Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB527C882@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:19:18 -0500
From: Bob Swisher <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 14 September 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 14 September 1997. Edupage, a summary of news about
> information technology, is provided three times a week as a service by
> Educom, a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and
> universities seeking to transform education through the use of
> information technology.
> ************************************************************
>
> TOP STORIES
> Chipmakers Fund Gov't Research On Next-Generation Chips
> Motorola Discontinues Mac
> Super-Speedy Image Processing
> Educom Project Targets Metadata Specs
>
> ALSO
> Before You Know It, There's More History To Know
> Microsoft Invests In Speech Recognition Firm
> "Information Age?". . .For Whom?
> High-Tech Investment
> The Proliferation Of ISPs And Other Amusing Statistics
>
> CHIPMAKERS FUND GOV'T RESEARCH ON NEXT-GENERATION CHIPS
> Intel, Motorola and Advanced Micro Devices will spend $250 million to
> fund a three-year R&D partnership aimed at developing extreme
> ultraviolet lithography technology. The Extreme Ultraviolet
> Lithography Limited Liability Co., as the partnership is called, will
> enlist the research efforts of the Livermore, Sandia and Berkeley
> national laboratories. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore says EUV
> technology is vital to the chip industry:
> "The semiconductor industry has a major problem to solve here. EUV
> has a lot going for it, that's where we are going to put our money...
> We are going to pursue the technology to the point where it can be
> realized as a system." (TechWeb 11 Sep 97)
>
> MOTOROLA DISCONTINUES MAC
> Motorola, in response to Apple's recent decision to put limits on Mac
> OS licensees, has decided to drop its Mac OS clone business. "This
> was a tough decision for all of us, but given Apple's position we had
> no choice," says a Motorola VP. "You can sue for divorce, but you
> can't sue for marriage." Motorola will continue to sell its StarMax
> clone up to the end of the year, but it cannot sell its StarMax Pro
> 6000, built on the CHRP (common reference hardware platform)
> architecture. The StarMax Pro 6000 was slated to ship in the first
> two weeks of this month, and was reputed to be the fastest Mac on the
> market; it was also able to run PC applications at the speed of a
> 166-MHz Pentium. Umax now remains the only company able to license
> the Mac OS for its clones. (InfoWorld Electric 11 Sep 97)
>
> SUPER-SPEEDY IMAGE PROCESSING
> Lockheed Martin Electronics & Missiles has spent 15 years developing a
> super-speedy chip for military image processing that now is moving
> into commercial use in the medical and database fields. Lockheed's
> chip sports 4,000 or more tiny circuit modules that can process 4,000
> pixels in parallel, speeding up considerably time-consuming chores
> such as matching fingerprints in a database or screening mammograms.
> In addition, a new mathematical technique, called image algebra,
> manages to squeeze the number
> of instructions needed to process a pixel by 50%. (Business Week 15
> Sep 97)
>
> EDUCOM PROJECT TARGETS METADATA SPECS
> Educom is teaming up with a coalition of academic, industry and
> government organizations to develop a metadata specification for
> materials used in higher education, corporate and government training
> programs, making them easier to find on the Web. The metadata specs
> provide a common vocabulary for searching and using various components
> that make up educational or training courseware. Educom is also
> making available a Java-based tool that will assist content developers
> in applying the metadata labels to their materials. The metadata
> specification development is part of Educom's Instructional Management
> Systems project.
>
> ==============================================
>
> BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, THERE'S MORE HISTORY TO KNOW
> Suggesting that laptop computers and CD-ROMs, rather than books, might
> be a cheaper and better way of keeping learning materials current, the
> Texas State Board of Education chairman Jack Christie says: "We're
> talking big numbers there, and the price of this technology is coming
> to where it approaches that level. Why wait for the rest of the
> nation? Why wait for six, seven, eight years to update history?" (New
> York Times 12 Sep 97)
>
> MICROSOFT INVESTS IN SPEECH RECOGNITION FIRM
> Microsoft will invest $45 million in Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
> NV, which specializes in developing speech recognition technology.
> "Speech is a nascent technology. There aren't that many companies
> around that have a good core competence in this field. Combining the
> efforts of the two companies can only benefit the user in the end,"
> says a Microsoft manager. Belgian-based L&H is one of the few speech
> recognition software firms to have developed products in as many as 20
> different languages, and its
> technology can be found in many commercial applications, from
> translation software to on-board car navigation systems.
>
> "INFORMATION AGE?". . .FOR WHOM?
> Project Gutenberg founder Michael S. Hart says he is disturbed by
> copyright legislation in Congress which would extend all current
> copyrights by 20 years with no provision for maintaining the public
> domain. "To add 20 years to copyright creates a Landed Gentry of the
> Information Age," he says. The public domain is an inalienable right
> of the public which cannot be a commodity to be bought or sold, either
> by persons or by their government. "Copyright extension destroys both
> the concept and content of the public
> domain." (Time 15 Sep 97)
>
> HIGH-TECH INVESTMENT
> A study by the Conference Board of Canada found that tax breaks are
> not much a lure for high-tech companies looking to expand or relocate.
> Companies identified a skilled work force as the most important
> influence on where to relocate, with quality of life a distant second
> and the proximity of a local university third. A second study by KPMG
> confirmed the Conference Board conclusions that tax breaks play only a
> minor role in the creation of high-tech clusters. (Toronto Globe &
> Mail 11 Sep 97)
>
> THE PROLIFERATION OF ISPs AND OTHER AMUSING STATISTICS
> According to Boardwatch magazine, the number of Internet service
> providers in the U.S. and Canada has mushroomed from 1,447 in February
> 1996 to 4,133 in August 1997. Presumably, all those ISPs are staying
> busy handling the 2.7 trillion e-mail messages that will be sent this
> year, with e-mail numbers projected to rise to 6.9 trillion in 2000.
> None of this connectivity comes cheap: end users spent $19 billion on
> Internet and intranet products last year, roughly $1,000 for each of
> the 20 million individuals who consider the Internet "indispensible."
> (Internet Index #19, 10 Sep 97)
>
> Edupage is written by John Gehl <gehl@educom.edu> & Suzanne Douglas
> <douglas@educom.edu>. Telephone: 770-590-1017
>
> Technical support is provided by Information Technology Services at
> the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
>
>
> ************************************************************
> Edupage ... is what you've just finished reading. To subscribe to
> Edupage: send mail to: listproc@educom.unc.edu with the message:
> subscribe edupage Louis Bachelier (if your name is Louis Bachelier;
> otherwise, substitute your own name). To unsubscribe send a message
> to: listproc@educom.unc.edu with the message: unsubscribe edupage.
> (If you have subscription problems, send mail to
> manager@educom.unc.edu.)
>
> EDUCOM'97 CONFERENCE, the premier national conference on information
> technology in higher education, will be held this year October 28 to
> 31 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In addition to almost 100 presentations
> from leaders in information technology in higher education, the
> conference will feature Eli Noam, director of the Columbia Institute
> for Tele-Information; Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Life
> on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet; and John Perry
> Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic
> Frontier Foundation. For conference information check out
> <http://educom.edu/ , call 202-872-4200, or send e-mail to
> conf@educom.edu.
>
> Educom Review ... is our bimonthly print magazine on information
> technology and education ... Subscriptions are $18 a year in the
> U.S.; send mail to offer@educom.edu. When you do, we'll ring a
> little bell, because we'll be so happy! Choice of bell is yours: a
> small dome with a button, like the one on the counter at the dry
> cleaners with the sign "Ring bell for service"; or a small hand bell;
> or a cathedral bell; or a door bell; or a chime; or a glockenspiel.
> Your choice. But ring it!
>
> Educom Update ... is our twice-a-month electronic summary of
> organizational news and events. To subscribe, send mail to:
> listproc@educom.unc.edu with the message: subscribe update Louis
> Bachelier (if your name is Louis Bachelier; otherwise, substitute
> your own name).
>
> Translations & Archives... Edupage is translated into Chinese,
> Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Hungarian, Korean,
> Lithuanian, Portuguese, Slovak and Spanish. Send mail to
> translations@educom.unc.edu for info on subscribing to any of these
> translations. See http://www.educom.edu/web/pubs/pubHomeFrame.html for
> Edupage archives.
>
> Today's Honorary Subscriber is Louis Bachelier (1870-1946), the
> French economist whose study of the commodities markets led him to
> develop the "random walk hypothesis," which is that the short-term
> unpredictability of stock market factors means that they appear to
> walk randomly on a chart, and that current prices are no guide to
> future prices.
>
> ************************************************************
> Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology
> ************************************************************
>