Edupage: Internet News
Dateline:
23 January, 1997
26 January, 1997
28 January, 1997
30 January, 1997
TOP STORIES
ACLU Fights Political Restrictions On Academic Facilities
Gartner VP Says Don't Throw Those PCs Out Yet
AT&T WorldNet Benefits From AOL Logjam
Internet Patent Numbers
ALSO
Superscape's 3-D Web-Within-A-Web
CR Tackles Online Medical Help
Virtual Pet Sweeping Japan
Online Sex Sting
Muppets Go To Microsoft
ACLU FIGHTS POLITICAL RESTRICTIONS ON ACADEMIC FACILITIES
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer David Rocah says it's "ridiculous" to
think that a university's 501(c)3 nonprofit status could be jeopardized if
its faculty, staff or students use e-mail or Web pages to send partisan
political messages. "That's not the law, it can't be, and it never will be.
The law prevents the university itself from indulging in political activity,
not others using its property. With their logic, a professor using a
Princeton phone in a Princeton office couldn't talk about who to vote for."
Princeton University will now simply require that any personal political
opinions be clearly identified as being those of the sender rather than of
the university. (Reason Feb 97 p13)
GARTNER VP SAYS DON'T THROW THOSE PCs OUT YET
"Don't throw away your PCs. Network nirvana is not yet a reality," says the
Gartner Group's VP of research. A study released this week by Gartner says
network computers from Oracle, Sun Microsystems and IBM will result in only
a 41% savings over regular PCs running Windows 95, far below the 80% number
used by Sun when it debuted its machine last October. But Sun says it got
its PC figures from an earlier Gartner study, and criticizes the latest
report because it includes an analysis of the NetPC design (a joint product
by Microsoft and Intel), which does not have any test models currently
available. Both Gartner and Sun do agree on the annual costs of running the
JavaStation -- roughly $2,500. (Investor's Business Daily 23 Jan 97 A6)
AT&T WORLDNET BENEFITS FROM AOL LOGJAM
AT&T is enjoying a recent boost in subscriber numbers, which it attributes
to overload problems experienced by America Online. AT&T says the number of
new subscribers has tripled this month from last, and in polling new users,
found that 45% are also AOL members. "A lot of the increase in orders we're
seeing is directly because of the publicity of AOL's problems," says the
head of WorldNet. "People care a lot about the reliability of their
Internet service. It's become a serious part of their lives." An AOL
spokesman says AT&T's 600,000 subscribers don't present any threat to AOL's
8 million: "Our member retention is within historical norms." (Wall Street
Journal 23 Jan 97 B6)
INTERNET PATENT NUMBERS
The Internet Patent News Service (IPNS) says that in the first half of 1996
there were 3,966 patents issued, of which 919 were in network software and
528 were in image processing patents. (Communications of the ACM Jan 97)
===============================================
SUPERSCAPE'S 3-D WEB-WITHIN-A-WEB
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Superscape Inc. operates a Virtual Web, comprising
about 60 corporate sites that sport 3-D pages as part of their Web
environment. "If you create an environment that's like an interactive game,
people like it," says Superscape's CEO, who also touts the benefits of 3-D
"test drive" shopping which, along with entertainment, is a prime aspect of
the Virtual Web. Companies such as United News Media Group, Intel and
Northern Telecom are among Superscape's Virtual Web clients. (Broadcasting
& Cable 13 Jan 97 p131) < http://www.vww.com >
CR TACKLES ONLINE MEDICAL HELP
Consumer Reports spent two months exploring and evaluating the myriad
medical information sites on the Web, and has concluded, "The wealth of
useful medical information available online is well worth the initial
difficulty of finding one's way around this new world -- and the constant
need to be on guard against dubious material." Their recommendations? <
http://www.ama-assn.org >, < http://www.medicinenet.com >, <
http://medscape.com >, < http://www.oncolink.upenn.edu >, <
http://parentsplace.com >, < http://pathfinder.com/thrive >. Also
recommended are two sites that offer links to other sites: <
http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/md.html > and <
http://www.slackinc.com/matrix >. Oh, and if it sounds too good to be true,
it probably is. (Consumer Reports Feb 97 p27)
VIRTUAL PET SWEEPING JAPAN
The newest high-tech consumer fad in Japan is tamagochii, an electronic bird
creature which starts life as an endearing, bird-like image on the screen of
an egg-shaped key ring device, and then changes from a chick to a fully
grown adult in around 10 days. However, the owner must push the right
buttons to feed, groom and soothe the digital creature or else see it waste
away and die from neglect. (Vancouver Province 23 Jan 97 A27)
ONLINE SEX STING
An Albany, New York, college business major was arrested yesterday in a
cyberporn sting operation, on a charge of using America Online to transmit
three dozen sexually explicit photos of children. (Vancouver Province 23 Jan
97 A37)
MUPPETS GO TO MICROSOFT
Jim Henson Productions, which created Kermit the Frog and all the other
Muppets, has agreed to a three-year deal with Microsoft Network, under which
the puppet company will develop nine shows for MSN. A Microsoft executive
says: "It's a very big win for us. When you think of family programming,
you think of Henson. This shows we can play with the big boys." The
expectation is that the programs will make use of real-time,
computer-controlled digital puppetry." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 23 Jan
97 G3)
TOP STORIES
FCC Hearing Focuses On Internet Bottlenecks
Internet Coalition Says, "What Gridlock?"
Digital Libraries: The Future
Digital Libraries: The Present
ALSO
Computer in a Coffee Cup
Apple Wants "Most Compatibility In Industry"
Kent State's Distributed Learning Program
Internet For Life
FCC HEARING FOCUSES ON INTERNET BOTTLENECKS
The Federal Communications Commission met Thursday to discuss ways of easing
congestion on the Internet by providing "a climate in which we can create
the maximum incentives" for companies "to enable faster connections," said
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. Faster connections could be achieved by making
advanced technologies such as ISDN, ADSL and cable links more available to
residential customers. The telephone companies warn that increasing
Internet usage could cause a breakdown in the public telephone network, but
Internet companies contend that the congestion is attributable to growth in
other communications services, not just the Internet. "If the commission
awards large new fees to local telephone companies for access to the local
networks, there will be a significant risk that the only winners will be the
phone companies, while consumers and the entire Internet online industry
will lose," says an America Online VP. (Tampa Tribune 24 Jan 97 B&F1)
INTERNET COALITION SAYS, "WHAT GRIDLOCK?"
The Internet Access Coalition has released a study that refutes telephone
company claims that increased use of the Internet is jamming their lines.
Rather, the increase in data traffic has produced just a few localized
logjams, and has generated additional revenues for local exchange carriers
that "far exceed" the costs of providing access. The study suggests that
the main problem is the telephone companies' reliance on circuit switching
equipment rather than packet switching gear for data transmission. Phone
company officials dispute the findings: "The fact is Internet usage has
grown more than 100% over the past 10 years, and is predicted to grow more
than 700% by the year 2001. Someone has to pay for that usage, the
subsequent wear and tear on the network, and the new equipment additions
necessitated by this rapid growth," says the head of the U.S. Telephone
Association. (BNA Daily Report for Executives 23 Jan 97 A25)
DIGITAL LIBRARIES: THE FUTURE
The vision of computers powerful enough to organize and index huge treasure
troves of scientific literature using intelligent functions such as
"vocabulary switching" -- classifying an article that mentions "Unix" under
"operating systems" even if the words "operating systems" do not appear in
the article -- is finally coming to fruition, 32 years after it was first
outlined in J.C.R. Licklider's "Libraries of the Future" (1965).
Large-scale simulations on the HP Convex Exemplar supercomputer at the
National Center for Supercomputer Applications have resulted in generating
concept spaces for 10 million journal abstracts across 1,000 subject areas
covering all engineering and science disciplines -- the largest vocabulary
switching computation ever achieved in information science. Future
developments will require automatic indexing with scaleable semantics to
coordinate searches among the one billion repositories likely in the next
century. (Science 17 Jan 97 p327)
DIGITAL LIBRARIES: THE PRESENT
Kenneth E. Dowlin has been forced to resign his position after serving
almost 10 years as head of the San Francisco Public Library, where he was a
creative proponent of the use of information technology in the modern
library. Critics charged that he favored technology over books. Peter
Lyman, the University Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley,
says in support of Mr. Dowlin: "It's so sad to be debating books versus
computers, when the issues facing San Francisco are of literacy, of
immigrant populations. The public library needs to be a place that helps
children learn the basic skills of literacy, that helps immigrants become
citizens. Ken was trying to create a sense of political community through
technology, and the new library is in many ways successful on those
grounds." (New York Times 26 Jan 97 p8)
================================================
COMPUTER IN A COFFEE CUP
While a conventional computer stores its bits of information by assuming one
of two possible states (a 1 or a 0), a quantum computer theoretically could
store much more information by using all the potential states of an atom.
Scientists are now proposing a new way to harness the power of quantum
computing, using nuclear magnetic resonance devices to control the movement
of millions of atoms within an evenly heated volume of material. By
coordinating the nuclear spin of the particles, physicists could make them
act collectively as qubits (quantum bits). A liquid with the right thermal
properties (such as coffee, which is known for its unusually even heating
characteristics) could hold up to 10 qubits, but scientists are still
looking for ways to create a liquid computer that could hold up to 40 qubits
-- perhaps out of "a really expensive cup of structured coffee," says a
University of California, Santa Barbara researcher. (Science News 18 Jan 97
p37)
APPLE WANTS "MOST COMPATIBILITY IN INDUSTRY"
Apple CEO Gil Amelio concedes some "disappointments" in the past year and
admits that "it has been tougher to turn Apple around than I had expected,"
but insists that within two or three years the company will "have the most
compatible personal computer in the industry, able to run more software than
anyone else -- period." Eleven days ago Amelio and top associates (Ellen
Hancock and Steve Jobs) met with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to discuss ways of
cooperating, including the possibility of Apple licensing from Microsoft the
Windows NT operating system for the corporate market. Amelio says: "We're
not in the world by ourselves. We have to be able to support the commodity
technology standard." In addition, a number of new Macintosh products are
in the works, and next month will see the introduction of a new line of
Powerbook notebook computers, which, at 200 megahertz, will run at faster
speeds than most "Wintel" notebooks running on Windows software and Intel
chips. (New York Times 26 Jan 97 p16)
KENT STATE'S DISTRIBUTED LEARNING PROGRAM
Kent State University's Distributed Learning Program is using LearnLinc, a
PC-based distributed learning software environment developed by ILINC
(Interactive Learning International Corp.). The software allows teachers to
structure and control their distance learning courses, and also includes a
LearnLinc Question & Answer component that allows professors to immediately
assess student levels of course content knowledge by viewing their scores as
they're quizzed online. An electronic hand raising feature lets the
instructor or the students ask a question at any time. Instructors also
control the students' screens at all sites. (Syllabus Jan 97) <
http://www.ilinc.com >. An article related to this activity will appear in
the March/April issue of Educom Review.
INTERNET FOR LIFE
Is California starting another new trend? Two small Internet service
providers in San Jose are offering lifetime access to the Net for a one-time
registration fee ($59.95 from TGGH Inc's "Bigger Net" or $29.95 from Hyper
Net USA Inc.'s "Cyber FreeWay"). The companies plan to make money selling
advertisements that will appear in a small window on the user's screen.
Presumably the service could continue into the Afterlife at no extra charge
providing the user remains amenable to looking at the ads. (Wall Street
Journal 25 Jan 97 D2)
TOP STORIES
Informix Sues Oracle Over People Piracy
Donkey Kong U. To Offer Degrees In Videogame Design
FCC Rule Could Stymie Move To 56-Kbps
IBM Teams With 3Com, Cascade On Networking
Net Gains
ALSO
Microsoft Moving Up In Browser Battles
Online Films
AOL To Give Refunds To Customers Who Complain
Amazon To Get Competition For Online Book-selling
AT&T Reaches Out (Gently) Into Local Phone Business
INFORMIX SUES ORACLE OVER PEOPLE PIRACY
Informix Corp. filed a lawsuit in Portland, Ore., last week, charging that
arch-rival Oracle Corp. "pirated away" 11 key engineering employees. The
filings alleges that Oracle engaged in "a conspiracy to misappropriate
Informix's intellectual property and gain an unfair advantage in the
competitive market for database computer access systems." An Oracle senior
VP called the charges "ludicrous" and says the defectors were hired only
after they'd been rejected by Microsoft. He adds that the new employees
were asked to purge their computers, cars and houses of any trade secrets
before coming to work. "We have absolutely no interest in Informix's trade
secrets or technology." (Wall Street Journal 27 Jan 97)
DONKEY KONG U. TO OFFER DEGREES IN VIDEOGAME DESIGN
The DigiPen Applied Computer Graphics School, nicknamed "Donkey Kong
University" after the popular videogame, will open a four-year campus in
Seattle next year, replacing the two-year program it's sponsored in
Vancouver, B.C. for the last few years. DigiPen has already been approved
as a nonprofit institution by the Washington State Higher Education
Coordinating Board, and plans to admit the first class of 100 students, each
paying $12,000 a year in tuition, next fall. The school says it's the first
institution to offer a four-year degree in videogame design. Its only
competitors are a few programs in Japan, all of which are two-year.
(Chronicle of Higher Education 31 Jan 97)
FCC RULE COULD STYMIE MOVE TO 56-KPBS
An FCC rule that limits the amount of power that can be used to send data
over a telephone line has makers of high-speed modems concerned that their
new 56-Kpbs products won't perform as well as promised. The companies have
petitioned the FCC to waive the rule, claiming it is based on out-of-date
technologies, and a meeting is scheduled next month to discuss the matter.
"You can still get 56-Kpbs even within the federal limits, but you'd get it
more of the time without the rule," says a spokesman for Lucent
Technologies' modem group. "It doesn't put a nail in the coffin of 56-Kpbs,
it just means you won't get that speed so often." The FCC rule was made
when telephone lines were almost exclusively analog, and was designed to
prevent cross talk between cabled wire pairs in analog carrier systems.
(InfoWorld Electric 24 Jan 97)
IBM TEAMS WITH 3COM, CASCADE ON NETWORKING
IBM is teaming up with networking companies 3Com and Cascade Communications
to develop a new approach to IP switching that they say is five times faster
than the current technologies being used. In the past year, numerous
companies have called for using IP switching as a replacement for the
routers that direct electronic messages to their proper destination. The
problem is that no two companies have agreed on how the new IP switches
would work -- IBM's pact with 3Com and Cascade is seen as a first step in
that direction. (Wall Street Journal 27 Jan 97)
NET GAINS
A larger percentage of Japanese PC households are online compared to U.S. PC
households (18% vs. 16%), says IDC/Link. But Western European PC households
are the most willing to do business online, with more than a third saying
they've used the Net to purchase goods and services (compared to 22% in the
U.S. and 17% in Japan). (Investor's Business Daily 28 Jan 97)
================================================
MICROSOFT MOVING UP IN BROWSER BATTLES
Microsoft is gaining ground in its war with Netscape over browser software
penetration. In the business market, which numbers 30- to 34-million users,
Netscape's share has dipped to 70%, down from 87% early last year, according
to Zona Research Inc. And its share of the business server software is
falling, too -- 75% last September, down from almost 100% the previous year.
Netscape's strategy to reverse its fortunes is pinned on its new suite of
Communicator software, which allows corporate workers to collaborate on
documents and scheduling over company intranets. (Wall Street Journal 28
Jan 97)
ONLINE FILMS
The American Film Institute's OnLine Cinema debuted last week, presenting
the 20-minute Charlie Chaplin comedy "The Rink" (1916) in its entirety,
complete with musical score, over the Internet. The AFI uses VDOnet Corp.'s
VDOLive "streaming" software to allow for instantaneous viewing. (Tampa
Tribune 27 Jan 97) < http://www.afionline.org/cinema >
AOL TO GIVE REFUNDS TO CUSTOMERS WHO COMPLAIN
America Online will give refunds on a "case-by-case" basis to customers who
complain about excessive busy signals caused by heavy subscriber activity
that began after AOL recently introduced a flat-rate pricing plan. Refunds
to customers who call the company may take the form of free online service
instead of cash. (Washington Post 27 Jan 97)
AMAZON TO GET COMPETITION FOR ONLINE BOOK-SELLING
Amazon.com, Inc., which pioneered the business of using the Internet for
book-selling, will soon face competition from online bookselling services
being developed by traditional bookstore companies Barnes & Noble and the
Borders Group Inc. The Barnes & Noble service will begin on AOL and will
extend access to all Internet users in the Spring. The company will offer
30% discounts on the cover price of hardcover books, which is a steeper
discount than its own stores offer. (Wall Street Journal 28 Jan 97)
AT&T REACHES OUT (GENTLY) INTO LOCAL PHONE BUSINESS
AT&T will soon offer local phone service to small- and medium-size business
customers in California, but will use leased lines from Pacific Telesis
rather than build its own local operation. In contrast, MCI has spent $1
billion to build network infrastructure in 18 cities around the country.
(New York Times 28 Jan 97)
TOP STORIES
America (Trying To Get Back) Online
Surfing For Porn, Paying In Phone Bills
U.S. Says Indecent Material Will Ruin Educational Value Of Net
Deloitte, Merchant Group To Deliver Secure E-Mail Documents
Boeing's Jumbo Net
FBI Cracks Down On Software Piracy
ALSO
Silicon Graphics To Make Software For Rival Machines
E-Mail Forger Faces Jail Term
Clinton Advisor Defends Encryption Plan
Court Says University Can Restrict Internet Access
Upside Looks Down On Wired's Downside
AMERICA (TRYING TO GET BACK) ONLINE
In an attempt "to do what it takes to fix the problems members are
experiencing as a result of the extraordinary demand for AOL," caused by its
energetically promoted flat-fee pricing plan, America Online CEO Steve Case
says the company will give refunds in cash or time to customers who
experienced difficulties connecting to AOL. The company has pledged to make
various improvements in customer service, and to suspend advertising for new
customers. AOL has been accused by some subscribers of fraudulently
overselling their service beyond what it knew it was capable of
accommodating. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 30 Jan 97)
SURFING FOR PORN, PAYING IN PHONE BILLS
A scam on the Internet has cost some Canadian victims up to $1,200 to
download pornography from certain Web sites. In the scam, surfers are told
that looking at nude pictures is free but that a "special image viewer" must
be clicked on and downloaded to your computer. The viewer is actually a
virus that disconnects your modem from the regular local Internet service
provider and surreptitiously reconnects the call to a number in Moldavia, in
the former Soviet Union, generating long-distance charges. Canadian federal
police have ordered that all calls from Canada to the number in Moldavia not
be connected. (Toronto Star 29 Jan 97)
U.S. SAYS INDECENT MATERIAL WILL RUIN EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF NET
A U.S. Justice Department legal brief filed with the Supreme Court last week
cites the educational value of the Internet in its argument for banning
"indecent" material: "Much of the Internet's potential as an educational
and informational resource will be wasted," says the statement, "if people
are unwilling to avail themselves of its benefits because they do not want
their children harmed by exposure to patently offensive sexually explicit
material." Therefore, it concluded the government has a "compelling
interest in furthering the First Amendment interest of all Americans to use
what has become an unparalleled educational resource... It is better to
place some burdens and costs on those who disseminate patently offensive
material through use of a new and rapidly changing technology than it is to
leave children unprotected." A lawyer for the ACLU, which has challenged
the law, called the government's argument "outrageous" and "oxymoronic."
(Chronicle of Higher Education 31 Jan 97)
DELOITTE, MERCHANT GROUP TO DELIVER SECURE E-MAIL DOCUMENTS
Accounting firm Deloitte & Touche is teaming up with private merchant group
Thurston Group to provide an electronic service called NetDox Inc., which
will offer banks, insurance companies, law firms and others a means of
transferring legal documents via a secure electronic system. NetDox will
track the documents through delivery, will return a receipt to the sender,
and will retain an electronic "thumbprint" of the document in case any
questions regarding its authenticity or delivery time arise. The service
should be operational by summer. (Wall Street Journal 30 Jan 97)
BOEING'S JUMBO NET
The Boeing Co. is known worldwide for its jumbo jets, but now its Boeing
Internal Web is being held up as the best example of corporate intranet
implementation in the country. "Boeing is the biggest corporate intranet,"
says a Netscape VP. "Boeing is one of the leading companies to see the
benefits of standards-based computing and is ahead of the pack in truly
leveraging that benefit." More than 50,000 employee workstations are wired
to the system, and new users are being added at the rate of about 500 a
week. The company's ultimate goal is to provide unrestricted access for up
to 200,000 employees. The Internal Web is a conglomerate of 412 separate
Web sites, some of them comprising as much as 17,000 pages. The sites are
used for, among other things, group work on projects, eliminating the need
to relocate some employees, and responsibility for site content is delegated
downward, to the group or division responsible for that function. "They use
a distributed management approach, and frankly that's the only way to do
it," says the president of an information technology management consultancy
group. "The issue is content. If you have IT people managing content they
would do nothing else but manage phone lists, product descriptions and human
resources information. The content has got to be delegated to the
divisions, because that's where the accountability is." (Communications
Week Interactive 24 Jan 97)
FBI CRACKS DOWN ON SOFTWARE PIRACY
Following an eight-month investigation, the FBI is mounting raids in seven
states to nab software pirates who make illegally copied software available
over electronic bulletin boards. In some cases the software was posted
before it became commercially available. (Investor's Business Daily 29 Jan 97)
======================================
SILICON GRAPHICS TO MAKE SOFTWARE FOR RIVAL MACHINES
Silicon Graphics, realizing that it must expand its horizons beyond the
high-end workstation market, is adapting its 3-D Internet graphics software,
Cosmo Worlds, to run on Intel-based PCs using Microsoft's Windows NT
operating system. Silicon CEO Ed McCracken says the company also is looking
"very seriously" at making a similar move with its special-effects software.
The Cosmo Worlds software will be available on PCs by the end of the year.
(Wall Street Journal 29 Jan 97)
E-MAIL FORGER FACES JAIL TERM
A former Oracle employee faces up to six years in prison for perjury,
falsification of evidence, and breaking into a computer network, because she
forged an e-mail message to support her charge that she was terminated from
the company for breaking up a personal relationship with the company's chief
executive. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 29 Jan 97)
CLINTON ADVISOR DEFENDS ENCRYPTION PLAN
The Clinton Administration's special envoy to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development told a computer security conference that the
Administration's policy "in no way seeks to expand the powers of law
enforcement nor reduce the privacy protections of individuals." The
Clinton "key escrow" plans calls for creation of a de facto global
communications standard in which the key algorithms needed for unscrambling
messages would be placed "in escrow" with separate authorities. The
president of the Information Technology Association of America, an industry
trade group, says the plan "could have a detrimental effect on international
trade and the world's ability to use the Internet for international
commerce." (New York Times 29 Jan 97)
COURT SAYS UNIVERSITY CAN RESTRICT INTERNET ACCESS
A federal judge in Oklahoma has rejected a challenge made by a University of
Oklahoma professor to the university's decision to restrict access to
Internet news groups in order to protect itself against possible federal
obscenity charges. The professor argued that the restriction violated his
First Amendment right to free speech, but Judge Wayne E. Alley ruled against
him, saying he had not demonstrated that he was "irreparably harmed" by the
university's policy and had presented no evidence that anyone had ever tried
to reach the news groups. (New York Times 29 Jan 97)
UPSIDE'S LOOKS DOWN ON WIRED'S DOWNSIDE
Upside and Wired, two magazines competing for a high-tech readership, seem
to be stuck in a long-running feud. Responding to an Upside reporter's
request for an interview with Wired cofounder Louis Rossetto, a Wired
spokesman said that Rossetto "is in no mood to cooperate with Upside in any
way. They've gone out of their way to trash us for no apparent reason." On
Upside's Web site a columnist had characterized Wired Ventures' attempt at
an initial public offering as a "mangy dog of a stock offering that
deserved, if only for mercy's sake, to be taken out and shot," and in the
current issue Upside says that, on a balance sheet basis, Wired Ventures
should sell for about $6 million to $10 million -- "a far cry from the
pie-in-the sky $447 million" the company claimed its value to be last May or
"the nearly-as-silly $293 million it tried to get away with in the revised
September offering." (Upside Feb 97)
News brought to you courtesy of Edupage (Internet News).