The Journal Times from Racine, Wisconsin • 43

IT Business Sunday. Jm 1 7, 2001 J-ptyu clfur Torn Failey Concern over tire specs grows it's about staying true to your rOOtS. it's about us aDoui was complicated, Kelley said "Usually the actual failure is a sequence of events involving many overlapping factors," he said While a sport utility is not a space ship, it Ls a complex piece of machinery ami one part affects the otlier, he said. But Kelley says the amount of time that has gone into NllTSA's study gives him confidence the federal safety regulators will arrive at a reasonable conclusion. "I believe with high probability thut they will find tlus primary cause," lie said.

Three months after NHTSA launched its investigation Into Firestone tires, the tire nuiker recalled 14 4 million 15-inch tires, 6 5 million of which were still in use Most of the tires had been Installed as original equipment on Ford Explorers, the nation's best-selling sport-utility for a decade. NHTSA's 15-month investigation will determine two things, said spokesman Rae Tyson One is whether additional tires need to be recalled. Tlie second is why tires failed, so that these mistakes are not repeated. Those Issues and the overall safety of the Ford Explorer are likely to be discussed at Tuesday's hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee's chairman, Rep.

Billy Tauzin, asked NHTSA last week to look at "whether the problem with the Firestone tires is solely a tire issue or whether it ls a tire-vehicle application issue." CM and Toyota have not had significant problems with Firestone's Wilderness AT tires, but different automakers ask for different characteristics in a tire Not every Wilderness AT tire ls the same. But the automaker sets "performance specifications, not how you build the tire," said Ford spokesman Jason Vines. That doesn't fly with Beatrici, who plans to replace his tires this weekend and is second-guessing his loyalty to Ford He doesn't want Ford to be forced out of business, but he suspects Ford took risks with its tires and its customers' safety. "The bottom line is that Ford put crap tires on their bread and butter: The Ford Explorer," he said. BY JAMIE BUTTERS Knight RKktor Nospais When Ford Motor Co chief executive Jacques Nasser tells Congress on Tuesday why the Dearborn autonuiker is replacing 13 million Firestone Wilderness AT tires on its vehicles, David Bealnci will be paying attention.

The St luis resident, who splits his time between construction jobs and researching public records, has sent more tune than the average Ford customer studying tires, ami he doesn't like what he has fmmd Specifically, he is uset that the Wilderness AT tires on his Ford Ranger pickup have the industry's lowest rating for tem-ra-ture resistance The tires similar to those on the best-selling sport-utility Kxplorer also can carry less of a load than the Wilderness AT tires General Motors Corp. puts on its Chevrolet Mazer, which weighs about 400 pouixls less than an Kxplorer Beatrici has been concerned alxmt tire safety since two Firestone 500 tires blew out on him on a vacation years ago. The llJ78 recall of 14 million of those tires nearly bankrupted the Nashville tire maker and led to its eventual sale to Bridgestone Corp. lie was relieved his 16-Inch Wilderness AT tires were not among the 14.4 million recalled by Firestone last August. That relief turned to disgust when Ford announced last month it was replacing 13 million Firestone tires on its vehicles, including the Wilderness ATs on his newly leased Ranger.

Ford said the tires were more likely to fail as they aged than competitors' tires. BridgestoneFirestone, a subsidiary of Japan-based Bridge-stone has maintained that its tires are safe and that a design flaw in the Explorer causes the vehicle to flip over when a tire fails. Automakers tell tire makers what they expect from a certain tire, which has led consumers like Beatrici to question whether the standards were set high enough. "I think they are just tires with extreme limitations," he said. Tire experts say it is impossible to determine the safety of the Firestone tires with the few tech- i.

exceeding expectations. Automakors tell tire makers what they expect from a certain tire, which has led consumers to question whether the standards were set high enough. meal specifications that are publicly known. Ttie National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been studying Firestone tires of the type linked to at least 174 deatlis and 700 injuries in the United States, most of which occurred when Ford Explorers were driven on hot highways, the tread peeled and the vehicle rolled over The results of that study are expected in August. Until then, tire scientists warn against jumping to conclusions.

Tire science is far too complicated to boil down to a handful of sjiecifications, said Hank Kelley, dean of the University of Akron's college of polymer science and engineering. "1 don't think many people realize what a complex composite structure a tire Ls," he said. Tires are defined by 15 to 20 technical specifications, many of which are kept secret for competitive reasons. But even knowing all of them Isn't enough to determine a tire's quality, Kelley said. Also needed, he said, is destructive testing, a process that resembles an autopsy.

New tires are rolled and pounded in a variety of controlled exercises, then sliced open to examine their condition. Few entities, outside tire manufacturers, have the resources or expertise to do such testing and most that do would not appear objective. Kelley said he declined to participate In the N1ITSA study, in part because he has done several studies funded by BridgestoneFirestone Inc. and works in a building named for rival Goodyear Tire Rubber Co. Kelley says he has participated in dozens of aerospace investigations including one into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

That disaster was attributed to a failure of an O-ring, but the sequence of events lr, Ui.W i it's about snaping the hiture. XML like a Swiss army knife' new concerns among privacy advocates. There's even a version of XML being developed for marketing and consumer profiling. But XML supporters say the tags can ultimately help enhance privacy. Software could restrict employee performance reviews to top decision-makers, filtering out low-level clerks in human resources who might now have access as well.

And XML is the basis for the Platform for Privacy Preferences, techniques being developed to let browsers automatically interpret Web sites' privacy policies. "It's like a Swiss army knife. It's hugely useful in a lot of different areas," said Uttam Narsu, a research analyst with Giga Information Group. "By the end of next year, I will be hard pressed to find a single company that won't be touched somehow by XML." World Wide Web Consortium: w3.org Schools initiative: sifinfo.org XML resources: xml.org speak the same language without customizing computers. Dollar Rent A Car Systems Inc.

already uses XML to let Southwest Airlines agents book car rentals. Not that customers will necessarily notice. Though travelers may be able to make all arrangements from a single Web site, they won't need to know XML drives it. Same goes for the health care industry. XML could link medical records and lab results from various clinics and hospitals.

It could warn doctors of drug reactions and help them analyze the success rates of specific treatments for certain combinations of symptoms and family histories. But patients, even doctors, would care only about the effects. "If I'm on a business trip and (have to visit) an emergency room, my medical records could be accessed and they would know right away whether I'm allergic to penicillin," said Rachael Sokolowski, a consultant working on health care standards. The ease of sharing data raises From Page 1A complementary but others conflicting. Part of XML's flexibility comes from its ability to let anyone define XML tags.

But that flexibility can lead to "a lot of confusion, a lot of experimentation and frankly a lot of chaos," said Laura Walker, executive director of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, which is trying to coordinate some of the XML work. David Sommer, director of electronic commerce for the Computing Technology Industry Association, doesn't doubt that XML will take off. "It's more a question of what standards are going to win out," he said. In the past, larger organizations communicated with others using customized protocols that were complicated and expensive to set up; separate arrangements often had to be made between pairs of organizations. Using XML, airlines, hotels and rental car companies could all I I i 1 1 1 i If ..111 MAGAZINES Getting squeezed From Page ID At Bank we believe in partnerships.

Come to our Grand Opening and let us thank you for allowing us to be part of this great and growing community. Stop in and enjoy the fun, refreshments and prizes. Monday, July 2 through Saturday, July 7 Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 9:00 pm Friday 9:00 pm Saturday 9:00 am-1 2:00 pm Wednesday Closed July 4th 2440 Four Mile Road Caledonia 262681-4333 a credit card company to pitch subscriptions. It has also netted some 1 million new readers by selling subscriptions through America Online, a sister company in the AOL Time Warner family. Another big move for Time Inc.

was to create "continuous service" subscriptions that is, automatically renewing a reader's subscription by credit card, just as newspapers have long done. A fifth of his subscribers use that service, he said. "Continuous service has been the Holy Grail moving people from the idea that the onus was on us to renew them, to a model where the onus moves to the customer to cancel the subscription," Koch said. raised advertising rates across the board Brewster says he's seizing an opportunity to correct the longstanding problems of circulation figures that were too high and subscription prices that were too low. "We're getting squeezed on the revenue side and the cost side simultaneously," he said.

"I want the consumer to pay more of the freight, and I don't want advertisers to pay for wasted copies." Jeremy Koch, circulation chief at Time Inc. whose magazine titles include People, Fortune and Sports Illustrated has teamed up with Ticket master Group the Home Shopping Network and Yet even with new ways to get and keep subscriptions, the magazine industry has other distribution problems. It is still recovering from the collapse of the sweepstakes houses, which once accounted for as many as a third of all new subscriptions, and the year's second postal rate increase is due this summer. On top of that, there has been a rapid consolidation of wholesalers, which means a tougher road for niche titles that aren't big sellers. If things keep going the way they are, more and more of those smaller titles may be shut down, says Chip Block, publishing strategist at Ziff Davis Media.

There's so much product out there that publishers are going to have to look at their weaker products and ask whether they should be publishing this magazine at all." That may not be all bad for Ron Clark, general manager of Hudson News who says handling the huge volume of unsold copies cuts into his company's profit. "We can't put our head in the sand any more," said Clark while surveying huge piles of discarded magazines and his three shredders, two of which were installed in the last 18 months. "We have to see some inroads or else it's literally going to be Impossible to stay in business." ft ir.yftif tvm v. tL- Racine Milwaukee (262) 634-7277 (414) 774-5SSS Km Rffii Bank Bettrioi Deem CNCS IbbifeMM Unflpentw NedMicH Detaam Just the partner you need. wf ucrifn 1W i I I Qm AIDMfiioM ftdl Support an 1648 Washington Racine Wl 53403 Member FDIC.