From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Edupage, 11 February 1999
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 13:53:18 -0600
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Edupage, 11 February 1999. Edupage, a summary of news about information
technology, is provided three times a week as a service of EDUCAUSE, an
international nonprofit association dedicated to transforming higher
education through information technologies.
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TOP STORIES
Professors Need Permission To Download Pornography
Portals -- From Information Bazaars To Shopping Malls?
Free-PC Starts With The Well-To-Do
Service Puts Ads On Competitors' Web Sites
SynopSys Makes Systems-On-A-Chip Design Easier
ETS Suspends Computerized Tests In 20 African Countries
ALSO
Amazon.Com Will Now Disclose Publishing Promotional Deals
Playboy Sues Excite And Netscape For Trademark Infringement
EDS And MCI WorldCom Swap Employees And Services
Internet Math
Honorary Subscriber: Galileo Galilei
PROFESSORS NEED PERMISSION TO DOWNLOAD PORNOGRAPHY
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed a Virginia law
prohibiting state employees from using state-owned computers to access
Internet pornography. The law had been challenged by six professors who
said it infringed on their First Amendment rights and restricted their
ability to do research; for example, several of the professors said the
law hampered their research on human sexuality or their studies of
sexually explicit poetry. The American Civil Liberties Union calls the
ruling an outrageous abridgment of academic freedom. The state attorney
general's position is, "All the professor would have to do is get
permission to download the material, so it's not going to be a
problem... Taxpayers in Virginia should not be forced to pay for state
employees to use state computers on state time to download pornography."
(Washington Post 11 Feb 99)
PORTALS -- FROM INFORMATION BAZAARS TO SHOPPING MALLS?
"Portals have established their place as integral in the online
experience," says Kate Delhagen, director of online retail strategies at
Forrester Research. But today's portals really target the novice user,
hoping to offer enough goodies that the visitor rarely ventures further
out onto the Web. And with users becoming more sophisticated, the
amount of time spent at portal sites will decline as they become nothing
more than a quick jumping off point for savvy Web surfers -- unless, of
course, they transform themselves into shopping centers. "Portals were
built with the expectation that advertising would be the primary revenue
stream. But now, the commerce revenue stream is growing much more
quickly," says Delhagen. "It's quite astonishing how many people use a
portal, and portals are going to have to continue to evolve from a great
information source into a truly value-added service," says Yahoo
president Jeff Mallett. (Reuters 11 Feb 99)
FREE-PC STARTS WITH THE WELL-TO-DO
After announcing its plans on Monday to give away inexpensive PCs to
users in exchange for divulging personal information and agreeing to
watch advertising, startup FreePC Inc. was deluged with 375,000
applications on the first day. The company had planned to distribute
only 10,000 PCs in the first 90 days, starting with people who fit
advertisers' desired demographics. Later on, FreePC hopes to have
enough computers to supply less affluent applicants, says the company's
CEO. (Wall Street Journal 11 Feb 99)
SERVICE PUTS ADS ON COMPETITORS' WEB SITES
More than 100 advertisers, including Amazon.com and CDNow, have signed
up for a service that places their banner ads on their competitors' Web
sites. Alexa Internet offers a service that tracks Internet users'
surfing patterns and then sends them "smart links" to relevant sites.
Users download a toolbar onto their computer screens that delivers
information on different companies' Web sites, including address, number
of Web visitors and financial data. It also delivers ads, targeted so
that they appear only when the user is visiting a designated site.
Thus, Amazon.com can ensure that its ad pops up when the Alexa customer
logs onto barnesandnoble.com or the U.S. Library of Congress. If the ad
is clicked on, it balloons in size, superimposed over the top of the
barnesandnoble.com page. "It's as close as you can get to putting an ad
on somebody's front door," says the COO of Alexa. (Reuters 11 Feb 99)
SYNOPSYS MAKES SYSTEMS-ON-A-CHIP DESIGN EASIER
Today's computer chips can have up to six miles of wiring etched on tiny
slivers of silicon, and the trend toward more wiring is increasing as
designers move toward systems-on-a-chip. Synopsys' Chip Architect
Design Planner purports to revolutionize the chip design process by
solving one of the problems that plagues designers: the Chip Architect
software enables better coordination the timing of the electrical pulses
that must travel along all those miles of wiring. The company's CEO
says the Synopsys Architect product increases the efficiency of the
chip, in the same way that it makes sense to have the dining room
adjacent to the kitchen in a house. Companies that use the Chip
Architect include Toshiba, STMicroelectronics NV, Matsushita and
Siemens. The semiconductor Industry Association predicts that by 2012,
a single chip will house 1 billion transistors, up from an average of 10
million today. (Investor's Business Daily 11 Feb 99)
ETS SUSPENDS COMPUTERIZED TESTS IN 20 AFRICAN COUNTRIES
Following a barrage of complaints, the Educational Testing Service has
decided to suspend computer-based testing in at least 20 African
countries. The numbers of sub-Saharan African students taking the TOEFL
English-language tests had declined by two-thirds following the move
last year from paper-and-pencil to computer-only testing. Officials at
U.S. Information Service posts in Africa had reported that many students
were unable to travel to the "mobile test centers" where the
computerized tests were administered, and many opponents raised concerns
about African students' familiarity with computers: "It is unwise to
force the computerization of sensitive screening tests in Africa until
the infrastructure, student skills and test mechanisms are tried and
tested," says a spokesman for the African Studies Association.
(Chronicle of Higher Education 12 Feb 99)
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AMAZON.COM WILL NOW DISCLOSE PUBLISHING PROMOTIONAL DEALS
Because a number of its customers have indicated their unhappiness about
its recently revealed "e-merchandising" program, online bookseller
Amazon.com will now disclose when book publishers pay the company to
feature titles. A company executive says, "We're always listening to
our customers and it was clear that our customers had a higher
expectation for us than the physical bookselling world." (New York
Times 10 Feb 99)
PLAYBOY SUES EXCITE AND NETSCAPE FOR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT
Playboy Enterprises is suing portal sites Excite and Netscape for
trademark infringement because searches on words trademarked by Playboy,
such as "Playboy" and "Playmate," turn up banner ads for a cluster of
hard-core porn sites that are benefiting from a misappropriation of
Playboy's "good will and reputation." First Amendment lawyer Neil
Shapiro calls the case "a cutting-edge lawsuit" and predicts it will be
precedent-setting. (USA Today 11 Feb 99)
EDS AND MCI WORLDCOM SWAP EMPLOYEES AND SERVICES
In a $1.67 billion deal, computer consulting and services company
Electronic Data Systems and No. 2 long-distance company MCI WorldCom are
trading 13,000 employees and entering into multi-year mutual support
agreements. EDS will acquire the MCI Systemhouse division and acquiring
12,000 MCI employees. MCI WorldCom will acquire 1,000 EDS workers. EDS
will provide computer services for MCI and MCI will provide telecom
services for EDS and its customers. (San Jose Mercury News 11 Feb 99)
INTERNET MATH
The stock of Internet portal company Lycos fell rather than rose after
the firm's merger with the much larger media company USA Networks,
because the merger deflated the hopes of Lycos investors. Industry
analyst Saul Hansell says, "The deal means that Lycos shareholders will
go from owning 100% of a company with $75 million in revenue to owning
30% of a company with $1.5 billion in 1998 sales. Which is better? If
this were a 4th-grade math problem, the right answer would be that
having a smaller piece of a much bigger pie is clearly superior." But
this is the Internet, and "even the best reality cannot compete with
fantasy. Suddenly, the stakes in a small, rapidly growing company with
seemingly infinite potential have become shares in a finite and
measurable enterprise." (New York times 10 Feb 99)
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: GALILEO GALILEI
Today's Honorary Subscriber is one of the giants of the history of
science (but a troublesome undergraduate), Galileo Galilei. See the
very end of today's 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 EDUCAUSE CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS:
The Higher Education Financial Executive Symposium, Feb 21-23, 1999,
Arlington, Virginia. http://www.nacubo.org/website/events.html.
Sponsored by NACUBO and EDUCAUSE.
The Council of Independent Colleges and EDUCAUSE, Mar 25-27, 1999,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. http://www.cic.edu/conferences/
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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the great Italian astronomer and
mathematician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). At the University of Padua,
he improved the refracting telescope and was the first to use it in
astronomy; he was also the first to see sunspots, the four main
satellites of Jupiter, mountains and craters on the moon, and the
appearance of Venus going through phases.
Before long, he came to the conclusion that the Copernican
Sun-centered theory of the universe had been right, and the Aristotelian
Earth-centered theory wrong. Too bad for Galileo. The authorities were
scandalized, and Galileo was forced to recant by the Inquisition. He
was under house arrest in his last years, and eventually went totally
blind.
Naturally rebellious and without benefit of modern career guidance
counseling, Galileo's college education got off on the wrong foot. His
father, a musician, wanted his son to do something that would earn more
money, and made him study medicine. Galileo was not a happy freshman
undergraduate. Biographer James Reston Jr. writes:
"Ironically, medicine came under the heading of the arts, and this
was apt since the profession still contained a large element of faith
and hocus-pocus. During the first year, theory was stressed. Galileo
got a heavy does of Aristotle's natural philosophy, Galen's physiology,
and Avicenna's theory of recovery, along with further grounding in
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew... Soon enough, Galileo's likes and dislikes
were evident. The tedious emphasis on outdated classical authors
annoyed him, and in certain disquisitions he could see that the Greeks
were not only irrelevant but wrong...
"His regular professors did not appreciate his outspokenness but
regarded it as disrespect. They tagged the medical student with the
unflattering label of 'the wrangler," as if he delighted in arguing
about anything simply for the fun of it and in the secret hope of making
the distinguished professors look ridiculous... His absence from core
lectures became a serious problem. In due course the university
informed his family that their son was in danger of flunking out, and
his father could see his hopes for his son vanishing."
But after some discussions, a decision was made to allow the
delinquent young man to switch majors. He went into mathematics, and
the rest is (as the saying goes) history.
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EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to
transforming higher education through information technologies
************************************************************