Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB53FAA93@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 13:32:33 -0600
From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 25 November 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 25 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
> Government May Tighten Encryption Rules
> Microsoft, Intel Rethink NC
> Dow Jones To Charge For Online Quotes
> Netscape To Buy Kiva
>
> ALSO
> Learning How We Learn
> Cyber Hate-Speech Case Ends In Mistrial
> Microsoft Releases Rival Firm From Unix Royalties
> Not So Helpful At The Help Desk
>
> GOVERNMENT MAY TIGHTEN ENCRYPTION RULES
> The Clinton Administration is considering a policy that would put new
> restrictions on the ability of financial institutions to use the
> strongest available encryption technologies to protect electronic
> transactions. In favor of such restrictions: Law enforcement agencies
> worried about strong encryption being used by terrorists and
> criminals, and traditional banks, which want a narrow definition of
> what a financial institution is. Opposed: Software companies,
> securities firms and Internet startups offering financial services
> that were formerly provided only by banks. (New York Times 24 Nov 97)
>
> MICROSOFT, INTEL RETHINK NC
> After spurning the Network Computer concept, and coming out with a
> slimmed-down NetPC instead, Microsoft and Intel now are exploring the
> possibility of manufacturing a diskless version that would download
> modified Windows NT 5.0 software from a server. The new effort is
> being billed as a "logical extension" of the NetPC, which some
> industry insiders say has not been selling up to expectations. One
> analyst for Goldman Sachs & Co. notes that the new machine could give
> the Java NCs from Sun Microsystems stiff competition: "There is a lot
> of interest in a thin client that could still have a Windows desktop.
> This would co-opt NCs by providing Windows compatibility." Meanwhile,
> Novell CEO Eric Schmidt says: "What Microsoft and Intel did is they
> took the NC and they refined it into an NC plus all the applications
> you already use, a very clever marketing strategy. The thing missing
> in their strategy was... that the real problem with the NC and the
> personal computer as they exist today is in the back end, not the
> front
> end." (Computer Reseller News 22 Nov 97)
>
> DOW JONES TO CHARGE FOR ONLINE QUOTES
> Dow Jones says it will renegotiate contracts with more than 50 outside
> companies that use its online and electronic services to distribute
> industrial average quotes to customers. A company spokesman says the
> change is intended to offset expenses it will incur as it moves to
> become the sole provider of industrial average calculations. Critics
> of the new scheme say they can access other indicators for tracking
> the stock market for free, such as Standard & Poor's 500-stock index,
> but meanwhile, S&P says they're
> keeping "a keen eye" on the Dow Jones situation. (Wall Street Journal
> 25 Nov 97)
>
> NETSCAPE TO BUY KIVA
> Netscape Communications will acquire Kiva Software for $180 million in
> stock, a move that will give the Web browser company a leg up in the
> enterprise network market. Kiva makes software that enables companies
> to link partners, distributors, suppliers and customers and use
> large-scale applications over networks based on Internet standards.
> "If you want to deploy mission-critical applications with very high
> throughput, then you need something like Kiva. They don't have a
> parallel in the marketplace today," says a VP at the Internet Shopping
> Network. (InfoWorld Electric 25 Nov 97)
>
> ===============================================
>
> LEARNING HOW WE LEARN
> The National Science Foundation's new Learning and Intelligent Systems
> initiative is aimed at determining how learning takes place and how
> technology can help that process along. Grants worth more than $22.5
> million have been awarded to 28 institutions for research on how
> animals and babies learn from the environment around them, and how
> older humans learn theoretical concepts that have not been directly
> experienced and then transfer those concepts to situations outside the
> original learning context. The unifying theme of the Learning and
> Intelligent Systems project, says a UCLA researcher, "is the
> interaction between the structure of the brain's learning mechanisms
> and the structure of the data that support that learning." One NSF
> organizer says some research will also be directed at developing new
> technologies that will better measure prior knowledge, thereby
> providing a shortcut in retraining people for a changing workplace.
> (Los Angeles Times 24 Nov 97)
>
> CYBER HATE-SPEECH CASE ENDS IN MISTRIAL
> The jury trial of a 20-year-old Latino man who, after flunking out of
> the University of California at Irvine, sent mail to 59 Asian
> university students telling them that they were responsible for all
> crime on the campus and vowing to "kill everyone of you personally,"
> deadlocked with a vote of 9 to 3 jurors in favor of acquittal. The
> prosecution charged: "He thinks Asians get better grades, and blames
> them for his failure. He needed a scapegoat." The defense argued:
> "He sent it because he was bored. He
> wanted someone to talk to. He wanted someone to talk to him... [He]
> is not a member of the KKK. He is not a member of any hate group. He
> has no guns or arsenal at homes. There is evidence to show that he
> was bored." (New York Times 25 Nov 97)
>
> MICROSOFT RELEASES RIVAL FIRM FROM UNIX ROYALTIES
> Microsoft has said that competing software company Santa Cruz
> Operation won't have to pay the royalties stipulated in a 1987
> contract that required it to include Microsoft code in future versions
> of its Unix operating system, and to pay the royalties whether or not
> it used the code. Santa Cruz had brought the matter before the
> European Commission, which determined the contract violated European
> laws governing competition. Santa Cruz, one of the few remaining
> independent operating system software makers, says the new arrangement
> will enable it create a new version of Unix without including
> Microsoft technology, which it says serves no purpose in the new
> product. Under the terms of the 1987 contract, it would have had to
> pay Microsoft about $15 a copy on all Unix products. (Wall Street
> Journal 24 Nov 97)
>
> NOT SO HELPFUL AT THE HELP DESK
> A temporary employee fired last Spring from the "help desk" of Forbes,
> the magazine publishing company, for "rude and abusive" behavior, has
> been charged by federal prosecutors for "a serious act of computer
> sabotage" that caused more than $100,000 damage to the company's
> computer system. If convicted, the man faces up to five years in
> prison for his act of revenge.
> (CyberTimes 25 Nov 97)
>
> The next issue of Edupage will be Sunday 30 November 1997. Edupage is
> written by John Gehl (gehl@educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas
> (douglas@educom.edu). Telephone: 770-590-1017.
>
> Technical support for distributing Edupage is provided by Information
> Technology Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
> Hill.
>
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> Coming up next week! 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 Honoroary Subscribers are the science fiction writers Robert
> A. Heinlein (1908-1988) and E.E. "Doc" Smith (1890-1965). Heinlein
> was author of the 1959 novel "Starship Troopers" (which featured
> cybernetic "powered (battle)suits" not shown in the recent movie) and
> the 1966 "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" with one of the earliest
> depictions of a sentient computer in fiction. Doc Smith, designed
> pastry mixes by day (except during WWII, when he designed land mines)
> and by night invented interstellar warfare in his "Skylark" and
> "Lensman" novels. Of particular interest is the 1935 novel "Skylark
> of Valeron," for which he conceptualized a one-cubic mile "Brain"
> operating by high-energy particle beams.
>
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