From: technews <technews@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Edupage, 20 December 1999
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 09:17:32 -0600
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Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association
dedicated to transforming education through information technologies.
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TOP STORIES for December 20, 1999
Software Evolving into a Service Rented Off the Net
Berkeley Uses Web to Detect Plagiarism
U.S., EU Aim to Conclude Talks on Data Privacy
Is PKI Ready for Takeoff? Many Say Yes
ALSO
Palo Alto School Gives Tryout to Palm VII
Seeing Is Believing
Lessons for Teachers on the Net
The Leaders of E-Business
SOFTWARE EVOLVING INTO A SERVICE RENTED OFF THE NET
The transition of software from traditional packages to an Internet-based
service is likely to advance significantly in 2000. Companies are already
using the Internet for internal communications as well as customer
transactions, and 24-hour Internet connections are becoming common in homes.
Software companies in the future will sell applications as a service, just
as utility companies sell electricity or phone service. The move to
Internet-based computing is happening much more rapidly than the last major
shift in computing, which was the move to client/server architectures that
occurred about 10 years ago. In the future, the client could become
essentially a Web browser, rather than a powerful PC. The shift of
computing to the Internet threatens Microsoft's dominance, which was built
on the PC computing model. Experts say any ruling in the antitrust trial
might be irrelevant because of the rapid changes brought by Internet
computing that are diminishing Microsoft's hold on the market. (New York
Times 12/20/99)
BERKELEY USES WEB TO DETECT PLAGIARISM
The University of California is using the Internet as well as the threat of
lawsuits to fight plagiarism. The U.S.'s largest university system last
spring began using the Plagiarism.org Web site to check the validity of
papers against an online database compiled from previously written term
papers, books, and journals. The site was the idea of a Berkeley doctoral
student and was put together with the help of eight other graduate students.
The site allows teachers to search the database for exact matches of phrases
of at least eight words. The site was tested on a neurobiology class at
Berkeley, where students were required to upload their papers to the Web
site. After comparing the students' papers to the online database, one in
eight papers were found to contain plagiarized material. The site is now
being tested at various other colleges. (Washington Times 12/19/99)
U.S., EU AIM TO CONCLUDE TALKS ON DATA PRIVACY
The United States and the European Union have set a March deadline to end 20
months of negotiations over the EU's data privacy directive. Those familiar
with the negotiations say that the dispute over the data privacy directive
must be settled within coming months because businesses are becoming
impatient and are worried that the dispute will be taken up by the World
Trade Organization. The EU and U.S. are working out the details of a
self-regulation framework that would simplify the process for businesses and
stiffen data protection, says a European Commission official. However, once
again, the enforcement of the safe harbor scheme proposed by the U.S. is a
stumbling block. U.S. negotiators argue that self-regulation offers a better
solution than the legislation proposed by the EU. Barbara Wellbery,
counselor to the U.S. undersecretary for electronic commerce, notes that a
Jupiter Communications survey found that just 10 percent of the top 125 EU
Web sites had a privacy policy on their home page, compared to 70 percent of
U.S. sites. (Financial Times 12/20/99)
IS PKI READY FOR TAKEOFF? MANY SAY YES
Several leading public-key infrastructure (PKI) vendors, including IBM,
Microsoft, and Entrust Technologies, formed the PKI Forum to speed up the
deployment of the security system by resolving interoperability issues among
vendors and users. Meanwhile, users, particularly those in the health care
industry, are working to come up with a certificate revocation authority.
Gordon Romney, president of certificate authority Arcanvs, expects the
government will assume the certificate authority role and issue root keys,
from which companies can base their encryption strategies. Signs of PKI
acceptance in the marketplace include the 500,000-user Healthcare Internet
Interoperability Security Pilot, which is scheduled to go live next year,
and the news that PKI Forum member VeriSign posted its first profit last
quarter. (PC Week Online 12/17/99)
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PALO ALTO SCHOOL GIVES TRYOUT TO PALM VII
Seniors at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, Calif., are using Palm VII
personal organizers this year as part of a project coordinated by a parent
and senior executive at 3Com's Palm Computing. The Palm VII is the first
Palm organizer with built-in wireless functions, and the device offers movie
listings, driving directions, and news from popular sites. The Palm VII
also allows students to organize their schedules and exchange e-mail.
Students and teachers especially like the Palm's infrared wireless data
transfer, which lets users transfer information from one device to another
by placing the infrared ports close to each other. Many students say the
device is most helpful as an organizer. Complaints about the Palm VII
include short battery life, a lack of high-quality Internet applications,
and insufficient memory. Overall, a small number of students have become
avid Palm VII users, another small group hardly uses the device, and most
are moderate users. (San Jose Mercury News Online 12/18/99)
SEEING IS BELIEVING
The National Transparent Optical Network Consortium (NTONC) is helping to
develop the U.S. government's Next Generation Internet (NGI). NTONC is now
working on the West Coast part of the network, which eventually will be used
to test high-speed broadband applications. Already, NTONC has connected
Portland, Ore., and Seattle. Nortel Networks is managing the project, and
vendors, carriers, corporations, universities, and research groups have all
contributed as well. The backbone of the network is a 10 Gbps OC-192 Sonet
system that extends from Seattle to San Diego, says Nortel's program manager
for NTONC Paul Daspit. However, only about half of the backbone is
complete, and NTONC plans to add Layer 3 switching, ATM, packet-over-Sonet
switching, and routing to the network's five main nodal points, Daspit says.
NTONC's network allows organizations to study next-generation issues
involving protocols and devices, Daspit says. Currently, researchers are
using the network to try out high-speed applications such as remote medical
diagnosis and real-time distance editing of motion pictures. (Telephony
12/13/99)
LESSONS FOR TEACHERS ON THE NET
The U.S. Department of Education has created the Gateway to Educational
Materials (GEM) Web site to provide teachers with lesson plans at no charge.
GEM was created by the National Library of Education and the ERIC
Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The lesson plans were culled from
online sites for federal and state governments, nonprofit and commercial
entities, and universities. More than 7,000 items are available at the
site. School teacher Mary Beth Blegen says, "GEM offers a quicker way to
get at materials that are very specific lesson plans that are already done.
At least there's a guide to work with, and that's better than [sorting
through] pages and pages on the Web." GEM has been online since 1998, but
the Education Department didn't want to promote the site until enough
resources were online to make it useful for teachers. (Wired News 12/16/99)
THE LEADERS OF E-BUSINESS
InformationWeek recently compiled a list of the 100 most innovative
e-business companies. The E-Business 100 range from established firms to
startups less than a year old, and cover a variety of industries. The
companies are all using the Internet to conduct sales, offer customer
service, and to connect customers, suppliers, partners, and employees.
Almost 60 percent of the companies say e-business extends through the entire
enterprise, and the companies receive an average of about half of their
annual revenue from e-business. The main objectives in launching e-business
initiatives, listed by 94 percent of the E-Business 100, are customer
satisfaction and customer service. In addition, the companies connect an
average of almost 60 percent of customers and 55 percent of suppliers via
extranets. Intranets are growing along with extranets, and almost 70
percent of the E-Business 100 run intranets to provide employees with better
access to information. The most common difficulty in deploying e-business
initiatives is connecting legacy IT systems to Web systems, a problem listed
by half of the E-Business 100. (InformationWeek 12/13/99)
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UPCOMING EDUCAUSE CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS:
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January 6-8, 2000, Seton Hall University
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http://www.cat.shu.edu/ubitcomp/
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Edupage Copyright 1999, EDUCAUSE
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EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to transforming
education through information technologies