Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 1

SERVING THE COUNTY SINCE 1856 HlHIfQ) ii 1 MILM dam .01 01 8601 so cents: At The Newsstand Santa Cruz, California- 143rd Year, Vol. 288 Santa Cruz Sentinel Publishers Co. 1 www.santacruzsentinel.com IMC. nr, HAY 111 CHOI- IU'1, 1115 ARGUES AVE SUNNYVALE. CA 74086 CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST Parting Company Local high-tech firm prepares to merge, spin off and disappear if iriniOTJi U.S.

aims to persuade Arafat to calm inflamed tensions among Palestinians i pin sspr I I I Y4 TTV ai- -S23 By SONYA ROSS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON U.S. leaders headed to Egypt on Sunday to try to cool Middle East tensions but with little hope of resuming an Israeli-Palestinian peace process that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said "is the only road" away from violence. President Clin-More inside ton took a break USS Cole struggles to stay afloat Page A4 from almost constant telephone diplomacy to attend services at Foundry Methodist Church, where the congre- The Associated Press gation prayed that he would succeed in bringing peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Clinton made calls to various Middle East leaders, and received a briefing from Albright and Sandy Berger, his national security adviser before departing for Egypt. He chatted animatedly with Albright and Bsrger as they boarded his helicopter en route to the airport.

The president was to participate in emergency talks Monday at Sharm el-Sheikh with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Egyptian President Hosni Mourners walk behind the coffin of Israeli reserve officer Yosef Avraha-mi Sunday. Avrahami was killed by a crowd of Palestinians last week. Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan. Berger told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the president was going into the summit focused on stopping the vio- Please see MIDEAST on BACK PAGE By JENNIFER PITTMAN SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT SANTA CRUZ One of the county's first and highest-profile technology companies is in the final stages of disbanding. After obtaining shareholder approval and clearing the final regulatory hurdles later this year, The Santa Cruz Operation plans to sell two of its three divisions to Caldera Systems.

The third will be spun off, creating a new company and signaling the end of SCO. It has not been an easy ride since Doug Michels and his father Larry founded the IN DEPTH SSrtE same thing that made SCO popular with employees beachy, informal Santa Cruz was a hurdle to overcome with more conservative over-the-hill industry watchers. All the while, the company fought to carve a niche in the ever more Microsoft-dominated industry. The company's core business has been the development of computer server software for businesses that use the Unix operating system. The company managed to carve out an increasing piece of the market.

The bad news was that the market was shrinking. In the early '90s, meanwhile, the company grappled with lawsuits charging Larry Michels with "predatory" sexual harassment against several employees. The elder Michels denied the allegations but eventually resigned as president just before the company went public in 1993. The company witnessed more executive turnover when his replacement died suddenly and a subsequent replacement retired a year later. However, there were years that the company credited with Please see SCO on Page A10 Tarantella focuses on Web software By JENNIFER PITTMAN SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT SANTA CRUZ When Mike Orr came to The Santa Cruz Operation last year to head up marketing, he knew it would be an uphill battle.

But he didn't know SCO's market niche would soon collapse and put him at the helm of what was left of the beleaguered company. As president of SCO's Tarantella division, Orr, 48, is setting about pushing the company's obscure Internet technology into the marketplace. "It's about as hard as I thought it would be," he said recently in his Santa Cruz office. Tarantella is a technology called Web-enabling software. It lets someone at one computer use software applications on another computer via the Internet.

In a move away from the personal computer model, a company using Web-enabling software doesn't have to install applications on each computer because the technology lets it use a program from somewhere else. "We are extremely excited about Please see TARANTELLA on Page A10 -a. 1 1 If State's school plan meets local resistance Reform program shaped by politics, group contends By DONNA JONES SENTINEL STAFF WRITER SANTA CRUZ Rising scores on a statewide academic performance index may be pleasing politicians, but some parents and educators are questioning whether California's public school account Shmuei TnaierSentinei "This is about being educated about how school reform is played out. It's about making sure it's done in an intelligent manner, not just what looks good," said Lysa Tabachnik, a former Gault Elementary School teacher who now runs a Santa Cruz City Schools home-school program. Tabachnik is a founding member of School Voices, a Santa Cruz-based group advocating a change in the direction of school reform.

The group is hosting a forum on standardized testing tonight, featuring Eugene Garcia, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and an outspoken critic of the state's assessment program. Tabachnik and others say they are not against educational standards or testing, but the existing program has been shaped more by politics than valid educational research and is flawed in ways that may negatively affect California classrooms. The primary problem, they say, is the focus on the SAT-9, a national standardized test administered each spring in California to second- through 11th-graders. As the sole basis for scores' used in the state's Academic Perform: mance Index the ranking system that determines whether schools and teachers receive monetary rewards or Please see REFORM on BACK PAGE The familiar SCO logo will soon be a thing of the past if the company's deal with Caldera goes through. 'New Caldera'employees to remain in Santa Cruz Testing forum What: A forum about standardized testing When: Tonight from 7 to 9 Where: Louden Nelson Community Center, 301 Center Santa Cruz ability program is making schools better.

In Santa Cruz, a small group of parents and teachers have joined a growing statewide constituency critical of the 3-year-old accountability program that includes annual The local employees were concerned how the small, Orem, Utah-based start-up would integrate a 21-year-old international company more than four times its size. Under terms of the deal, employees in two SCO divisions those who have not quit or been laid off in recent months have the option to stay in Santa Cruz and work in their present positions for what will be called New Caldera. Please see NEW CALDERA on Page A10 By JENNIFER PITTMAN SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT SANTA CRUZ Caldera Systems' Ransom Love was recently in Santa Cruz to reassure The Santa Cruz Operation employees that the planned acquisition of their company will be a boon to both corporations. A speech by the Caldera chief executive was broadcast internally over the Internet to the two companies, which hope to join officially sometime in December, creating what is being called New Caldera. standardized testing of most California public school students, a statewide school ranking index and a system of rewards and punishments based on overall school performance.

Study finds widespread lying, cheating among teens WEATHER tooay INDEX Ann LandersA9 OpinionAll ClassifiedB6 Personal TechA6 ComicsB5 SportsBl CrosswordBS State newsA3 Local newsA2 StyleA8 LotteiyAlO Traffic alertAlO National newsM TV llstlngsA9 ObituariesAlO World newsM Morning clouds, followed by sunshine. Highs In the. low 70s. BACK PAGE By GISELE DURHAM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES The nation's high school Students lie a lot, cheat a lot, and many show up for class drunk, according to preliminary results of a nationwide teen character study released Monday. Seven in 10 students surveyed admitted cheating on a test at least once in the past year, and nearly half said they had done so more than once, according to the nonprofit Joseph Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics.

"This data reveals a hole in the moral ozone," said Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Marina Del Rey-based organization. On the other hand, the results were not significantly worse than on the last test in 1998 On the Net Institute site: www.charactercounts.org the first time that has happened since the group began testing in 1992. The "Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth" found that 92 percent of the 8,600 students surveyed lied to their parents in the past year. Seventy-eight percent said they had lied to a teacher, and more than one in four said they would lie to get a job. Nearly one in six students said they had shown up for class drunk at least once in the past year.

Sixty-eight percent admitted they hit someone because they were angry. Nearly half said they could get a gun if they wanted to. Josephson said the results amounted to the formula for a "toxic cocktail." "Kids who think it's OK to hit someone when they're angry," he said, "who may be drunk at school when they do it and who can also get their hands on a gun." The survey, conducted this year, involved students in grades nine through 12 in both public and private schools. Participating schools handed out surveys with 57 questions that students could submit anonymously. The results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The high school results, along with those for middle schools, will be included in a series of three finals reports to be released later this year. niiiiiiiiiiii On top of the World Harbor High School grad wins the Samsung World Championship golf tourney by 4 strokes. PAGE Bl 0 Iili78908ir22 a.