Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB53FAA5D@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 14:51:09 -0600
From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 18 November 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 18 November 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
> U.S Regains Supercomputer Lead
> Apple Courting New CEO?
> Sun On Fast Track For Java Standard
> MasterCard, AT&T To Build Private Network
>
> ALSO
> Randomly Groovy
> Microsoft Doubles Share Of Browser Market
> Intergraph Sues Intel Over Patents
> Information Technology Is Nation's Largest Industry
> Graves Says Instructional Technology Won't Work Without A
> Market
>
> U.S REGAINS SUPERCOMPUTER LEAD
> A study by researchers at the University of Tennessee and the
> University of Mannheim indicates that the U.S. has built 16 of the
> world's 20 fastest supercomputers, with the other 4 built by Japanese
> companies. A year ago, the Japanese had the 3 fastest supercomputers
> and 10 of the fastest supercomputers were made in Japan. Currently,
> the world's fastest computer is a massively parallel processing
> machine built by Intel using 9,152 Pentium P6 processors and capable
> of a speed of more than 1.3 trillion mathematical operations per
> second. In parallel processing, a large problem is broken up into
> many small pieces, and the various pieces are solved simultaneously
> ("in parallel") by a massively large number of small processors. Only
> one of the 20 fastest computers is a traditional vector machine which
> has one or several high-speed processors. (New York Times 17 Nov 97)
>
> APPLE COURTING NEW CEO?
> Oracle CEO and Apple Computer board member Larry Ellison says that
> Apple is very close to making an offer to the top candidate for the
> Apple CEO job: "We're getting close. We have someone we like very
> much... He's really terrific." Ellison also says Apple will develop
> a low-cost network computer, and that the key to Apple's future is the
> existing Mac OS, not Rhapsody (the next-generation Mac operating
> system). He predicts that network computers will eventually supersede
> PCs in the computer marketplace, thanks to their adaptability and
> easy upgrade capabilities. "The PC is truly a device that only an
> engineer can love." (InfoWorld Electric 14 Nov 97)
>
> SUN ON FAST TRACK FOR JAVA STANDARD
> Sun Microsystems' request to make its Java software an official
> technical standard has received a majority of favorable votes from
> member countries of the International Organization for Standardization
> in Geneva. The move is part of Sun's strategy to encourage adoption
> among overseas governments and businesses, many of which will use only
> ISO-approved technologies. A Sun spokeswoman said the company had
> received unofficial notice that only two of the countries voting, the
> U.S. and China, had voted against the proposal, with 19 for and 2
> abstaining. (Wall Street Journal 17 Nov 97)
>
> MASTERCARD, AT&T TO BUILD PRIVATE NETWORK
> MasterCard International is working with AT&T in building a 70-country
> virtual private network to replace its X.25 packet-switching network.
> The credit card company anticipates reducing transaction waiting times
> in half for its 23,000 financial institutions. In the first year
> alone, the combined times savings for companies that use credit card
> terminals is expected to total 47 years. The new IP-based network
> will enable MasterCard to increase and decrease capacity as needed,
> expanding for peak times like the Christmas holidays, and shrinking
> when buying subsides. In addition to flexibility, the network is
> considered a key component of MasterCard's strategy for the future of
> electronic money. "It has to be anywhere, on time, and every time,"
> says a senior VP with the company. "Unlike in the credit-card
> business, there is absolutely no means for failure." (Information Week
> 16 Nov 97)
>
> ==================================================
>
> RANDOMLY GROOVY
> Scientists at Silicon Graphics have taken the mesmerizing flow of the
> lava lamp to the next level of utility -- using the favorite fixtures
> of the '60s to generate truly random numbers, something computers
> cannot do. The process involves using a digital camera to snap
> periodic shots of six oozing cylinders, combining those images with
> electronic noise and converting it into 1s and 0s, and then using the
> Secure Hash Algorithm from the National Institute of Standards and
> Technologies to compress and scramble the binary string to create a
> seed value for a standard random-number generator. (Scientific
> American Nov 97)
>
> MICROSOFT DOUBLES SHARE OF BROWSER MARKET
> Over the past nine months, Microsoft has doubled its share of the
> Internet browser market to 40%, up from 20% at the end of 1996,
> according to a Dataquest survey. Arch rival Netscape still leads with
> close to 58%, but that's down from 73% earlier. "If Microsoft's
> growth in browser share continues, Dataquest projects Internet
> Explorer to reach parity with Netscape Navigator as early as the
> second quarter of 1998,'' says a Dataquest analyst. "The important
> battle to watch is the change by version -- particularly, will
> Navigator version 3 users move to Navigator version 4, or will they
> choose Internet Explorer, or both?'' Microsoft is currently under
> investigation by the Justice Department over the bundling of its
> Internet Explorer 4.0 software into its Windows operating system. (AP
> 18 Nov 97)
>
> INTERGRAPH SUES INTEL OVER PATENTS
> Intergraph Corp. has sued Intel in federal court, charging the
> chipmaker with a "systematic campaign of coercion" and violation of
> contracts and patents. Intel has countersued, alleging that
> Intergraph's patents are invalid and that it wasn't infringing on them
> anyway. The two companies have been discussing their differences for
> months, but Intergraph apparently decided to sue after Intel refused
> to help fix a bug Intergraph engineers found in Intel's Pentium II
> chip. Intergraph enlisted the aid of another company to help it,
> which resulted in Intel warning that company that it would be
> violating its contract with Intel if it worked with Intergraph.
> Intergraph is seeking monetary damages in the suit. Separately, Intel
> has filed suit against Silicon Storage Technology Inc., alleging
> infringement of Intel's flash-memory chip patents. (Wall Street
> Journal 18 Nov 97)
>
> INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IS NATION'S LARGEST INDUSTRY
> A study based on Commerce Department data and sponsored by the
> American Electronics Association (AEA) and the Nasdaq stock market
> says that the field of information technology (including both
> computing and telecommunications) is now the nation's largest
> industry, ahead of construction, food products, and automobile
> manufacturing. And the AEA's president took the occasion of the
> study's release to urge lawmakers to learn more about technology:
> "Whether we like it or not, high-technology issues are going to be
> front and center in Washington and in state capitals during the next
> few years. At the state and national level, policy makers have a lot
> of positive impressions about the high-technology industry, but often
> very little knowledge of it. The biggest public policy threat to the
> high-technology field is the ignorance of technology and of how these
> industries work." (New York Times 18 Nov 97)
>
> GRAVES SAYS INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY WON'T WORK WITHOUT A MARKET
> William H. Graves, who recently left the University of North Carolina
> at Chapel Hill to form the Learning Technology Research Institute in
> the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, says that the use of
> technology in the classroom will never become routine unless
> businesses get involved in it, much as publishers now produce
> textbooks. Graves is also senior vice president of Collegis, a
> consulting company specializing in the academic market sector.
> (Chronicle Of Higher Education 21 Nov 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 William Holmes McGuffey (if your name is William
> Holmes McGuffey; 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 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 William
> Holmes McGuffey (if your name is William Holmes McGuffey; otherwise,
> substitute your own name).
>
> Translations & Archives... Edupage is translated into Estonian,
> French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Hungarian, Korean, Lithuanian,
> Portuguese, Slovak and Spanish.
>
> Don't miss the 21st Annual CAUSE Conference on Information Resources
> in Higher Education, December 2-5, 1997. Walt Disney World Dolphin
> Hotel, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. CAUSE and Educom are exploring the
> possibility of a merger. See:
> http://www.cause.org/conference/c97/c97.html.
>
> Today's Honorary Subscriber is Reverend William Holmes McGuffey
> (1800-1873), who fought illiteracy before illiteracy became
> reengineered into computer illiteracy. A professor and administrator
> at various colleges and universities (Cincinnati College, Ohio
> University, Miami University, and the University of Virginia), this
> graduate of what was then Washington University and Jefferson College
> in Virginia became interested in public-school reform, and the result
> of that interest was creation of the famous "McGuffey Readers" that
> molded many generations of Americans. His first reader (1841)
> introduces children in 55 lessons to McGuffey's ethical code (a child
> is prompt, good, kind, honest and truthful). The second reader
> contained reading and spelling with 85 lessons, 16 pictures and 166
> pages, in which it outlined history, biology, astronomy, zoology,
> botany, table manners, behavior toward family, attitudes toward God
> and teachers, the poor; the great and the good. When he was finished,
> McGuffey had produced six of his little "readers" containing
> selections from a very wide range of different literary sources.
>
> ************************************************************
> Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology
> ************************************************************
>
>
>
>