, volatile. $VIX peaked at 17.50, fell to 13.50 and has bounced back and forth in between. The peak at 17.50 stands as a modestly bullish sign, but recent sideways action makes $VIX somewhat dubious as a short-term indicator at the current time.

In summary, we expect the short-term bullishness of the late October Seasonal Buy Pattern to hold once again this year. If it can force the market up above 1205, basis $SPX, that may be enough to trigger a more intermediate-term buy signal. We would act on that if it happens. However, it should be pointed out that nearly every bullish analyst has been counting on a 4th quarter rally to bail out the market. If that's too much conventional wisdom, it won't happen, of course.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Splits Copyright Law Experts on Fair Use


BNA

Thursday, October 27, 2005
ISSN 1535-1610
News

Copyrights
Google's Search of Library Shelves
Splits Copyright Law Experts on Fair Use



The Royal Library of Alexandria, reputedly the largest of the ancient world, got its edge when Ptolemy III of Egypt issued a decree that all those who visited the port city must submit their scrolls to be copied by official scribes.
That mandate undoubtedly inconvenienced countless travelers, but it created one of the great repositories of Western civilization. Now, 2,000-plus years later, Google Inc. finds itself confronting a dilemma not unlike that faced by Ptolemy's advisers: How much should the rights of property owners bend in service to creating the ultimate library of our time?

Representatives of authors, publishers, and Google sought to answer that question at an Oct. 24 panel discussion sponsored by the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.


Search Moves to Libraries

By any measure, Google's Print for Libraries project is ambitious. The search engine juggernaut aims to make finding relevant content in published books as easy as searching the Web. Google is partnering with five prominent libraries, Harvard University's and the New York Public Library among them, to digitize their entire collections and make them searchable by Web users. Google's pitch to publishers is that easy searching will lead users to lesser-known books they might not otherwise discover. Each search results page provides links to purchase the book from online booksellers, opening the door for new sales. Not all copyright owners, though, share Google's enthusiasm for the project.

The role of economic efficiency, and how that shapes the fair use analysis, is at the heart of the controversy. ...

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Television Archives


Yahoo Finance

Press Release Source: Google Inc.


Google and Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Provide Access to Historic Television Archives
Wednesday October 26, 9:02 am ET
Taped Interviews of America's Greatest Television Actors, Writers, Producers, Directors Made Available For Free Viewing on Google Video


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. & NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 2005--Google (NASDAQ:GOOG - News) and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation today announced a joint effort to make the Foundation's Archive of American Television interviews available for free viewing on Google Video. This historic collection includes interviews with Alan Alda, Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco and many of television's greatest actors, writers, producers, directors and others.
"The Foundation's Archive of American Television is probably the most diverse, complete and fascinating resource of its kind. The stories are told through the eyes of the creative geniuses -- in front of and behind the cameras -- who shaped and continue to shape television into the most powerful medium in the world," Steve Mosko, Chairman of the Television Academy Foundation, commented. "Google has been fantastic. They learned of our need to make our interviews more accessible and stepped up to make it happen. This relationship is a perfect marriage of irreplaceable content and one of the most powerful delivery systems in the world."

Today, the first 75 of the 284 historic films (which equals to about 240 viewing hours) can be watched on Google Video at http://video.google.com. The collection includes a virtual "who's who" from the past 75 years of television. The comprehensive list of actors, producers, show creators, writers, artists, journalists and directors includes:

Performers: Alan Alda, Sid Caesar, Diahann Carroll, Ossie Davis, Phyllis Diller, Michael J. Fox, Andy Griffith, Robert Guillaume, Florence Henderson, Angela Lansbury, William Shatner, Dick Van Dyke, Betty White, and James Garner
Producer/Creators: Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco, Dick Clark, Sherwood Schwartz, Norman Lear, Grant Tinker, David Wolper, and Carl Reiner
Directors, Executives, Artists: James Burrows, John Frankenheimer, Bob Mackie, Gene Reynolds and Ted Turner
Today, if a user enters the query (academy of television) into the Google Video search box at http://video.google.com they will see a results page featuring the first 75 interviews from the Academy.

"This important archive has found a home on Google Video where anyone in the world whether it's a student, aspiring actor or historian can have immediate and free access to this cultural asset," said Susan Wojcicki Vice President of Product Management for Google Video. "Today we're demonstrating how the Web can help to distribute all kinds of content that may not have otherwise been widely available. We're happy to join with the Foundation to preserve the rich history of television by showcasing the individuals who pioneered the medium."

"We are very excited to be working with Google Video to help us unlock these interviews and make them accessible to students, journalists, researchers and television fans around the world," said Terri Clark, Executive Director of the Television Academy Foundation. "This will be the first time users can watch and search these full uncut interviews online." Clark and Michael Rosen, Executive Producer of the Archive, are working closely with Google on the day-to-day management of the project.

Microsoft to Offer Online Book-Content Searches


click here


--------------
October 26, 2005

By KATIE HAFNER
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 - Microsoft announced Tuesday that it planned to join the online book-search movement with a new service called MSN Book Search.

And in a nod to the growing influence of a recently formed group called the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft announced its plans to join it. The group is working to digitize the contents of millions of books and put them on the Internet, with full text accessible to anyone, while respecting the rights of copyright holders.

Microsoft is making the largest contribution to the alliance to date - $5 million - which is enough to scan about 150,000 books.

In aligning with the Open Content Alliance, MSN is joining forces with its archrival Yahoo, which announced its support of the project this month.

Several universities, including the University of California, Columbia University and Rice University, as well as the Internet Archive and the National Archives of Britain, have joined the alliance.

MSN Book Search will go online in test form early next year. Although the content of out-of-copyright books will be accessible at no charge from MSN Book Search, Microsoft is talking with publishers about how it might charge for books under copyright - perhaps per page, perhaps per chapter.

"We're thinking through a whole host of business models for the in-copyright stuff," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search content acquisition at MSN.

Google's service, called Google Print, has come under a great deal of criticism since it was announced nearly a year ago.

Last month, a group of authors sued Google, asserting that Google Print is engaged in copyright infringement. While only text fragments are displayed in the course of a search, a book must be digitized in its entirety to make it searchable, the authors said.

Last week, five large publishing companies - McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons - filed a similar lawsuit.

Instead of the "opt-out" approach taken by the Google Print Library Project, which gives copyright holders until Nov. 1 to contact Google if they do not want their work scanned, MSN and other Open Content Alliance members plan to ask copyright holders for permission before digitizing a work.

"We're pretty strongly 'opt-in,' " Ms. Tiedt said. "We're very aligned with protecting copyright and intellectual property."

"We're rolling now, and very few institutions will say no," said Rick Prelinger, administrator of the Open Content Alliance.

The alliance is the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that is building a vast digital library.

Mr. Kahle has said repeatedly that one of his greatest hopes is to have Google join the project. Mr. Kahle said Tuesday that talks with Google seemed to be progressing toward an agreement. Nathan Tyler, a Google spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that Google was speaking with Mr. Kahle about joining the alliance, but there was nothing yet to announce.



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Google Found to Be Testing Classified Ads


here



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 26, 2005

By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 - An online classified service being tested by Google set off intense speculation on Tuesday after a Web site for the service was accidentally made public and discovered by a computer programmer on Monday.

The service, which was named Google Base and was for a time accessible at base.google.com, described itself as "Google's database into which you can add all types of content."

"We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free."

The new service could automatically funnel listings on all kinds of subjects and display them as part of the company's sponsored ad links on the right side of pages displaying search results from Google queries.

Word of the new service, which would potentially compete with newspapers as well as with online classified services like those on eBay and Craigslist, drove eBay's stock down about 5 percent at points during the day.

The Google Base page was discovered on Monday by Tony Ruscoe, a British programmer, who said he had created an automatic program to search for subdomains accessible at the Google.com Web site. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., took down the test site and replaced the page with a "403" forbidden-access response.

Google released a statement on Tuesday suggesting that the purpose of the test site was to make it simpler for Google customers to post content on Google.

"We are testing new ways for content owners to easily send their content to Google," the company said in a statement. "Like our Web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content. We're continually exploring new opportunities to expand our offerings, but we don't have anything to announce at this time."

Google executives, who are having a conference for partners and advertisers, called Google Zeitgeist, would not comment.

EBay, the online auction company, based in San Jose, Calif., is currently a major Google advertiser. The potential for direct competition between the Silicon Valley giants has been a subject of speculation for several years.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Monday, October 24, 2005

GT Blasted


Herald Blog

Brickell takes a hit
The home of Miami law firm Greenberg Traurig, a highrise at 15th and Brickell Avenue, took a huge hit from the storm, said Brickell neighbor Carmen Rodriguez.

"About 80 percent of the windows have blown out,'' said Rodriguez, who owns an insurance agency in Coral Gables. "It looks like an explosion.''

Looking down on the street from her condo, Rodriguez said she could see at least three feet of water on the street on Brickell Bay Drive. "The one car on the street has water almost up to the window,'' she said.

Photos by Carmen Rodriguez/For The Herald

Posted on October 24, 2005 at 09:43 AM

Charles Lowry's blog


Website


Location: United States

Biography
Charles J. Lowry is Director of Client Relations for ALM Research, a division of ALM Law and Business. He is responsible for presenting to law firm and vendors to the legal profession the marketing, business development and competitive intelligence tools available through ALM Research.

Prior to coming to ALM Research, Lowry held a variety of editorial and sales/marketing positions at Matthew Bender, Lexis and Kluwer Law International. He holds a B.A. degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in classics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and works from the New York City office of ALM.
Interests

My name is Chuck Lowry, and I am the Director of Client Relations at ALM Research in New York City. I hope from time to time to offer observations about research and competitive intelligence resources for business development and professional marketing in the legal field, with a special concentration on large law firms. Any of you, whether you become regular readers or remain casual readers, should feel free to e-mail me with any questions, comments, sugestions or amplifications. We can all learn from one another

Friday, October 21, 2005

The Authors Guild v. The Google Print Library Project


LLRX.com

The Authors Guild v. The Google Print Library Project
By Jonathan Band

Jonathan Band represents Internet companies and library associations with respect to intellectual property matters in Washington, D.C. He does not represent any party in connection to the Google Print Project. A version of this article first appeared in E-Commerce Law & Policy (August 2005).

Published October 15, 2005

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild and several individual authors filed a complaint in federal district court in New York alleging that Google is engaging in "massive copyright infringement" through the Google Print Library Project. This culminated months of publisher condemnation of the initiative, which involves scanning the collections of five major research libraries and making the full text of the books searchable on Google. Despite the allegations of infringement, libraries, users, and some authors have welcomed the Project, insisting that it will actually stimulate demand for books by helping readers identify books that contain the information they seek. These varying perceptions of the Print Library Project stem in part from confusion over exactly how much text will be viewable in response to a search query. Publishers and authors should carefully study precisely what Google intends to do and understand the relevant copyright issues before supporting the Authors Guild’s lawsuit....

McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. v. Google Inc.


[McGraw-Hill owns S&P and decides what stocks go into the S&P 500. They put Lennar in instead of Google last revision.]



Friday, October 21, 2005
ISSN 1535-1610

News

Copyrights
Opt Out Plan for Google Library Project
Conflicts With Copyright Act, Say Publishers



A copyright owner is under no duty to self-identify which among its works it does not want infringed, according to a complaint filed against Google Inc. Oct. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. v. Google Inc., S.D. N.Y., No. 05 CV 8881, filed 10/19/05).

At issue in the lawsuit is the "Google Print for Libraries Project," an ambitious program to scan the entire collections of several prominent university libraries as well as the New York Public Library. Once completed, users will have unprecedented access to the texts of hundreds of thousands of books through the Google search engine. Google will allow users full-text searching of the works, but will only display excerpts of a few sentences each for works still subject to copyright protection.

Some publishers balked at the proposal, and in response Google suspended work on the project to give publishers a few months to identify specific titles in the libraries' collections that should not be scanned. The deadline to submit those lists is Nov. 1.

The Copyright Act "squarely put[s] the burden on Google" to obtain permission to copy the books, and not on the publisher to tell Google which particular titles ought not to be copied, said McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., joined by other publishing houses.

"Both the Google Library Project and Google's pronouncement that publishers must provide to Google detailed lists of books that they wish to be excluded are contrary to the black letter requirements of the Copyright Act," the complaint charged. The publishers argued that they have already advised Google that none of their works should be copied, and that it is incumbent on Google to search the libraries' bibliographic records to identify the pertinent titles to be excluded.

As the publishers see it, Google is attempting to harness their copyrighted works as a draw for more users to visit the search engine. Presumably, the ultimate goal is to generate more ad revenue from sponsored links keyed to search terms. The publishers fear that Google's program is "likely to usurp [their] present and future business opportunities" for exploiting the works digitally.

The Authors Guild raised similar concerns in a separate complaint it filed against Google in September (183 PTD, 09/22/05 ).

Bruce Keller of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, New York, filed the complaint for the publishers.

Full text of complaint available at http://pub.bna.com/eclr/058881.pdf.


By Michael Warnecke


______________________________
Contact customer relations at: customercare@bna.com or 1-800-372-1033
ISSN 1535-1610
Copyright © 2005, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
Reproduction or redistribution, in whole or in part, and in any form,
without express written permission, is prohibited except as permitted by the BNA Copyright Policy,
http://www.bna.com/corp/index.html#V

Profit Rises Sevenfold at Google


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 21, 2005

By SAUL HANSELL
Finding more ways to make money from its spot as the world's most popular Internet search engine, Google topped Wall Street expectations yesterday and posted a sharply higher profit in the third quarter.

The results even exceeded the expectations of the company.

"We were surprised, pleasantly, I might say," Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Google earned $381 million, or $1.32 a share, in the third quarter, up more than sevenfold from its $52 million, or 19 cents a share, a year ago. Last year's results were depressed by a $201 million noncash charge related to settling a patent dispute with Yahoo.

Google shares rose about 10 percent after the announcement, which was at the end of regular trading. In after-hours trading, shares hit $335, a record, up from the $303.20 closing price in regular trading.

Mr. Schmidt said the strong growth did not come from more users, as traffic slowed in the summer, but from Google's growing ability to earn more money from Internet searches.

Part of the increase, he said, is coming from higher demand for search advertising, especially among larger companies, which in turn raises the bidding for advertisements. (Google runs a complex auction in which advertisers bid how much they are willing to pay if a user clicks on their ad.) In addition, Google has deployed more sophisticated technology to select which of the millions of advertisements to put on each page and in what order.

"It is really about getting the right ad to the right person at the right time and having them click on it," Mr. Schmidt said.

Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Company, said one driver of the strong results was that Google had been able to convince major marketers that search engine advertisements - which are mostly short snippets of text - are good ways to promote brands rather than simply to consummate immediate sales.

"You see General Motors interested in being in front of users any time they type in anything automotive," he said, "rather than just for products they sell."

Mr. Schmidt said that Google was working to develop graphical advertising and had expanded ways for marketers to promote their brands.

Google's revenue in the quarter was $1.6 billion, up 96 percent from $805.9 million a year ago.

Analysts were particularly impressed that this amount grew 14 percent from the second quarter, given that the summer is typically a slow period for advertising.

Google said that revenue from Google.com and other sites it owned was $885 million, up 20 percent in the quarter.

Revenue from selling advertising on sites owned by other companies, like those of America Online, was $675 million, up 7 percent in the quarter. Of that, Google paid $530 million of the advertising revenue it received back to the site owners.

Google ended the quarter with $7.6 billion in cash, bolstered largely by $4.3 billion it raised in a stock offering. The company's operations generated an additional $647 million in cash.

Google's also continued to spend money rapidly. It made $293 million in capital expenditures - a large amount for an Internet company.

Some of that expense relates to Google's need to expand its offices to house its growing work force, Mr. Schmidt said, but much of it is invested in Google's network of computers that index Web pages and operate its site.

"There is very large capital spending associated with data centers," Mr. Schmidt said. "We move very large amounts of information."

The company also spent $152 million on research and development, up 167 percent from a year ago. Most of that was the salaries of engineers, whom the company has been hiring in droves.

Google added 806 employees, giving it a total of 4,989 full-time workers at the end of September.

"They did the right thing and invested a lot of money back into R.& D. and their infrastructure," Mr. Rashtchy said. This, he said, will put Google in a position to continue its revenue and profit growth in coming quarters.

"Most of the numbers will just go way up," he said.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Indian president warns against Google Earth


CNET news


By Dinesh C. Sharma
Special to CNET News.com

Published: October 17, 2005, 8:17 AM PDT

Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has joined the list of government officials charging that the geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging program pose a security risk.

"Developing countries, which are already in danger of terrorist attacks, have been singularly chosen," Kalam said.

Kalam, who is also the supreme commander of India's armed forces, made the comment over the weekend while addressing the nation's top police officers at the Vallabhabhai Patel National Police Academy at Hyderabad. Google has an engineering center in Hyderabad and another in Bangalore.

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Government officials in other countries, including South Korea and the Netherlands, have made similar complaints . . .

Interesting Law Librarian blog


here

Washington Post's Supreme Court Blog
I think the Washington Post's Campaign for the Supreme Court blog (by Fred Barbash) is a great example of mainstream media taking advantage of the flexibility offered by blog technology. My one issue about the Post's blog is whether or not we should hold it to the standards of professional journalism and, if so, will that spill over to personal "citizen journalist" blogs. ...

Friday, October 14, 2005

Nena on Knowledge Management




Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify,
to clarify, and classify
--99 Red Balloons

McMillan



Stock Market

This is turning into a very nasty October. $SPX has broken down through all support levels so far: 1220, 1200, 1190, and has now closed at a new relative low -- breaking down below the lows of last week. We had previously mentioned targets of 1170 and 1140, the first of which has now been attained. The target of 1140 still appears attainable on the downside.

Breadth has been terrible. These very negative breadth statistics show how severe the decline has been in the small-cap indices -- the ones with the most stocks in them. They have fared far worse than $SPX or $DJX.

Similar readings are now being achieved in the equity-only put-call ratios. The standard ratio reached 95 on Wednesday (just the single-day reading, not the moving average), which is extremely high. In general, when the ratio hits 100, it is often considered so oversold that it signals a short-term rally is imminent (the WEIGHTED ratio, which is always more extreme, registered a single day reading of 137 -- its highest since
April).

Volatility ($VIX) made a new high as well, but it is not showing the extremes in emotion that breadth and put-call ratios have. It is above 16, though, for the first time since May.

Deeply oversold markets are tricky because they are so volatile that they can cause consternation for both bulls (during market declines) and for bears (during sharp reflex rallies). At this point, though, things have deteriorated so badly that any rally that materializes will surely not last; there will have to be something of a retest before any true bottom sets up. Having said that, a rally can still be substantial -- just short-lived.

One other point: usually at a trading bottom, the market opens down on the day, plunges dramatically in the morning, and then has a sharp upward reversal sometime near mid-day or early afternoon. This particular market has been opening higher each day, and then selling off badly in the late afternoon. That is bearish action. One of these days, though, S&P futures will be down substantially (say, 10 or more) and then rally strongly at mid-day, closing on the upside. That will start the short-term rally. It probably wouldn't carry even to the 20-day moving average however, before retracing and retesting the bottom once again. A successful retest would then signal a more lasting bottom.

SIS



Members of the public who wish to contact SIS from the UK may do so via PO Box 1300, London SE1 1BD.

SIS has opened a special PO Box for job applications to the Service - PO Box 1301, London SE1 5UD.

Brady Bunch Making Trouble


According to the Telegraph

Be nice or be shot, Florida tourists are warned
By Jeremy Skidmore
(Filed: 08/10/2005
)

Visitors to Florida are being warned that they could be at risk thanks to a new state law that allows gun owners to shoot anyone they believe threatens their safety.

A spokeswoman for The Brady Campaign to Control Gun Violence, named after an aide of Ronald Reagan who was shot during an assassination attempt, said tourists should be wary of getting into an "aggressive argument" during their stay".

The law, which came into force this week, says that people in their house or vehicle do not have to become victims before shooting an attacker. Previously, they could only use their weapons if they had first attempted to withdraw and avoid a confrontation.

But a spokeswoman for Visit Florida in the UK accused the Brady Campaign of employing scare tactics and claimed the new law would not have any impact on tourism to the state.

"There are 28 other states that do not require people to retreat if they are being attacked, so it is just bringing Florida into line," she said.

"I don't think many UK holidaymakers are going to attack someone in their car or their house, so they have nothing to worry about. It is not a real issue. According to the state's annual crime report, Florida's crime rate is at a 34-year low."

Florida is the most popular US destination for Britons, attracting 1.5 million people from the UK each year.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Henry Blodget says GOOG Beats Microsoft?


From John Battelle

Blodget on MSFT v GOOG ... And Role of AOL

Highlights:
So the big story these days is that Google and Microsoft are going to war and that either could win. This is a big story because it's a great story: two undefeated heavyweights preparing to bash each other's brains out. Alas, it's also fiction.

....In the absence of disastrous mistakes by Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft's best chance to win with MSN is to merge it with AOL and spin it off. This would be extraordinarily challenging, and it would not guarantee success: the merged company would still run third behind Google and Yahoo!. A combined MSN-AOL, however, would be far stronger than either company alone.

Blodget has a longer report (from which this post is summarized) available for free on the site, which marks his entry into the b'sphere...wlecome!
Business Review: Google Inc. hiring for Ann Arbor operation: "Google Inc. hiring for Ann Arbor operation
BY PAULA GARDNER and BRIAN HAMILTON
pgardner@mbizreview.com and bhamilton@mbizreview.com

Google Inc. hiring for Ann Arbor operation


BY PAULA GARDNER and BRIAN HAMILTON
pgardner@mbizreview.com and bhamilton@mbizreview.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google Inc. appears set to launch an expanded operation in Ann Arbor for its library digitization project for the University of Michigan.

The company seeks to hire technicians that will install and maintain new servers equipment capable of processing and storing network information in a server room at an undisclosed site in the city.

Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] had been looking for up to 40,000 square feet of space for the digitization project, as well as up to 250,000 square feet capable of housing a Googleplex, its name for a combined technology/call center (See Business Review, June 9-15). The company has refused to comment on the state of either space search, and sources say that anyone working with Google has been bound by strict confidentiality agreements.

However, it appears that the company has identified a site for the digitization project, though no details are available on its location. Ads placed by Google on Internet job-search sites and its own Web site make it clear that it will be hiring for a site that will have new equipment. The digitization is taking place in libraries nationwide, despite challenges over copyright issues.

The Internet search-engine giant wants to scan all 7 million volumes in the U-M collection, a project estimated to take at least six years.

The contract between U-M and Google calls for the university to approve any off-site operations.

John Wilkin, U-M associate librarian in charge of overseeing the scanning, said Tuesday that he had no information on a Google move off-campus.

At U-M, Google is working on non-copyrighted material at the Buhr Shelving Facility until the copyright issues are resolved.

Google started the scanning operations on University of Michigan property early this year, but officials said U-M had no room for the company to expand as it accelerated the scanning pace.

Google did not return calls on deadline. The company previously would not disclose information on space needs, staffing or associated costs.

Google does not permit the public on the scanning site because of proprietary software and hardware.

Based in Mountain View, Calif., Google has 22 offices in the U.S. and abroad and 3,482 employees as of March 31.

Fair Dinkum Fair Dealing


7 October 2005:

High Court Copyright decision a victory for libraries and research

The Australian Library and Information Association applauds the judgment of the High Court in yesterday's judgement on the case of Stevens v Sony. The landmark decision will safeguard the public domain and our intellectual freedom from limitations imposed by commercial organisations.

Sony brought legal action against Eddy Stevens, who had mod-chipped Sony Playstation consoles. The High Court of Australia's judgment yesterday held that the Sony protection device was not a 'technological protection measure', as Sony had claimed. The case has established that the modification of the Sony PlayStation, so that users could play games lawfully purchased outside the country, was not illegal according to Australia's anti-circumvention laws. But successfully mod-chipping a Playstation is not why this is a landmark case for libraries and researchers. This decision preserves the 'fair dealing' aspects of Australian copyright law that are so vital to an information society, making public access to information and unimpeded research and study something that cannot be allowed or disallowed by copyright owners.

Justice Kirby spoke of the concerns of libraries that "Sony's interpretation of s 116A would enable rights holders effectively to opt out of the fair dealing scheme of the Act". He maintained: "This is not an interpretation that should be readily accepted."

Jennefer Nicholson, the executive director of the Australian Library and Information Association, said: "This decision will enable libraries and archives to provide information services to readers without undue technical restraints. It also reinforces the importance of the fair dealing provisions in striking a balance between the rights of copyright owners and users."

Dr Matthew Rimmer of the Faculty of Law at the ANU praised the decision: "The High Court has handed down a principled decision on Australia's Digital Agenda Copyright Act, which upholds fundamental freedoms, access to information, and fair competition."

The Australian Digital Alliance, the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had earlier intervened in the case because of wider concerns raised about freedom to access information and the undermining of competition in the marketplace.

Under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, the federal government is obliged to provide broader protection of "technological protection measures", and narrow the available exceptions. The High Court decision makes it clear that the federal government will have to craft such laws carefully to take into account broader considerations about access to knowledge. As Justice Kirby observes: "Such considerations included the proper protection of fair dealing in works or other subject matters entitled to protection against infringement of copyright."

Google Print and Fair Use


WSJ
Authors' Second Chance

Google's Ambitious Plan to Put Books Online
Offers Authors, Publishers New Lease on Life

October 10, 2005

It's become one of the tech world's most-popular parlor games: digging up examples of how Google, whose founders' letter identified "Don't be evil" as a core value, is busy being evil. One of the more-recent pieces of evidence offered is the Google Print project, a plan that's breathtaking in its ambition -- and, some say, in its total disregard for copyright laws.

Google Print's goal is simple and startling: scan every book ever written and make the contents searchable. The project has two parts: the Print Publisher Program and the Print Library Program. In the former, publishers authorize Google to scan their books into its database; a search that turns up something from a publisher's book displays the relevant page with the search term highlighted, from which a computer user can go a few pages forward and back. Users also get other relevant information -- the copyright, table of contents, index and links to booksellers selling that book. Google shows relevant ads next to the pages if a publisher has given it permission to do so, with the publisher getting a share of ad revenue.. . . [more including a fair use analysis]

Monday, October 10, 2005

Born to Kvetch


Intl Herald Tribune

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods
Reviewed by William Grimes The New York Times

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2005


Most children watching "The Three Stooges" didn't realize it, but an understanding of Yiddish was required to get a lot of the jokes. In one episode, when Larry hears that Moe is heading to a hockshop, he says, "While you're there, hock me a tshaynik." What must have sounded like pure nonsense to most viewers was a Yiddish pun, one that Michael Wex, in his wise, witty and altogether wonderful "Born to Kvetch," lays on the table for analysis.


A "tshaynik" is a teakettle. "Hak," or "huk," comes from a verb meaning "to knock." What's the connection? Imagine a boiling teakettle. The more it boils, the emptier it gets, and the louder and more annoyingly the lid bangs. The very popular phrase "Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik" literally means "Don't knock me a teakettle." Figuratively, as Wex translates it, it means "you don't have to shut up completely, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop rattling on about the same damned thing all the time."

Wex, a Yiddish translator, university teacher, novelist and stand-up comic, has many such examples up his sleeve, but "Born to Kvetch" is much more than a greatest-hits collection of colorful Yiddish expressions. It is a thoughtful inquiry into the religious and cultural substrata of Yiddish, the underlying harmonic structure that allows the language to sing, usually in a mournful minor key.

Yiddish is the language par excellence of complaint. How could it be otherwise? It took root among Jews scattered across Western Europe during the Middle Ages and evolved over centuries of persecution and transience. It is, Wex writes, "the national language of nowhere," the medium of expression for a people without a home. "Judaism is defined by exile, and exile without complaint is tourism," as Wex neatly puts it.

To be Jewish, in other words, is to kvetch. If the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" had been translated into Yiddish, Wex writes, "it would have been called '(I Love to Keep Telling You That I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You That I'm Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satisfy Me)."'

Wex finds a second source of Yiddish's prevailing tone in the Torah and its attached Talmudic commentary. The Jews who transmuted German into Yiddish were steeped in Jewish law, whose style and phraseology made their way into the developing language and put down deep roots.

Yiddish thrives on argument, hairsplitting and arcane points of law and proper behavior. Half the time, Yiddish itself is the object of dispute, a language, Wex writes, "in which you can't open your mouth without finding out that, no matter what you're saying, you're saying it wrong."

When you get it right, it can be a beautiful thing. Or a lethal weapon. Yiddish excels at the fine art of the insult and the curse, or klole, which Wex, in a chapter titled "You Should Grow Like an Onion," calls "the kvetch-militant." Americans generally stick to short, efficient four-letter words when doling out abuse. Yiddish has lots of those, too, and it abounds in terse put-downs like "shtik fleysh mit oygn." Applied to a stupid person, it means "a piece of meat with eyes." More often, though, Yiddish speakers, like the Elizabethans, like to exploit the full resources of the language when the occasion requires.

Yiddish is rich in curses that, at their best, leave just enough to the imagination to keep the recipient tossing and turning at night, poring over possible implications. "It isn't a matter of yelling out bad words; the trick is to put good ones together in the most damaging possible way," Wex explains.

A simple "drop dead" might be rendered as "a dismal animal death on you" ("a viste pgire af dir"), which, Wex, notes, carries the suggestion that "you should spend the rest of your tiny life in a Colorado feedlot, then be herded off to some nonunion slaughterhouse to be turned, painfully, into fast-food burgers for one of the less prominent chains."

Yiddish is not a "have a nice day" language. "How are you?," a perfectly innocent question in English, is a provocation in Yiddish, which does not lend itself to happy talk. "How should I be?" is a fairly neutral answer to the question. Theoretically it is possible to say "gants gut" ("real good"), but this is a phrase that the author says he has never heard in his life. "As a response to a Yiddish question, it marks you as someone who knows some Yiddish words but doesn't really understand the language," he writes.

It probably helps to know a little Yiddish to extract maximum enjoyment from "Born to Kvetch," but even readers with minimal "bacon Yiddish" ("schlep," "schmear," "maven" and the like) can appreciate vocabulary words like "kishke-gelt" (literally "gut money," earned by self-deprivation so extreme that it's ripped from the intestines) and expressions like "lakhn mit yashtsherkes," which means "laugh with the lizards" and refers to a bitter kind of jollity, the kind of laughter that keeps you from crying.

Wex has perfect pitch. He always finds the precise word, the most vivid metaphor, for his juicy Yiddishisms, and he enjoys teasing out complexities. His tour through the vocabulary of traditional punishments meted out to schoolchildren, collectively known as the "matnas yad," or "gift of the hand," may be his finest riff, a subtly differentiated taxonomy of pain that starts with the "knip" ("pinch") and proceeds to the "shnel" ("flick"), the "patsh" ("slap") the "zets" ("hard slap") and the "flem" ("resounding smack").

At the far end lies the "khmal" or "khmalye," "the all-out murder-one wallop that makes its victims 'zen kroke mit lemberik."' It's so hard, in other words, that the student sees Krakow, Poland, as his head snaps forward and Lemberg (present-day Lviv in Ukraine) on the return trip.

That hurts. But it's funny, too. All you can do is laugh with the lizards.

Most children watching "The Three Stooges" didn't realize it, but an understanding of Yiddish was required to get a lot of the jokes. In one episode, when Larry hears that Moe is heading to a hockshop, he says, "While you're there, hock me a tshaynik." What must have sounded like pure nonsense to most viewers was a Yiddish pun, one that Michael Wex, in his wise, witty and altogether wonderful "Born to Kvetch," lays on the table for analysis.


A "tshaynik" is a teakettle. "Hak," or "huk," comes from a verb meaning "to knock." What's the connection? Imagine a boiling teakettle. The more it boils, the emptier it gets, and the louder and more annoyingly the lid bangs. The very popular phrase "Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik" literally means "Don't knock me a teakettle." Figuratively, as Wex translates it, it means "you don't have to shut up completely, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop rattling on about the same damned thing all the time."

Wex, a Yiddish translator, university teacher, novelist and stand-up comic, has many such examples up his sleeve, but "Born to Kvetch" is much more than a greatest-hits collection of colorful Yiddish expressions. It is a thoughtful inquiry into the religious and cultural substrata of Yiddish, the underlying harmonic structure that allows the language to sing, usually in a mournful minor key.

Yiddish is the language par excellence of complaint. How could it be otherwise? It took root among Jews scattered across Western Europe during the Middle Ages and evolved over centuries of persecution and transience. It is, Wex writes, "the national language of nowhere," the medium of expression for a people without a home. "Judaism is defined by exile, and exile without complaint is tourism," as Wex neatly puts it.

To be Jewish, in other words, is to kvetch. If the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" had been translated into Yiddish, Wex writes, "it would have been called '(I Love to Keep Telling You That I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You That I'm Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satisfy Me)."'

Wex finds a second source of Yiddish's prevailing tone in the Torah and its attached Talmudic commentary. The Jews who transmuted German into Yiddish were steeped in Jewish law, whose style and phraseology made their way into the developing language and put down deep roots.

Yiddish thrives on argument, hairsplitting and arcane points of law and proper behavior. Half the time, Yiddish itself is the object of dispute, a language, Wex writes, "in which you can't open your mouth without finding out that, no matter what you're saying, you're saying it wrong."

When you get it right, it can be a beautiful thing. Or a lethal weapon. Yiddish excels at the fine art of the insult and the curse, or klole, which Wex, in a chapter titled "You Should Grow Like an Onion," calls "the kvetch-militant." Americans generally stick to short, efficient four-letter words when doling out abuse. Yiddish has lots of those, too, and it abounds in terse put-downs like "shtik fleysh mit oygn." Applied to a stupid person, it means "a piece of meat with eyes." More often, though, Yiddish speakers, like the Elizabethans, like to exploit the full resources of the language when the occasion requires.

Yiddish is rich in curses that, at their best, leave just enough to the imagination to keep the recipient tossing and turning at night, poring over possible implications. "It isn't a matter of yelling out bad words; the trick is to put good ones together in the most damaging possible way," Wex explains.

A simple "drop dead" might be rendered as "a dismal animal death on you" ("a viste pgire af dir"), which, Wex, notes, carries the suggestion that "you should spend the rest of your tiny life in a Colorado feedlot, then be herded off to some nonunion slaughterhouse to be turned, painfully, into fast-food burgers for one of the less prominent chains."

Yiddish is not a "have a nice day" language. "How are you?," a perfectly innocent question in English, is a provocation in Yiddish, which does not lend itself to happy talk. "How should I be?" is a fairly neutral answer to the question. Theoretically it is possible to say "gants gut" ("real good"), but this is a phrase that the author says he has never heard in his life. "As a response to a Yiddish question, it marks you as someone who knows some Yiddish words but doesn't really understand the language," he writes.

It probably helps to know a little Yiddish to extract maximum enjoyment from "Born to Kvetch," but even readers with minimal "bacon Yiddish" ("schlep," "schmear," "maven" and the like) can appreciate vocabulary words like "kishke-gelt" (literally "gut money," earned by self-deprivation so extreme that it's ripped from the intestines) and expressions like "lakhn mit yashtsherkes," which means "laugh with the lizards" and refers to a bitter kind of jollity, the kind of laughter that keeps you from crying.

Wex has perfect pitch. He always finds the precise word, the most vivid metaphor, for his juicy Yiddishisms, and he enjoys teasing out complexities. His tour through the vocabulary of traditional punishments meted out to schoolchildren, collectively known as the "matnas yad," or "gift of the hand," may be his finest riff, a subtly differentiated taxonomy of pain that starts with the "knip" ("pinch") and proceeds to the "shnel" ("flick"), the "patsh" ("slap") the "zets" ("hard slap") and the "flem" ("resounding smack").

At the far end lies the "khmal" or "khmalye," "the all-out murder-one wallop that makes its victims 'zen kroke mit lemberik."' It's so hard, in other words, that the student sees Krakow, Poland, as his head snaps forward and Lemberg (present-day Lviv in Ukraine) on the return trip.

That hurts. But it's funny, too. All you can do is laugh with the lizards.


Stock Market


from here

Monday Morning Outlook
By Christopher Johnson


The major indices took a few direct hits last week as inflation fears reverberated through stocks, sending investors into sell mode. While the initial damage assessment is being called a buying opportunity by some, the truth may be that the market is just gearing up for what could be another turbulent October, as technicals, sentiment, and fundamentals meet to challenge the market.

Actually, the technical damage may not be all that bad. Though the S&P 500 (SPX – 1,195.90) closed the week below its 10-month moving average (it hasn't closed a month below this trendline since September 2004), the Nasdaq Composite (COMP – 2,090.4) and Russell 2000 (RUT – 644.33) closed just above their 10-months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU – 10,292.3) wasn't as fortunate, as it dipped below its 10-month and 20-month moving averages, signaling that the Dow is in much need of some support to avoid falling back into what we consider bear market territory. The Dow hasn't been a stranger to sub-20-month territory, having posted two monthly closes below this important trendline since April 2005. With these monthly moving averages showing signs of rolling over into downtrends, the pressure is mounting against the Dow to avoid an all-out long-term bearish trend.

RIAA lawsuits target students


Managing Intellectual Property

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against 757 individuals, including computer network users at 17 different colleges.

The RIAA on September 29 accused the individuals of illegally distributing copyrighted music over the internet via peer-to-peer services such as eDonkey, Grokster, Kazaa and LimeWire.

The Association targeted students using the file-sharing application i2hub to download and distribute music. They used the Internet2 network, a high-speed computer network used by universities.

Students were targeted at top US universities including Harvard, Princeton, Boston, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It is the third time the RIAA has gone after users of the Internet2 network, amounting to a total of 560 lawsuits at 39 campuses this year.

Earlier this month, music companies filed 163 lawsuits against individuals, whose names they got from their respective internet service providers.

MIP Week welcomes your feedback on this or any other story. Please email the author with your comments. Letters may be published online.

Google Text Search


washingtonpost.com
Text Searches Put the Operator on Hold

By Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 9, 2005; F07



One of the coolest things about technology is discovering new ways to save a buck or two -- in this case the $1.50 fee that some wireless phone carriers charge for each call to 411.

If you know how to send a text message on your mobile phone -- and millions do -- then listings for a neighborhood deli or the closest ATM or even a weather forecast or stock quote are as close your mobile phone.

And it's pretty much free -- unless your phone plan charges text-messaging fees. For some, that's as much as 10 cents per message.

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., as well as the smaller 4Info Inc., are now offering text-messaging search features that allow users to send a query to the search engines via text message and receive a reply within seconds.

The three work in a similar fashion: To use the service, a user sends a text message with the search request to the five-digit number for YAHOO (92466) or GOOGL (46645) or 4INFO (44636).

For example, text "pizza 20071" to GOOGL and within seconds you'll get text responses with the addresses and phone numbers for pizza joints in downtown Washington's 20071 Zip code.

Alternatively, the same search request can be processed by typing "Washington DC pizza," or narrowed by the specific restaurant by entering "Pizza Hut 20005" in the text message.

Yahoo, Google and 4Info all let you search for weather by typing in "Weather 20071" or, alternatively, just "W 20071" or "W Washington DC." All three also offer stock quote searches by typing in the company's ticker symbol.

But there are also searches unique to each provider. Google offers driving directions and answers to simple questions -- U.S. population, for example -- while 4Info offers more of the unexpected, such as Fantasy sports statistics, recipes for your favorite cocktail or sports scores (just type in the team's name).

So far, searching by text is still a relatively new idea. In August, M:Metrics Inc., a Seattle-based research firm, found that 3.6 million people had used text search, compared to the 12.1 million people who conducted a search on their wireless phones by logging on to the phone's Web connection.

Search-by-text is a service that is expected to gain in popularity as the big search-engine companies compete to keep users of their desktop search products, said Mark Donovan, an analyst with M:Metrics.

"Mobile search is another front in that war," said Donovan., who said he often uses the services, even while sitting in front of a computer.

Even though an estimated 95 percent of cell phones today are capable of sending and receiving text messages, there hasn't been much done to promote search-by-text. Donovan said word of mouth and increased more marketing will bring more users.

For now, providing the service for free does not generate any direct revenue, but it makes users more loyal to the Yahoo brand, said Nicole Leverich, a spokeswoman for Yahoo.

Still, it's likely to eat into the revenue wireless carriers get for directory assistance.

Even if search engines eventually start charging a small fee to use its text-search service, it will still cost far less than directory assistance today, M:Metrics' Donovan said.

"Carriers are excited about seeing increased use of cell phones but are ambivalent about losing that revenue," he said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Friday, October 07, 2005

Google's Capitol Idea


link


By Jonathan Berr
TheStreet.com Senior Writer
10/6/2005 5:15 PM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/tech/jonathanberr/10246140.html


Mr. Google (GOOG:Nasdaq) is going to Washington.

Some observers sniffed a political motive as the popular search engine opened a lobbying office Thursday in the nation's capital. But the Mountain View, Calif., company immediately moved to drape its policymaking efforts in the mighty flag of Internet freedom.

"Our mission in Washington boils down to this: defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation," Andrew McLaughlin, a senior policy counsel, wrote Thursday on the company's internal blog.

"It is quite clear that there are enough . . .

Stock Market





The post-Katrina market rally was not confirmed by our technical indicators, which caused us some consternation at the time. As we now see, that failure of bullish confirmation was warranted, as the market eventually rolled over into a severe selloff this week -- bringing the market down to levels lower than seen at the beginning of September. It seems as if the last vestiges of buying power were consumed by the artificial quarter-end window-dressing that took place over the last few days of September and the first couple days of October. From Wednesday, September 28th, through Tuesday morning, October 4th, there were a total of 36 buy programs and only 2 sell programs. However, during that time, $SPX rose strongly on only one day -- last Thursday, when there were 15 buy programs and no sell programs. When there are so many buy programs, yet the market has trouble moving higher, there is usually a negative reaction when those buy programs exhaust themselves. This week's decline was a classic example.

So where do we stand now? The market is somewhat oversold, but it has been wounded severely. We feel it is at an inflection point and will move sharply away from this level (1200 $SPX, for example). Bulls will say the market is oversold, that we are in a support area (1190-1200, basis $SXP; see Figure 1), and that the market is due for a substantial bounce off the lower end of its trading range. All of those reasons are valid, and the bulls could be right. On the other hand, bears will point out that technical indicators have worsened (see below), and that a violation of the 1190 area on a closing basis would augus for much lower prices -- perhaps 1140, basis $SPX, which is the yearly low. Again, those arguments have merit, too. One thing that is certain is that the market won't be hanging around this level for long.

Can the technical indicators shed some light on this? The equity- only put-call ratios have recently rolled over to sell signals (Figures 2 and 3). First the weighted ratio succumbed early this week, followed by the standard ratio today. It is also worth noting that the QQQQ weighted put-call ratio has rolled over to a sell signal as well. These are intermediate-term indicators and would suggest that the downside is the path of least resistance.

Market breadth was not strong during the rally and has been terrible this week during the decline. There have been 1000 more declines than advances for each of the past three days. As a result, breadth indicators are very oversold, by that is not yet the same as a buy signal.

Finally, volatility ($VIX) has spiked to levels not seen since May. At first, $VIX was just following the market -- traindg within a range, as $SPX was. But on Wednesday of this week, that changed. $VIX broke out over a row of previous tops at 14 and shot up above 15 today. When $VIX is rising, that is bearish for the market, and that's the current state. However, as soon as it peaks, a buy signal occurs. Again -- not something one wants to anticipate -- but certainly something one wants to watch for.

In summary, we expect the market to make a volatile move away from the 1200 area on $SPX.

Zimmerman's Research Guide


here


InfoPro Home > Zimmerman's Research Guide


An Online Encyclopedia for Legal Researchers by Andrew Zimmerman.
About the Guide

Browse by Topic:
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M
N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y | Z


The Guide began several years ago when I was visiting a senior law librarian at her office. In the middle of our conversation she opened a drawer and pointed to a black ring binder stuffed with paper. This was her "black book." She said the binder held twenty-odd years of her accumulated wisdom. Then she closed the drawer, and I never saw the book again.

That afternoon I started my own black book. Mostly I just took notes on anything I learned in the library. At first I kept my notes to myself, but soon I started printing out copies for other librarians. I called the manuscript "A Reference Guide." I considered it a work-in-progress, and that was as far as I ever expected things to go.

From Sabrina Pacifici:






GPO'sTimeline for Digitization of Legacy Document Collection
The GPO announced that its plan, the Future Digital System (FDsys), to digitize most government documents beginning with the Federal Papers, should be completed by summer 2007.
See also the December 1, 2004 GPO report, A Strategic Vision for the 21st Century (23 pages, PDF)
Topic(s): E-Government, Government Documents, Legal Research, Libraries


Compilation of State Legislative History Guides on the Web
State Legislative History Research Guides on the Web, Compiled by Jennifer Bryan, Documents Librarian, Indiana University School of Law Library - Bloomington [The E-LawLibrary Weblog]
Topic(s): Legal Research

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Cartoon Copyright


Hi Laurie!

It depends on the cartoon source. You'd have to check with them. There
are some sources for cartoons where you purchase the cartoon and you
can use it for anything -- royalty free rights. Other sources require
more complicated payments and permissions based on usage and the number
of people who will see the image.

Sometimes you go directly to the cartoon creator other times you go to
the syndication source. For instance, you can get cartoons from
Cartoonbank.com < http://www.cartoonbank.com >. Select a New Yorker
cartoon and you can get permission to use it in a presentation for
$19.95. If you want more info, click on the "presentations" tab at the
top of their web site.

Hope this helps.
. . . . . .
Chris
............................................
Chris Olson, M.L.S., M.A.S.
Chris Olson & Associates
Marketing Consultants to Information Professionals

http://www.ChrisOlson.com
Let us guide you through the marketing maze!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


On Oct 5, 2005, at 11:54 AM, Smith, Laurie wrote:

> I work at a for-profit consulting firm. One of our senior people will
> be doing a presentation at a conference and would like to include a few
> cartoons in her PowerPoint.
>
> Does she need to get copyright permission to use these cartoons or can
> she merely reference the source?
>
> Thank you for your help.
[sig redacted]

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."
- Robert Wilensky

[It was actaully an infinite number of monkeys, but I take his point.]