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Issue # 021402

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This issue of Competence News contains:

• Editorial - Microsoft Bashing is Bad for the Economy
• Article - Enron - Financial Illiteracy or White Collar Crime? - The Impact on Training Priorities
• Column - Ask the Experts - How to Transfer Knowledge
• Controversy - Computer and Network Security - What's the solution?
• Contact Us

e-learn·ing n. Learning that is assisted by using computer and information technology as a tool to help transfer knowledge.

Visit our sponsor — Competence Software, Inc. Over 500,000 e-learning courses in Finance, Investing and Computers delivered to individuals and corporations large and small. Our online training tutorials (also known as "e-Learning") can train virtually anyone to be competent in these three areas:

• Understanding Computers — the basics of computer technology
• Financial Competence — the basics of business finance
• Investment Competence — the basics of investing

Editorial - Microsoft Bashing is Bad for the Economy

"We agree with Microsoft's assessment that AOL is investing in lawyers and lobbyists while Microsoft innovates."

Interview with Larry Byrnes
CEO Competence Software
http://www.competencesw.com

Competence Software News (CSN): When AOL/Time Warner announced their suit against Microsoft on Jan 22, what was your reaction?

Answer: That AOL/Time Warner should get back to work and help turn around the economy rather than enriching high profile lawyers by trying to compete in the courts. The result of the AOL suit will be further harm to the consumer. A huge number of consumers have personal computers these days. This was a goal that Bill Gates set when he founded Microsoft and his company has played a major role in making computer technology affordable and broadly available. Prior to the PC revolution, this technology was available mainly to governments and large organizations. To penalize or attack Microsoft for its success is counter-productive and sends entirely the wrong message to the entrepreneurial society that we enjoy today,

CSN: What does suing Microsoft have to do with the economy?

Answer: I believe that the Justice Department's targeting of Microsoft contributed to a chain of events that led to the current economic fiasco that is impoverishing millions of US citizens. Microsoft is the most successful business enterprise in recent history. If you want to kill free enterprise, then go after the most successful business around and harass that business. The public will get the message that production is penalized and non-production is rewarded and with that goes our economy. In fact, the penalization of producers and the rewarding of non-producers have marked the decline in every civilization in recorded history.

Question: What about the evidence that shows Microsoft's bundling of its Internet Explorer browser was harmful to Netscape?

Answer: Check out the history of Netscape - it came from Mosaic which was a university project funded by the taxpayer. The Research and Development funds came from the government. I am not saying that Jim Barksdale and his team, which started Netscape, were anything but hard working geniuses. They made a major contribution to the forward leap of the Internet. The fact that Bill Gates and his team at Microsoft used this same government funded technology vehicle called the Internet and smoked Netscape in the free enterprise market place is to Microsoft's credit. And now we have AOL and Time Warner crying about how they were damaged? Give me a break!

Question: Microsoft positions itself with "freedom to innovate" but didn't they copy Netscape with the browser idea?

Answer: I sold a large computer system in 1966 for 3.5 million dollars. The computer filled a huge room and required all sorts of special air conditioning and electrical gadgets just to keep it going. The company I worked for was General Electric. Today I can buy a small laptop computer and sit on the beach in 90-degree weather and be in communication with the entire world. That laptop blows away in power and capacity that 3.5 million dollar computer - it's not even close - and costs under $2000. That's a few thousand to one cost performance improvement. A tangible, measurable benefit to the economy and consumer. Microsoft was and is a major contributor to that cost performance breakthrough. If for no other reason than they provided a de facto standard which developers like you and I could use to create whole new businesses. IBM did not bring the original commercial computer to the market - Sperry Rand did with the Univac. Sperry Rand and GE are not even in the computer business anymore - IBM beat them in the marketplace. Who are some of the leaders now? Intel, Dell, Sun, Compaq - companies that did not even exist when computers were starting to proliferate in the 70s. Do you see Jack Welch and GE suing these current leaders or whining about IBM's predatory practices? GE went on to create their business in other areas and continue to be extremely successful in doing so.

Question: What does this have to do with Microsoft - they don't even make computers?

Answer: Well first of all, I wouldn't bet that Microsoft not making computers is a scene that will continue for long - have you heard of the X-Box? But let me explain why IBM blew GE and several others away back in the 60s. GE and some others actually had better technology that IBM. But IBM understood the marketing of business machines better than anyone at the time and leveraged their marketing to dominate. With Microsoft we see a similar evolution. I ran a company back in the 80s that supplied Microsoft with an accounting system to keep the books of their international division. I watched Microsoft grow from a small operation with promise to a major if not dominant player in the world economy today. Of course they copied successful actions. So what? What do we go to school for? Aren't we supposed to learn how to duplicate successful people and operations and then try to improve on these? What's wrong with duplication? Successful pros have this ability to duplicate and then come out with innovative improvements of existing technology. This is a desirable and essential ability that anyone has - or should have. It applies to any field or endeavor. Ask a pro football coach how happy he would be if all his players could duplicate.

Question: What innovations has Microsoft been responsible for?

Answer: Microsoft took a PC market, which was highly fragmented in the early 80s, established constantly improving operating system and office productivity software standards and brought those standards to market with highly effective marketing techniques. No doubt there were and are better products in specific areas of computer software technology. There are holes in the Microsoft lineup of products that can be filled by entrepreneurs. You have done that at Software Shelf with your print management products. Companies like Executive Software did it with their disk defragmenter. Panda Software did it in the anti-virus area. We have done it ourselves with our e-learning tutorials. The list goes on and on. But the best innovations are useless unless you can get them into the hands of consumers. And in the overall high tech picture, the consumers have voted and Microsoft is the winner. It's a game and a good one. If Microsoft ever gets complacent, some innovative entrepreneur will come along and eat their lunch. In the meantime - We agree with Microsoft's assessment that AOL is investing in lawyers and lobbyists while Microsoft innovates.

Question: Any prediction on the outcome of the AOL/Time Warner suit?

Answer: Yes - Microsoft will get stronger, AOL/Time Warner will weaken themselves considerably, some lawyers will get richer and, if the politicians rear up on their hind legs and start another major round of Microsoft bashing, the economy will suffer further and, along with that, the consumer will undergo more economic hardship.

Visit our sponsor — financialcompetence.com — provides a thorough understanding of the basics of business finance.

Article - Enron - Financial Illiteracy or White Collar Crime?
The impact on training priorities

Question: How many people in business today need the ability to read and understand financial statements.

Answer: Every single employee in business.

Question: How many people in business today can read and understand financial statements.

Answer: Almost none.

Question: Does this need to change?

Answer: You bet!

Case in point: A high level executive of Enron testified before congress that he had no idea how Enron could go from profitable to bankrupt so fast.

Is this a problem in financial literacy or ethics?

We believe it is a bit of both.

Executives cashing in and making millions while the employees lose their jobs and 401 K nest eggs is not a smoking gun, it is a fiery cannon. No doubt we will be hearing volumes more about this over coming months.

But what about Enron's financial reports? Certainly someone in the business community must have had the ability to read Enron's Income Statement and Balance Sheet and tell that this company was in trouble. Certainly some Ivy League Business School graduate would be able to look at the published reports and quickly see what was up with Enron. After all, a $50,000 per year business school education would equip one to competently read and analyze Financial Statements. Right? Yet the Enron executives say they have no idea how this debacle happened.

And, if a business school graduate can't use financial reports to accurately analyze financial statements, what chance does J. Q. Public have?

We believe that anyone can learn to read and analyze financial statements.

We also believe that financial literacy will become a vital part of employee training programs as one result of the Enron debacle. In fact one could argue that if for no other reason than to protect the enterprise from litigation, we need basic finance courses available to all employees. Courses that assume no prior knowledge of finance and yet deliver financial literacy sufficient to deliver the ability to read and understand financial statements would be ideal.

Question: What is the key to understanding business finance and financial statements? Answer B-A-S-I-C-S. Finance is no different than any other subject. Competence requires a complete command of the basics. If you understand the basics, you can not only start to make sense out of any financial statement but can also challenge any "expert" and insist on accurate, no smoke and mirrors, reporting.

Of course numbers can be falsified and various accounting tricks can be used to falsify the picture. But if one looks at an income statement or balance sheet and promptly falls asleep or runs in the opposite direction, then it makes no difference what numbers are on the report. We believe there is a vital need for both ethics and literacy. They go hand in hand.

Another challenge in training people in business finance basics is to make the course relevant to a specific company. So - can a course in Finance be general enough to give you a good command of the basics and yet be specific enough to be relevant to your own company or industry?

One suggestion on this is to thoroughly cover the basics with a generic course and then present the actual financial statements of your company. This allows the student to see the similarities and differences between the unique company statement and the generic case. Several large enterprises have successfully taken this approach.

But whatever the challenges, it is clear that business executives are going to have to take more responsibility to provide themselves and their employees with basic financial literacy.

And here comes the good news. The Internet gives any business the resource they need to deploy basic training rapidly and broadly. The e-learning revolution is now upon us and we can expect to see an increasing number of courses made broadly available across the Internet. And perhaps just in time to help avoid a holocaust of damaging litigation.

Column - Ask the Experts - How do you Transfer Knowledge?

Interview with Jessica Byrnes - Director of Learning Technology at Competence Software

CSN: Your company has received high marks for the application of instructional methodology in your courses can you share some of the techniques you have used?

Jessica: Absolutely. But let me first say that these techniques are available to anyone to use. Visit http://www.appliedscholastics.org/ which distributes the educational technology of L. Ron Hubbard. There anyone can find out all about the most effective learning technology available anywhere.

CSN: Perhaps you can summarize?

Jessica: The first thing you need to conquer when transferring knowledge is the idea that the student knows it all already. This may seem like an obvious point but, unless a person is willing to admit they have something to learn, they are preventing themselves from gaining any knowledge.

CSN: How do you do this with e-learning unless it is live?

Jessica: One of the advantages of interactive computer based training is that the student does not have to openly admit to anyone they don't know something. They can do a course in their own time and at their own pace and no one knows but them how much they don't know.

CSN: Good point - what's next?

Jessica: If you visit the Applied Scholastics site I recommended above and get their Basic Study Manual you will see that there are three main barriers to study that you must anticipate and provide a solution for in any course. These barriers are 1) the skipped gradient 2) the lack of balance between the actual mass of what you are studying and the significance of that mass and 3) the misunderstood word or symbol.

CSN: Can you explain these?

Jessica: The best way to get this technology is to go to the site I recommended and get a course - but let me try. If you teach a child how to ride a bike you first have the child sit on the bike with you holding it, then you walk along with the child still holding the bike and gradually you move faster and hold on less until at last the child gets the balance and can ride solo. If at any time the child has difficulty you cut back the gradient - slower, more support etc. You can use this same principle to design any course The key is to ensure you do not have too steep a gradient so the student gets in over his/her head. The amazing thing is that you always tend to err in the direction of too steep a gradient. It's like trying to bring someone in on the 20th floor when they have not yet gotten into the elevator in the lobby.

CSN: What's this mass point?

Jessica: Well if you sit in a course room studying how to drive a tractor and have no pictures of tractors or never get to sit in a tractor, you are probably not going to do too well when you have to drive your first tractor. Here you are with this significance - written words about tractors but you do not have the mass of the tractor there to see, touch, feel, etc. The balance between significance and mass is off. We use sound, color, animation and interactive drills to get across some fairly esoteric business finance and investing concepts. You don't have to be an Ivy league MBA with 7 years of university at 50,000 per year to get a good grasp of financial basics if you know and apply this learning technology - it applies to any field.

CSN: And the Misunderstood Word?

Jessica: The computer field is loaded with technobabble. Anyone familiar with computers knows that they can get completely overwhelmed if they don't understand some basic computer terminology. This is piece of learning technology that is taking hold in e-learning. Any good computer based training these days has a glossary of terms and hyper linked where someone can click on a work and get its definition. Even if it is not built in to the software, online services like Atomica http://www.atomica.com/ are available and free and will help you find definitions of any term you encounter on the web.

CSN: What else?

Jessica: That's pretty much it! The funny thing is that it is just much too simple for most instructional designers to believe so they spend tons of time money with various theories about how people learn when all they have to do is be very good at handling some basic barriers to learning and they will make good course every time. But don't take my word for it, check out the referenced site, get some basic course material and see for yourself!

Controversy - Computer and Network Security - What's the solution?

Dan Feeley Executive Vice President Software Shelf International.

There have been questions and some controversy as to what is the best tool to scan, detect and patch all security vulnerabilities on a computer or network.

We have been asked why the U.S. Dept. of Defense, and more recently the Federal Aviation Administration are using STAT Scanner.

There are half a dozen good tools that try to do what STAT does. There are opinions as to what is "best-of-breed".

E-fense, Inc. did an independent study of STAT Scanner. E-fense is the world-renowned security group whose members are responsible for protecting the United States of America's most sensitive systems, and have served as case agents in some of the biggest computer intrusion and forensic investigations to date. These experts are software engineers and former U.S. federal agents and sworn court officers, and former agents from the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations who are specialists in digital forensics and cyber intrusion.

E-fense stated that they recommend STAT Scanner "without reservation "in fact, e-fense has concluded that "there is not a better NT assessment tool on the market."

Network World Magazine last week gave STAT number one position where it counts. They said, "Overall, STAT Scanner provided the most comprehensive and accurate list of the vulnerabilities on our network, STAT Scanner offers the widest range of reporting options by providing a long list of potential reports. If there is a specific way you would like the information displayed, STAT Scanner will have the report format available. For patching: Retina and STAT Scanner are again at the head of the class. They provide direct links to the patch location or a link to the program's Web site, such as www.sendmail.org for Sendmail vulnerabilities. STAT Scanner takes this one step further for Red Hat Linux systems by providing direct links to Red Hat's packaged management platform."

Harris Corporation originally created STAT for the U.S. Dept. of Defense and carries out its best-of-breed update service around the clock to keep the DOD system secure. The STAT update service is provided all STAT licensees to ensure all security holes, including newly discovered security holes affecting their corporate networks are automatically fixed.

STAT is supported by a 100+ year corporate legacy. Harris, founded in 1895, is a worldwide leader in the communications industry. With nearly $2 billion in annual revenues, 10,000 employees, and sales facilities in over 90 countries, the company is focused on providing product, system and service solutions that take its customers to the next level. Harris provides a wide range of products and services for commercial and government communications markets such as wireless, broadcast, government, and network support.

The Harris STAT Team develops all STAT products. They are part of the Harris Government Communications Systems Division (GCSD). Harris GCSD conducts advanced research studies, develops prototypes, and produces advanced airborne, spaceborne, and terrestrial communications and information processing systems for military and government agencies, their prime contractors, commercial organizations, and the company's commercial businesses.

For more information on STAT and to find out what security holes you have on your machines or network, download the trial version of STAT Scanner from http://www.softwareshelf.com/products/display.asp?p=34

Call) for free tech support and discount pricing.

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