Chris Broad will officiate cricket matches Wednesday for the first time since being caught in the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team in Pakistan.
The Briton will referee three matches on the opening day of a World Cup qualifying tournament in South Africa.
Broad and umpires …
Influence over sales and marketing * Online price mistakes
Marketing moves
Q I am chief procurement officer for a fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer with a strong purchasing function that is linked to business strategy and is performing well. One area I am not responsible for is sales and marketing spend. I think it would benefit from purchasing involvement, but I'm having difficulty in persuading my board colleagues to let me get involved. What would be the effect of applying purchasing principles to this area?
A Tom Casey, from supply chain consulting services at Capgemini, writes: There are two parts to your question. One relates to budget responsibility, and the other to purchasing's influence on sales and marketing services.
Budget responsibility for sales and marketing will not in the foreseeable future fall under procurement. Therefore, do not have this in your short- to medium-term objectives, as you will only be chasing a dream.
However, with regard to purchasing influence, your marketing and advertising (M&A) colleagues will gain a huge advantage if purchasing gets involved.
Procurement has strengths that any business unit will welcome, including negotiation expertise; policy and compliance advice; project management experience; and strategic sourcing and market knowledge.
The immediate benefit your M&A colleagues and the board will gain is the peace of mind that the contract negotiation and agreement are being handled by capable people. They also get to hand off the typically time-consuming terms and conditions discussions - a process they tend to dislike.
A medium-term benefit is that your M&A colleagues can maintain their working relationship with vendors while passing the commercial relationship responsibility to procurement. Large, drawn-out, complex cost negotiations are often better managed by a "neutral" resource, in order to depersonalise the cost-versus-relationship issue.
The long-term benefit for your M&A colleagues is better management information, clearer costs and improved campaign management performance. This is good for the industry, as continuous improvement and best practice become the norm.
The opportunity for reductions within an M&A budget usually lies within the 10-20 per cent range and focuses on subsegments within marketing including above-the-line (such as television), below-the-line (such as direct marketing), print, public relations, sponsorship and internet.
Your M&A colleagues often perceive a threat that procurement involvement will prolong negotiations and delay the reaching of contract agreements and therefore of service delivery. This is particularly relevant in an environment where market and consumer demands are shifting on a continuous basis. However, by applying good sourcing and supply chain management techniques this threat can be reduced.
In my experience M&A soon comes to demand, and indeed rely on, procurement involvement to better manage its spend.
NEED FREE AND INDEPENDENT ADVICE? E-mail your question to adviser@supplymanagement.com
Bargain basics
Q One of my buyers ordered audiovisual equipment on a website advertised at a very low price and received messages from the seller onscreen and by e-mail that his order had been accepted. Our bank account was also debited. Then they sent us an e-mail refusing to honour the deal, saying that the low price was a mistake. Is this legal?
A Paul Abbiati, a PMMS legal onsultant, writes: Some lawyers tell business buyers and consumers that the internet is lawless and that English common law is out of touch with e-procurement, and cannot be applied. It gets worse, as some will tell you that English law lacks a definition of an e-contract.
Only the latter statement is true.
Several years ago, I was invited to speak on the BBC programme Working Lunch about electronic contracts, following City lawyers' silence over whether consumers had beaten a mighty electronics supplier over a price mistake on a website.
The problem of suppliers' price mistakes and failure to honour contracts is nothing new and will not go away. All that has changed is the environment. We have gone from ordering by letters to ordering by telephone, dien to ordering by telex and fax, and now to ordering online and by e-mail.
So, who wins if the price of the goods or services anywhere - particularly on a website - is a bargain, the buyer orders according to the rules, and die supplier puts it in writing that your order has been accepted on the screen and/or in an e-mail and even debits your account?
Surprisingly, English law and other laws are clear on this. English law says that if a price offer or display anywhere is a genuine mistake, and it is clear to the reasonable person that the item's price is "too good to be true", then contract law will interpret the concluded contract - even if money is debited - as void for mistake.
All buyers might win their argument that the contract is valid just on confirmation of acceptance of the order in an e-mail if, for example, the price was "believable". This might apply, for example, if a DVD player normally priced at �20 was advertised for �1.50, or if the first five or 10 sets had been on sale at the low price as a loss leader.
However, a far greater reduction in price would not be "believable". The press reported recently that the retailers Argos and Homebase had advertised on their websites one bank holiday Monday a 28-inch television and DVD player, normally priced at �350, for 49p.
One buyer bought 80 sets at the bargain price, according to media reports. Argos and Homebase themselves said that 10,000 customers had bought the television and DVD player over the bank holiday.
However, these customers were destined to be disappointed. The retailers apologised, but were refusing to honour the website deals - even though they had debited customers' accounts - because the mistake in pricing was down to a "genuine internal error".
Please note: responses can only be given on this page, represent writers' personal views and should be regarded as general guidance only.
VANDALS are being blamed for damaging around 30 metres of drystone wall at a picturesque location in the Goyt Valley, near Buxton.
United Utilities believe the wall ? which runs between Errwood Reservoir and Goyt's Lane ? was pushed over sometime during the weekend of June 25 and 26.
Spokeswoman Helen Wilson said: "Clearly an act of vandalism like this is condemned by us. It has …
Nepal, March 31 -- Of late, my reading habit is changing from turning the pages to touching the screen. Now, when it comes to reading I opt for eBooks. They can be easily downloaded. Sometimes they don't even cost you money-the only thing you need to have is an active internet connection. And eBooks are easy to store-they don't hog space in your room.
I inherited my admiration for books from my father-I buy books, I read books, and I don't let a chance go to waste whenever there is a book exhibition or sale. My childhood ambition was to grow up and traverse the land my dad had travelled, read the books my dad had read, and learn the things my dad knows?
I never believed that anyone would remain famished or wear frayed apparel just to be able to buy books, as my father said he had done as a student. One day I waited for him to come from the hospital with loads of medicine, but instead he popped in with a stack of books. It's true that buying books can be akin to an addiction and in some cases, with rising prices, it can be quite serious. Traditional publishing-words printed on paper and the pages tagged and bound in a cover-is getting costlier day-by-day. The days are gone when you could buy a couple of titles, even those from foreign publishers, for just Rs. 500. These days that amount of money means nothing when it comes to purchasing books.
We won't stop reading even though books are getting more expensive. So what to do? The answer lies on the cheaper technology of publishing that is emerging: eBooks. But it will take time in Nepal for publishers and a greater mass of readers to opt for eBooks.
I have been buying books since I was in kindergarten-I even saved my pocket money just to buy books. It wasn't that my father didn't buy his children any reading material, but I wanted to visit the book store myself, see the colourful covers and wonder who wrote all these works and who has read all these titles. Since the school I attended had no library, the only library I had seen was my father's personal collection, and it was very small compared to the books stores. There was a bookstore on the corner in Anamnagar that sold Russian children books translated into Nepali and English with colourful pictures. I could buy books for just two rupees each. The bookstore was on the way to my school, and I managed to sneak a peak every Friday. It was my favourite hangout until it closed (USSR had collapsed). Later I found out that the man had been selling Russian books which the Soviet government distributed for free. To satiate your palate for reading you have to buy books. Of course, you can always borrow from the libraries, but collecting books brings a great feeling. However, in the changing times collecting books is becoming an expensive hobby. The cheap and handy solution: the World Wide Web.
Published by HT Syndication with permission from EKantipur.com.
For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at htsyndication@hindustantimes.com
Byline: GARY GRAFF Knight-Ridder
``Let's face it; there are always changes in rock 'n' roll since the last Boston album,'' Tom Scholz says. ``I mean, there's been a new president for every album.''
Scholz isn't kidding. In 19 years, his band has put out just four albums; Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton are the White House touchstones for each release. Madonna has put out more than twice as many albums in half that time.
Climates musical and political may have changed, but Boston hasn't. The sound on ``Walk On,'' which came out last June and is Boston's first album in seven years, is of a stylistic piece with the album's three predecessors. The production is dynamic and Teflon-clean. The guitar assault comes courtesy of Led Zeppelin, the melodic sensibility from the Beatles.
And there's a stadium-size drama and bombast drawn from the music Scholz learned as a child.
In other words, the world of alternative and modern rock has made no impact whatsoever in the self-constructed home studio where Scholz crafts Boston hits such as ``More Than a Feeling,'' ``Long Time'' and ``Don't Look Back.''
``I don't buy CDs,'' the 48-year-old multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and engineer says in his flat Bah-ston accent. ``I do hear other kinds of music when I'm out shooting pool or playing hoops, at the health club or just going out partying. The thing is, I like it all, with the exception of rap, which I hate.
``But that doesn't matter. Whatever I like, when I sit down to work on songs, they always end up sounding like Boston songs. I can't help it. I can't write anything else.''
On the plus side, Boston enjoys the kind of readily recognized signature sound most bands would kill for. The negative is criticism that Scholz and company are spinning their creative wheels, neither progressing nor keeping pace with the times.
The fact of the matter is it works. Boston has sold more than 20 million albums since 1976. At 11.5 million copies, its first album a sonic prototype for bands such as Journey, Styx and Bon Jovi is the top-selling debut of all time. Even ``Walk On,'' hampered by a lack of promotion from the record company and a music scene that's pointedly indifferent to what Boston has to offer, has sold more than a million copies.
In research conducted by Sony Music whose subsidiary, Epic Records, released the first two Boston albums the group shows up as one of the most widely recognized acts in every age group from 10 to 52.
``We have a pretty wide appeal, anywhere from high school kids to people our own age,'' says Brad Delp, who sang on the first three Boston albums and is along on the group's current tour. ``There's a lot of people who bought the first two records and are pleased there hasn't been any drastic change in the way the band sounds, and a lot of kids have latched on to it over the years, too.''
Scholz gets full credit for that consistency and durability particularly in light of Boston's erratic release schedule, which hardly fosters any kind of career momentum. Born in Toledo, Scholz moved to Boston to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started making music in 1971 as a free-time endeavor; his day job was at Polaroid, where he helped invent the company's instant film system.
Music was more than a hobby, though. ``I think I was a working at Polaroid trying to earn money to record,'' Scholz says. He approached it with the exacting, meticulous ways of an engineer, taking total control in crafting his songs and not letting them out until he was absolutely satisfied.
His results won fans, but Scholz's methods rankled record company executives and Boston bandmates; during the mid-'80s, he was in court with both entities over allegations of breach of contract, which he defeated, and underpayment, which he settled out of court.
Scholz also succeeded in the musical equipment world. His Scholz Research & Design, Inc., turned the Rockman a Walkman-sized device that allows musicians to re-create the Boston guitar sounds into one of the most popular accessories for musicians.
These days, however, Scholz is more interested in creativity than technology. He sold SR&D last year, though he still enjoys playing the mad inventor; he built the world's largest Hammond organ for the current Boston tour, and prodded by a litany of mostly basketball-related injuries he's developing some orthopedic aids.
Scholz also re-tooled his studio to make it more user-friendly. ``I can go in and punch a few buttons, and be a creative musician rather than having to think like an engineer and producer all the time . . . all of that stupid stuff that gets in the way of the original idea of the song,'' he says. That allowed him to make ``Walk On'' in just three years a sprint by Scholz's standard.
Which begs one last question will Scholz be faster in making the next Boston album?
``I have a hard time getting that down to under five years,'' he says with a laugh. ``With everything now in place, I'm actually looking forward to working on the next one. I'm predicting it in three (years), but I don't want to commit to that.
``I can guarantee you I'll be heartbroken if it's not out before the millennium. It's got to be out before 2000.''
More than 30,000 Muslims converged on Washington yesterday tocelebrate their wealth and freedom, renew social ties, hearinvestment advice and hunt for spouses, but they also complained thatU.S. conservatives have dehumanized them since the terror attacks ofSept. 11.
The estimated 7 million Muslim Americans enjoy status, affluenceand civil liberties unknown elsewhere in the Islamic world -- and byall accounts, those attending the Islamic Society of North Americaconvention this weekend aim for more.
The challenge, many said, is to assimilate into U.S. societywithout compromising Islamic religious strictures, such as thoseagainst investing in businesses that sell tobacco or alcohol, usingconventional mortgages to buy homes and collecting or payinginterest.
But leaders addressing the convention said efforts to carve out acomfortable U.S. existence are at risk because Muslim Americans'message condemning terrorist attacks as an affront to Islamic thoughthas consistently been drowned out by "vicious" U.S. radio andtelevision commentators.
The media attacks, they say, have come even as polls show sympathyand support for individual Muslims in the United States.
"Why are special interest groups exploiting the pain of 9/11 todehumanize and isolate Muslim Americans?" asked Salam Al-Marayati, anofficial of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He urged the audienceto join the public dialogue and help the world realize that MuslimAmericans are moderates who hold the same ethical values asChristians and Jews.
Osama "bin Laden will not define Islam for us, and hatemongers inAmerica will not define Islam for us," Al-Marayati said.
He reminded people not to shy away from criticizing U.S. policy inthe Middle East or East Asia and to improve Muslim American voterturnout, which stands at about 10 percent. "The hatemongers want ourinaction," he said. "Our involvement is mandatory for our survival asMuslim Americans in the U.S."
Whatever their political position may be, it was clear yesterdayat the Washington Convention Center that Muslim Americans want toenjoy the good life without giving up traditions they or theirparents brought from their homelands.
Thousands of women turned out in fashionable styles, but the vastmajority wore conservative head scarves.
In a massive bazaar, some retailers drew flocks of youngercustomers with hip wares that recalled slick corporate images whilesimultaneously promoting Islamic faith. One vendor sold T-shirts witha takeoff on the Gatorade logo that said, "Islam -- Is It In You?"and others that played on the Krispy Kreme logo emblazoned with thewords, "Koran Al Kareem -- Taste the Sweetness of Faith."
The FBI and the Army posted officers to recruit translators,vendors sold books and Muslim-oriented computer software, andnumerous groups promoted charitable donations to relieve suffering inMuslim nations around the world.
Financial advisers also discussed how investors can remain true tosharia, the canonical laws of Islam, by choosing stocks and mutualfunds that avoid businesses that are considered unpure.
"We need an Islamic Fidelity and an Islamic Vanguard," lamentedone Muslim adviser, Rushdie Siddiqui.
Another financial consultant, Omar Haydar, named publicly tradedcompanies that meet sharia standards -- Microsoft, ExxonMobil,Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and SBC -- and those that don't -- Citibank,Philip Morris, Aon, AOL/Time Warner and Wal-Mart.
Perhaps the most unusual marketer at the convention was theIslamic matrimonial matching service, a voluntary committee of theIslamic society that introduces Muslim bachelors to Muslim women.
With Muslim Americans working long hours in elite professions andscattered across the country -- sometimes far from Islamic brethren -- there is no other way to find a mate without running afoul oftradition, said Ahmed A. Qadeer, who co-chairs the matrimonialcommittee with his wife. Conventional dating is not part of thecourtship process.
"Islam tries to keep lust under control," he said.
Mates can only be found by referrals from relatives, friends orservices like his.
When Islam was new, women traditionally chose their husbands, butthat changed when the Muslims assimilated into societies around theworld where women had few rights, Qadeer said.
Today, Muslim American men registering with the Qadeers arelooking for highly educated women who were born in the United Statesor who have lived in this country long enough to understand the U.S.way of life. Most of the women and men are yuppies, he said.
Qadeer, a computer software consultant outside Chicago, said heknows of at least 15 couples that married after they were introducedby the service. "We think that's pretty good," he said.
Next, he said, the service will be made available on the Internet -- with photos.
THE time to start up your own business has never been better, thefounder of the UK's biggest website has claimed.
Speaking at an event at Staples in Tunbridge Wells entitled StartA Business In Your Spare Time, Emma Jones, the creator of EnterpriseNation, encouraged the audience to make the step.
The businesswoman - who is also the author of books Spare RoomStart-up, Working 5 To 9 and Go Global - said: "Many people start asecond business from home out of fear of redundancy and othersbecause they need an outlet for their energy and creative talent.But whatever their skill is, it can be turned into business."
Mrs Jones also urged the audience not to be put off by cost. "Youcan set up a business for Pounds 50", she said.
She went on to say: "There has never been a better time toconsider running your own business and it's getting easier andeasier all the time with the internet and the endless possibilitiesthat it provides. The key thing is having a niche idea that you arepassionate about, or spotting a gap in the market or just seeingsomething that you think you could do better and translating thatinto a viable business. Writing a good business plan is vital, butit should be no more than four pages long, not 40.
"Our research suggests that, by the end of 2011, more than 11million people in the UK will be making some form of income fromhome - which is incredible."
Other presenters included Tunbridge Wells-based Steve Emecz, whohas a full time job with a software firm in London, but who alsoruns MX Publishing in his spare time, and Claire Melvin who runsClaire's Handmade Cakes alongside here main job with the Women'sInstitute. Both feature in Emma Jones Book 5 to 9. Members of theaudience were invited to submit new business ideas expressed in 150words for entry into a competition to win Pounds 1,000 of Staples'vouchers. The Courier is to act as one of the judges and the winnerwill be notified and announced within two weeks of the competitionclosing.
