From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Edupage, 28 March 1999
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 16:09:18 -0600
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Edupage, 28 March 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
Watch Out For Melissa Virus
eBay Cuts Marketing Deal With AOL
Ericsson, Qualcomm Sign Peace Treaty
Utility.Com Powers Up The Web
Bricks-N-Mortar Vs. The Internet Mall
ALSO
Prediction Of Continued Internet Growth
Mitnick Gets Four-Year Sentence
Y2K Advice: Prepare But Don't Panic
Cost Of Online Stock Quotes Cut In Half
Honorary Subscriber: Warren Buffett
WATCH OUT FOR MELISSA VIRUS
A rapidly spreading computer virus called Melissa, enclosed in an e-mail
message with a subject line such as "Important Message From ... [the
name of someone you probably know]," is being circulated on the
Internet. Attached to the message is 40K Microsoft Word document named
"list.doc." A computer affected by the virus generates 50 copies of the
message and attachment and distributes them to persons found on the
user's address book. To avoid the virus, simply DO NOT open the
attachment that accompanies the e-mail. A fix for dealing with the
virus can be obtained at http://www.sendmail.com. (New York Times 28
Mar 99)
EBAY CUTS MARKETING DEAL WITH AOL
Online auctioneer eBay Inc. has agreed to pay America Online $75 million
over four years in exchange for a "prominent presence" on AOL's Web
sites. The new agreement, which significantly expands the companies'
existing alliance, gives eBay greater access to AOL's 16 million
members, and ties AOL more closely to one of the Web's most popular
sites for electronic commerce. As part of the arrangement, AOL's sales
force will be selling a co-branded site, dubbed "eBay at AOL." eBay
also plans to sell about $1 billion of stock, in the largest such
offering to date by an Internet business. (Wall Street Journal 26 Mar
99)
ERICSSON, QUALCOMM SIGN PEACE TREATY
Rival wireless phone makers Ericsson and Qualcomm have announced a
resolution to their long-running technology dispute, which pitted the
manufacturers against each other in what has often been described as a
wireless "holy war." The companies have settled their patent litigation
and will cross-license their digital technologies. They also have
pledged to back a single digital wireless standard that will be
compatible with current leading technologies in Europe and the U.S. The
truce signals an end to the ongoing incompatibility issues surrounding
three competing digital wireless standards -- CDMA (code division
multiple access), TDMA (time division multiple access) and GSM (global
system for mobile communications). All three technologies are in use in
the U.S., but the lack of compatibility means that customers usually
must buy a new phone when they switch wireless carriers. (Los Angeles
26 Mar 99)
UTILITY.COM POWERS UP THE WEB
Internet start-up Utility.com launched its Web-based electrical service
this past week, aimed at providing lower-cost electricity to consumers
and small- and midsize-business customers. The company, which says it's
the first Internet-only energy utility, uses the Web as a customer
self-service front end, an Internet-based procurement back-end, and a
vehicle for real-time delivery of usage information via a radio network.
The service initially is available only in California, but Utility.com
plans to expand to three more states by mid-1999 and in the four
remaining states that permit energycompetition by the year's end.
(InternetWeek 26 Mar 99)
BRICKS-N-MORTAR VS. THE INTERNET MALL
John Riordan, president of the International Council of Shopping
Centers, sees a bright future for conventional shopping centers, despite
the rise of electronic commerce. "The Net will be a valuable tool for
selling commodities like groceries, items we're willing to wait for
delivery. Shoppers will buy familiar items which they don't have to
question, or they may buy products they've already bought in a
catalogue. It will also be useful for buying hard-to-find goods... But
it won't have much of an effect on the types of products sold at
shopping malls. I don't think we'll buy personalized items like
expensive fashion clothes online." In fact, shopping centers could form
alliances with online retailers and "could help distribute goods bought
online. They could, for example, offer their surplus space as 24-hour
pickup points, or they could take returns of Net purchases... I think
store retailers and mall operators will eventually work with stores to
use the Net as an ad vehicle -- say, to promote a sale. Someday, these
online ads may supplant things like Sunday supplement inserts."
(Investor's Business Daily 26 Mar 99)
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PREDICTION OF CONTINUED INTERNET GROWTH
A report from the Yankee Group research firm says that about one out of
every three U.S. households is expected to be online by the end of 1999
and nearly two-thirds by December 2003. PCs priced below $600 now
represent
nearly a fifth of all U.S. PC retail sales, and with sub-$300 machines
now a reality, more households can afford the devices they need to get
online. The report predicts that U.S. consumers will spend $56 billion
on Internet access services over the next five years, and the market
will grow 21% a year during the same period. (Reuters/San Jose Mercury
News 26 Mar 99)
MITNICK GETS FOUR-YEAR SENTENCE
Pleading guilty to computer fraud and wire fraud for breaking into
computers, intercepting communications and stealing proprietary software
from several cellular phone companies, Kevin D. Mitnick was given a
46-month sentence to federal prison. Because he has already been in
prison since early 1995, he could be released about a year from now,
though he still faces charges in California. (New York Times 27 Mar 99)
Y2K ADVICE: PREPARE BUT DON'T PANIC
Janet Abrams of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion says
people should prepare for possible Y2K problems just as they would for a
bad winter snowstorm: stock up on groceries, fill the gas tank, and
take out a little extra cash (but not too much!) from the bank. "And
don't wait until the last minute." Government and industry
representatives seem quite confident that there will not be any kind of
national crisis over Y2K problems, though Federal Emergency Management
Agency director Rita Calvan admits, "We're used to dealing with one
incident at a time. What we could have here is a series of several
small incidents. If we're all busy, I'm not sure we'll have the
resources to respond." (Washington Post 27 Mar 99)
COST OF ONLINE STOCK QUOTES CUT IN HALF
Nasdaq is cutting by 50% the one-cent fee it charges online brokerages
for a real-time stock quote for their customers. Brokerage firms have
been absorbing the cost of those fees rather than passing them along to
online investors, whose number is increasing steadily and therefore
costing brokerages millions of dollars. (USA Today 26 Mar 99)
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: WARREN BUFFETT
Today's Honorary Subscriber is one of America's legendary stock market
investors, Warren Buffett. Now pay attention. If your father had
invested $10,000 with Buffett in 1956 you would now be worth about $150
million. However, it's time you stopped whining about your father. Go
out and get a job. But first go to the 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:
Networking'99 Conference on Advanced Networking, Apr 28-30, 1999,
Washington, D.C.
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/contents/events/apr99/
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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the famed American capitalist Warren
Buffett (b.1930), who controls the Berkshire Hathaway, one of the
country's most successful investment companies. Born in Omaha,
Nebraska, where he still
lives in a modest house on a tree-lined block, he is one of the richest
persons in the world, yet drives an ordinary car and thinks of
hamburgers as suitable ingredients for fine dining.
Biographer Roger Lowenstein writes,
"On Wall Street, his homespun manner made him a cult figure. Where
finance was so forbiddingly complex, Buffett could explain it like a
general-store clerk discussing the weather. He never forgot that
underneath each stock and bond, no matter how arcane, there lay a
tangible, ordinary business." [And then came the Internet! - eds.]
Lowenstein says that Buffett's genius is largely a genius of
character -- "patience, discipline, and rationality. These were common
enough virtues, but they were rare in the heat of financial passions,
and indispensable to anyone who would test his mettle in the stock
market... As an investor, Buffett eschewed the use of leverage,
futures, dynamic hedging, modern portfolio analysis, and all of the
esoteric strategies developed by academics. Unlike the modern portfolio
manager, whose mind-set is that of a trader, Buffett risked his capital
on the long-term growth of a few select businesses...
A plainspoken Midwesterner, Buffett has been the antithesis of the
Wall Street archetype. He quipped that it was the bankers "who should
have been wearing the ski masks" and he told a friend who had been
offered a job in
Wall Street that he wouldn't "encounter much traffic taking the high
road" there. "He once wrote that he would no more take an investment
banker's opinion on whether to do a deal than he would ask a barber
whether he needed
a haircut." Lowenstein continues (in "Buffett: The Making Of An
American Capitalist"):
"Though part of him is a showman or preacher, he is
essentially a private person. Peter Lynch, the mutual-fund wizard,
visited Buffett in the 1980s and was struck by the tranquillity in his
inner sanctum. His archives, neatly alphabetized in metal filing
cabinets, looked as if filed in another era. He had no armies of
traders, no rows of electronic screens, as Lynch did. Buffett had no
price charts, no computer -- only a newspaper clipping from 1929 and an
antique ticker under a glass dome. The two of them paced the floor,
recounting their storied histories, what they had bought, what they had
sold. Where Lynch had kicked out his losers every few weeks, Buffett
had owned mostly the same few stocks for years and years. Lynch felt a
pang, as though he had traveled back in time."
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EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to
transforming higher education through information technologies
************************************************************