From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Edupage, 23 July 1998
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:57:41 -0500
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Edupage, 23 July 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information
technology, is provided three times a week as a service of EDUCAUSE, a
consortium of leading colleges and universities seeking to transform
education through the use of information technologies. The organization
has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
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TOP STORIES
Senate Passes Bills To Fight Pornography
UNC-Chapel Hill Says, "Buy Big Blue"
Internet Domain Name Disputes Should Be Settled Online
Y2K OK On Wall Street
Online Privacy Alliance Seeks To Make Web Secure
ALSO
Ballmer Moves Up At Microsoft
Seagate's Founder Ousted
Starting Line-Up For Digital Baseball Cards
Motorola Phones Shrink In Size, Grow In Power
Honorary Subscriber
SENATE PASSES BILLS TO FIGHT PORNOGRAPHY
The U.S. Senate has passed two new bills intended to protect children
from being exposed to pornography on the Internet. One bill, sponsored
by John McCain (R-Ariz.), would require schools and libraries that
receive federal funding for discounted Internet access to use software
filters to screen out pornography; the other bill, sponsored by Dan
Coats (R-Ind.), would make it a crime (with penalties up to $50,000) for
commercial Web site operators to distribute pornography to minors.
Barry Steinhardt of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says, "The McCain
bill, while well-intentioned is based on the mistaken premise that you
can create filtering software that will work with enough precision to
block out material on the Internet." A number of cases have been
reported in which important information on, for example, breast cancer,
has been made inaccessible because it contains words (like "breast")
which can be used with a sexual connotation. (New York Times 22 Jul 98)
UNC-CHAPEL HILL SAYS, "BUY BIG BLUE"
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is recommending to its
students that they purchase their computers from IBM, once the school's
mandatory-laptop policy goes into effect in 2000. The school also
expects to buy some $16-million worth of computers from IBM over the
next four years. The deal will enable the school to offer students very
competitive prices on laptops conforming to certain technical standards
(which have not yet been determined because of the rapid changes in
technology). Meanwhile, IBM has promised the university $2.5 million in
grants for computer equipment and research, but the school's Vice
Chancellor for information technology said the grants did not influence
their decision to go with Big Blue. Sean Rush, general manager of IBM's
North American higher-education division, said the grants were a
continuation of the company's "long-standing research relationship with
UNC," and that university officials were forbidden by law to consider
such grants when selecting vendors. IBM's prices were as much as $1,400
below bids from other vendors. (Chronicle of Higher Education 24 Jul 98)
INTERNET DOMAIN NAME DISPUTES SHOULD BE SETTLED ONLINE
The World Intellectual Property Organization is developing an Online
Expedited Arbitration Service that will allow companies to conduct their
entire arbitration process, including administration fees, documentation
and evidence, over the Internet. The service is expected to host its
first legal case in September, but WIPO anticipates that its use could
expand beyond domain name cases to include other types of disputes, such
as complaints by online purchasers of faulty goods. Using the service
will cost about $300 an hour, and plans to eventually include voice and
video communications are being considered. (TechWeb 23 Jul 98)
Y2K OK ON WALL STREET
A ten-day-long test by the Securities Industry Association's Year 2000
project found no problems during a simulation involving 29 brokerage
firms, all major stock exchanges, and the corporations that conduct
trades for them. Project manager Leslie Tortora hopes that the success
of the project will encourage a similar effort by telephone companies,
and says: "People are feeling good. An enormous amount of energy and
preparation has gone into making this successful." (New York Times 23
Jul 98)
ONLINE PRIVACY ALLIANCE SEEKS TO MAKE WEB SECURE
A group of about 50 high-tech companies and trade groups is advocating a
new system that would enable Web site operators to display a seal
indicating their sites complied with privacy guidelines for the
collection, use and disclosure of personal information online. The
Online Privacy Alliance, as the group is called, includes America
Online, IBM and Time Warner, among others. Government officials, who
are considering legislation to protect privacy online, say they're
encouraged by the proposal, but want to see how the plan would be
implemented. "They certainly have come a long way from where we were 60
days ago," says FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky. "But the real issue is
going to be seeing how this plays out in the real world; we want to see
how they're going to take it forward." (Wall Street Journal 22 Jul 98)
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BALLMER MOVES UP AT MICROSOFT
Microsoft has a new president: chief salesman Steven A. Ballmer, who
will take over much of the day-to-day management of the company from
chairman Bill Gates. Gates says, "I'm not backing off at all in terms
of my commitment to Microsoft. I want to get in there and work with our
software developers. I want to spend more time to help drive our
breakthroughs." (New York Times 22 Jul 98)
SEAGATE'S FOUNDER OUSTED
Seagate CEO Alan Shugart, often referred to as the father of the modern
computer disk-drive industry, has been fired by his board of directors,
to be replaced by Stephen Luczo, the company's president and chief
operating officer. Shugart is credited with being a major force behind
the phenomenal growth of disk-drive storage capacity, which has
increased approximately 60% a year, outpacing even the growth rate of
semiconductor computing power. "I have no idea what they were
thinking," says Shugart. "I'm not very happy." (Wall Street Journal 22
Jul 98)
STARTING LINE-UP FOR DIGITAL BASEBALL CARDS
Baseball cards are morphing into multimedia format, with two sets of
stars available from Silicon Valley startup CyberAction and Major League
Baseball Properties. The downloadable sets consist of four stars each,
and each card can be "clicked" on to reveal full-motion and audio clips,
player stats and personal data. The initial sets feature sluggers Mark
McGwire, Ken Griffey Jr., Tino Martinez and Matt Williams, and pitchers
Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson.
(Broadcasting & Cable 13 Jul 98)
MOTOROLA PHONES SHRINK IN SIZE, GROW IN POWER
Motorola has developed a 2.7 ounce digital wireless phone (and about the
size of a large pack of chewing gum) capable of 160 minutes of talk time
and up to 160 hours of standby power. It will be available next year.
(USA Today 22 Jul 98)
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is William of Ockham. For details, see the
very bottom of Edupage.
Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl@educause.edu) and Suzanne Douglas
(douglas@educause.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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UPCOMING CONFERENCES SPONSORED BY EDUCAUSE: SEMINARS ON ACADEMIC
COMPUTING (SAC), "Scaling IT Up: The Integration Challenge," August
9-12, 1998, Snowmass Village, Colorado;
http://www.educause.edu/sac/sac98/sac98.html
EDUCOM '98, "Making the Connections," October 13-16, 1998, Orlando,
Florida, http://www.educause.edu/conference/e98/.index.html
CAUSE98, "The Networked Academy," December 8-11, 1998, Seattle,
Washington, http://www.educause.edu/conference/c98/c98.html
$1,000 PRIZE FOR EDUPAGE & EDUCOM REVIEW STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST
Edupage and Educom Review are sponsoring a student contest for
previously unpublished essays discussing any educational,
organizational, social, or cultural aspect of technology now or in the
future. The prize for best essay is $1,000. Deadline is July 31, 1998
and entries must be limited to 1500 words or less. Each entry must be
sent inside an e-mail message in ascii text (in English) addressed to
er-editors@educause.edu. Entries will be evaluated for originality,
insight, and clarity of presentation. Decisions will be made by John
Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, the editors of Edupage and Educom Review. All
decisions will be final. Entrants must be enrolled as full-time or
part-time graduate or undergraduate students in any discipline at some
institution of post-secondary education, anywhere in the world.
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[Note: Edupage editors John Gehl & Suzanne Douglas also write the
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U.S.; send mail to er-subs@educause.edu.
CAUSE/EFFECT ... is a quarterly publication serving as a practitioner's
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EDUCAUSE Online is a new weekly e-mail notification system, sent each
Monday, that will summarize news and information found that week on the
EDUCAUSE Web site. It is the perfect way to stay on top of matters
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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER Today's Honorary Subscriber is William of Ockham
(c.1300-1349), the English philosopher, theologian, logician, political
writer and Franciscan monk whose name is honored in the principle called
"Ockham's razor" (also called the principle of parsimony), which states
that "Entities shall not be multiplied beyond necessity" and means that
in scientific proofs you should always search for the simplest
hypothesis and never make more assumptions than you absolutely need.
Get out your Ockham's razor and cut, cut, cut.
Is the principle always valid? The philosopher A.R. Lacey says:
"Adoption of this principle, though seemingly obvious, leads to problems
about the role of simplicity in science, especially when we are choosing
between hypotheses that are not (or are not known to be) equivalent.
There are often different and clashing criteria for what is the simplest
hypothesis, and it is not clear whether a simpler hypothesis is pro
tanto more likely to be true; and if not, what justification other than
laziness there is for adopting it."
Because of his controversial views, Ockham (the name is sometimes
spelled Occam) never completed his undergraduate degree at Oxford. Pope
John XXII summoned him to Avignon to answer charges of heresy and to
defend the Franciscan preference for living in poverty. Ockham fled to
Bavaria, was excommunicated, and wrote political documents disputing
papal claims to have civil authority.
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EDUCAUSE -- Transforming Education Through Information Technologies
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