April 1-7, 2000

Scribblers Changing the Rules
Evr recieved an e-mail that looks like this??? If you evr got one like ths ur not alone!!

Experts say that people who communicate via computer are becoming increasingly informal -- and increasingly sloppy in their use of grammar, The Associated Press reported. E-mail is routinely strewn with typos, grammatical errors and various shortcuts, such as no capital letters or messages in all caps.

The trend -- as relaxed as a Silicon Valley company's dress code -- really bugs some grammar purists. "A student wouldn't walk into a professor's office asking a question using bad English. Why would they send me that kind of mistake in an e-mail?" gripes Kenneth Brown, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa business school.

An avid tracker of e-mail etiquette, Brown says he regularly chides students for sending sloppy e-mail to him and even prospective employers. Some faculty members have also received a word or two from Brown about their e-mail grammar, too.

Shonquis Moreno, a 28-year-old writer from New York with an affinity for the lower-case, says she likes the "more intimate, casual, off-the-cuff tenor" her e-mails have. In many cases, she has even stopped fixing jumbled letters, The Associated Press reported.

"Maybe it's because I know that typos are recognizable as typos and not spelling errors," says Moreno, who works for an Internet startup and finds herself scurrying to answer more than 30 e-mails a day.

By the end of last year, there were 335 million e-mailboxes -- more than one per person -- in the United States, according to Messaging Online. That represents a 73 percent leap in just one year.

Internet experts say the advent of instant messages -- real-time conversations -- has only heightened the casual, abbreviated nature of online "chatting." But even the experts warn against misspellings and grammatical goofs.

On the Web, "you won't be judged by the color of your skin, eyes, or hair, your weight, your age, or your clothing," author Virginia Shea said in her rules of Netiquette, which are posted on the Netiquette Web site. "You will, however, be judged by the quality of your writing." And people often can't write.

The solution? Re-read your e-mail, not just for mistakes but for impetuous words, Eric Arnum of Messaging Online said.

OIG Reviews Medicare Billing Software
Medicare’s billing system offers various opportunities for fraud, abuse and error from the string of individuals who handle billing software programs, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a report released earlier this week.

As reported in Compliance Monitor, the OIG said these risks stem from both the large number of people who handle claims, as well as inherent problems with billing software. Medicare officials have no way of knowing whether a claim has come directly from a provider or from a third-party billing firm with whom the provider has contracted, according to the OIG. Employees of both providers and their billing firms have access to submitter billing numbers that must appear on all claims, the agency said in its latest inspection report, "Medical Billing Software and Processes Used to Prepare Claims."

Among the four types of medical billing software reviewed in the report, proprietary software presented the greatest risk for fraud and abuse, the OIG said. Designers can intentionally create programs that produce improper or inaccurate claims, and only a handful of people know how any one proprietary program works, said the report. Interactive software gives users the best chance of correcting errors because it detects human errors and lets coders correct their mistakes, the OIG added.

Upcoming regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 should reduce many of these problems, Sue Prophet, RHIA, CCS, director of classification and coding at the American Health Information Management Association, said yesterday.

Motorola Invests In Tissue Bank
Motorola Inc, Schaumburg, Ill, invested in Pittsburgh-based, TissueInformatics Inc. for an undisclosed amount, an Associated Press news report stated.

The firm plans to introduce the first of what it calls "virtual tissue banks" in December. The company said its databases let researchers compile scientific conclusions from advanced microscopic images of human and plant tissues. These databases would be available to pharmaceutical, gene and tissue engineering companies through the Internet.

The databases are designed to help find new treatments for diseases, such as diabetes, breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, the news report stated.

Doctors Loathe the Net
While the drive to market physician practices on the Net may seem to be all the rage, doctors may not be as in tune with the Internet as commercial health care companies believe.

In fact, doctors still feel that word of mouth is the most effective referral source -- not the Web, according to a Forrester Research report, "Why Doctors Hate the Net."

Also, while many people are pushing doctors to use e-mail more extensively, the report said it was unlikely that doctors, who don’t get paid for cyberspace consultation, will use the Web. In fact, the report stated, doctors feel e-mail correspondence will most likely add to their workloads.

Physicians are more selective when it comes to the Internet, the report stated, choosing activities that will only make them more efficient. An example: Personal digital assistants hold promise for physicians because they can help with tasks such as scheduling and writing prescriptions.

The report included 60 in-depth interviews with doctors and non-physician health care service executives in the United States and Canada.

Dot-Com Employment May Tax Your Health
Long work hours and tough deadlines are contributing to dot-com employees’ depressions, according to Wired.com.

Norweigan doctors found that depression and exhaustion are a growing problem for online workers and that the health hazards are real. They said that the high stress environment contributes to heart disease and ulcers.

According to Wired.com: "Owners of companies push their employees to get short-term profits, but, in the long run, the stress is a killer for the employee and not a profitable policy," said one doctor, who noted that neighboring Sweden has the same problem.

Court Finds Microsoft Guilty
In a devastating rebuke to the dominant power in the software industry, a federal judge ruled that Microsoft violated antitrust law by unfairly squeezing competitors and repressing the product choices available to consumers.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson sided with the Justice Department on all but one relatively small point, and rejected Microsoft's contention that it was a tough but fair competitor, reported Philly.com.

"Microsoft placed an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune, thereby effectively guaranteeing its continued dominance," Jackson wrote.

"Microsoft's campaign must be termed predatory," he continued.

Microsoft has "a strong case on appeal," and will do so, its cofounder and chairman, Bill Gates, told reporters and employees.

Those appeals are expected to be time-consuming, and may bring into question Attorney General Janet Reno's assertion that Jackson's 43-page decision meant, "consumers who have been harmed can now look forward to benefits."

Surrounding the verdict was high anxiety over tech stocks. Gates lost more than $12 billion in personal worth during a Microsoft sell-off that anticipated Jackson's ruling.

Now that Jackson has ruled that Microsoft has violated the law, he will begin considering appropriate remedies during what is essentially a miniature trial, probably this summer.

The Justice Department is expected to ask Jackson for a structural remedy, such as breaking up the company.

FTC Investigates Yahoo’s Consumer Practices
Yahoo! Inc., the No. 1 Web-navigation company, said the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has started an investigation into its consumer information practices.

According to Technology News, the FTC is asking for company documents to determine if Yahoo complied with the FTC's consumer protection regulations. The inquiry was disclosed in Yahoo's annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yahoo warned that it may incur "substantial expenses" if it defends against third-party claims or any action by the FTC. The Santa Clara, CA-based company also said that it might have to change its business practices, which could affect its financial condition or business operations.

FTC officials declined to comment on the investigation, according to Technology News.

Yahoo said in a statement that it has been contacted by the FTC and has been asked to help the agency understand certain parts of its data-collection practices. It is voluntarily providing information to the agency, Yahoo said.

"We understand that this inquiry was prompted by the California Healthcare Foundations Report, dated January 2000, on the health Web sites of 21 companies," Yahoo said in its statement. More details about the health care report weren't immediately available.

The FTC has expanded its probe of Internet companies and their business practices to include companies such as Ivillage Inc. and HealthCentral.com. More consumers and privacy advocates have clamored for information about how Internet companies use the personal data that consumers enter on Web sites.

Netscape to Unveil 6.0
Netscape, the maker of leading Web-browser software, is set to unveil a much-delayed upgrade that marks the sharply curtailed ambitions of the once-pioneering program, reported Reuters.

Netscape 6.0, the latest version of the program millions rely on as their primary window to the Internet, will be introduced at a trade show in Los Angeles by officials of America Online, Inc., which acquired Netscape last year.

But the software that created the first Internet explosion and once held nearly a 90 percent market share faces an uphill battle against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which now ships in every Windows PC and holds nearly 70 percent of the market.

Netscape 6.0 was built around a slim base of 5.5 million bytes of programming code. Users can download additional components for electronic mail or Internet phone calling, but exclude other items, reducing the overall size of the browser. The new browser represents something of a clean slate for the company. Programmers threw out much of the bloated software code that had grown up since 1994 and started anew.

In contrast to Internet Explorer's focus on Windows, Netscape will run on Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems.

Software Donation Expected to Curb Medical Errors
The HHS Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) said a donation of Internet tools to 160 community health centers it funds will improve health care quality for low-income patients, according to AHA News Now.

MedicaLogic Inc. gave the centers Internet-based software for patient records. HRSA said the software will cut medical errors by providing centers with more legible chart notes and timely alerts about drug interactions.

"We hope this will be the first of many opportunities to work with the technology community to provide better, more error-free care in line with the administration's goal to cut medical errors by 50 percent in five years," said HRSA Administrator Claude Fox, MD.

UCITA One Step Closer in Maryland
The Maryland House voted 83-50 in favor of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), InfoWord reported. The controversial legislation now moves to the Maryland Senate.

The bill is supported by large software vendors, but has upset consumer advocates for software users, along with libraries and small businesses.

Supporters say the legislation is necessary to bring uniformity to software licensing contracts and a common understanding of software licenses across the 50 states.

The Maryland Senate already held hearings in its finance committee on its own version of the UCITA bill. A working group led by Sen. Leonard Teitelbaum was expected to discuss the bill again last week, InfoWorld reported.

"The work we will be doing between now and end of the session [on April 10] will be work that . . . would improve the bill to make it more consumer friendly," Teitelbaum told InfoWorld.

The working group will consider changes to the bill, including provisions designed to give Maryland residents certain protections in the event of a dispute over a software license. The group also will discuss issues affecting developers whose job is to re-engineer software, Teitelbaum said. Lawmakers will consider ways to ensure that developers would not place themselves in legal jeopardy by doing their jobs, which requires them to have access to software code made available by the owner.

Supporters say UCITA is important to establishing rules for licensing software and information products and would replace a patchwork of licensing laws in each of the states. The bill would also provide greater protections for companies and individuals who license software and would set clear procedures governing a software manufacturers' ability to take action against users who do not maintain proper licenses.

Opponents say the law is too broad and would impose uncertainty on the rights of individuals, and especially small businesses and libraries, to use licensed software. They also contend that the software companies' products already are protected under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Four Months Later: Still a Risk
Despite the year 2000 coming in with a whimper instead of roaring from computer date-related problems, insurance companies can only breathe a slight sigh of relief, Risk & Insurance magazine reported.

Although insurance companies dodged what was expected to be a catastrophe-level barrage of claims from all insurance lines, policyholders are now beginning to file claims to recoup millions of dollars they spent on computer remediation.

Policyholders say they should be reimbursed under "sue and labor clauses," because their remediation efforts prevented property damage. Insurers disagree, saying Y2K-related problems were not unforeseeable, but based on a decision by computer programmers to save computer memory, the magazine reported.

With policyholders and insurers lining up against each other, which side will win? The outcome will likely hinge on the testimony of expert witnesses. "Expert testimony is often the key to litigation, particularly when dealing with a jury of laypeople who don't understand the technical issues," Robert Hull, principal of The Roundtable Group in Chicago told Risk & Insurance. The consulting firm, which matches clients with a network of experts, began receiving requests for expert witnesses from law firms and insurance companies formulating strategies in 1998, before people started filing claims.

On the other hand, litigants should beware. Juries often discount expert testimony because they feel the experts are "hired guns," David Davis, senior vice president of DecisionQuest Inc., of Los Angeles said. DecisionQuest helps attorneys develop strategies for high risk and complex cases. "Experts are much more likely to lose a case than to win a case," Davis cautioned. Witnesses that lie about their qualifications, ignore important information, lack information or just screw up can sink a case, he said.

In Y2K cases, the biggest issue experts will address is whether Y2K-related problems actually needed to be fixed, Davis said. With few major problems reported, the date change seems anti-climatic to some people. "I'm sure prospective jurors will be saying to themselves, 'What was the big deal?'"

Last year, experts projected that claims related to the year 2000 rollover would be one of the most costly events ever experienced by insurers, second only to asbestos and pollution cleanup claims. Estimates said that claims could cost insurance companies between $15 billion and $35 billion, according to a study by actuarial consultants Milliman & Robertson.

The study projected that declaratory judgment expenses would cost insurers between $5 billion and $10 billion, general liability claims between $4 billion and $8 billion, directors' and officers' claims between $2 billion and $5 billion, business interruption claims between $2 billion and $4 billion, errors and omissions claims between $1 billion and $4 billion, and claims for other policies -- including property, auto, workers' compensation and fiduciary liability -- between $1 billion and $4 billion.

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