Message-Id: <55206A473154D011924D0020AFF7ACB549D1F2@mail1.oulan.ou.edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 11:07:34 -0600
From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@ou.edu'" <it-fyi@ou.edu>
Subject: Edupage, 11 December 1997
> ************************************************************
> Edupage, 11 December 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
> Technology Partnership Causing Stir At Cal State
> Seven Countries Unite In Fight Against Cybercrime
> Sun Activator Melts Microsoft Java Threat
> Nielsen Pegs Internet Users At 58 Million
>
> ALSO
> U S West And Time Warner In Bid To Offer Cable Net Access
> Ameritech And Microsoft To Offer High-Speed Internet Access
> Vandal Posts Ransom Note On Yahoo
> Do Cell Phones Affect Learning?
>
> TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP CAUSING STIR AT CAL STATE
> Heated debates are taking place throughout the 23-campus California
> State University system over a university plan to join with corporate
> partners Fujitsu, Hughes Electronics, GTE, and Microsoft in forming a
> corporation to administer the system's technology infrastructure and
> to manage procurement, user help desks, and other activities related
> to information technology. David J. Ernst, the university
> administrator in charge of the system's integrated-technology
> strategy, says the idea was a creative response to state government's
> refusal to allow the institutions to charge students a technology fee
> to fund necessary upgrades to the infrastructure. The ot-yet-final
> plan calls for the university system to transfer its $80-90-million
> annual information technology budget to the California Education
> Technology Initiative (CETI), which will then borrow money to pay for
> improvements and be responsible for the resulting debt. Current
> members of the university's technical support staff will have their
> salaries paid by CETI. The current campus furor revolves around
> charges by some faculty members and students that the deal, which
> provides the companies a ready way to market their wares to the
> academic community, will give too much control to corporations and
> thereby change the character" of the university system. But a
> statement from Cal State officials promises: "Nothing in the proposed
> final partnership agreement will shift campus authority for academic
> policies and programs to the partnership." According to the plan,
> CETI will begin operations in January and continue for at least ten
> years. (Chronicle of Higher Education 10 Dec 97)
>
> SEVEN COUNTRIES UNITE IN FIGHT AGAINST CYBERCRIME
> U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and counterparts in Canada, France,
> Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom have agreed to
> work together to police the "new frontier of crime" represented by
> computers and computer networks. Reno says: "We know now that a
> criminal can sit in one country and disrupt a computer system in
> another country thousands of miles away. If we are to keep up with
> cybercrime, we must work together as never before... Each nation has
> committed to develop faster ways to trace attacks coming through
> computer networks so that we can quickly identify the hacker or
> criminal who is responsible." (AP 11 Dec 97)
>
> SUN ACTIVATOR MELTS MICROSOFT JAVA THREAT
> Sun Microsystems has come up with a piece of software called
> Activator, which is designed to compensate for any incompatibilities
> that emerge between the Microsoft version of Java used in its Internet
> Explorer browser and programs written in the "official" Java language.
> The Activator program works by scanning a user's computer and
> automatically downloading Java Virtual Machine software from Sun's Web
> site if it doesn't find it already installed -- a procedure that
> "sounds like Big Brother technology," says a Microsoft general
> manager. A Gartner Group analyst calls the move " a direct assault on
> Microsoft," and says it likely will succeed because it will make it
> more attractive for software developers to create Java programs by
> restoring Java's one-code-fits-all-platforms appeal. (Wall Street
> Journal 10 Dec 97)
>
> NIELSEN PEGS INTERNET USERS AT 58 MILLION
> A new survey by Nielsen Media Research in cooperation with
> CommerceNet, based on interviews with more than 9,000 people,
> indicates that some 58 million adults in the U.S. and Canada are now
> online. This is the largest number estimate so far of adult Internet
> usage, and indicates a 15% increase over the 51 million estimated by
> Nielsen six months ago. Several other market research firms, using
> older data, have put the number at 35 million to 45 million adult
> users in the U.S. alone. In addition to overall user numbers, the
> Nielsen survey indicates that the number of people who've bought
> something over the Internet has increased 50% in the past six months,
> to nearly 10 million. More than half the respondents said they'd been
> online within 24 hours of the interview, and about 20% to 25% of Web
> users said they go online every day. (Wall Street Journal 11 Dec 97)
>
> ==============================================
>
> U S WEST AND TIME WARNER IN BID TO OFFER CABLE NET ACCESS
> A subsidiary of U S West -- MediaOne Express -- is merging with Time
> Warner's Road Runner to offer cable subscribers high-speed Internet
> access. The joint venture will begin operation in the first quarter of
> 1998: "MediaOne has built the high-speed backbone, and Time Warner has
> built the content, to this is a complementary fit," says MediaOne's
> executive VP. The new company, which has yet to be named, will go
> head-to-head with @Home, which has focused on selling high-speed
> Internet access and content to cable TV companies. The MediOne-Time
> Warner entity initially plans to target small and medium-size
> businesses for its services. (TechWeb 10 Dec 97)
>
> AMERITECH AND MICROSOFT TO OFFER HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS
> Ameritech, the mid-western Bell regional telephone company, is forming
> a partnership with Microsoft to offer Internet access up to 50 times
> faster than the standard 28.8-Kbps modems. (AP 10 Dec 97)
>
> VANDAL POSTS RANSOM NOTE ON YAHOO
> A network vandal broke into the Yahoo Web site for several minutes
> Monday night to post a note instructing the government to release the
> prisoner Kevin Mitnick, who is serving time for having used phones and
> computers to break into corporate, government and university computer
> systems. Although the vandal claimed to have implanted a "logic
> bomb/worm" on the Yahoo site, no virus was found, and the security
> breach was discovered and patched immediately. (NYT Cybertimes 7 Dec
> 97)
>
> DO CELL PHONES AFFECT LEARNING?
> European regulators are taking a hard look at research by University
> of Washington professor Henry Lai that indicates exposure to microwave
> radiation hampered the ability of lab rats to learn a maze. Lai found
> that exposing the rats to 45 minutes of microwave radiation similar to
> levels that might be absorbed by a typical cell phone user slowed the
> rats' ability to master the task. The effects of the waves could be
> ameliorated by pretreating the rats with drugs that target two
> neurochemical systems in the brain -- the endogenous opioid system and
> the cholinergic system, leading Lai to propose that these systems are
> affected by microwave-frequency fields. The Wireless Technology
> Research Group, an industry-funded group, is now planning its own
> experiments. Meanwhile, at least one company in Germany already began
> advertising "low-radiation" cell phones this past summer. (Scientific
> American Dec 97)
>
> 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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> Today's Honorary Subscriber is Soeren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the
> Danish existentialist philosopher who argued that no system of thought
> could explain the unique experience of the individual. Among his
> works are "Either/Or" and "The Concept Of Dread." Kierkegaard gave
> considerable thought to the problem of getting people to pay
> attention: "In all eternity it is impossible for me to compel a
> person to accept an opinion, a conviction, a belief. But one thing I
> can do: I can compel him to take notice. In one sense this is the
> first thing; for it is the condition antecedent to the next thing,
> i.e., the acceptance of an opinion, a conviction, a belief. In
> another sense it is the last -- if, that is, he will not take the next
> step." The scholar Derek L. Phillips comments: "How does one do this?
> How do we compel someone to take notice? Kierkegaard says that one
> must be indirect, that one might have to use 'deception.' The reason
> for this, Kierkegaard argues, is that direct communication is often
> almost impossible. If the individual whom one wishes to have take
> notice is to be affected by our utterances, he must first be receptive
> to our communications. Often, however, his ability to receive is
> disturbed. In such cases, Kierkegaard states, we must resort to
> deception. What does he mean when he speaks of deception? 'It means
> that one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to
> communicate,' Kierkegaard tells us, 'but begins by accepting the other
> man's illusion as good money.'"
>
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