Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB527C8A4@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 13:56:48 -0500
From: Bob Swisher <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 16 September 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 16 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
> The Fate Of Internet Service Providers
> Internet Keeps Growing And Growing
> Windows 98 Timetable
> Are "Invisible" Trademarks Unfair Competition?
> Walking Away From The Medicare Computer Project
>
> ALSO
> Microsoft Jump-Starts WebTV
> Year 2000 Problem Is "Real, Serious, Important"
> Pentium II Prices Poised To Plunge (Again)
> IBM, CompUSA Discover Just-In-Time PCs
> Sega, Microsoft To Team Up On High-Powered Video Game
>
>
> THE FATE OF INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
> A study by the Gartner Group market research firm suggests that as
> many as 90% of the approximately 4,500 Internet Service Providers in
> the United States may disappear over the next five years. One reason
> for consolidation of service providers is price competition: with the
> largest ISPs offering flat-rate access for $20 a month in the U.S.,
> small operators have a difficult time making covering their costs and
> keeping their prices at the same levels. (Financial Times 15 Sep 97)
>
> INTERNET KEEPS GROWING AND GROWING
> The old phrase "growing like Topsy" may be replaced by "growing like
> the Internet." A survey by Christian Huitema of Bellcore indicates
> that the number of host computers grew from 14.7 million in September
> of 1996 to 26 million in September of 1997. The goal of the survey
> was to count centralized server computers, work stations, and each
> modem in the modem bank of Internet Service Providers. (New York
> Times 15 Sep 97)
>
> WINDOWS 98 TIMETABLE
> Microsoft announced that it will delay by several months the
> introduction next year of its newest Windows software program (Windows
> 98), so that it can coordinate release of two versions of the new
> product, one to upgrade Windows 3.1 and the other to upgrade Windows
> 95. Made jittery by the delay, investors caused Microsoft stock to
> drop $7.25 on Monday. (Washington Post 16 Sep 97)
>
> ARE "INVISIBLE" TRADEMARKS UNFAIR COMPETITION?
> Web site operators have found that a sure-fire way to lure visitors is
> to incorporate a popular brand name into "invisible" coding on their
> Web pages, thereby attracting the attention of the all-important
> Internet search engines used by many Net surfers. Lawyers for Playboy
> Enterprises are suing Calvin Designer Label (no relation to Calvin
> Klein) for copyright infringement after it incorporated the words
> "Playboy" and "Playmate" into the coding on its adult-oriented Web
> sites. In another case, National Envirotech Group, a
> pipeline-reconstruction company, has agreed to delete mentions of a
> larger competitor, Insituform Technologies Inc., from the hidden
> coding on its Web site. Insituform's lawyer says the programming
> trick is "very harmful" to a company trying to attract customers on
> the Web, and "destroys the value of search engines as a way for people
> to find accurate information about companies." "Intercepting people
> on the information superhighway is like putting up big sign on a
> freeway that says Exxon, but that's not what you find once you get
> there," says a law professor at the University of San Francisco.
> (Wall Street Journal 15 Sep 97)
>
> WALKING AWAY FROM THE MEDICARE COMPUTER PROJECT
> The Clinton Administration has terminated the contract with GTE for a
> new computer system to handle Medicare because the current system (run
> by 72 private insurance companies around the country) proved to be so
> antiquated and complicated that they frustrated GTE's efforts. The
> Department of Health & Human Services has told GTE to "stop all work,
> make no further shipments, place no further orders and terminate all
> subcontracts." Medicare officials say they will now work on individual
> pieces of the system rather than attempting to do the entire project
> at once. (New York Times 16 Sep 97)
>
> =============================================
>
> MICROSOFT JUMP-STARTS WEB TV
> Microsoft has unveiled a new, souped-up version of its WebTV system
> for surfing the Net via the television. The company's new technology
> is based on an innovative chip that combines the capabilities of a TV
> tuner, a cable modem and a high-speed PC modem all into one low-cost
> unit. The new boxes will enable WebTV to develop content that
> combines both television programming and Web sites in a seamless mix,
> using an improved program guide called Explore. "We intend to define
> mass-market media for the next century," says WebTV CEO Steve Perlman.
> Forrester Research predicts some 1 million Net-ready TVs will be in
> U.S. homes by 2000. (Business Week 22 Sep 97)
>
> YEAR 2000 PROBLEM IS "REAL, SERIOUS, IMPORTANT"
> Office of Management and Budget Administrator Sally Katzen says that
> the Clinton Administration has been aggressive in confronting the year
> 2000 problem, when computer programs that were coded with two-digit
> dates will not calculate correctly because they will not be able to
> distinguish 20th and 19th century dates: "I have said repeatedly
> that the issue is real, it's serious, it's important." OMB has
> decided against approving spending requests for computer technology
> from four agencies -- the Departments of Agriculture, Education,
> Transportation and the Agency for International Development -- unless
> the purchases are related to fixing the 2000 problem. OMB says they
> have shown "insufficient evidence of progress.'' (AP 16 Sep 97)
>
> PENTIUM II PRICES POISED TO PLUNGE (AGAIN)
> Intel executives predict that, on top of drastic price cuts already
> made on its Pentium II chips, further reductions are in store. Last
> month, the price of Intel's 300-MHz Pentium II was slashed 57% to
> $1,131, far more than the typical August cuts of 20% to 30%. Company
> officials now are saying that the prices of 300-MHz Pentium II-based
> PCs that now sell for $3,500 could drop to less than $2,000. "It
> wouldn't surprise me to see that within the next six months," says
> Intel's Pentium II market director. (Investor's
> Business Daily 16 Sep 97)
>
> IBM, COMPUSA DISCOVER JUST-IN-TIME PCs
> IBM is moving to just-in-time manufacturing and electronic ordering in
> an effort to compete with direct-sales PC marketers, reduce costly
> inventory stockpiles, and woo corporate customers. As part of its
> Advanced Fulfillment Initiative, IBM is authorizing a few of its large
> dealers to use its PC factories to assemble customized computers made
> from IBM components and ship them directly to the buyers. While
> dealers have been doing some assembly work on their own since 1995,
> the new strategy will help speed up computer deliveries by eliminating
> the time it was taking IBM to ship partly assembled PCs to dealer
> locations. The company is also initiating a SystemXtra service
> program for corporate buyers that, among other things, allows them to
> upgrade to more powerful computers after 24 months. (Wall Street
> Journal 15 Sep 97) Meanwhile, CompUSA is starting its own
> custom-built PC brand, with prices ranging from $699 to $3,999. The
> computers will be available through its retail stores, on its Web
> site, over a toll-free line, and through its corporate field-sales
> force. "There's a lot of people who want built-to-order computers,"
> says ComUSA's CEO. "If we don't have it, they're going to buy it from
> somebody else." (Wall Street Journal 16 Sep 97)
>
> SEGA, MICROSOFT TO TEAM UP ON HIGH-POWERED VIDEO GAME
> A Japanese newspaper reports that Sega Enterprises and Microsoft are
> collaborating on a 128-bit home video game machine. An official
> agreement likely will be signed next month, say sources. (St.
> Petersburg Times 15 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.
>
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> 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
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> Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American architect Frank Gehry (b.
> 1929), whose latest building is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,
> Spain. In an ecstatic review of Gehry's accomplishment, New York
> Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp says that the building is a
> "sanctuary of free association ...It's a bird, it's a plane, it's
> Superman. It's a ship, an artichoke, the miracle of the rose. A
> first glimpse of the building tells you that the second glimpse is
> going to be different from the first. A second glimpse tells you that
> a third is going to be different still. If there is an order to this
> architecture, it is not one that can be predicted from one or two
> visual slices of its precisely calculated free-form geometry. But the
> building's spirit of freedom is hard to miss." Muschamp calls it
> happily "a shimmering, Looney Tunes, post-industrial, post-everything
> burst of American artistic optimism wrapped in titanium."
>
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