Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB53FAA69@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 12:51:41 -0600
From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 20 November 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 20 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
> Texas Educators See Laptops As The $1.25 Solution
> Armed Robbers Steal Microsoft CD-ROMs And COAs In Scotland
> Sun Says Microsoft Deceives Customers About Java Compatibility
> Weather Forecasting System
>
> ALSO
> Lucent Unveils Smaller, Faster Transistor
> Wireless Cable TV
> AOL Reaches Ten Million Subscribers Now
> Vidal Says Computers Encourage "Lousy, Repetitive Prose"
> Down To The Wire
>
> TEXAS EDUCATORS SEE LAPTOPS AS THE $1.25 SOLUTION
> Faced with $1.8 billion in projected costs for textbooks over the next
> six years, the Texas Board of Education is seriously considering
> replacing textbooks with laptop computers that would be lent to the
> state's 3.7 million students for a cost of $300 million a year. Board
> Chairman Jack Christie, who says "there's no way it would not improve
> student learning," asserts that "a year ago we replaced social studies
> books that still had Ronald Reagan as President, the Berlin Wall
> standing and the Soviet Union as one country. With laptops, you can
> upgrade that for $1.25." (New York Times 19 Nov 97)
>
> ARMED ROBBERS STEAL MICROSOFT CD-ROMs AND COAs IN SCOTLAND
> Four masked men held up a manufacturing facility in Scotland and got
> away with 100,000 CD-ROMs and 200,000 certificates of authority (4x4"
> papers with holographic images, watermarks, special printing, bar
> graphs and serialized numbers) worth millions of dollars. A Microsoft
> executive says: "We are doing everything in our power to ensure that
> counterfeit product resulting from this robbery doesn't reach
> consumers in the United States or elsewhere and that, if it does, the
> trail is tracked straight to the source." (Wall Street Journal 19 Nov
> 97)
>
> SUN SAYS MICROSOFT DECEIVES CUSTOMERS ABOUT JAVA COMPATIBILITY
> Sun has asked a federal judge to forbid Microsoft to use Sun's Java
> logo on its Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser software. Sun claims
> Microsoft is deceiving consumers by printing the "Java compatible"
> logo on its software, and a Sun attorney says: "It's like buying a
> can of Coca-Cola and finding ginger ale inside. The customer trusted
> the brand and was deceived... We are making a simple demand: because
> these Microsoft products do not pass Sun's compatibility tests...
> Microsoft must be stopped from using the Java compatible logo."
> (Financial Times 19 Nov 97)
>
> WEATHER FORECASTING SYSTEM
> IBM is demonstrating a new local weather forecasting system, developed
> in cooperation with the National Weather Service and the National
> Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that can create detailed
> forecasts, accurate down to a three-mile range. Cost of the system
> ranges from $1 million to well over $10 million, depending on how much
> detail is required, how quickly the forecast is needed, and how many
> three-dimensional modeling workstations are required to view the
> results. (San Jose Mercury News 19 Nov 97)
>
> ==============================================
>
> LUCENT UNVEILS SMALLER, FASTER TRANSISTOR
> Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have come up with a
> transistor that is five times faster and one-fourth the size of
> conventional models. The tiny transistor -- about 1,000 times smaller
> than the width of a human hair -- is also a power miser, consuming
> between 60 and 160 times less power than transistors currently in use.
> The company has not said when the new technology will become
> commercially available, but industry experts project such transistors
> to be standard by the year 2010. (Wall Street Journal 20
> Nov 97)
>
> WIRELESS CABLE TV
> BellSouth is now offering a wireless digital TV service that will
> reach about 80% of homes in the New Orleans area and that will be the
> nation's first all-digital TV offering. Though digital satellite
> carriers are not allowed to offer local programs, BellSouth's
> customers will be able to purchase as many as 160 channels at prices
> ranging from $15 to $80 a month. (USA Today19 Nov 97)
>
> AOL REACHES TEN MILLION SUBSCRIBERS NOW
> America Online has exceeded the 10 million-subscriber level by adding
> more than 3 million members in the United States, Canada, Europe and
> Japan over the past year. Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.,
> says AOL's new numbers give it about 20 percent of the world's online
> population and half of the online households in the United States,
> making it a very attractive advertising medium. (AP 18 Nov 97)
>
> VIDAL SAYS COMPUTERS ENCOURAGE "LOUSY, REPETITIVE PROSE"
> Novelist Gore Vidal says his writing would have suffered over the
> years had he been using a computer: "In general, people who write on
> computers don't write nearly as well as those who type or write
> longhand. They become 'easy settlers,' as we used to call movie
> writers who settled for their first notion of a scene. The computer
> page looks too perfect to alter the first time around. Hence, lousy,
> repetitive prose." (Forbes ASAP 1 Dec 97)
>
> DOWN TO THE WIRE
> In hopes of being able to finally show a profit by the end of 1998,
> Wired Digital (publisher of the Wired News Service and the Hotwired
> Web site) is cutting its staff by 20%. The company recently abandoned
> its attempt to offer features focused on health, sports and
> entertainment, and its parent organization, Wired Ventures, recently
> jettisoned its plans to become an independent book publisher. (New
> York Times 20 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.
>
> ************************************************************
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>
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>
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> cummings (if your name is e.e. cummings; 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 the famous mid-20th century American
> lyric poet Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1964), who set his poems in
> unusual typography and always used lower-case letters to write his own
> name. Here are brief excerpts from three of his poems:
>
> (1)
> i thank You God for most this amazing day:
> for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;
> and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes ...
>
> **********************************************
>
> (2)
> dying is fine)but Death
>
>
> o
> baby
> i
>
>
> wouldn't like
>
>
> Death if Death
> were
> good: for
>
>
> when(instead of stopping to think)you
>
>
> begin to feel of it dying
> 's miraculous
> why?be
>
>
> cause dying is
>
>
> perfectly natural;perfectly
> putting
> it mildly lively(but
>
>
> Death
>
>
> is strictly
> scientific ...
>
>
> **********************************************
>
> (3)
> somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience, your
> eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which
> enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near
>
> your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself
> as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
> (touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose
>
>
> ************************************************************
> Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology
> ************************************************************
>
>
>