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Edupage, 10 March 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information
technology, is provided three times a week as a service by Educom,
a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities
seeking to transform education through the use of information technology.
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TOP STORIES
Technology Gender Gap
The Coming Of The Euro
Nearly Half Of U.S. Homes Own A PC
Local Leaders Asked For Input On Internet Bills
Third World Protests Tax-Free Internet
ALSO
University Administrators Meet To Discuss Microsoft Pricing
Learning Co. To Acquire Mindscape Inc.
Book Party
Online News Partnership Breaks The Connection
Gateway To Offer Flat Rate Internet Access
TECHNOLOGY GENDER GAP
The National Center for Education Statistics says that the percentage of
women college graduates in computer science has fallen from 37% in the early
1980s to 28% in 1994-95. (USA Today 9 Mar 98)
THE COMING OF THE EURO
Dealing with the "Year 200 Problem" is not the only major (and potentially
disastrous) conversion that lies ahead for business programmers; another is
the European Monetary Union's introduction on 1 January 1999 of the euro, as
a common European currency. One Gartner Group executive says that "the
magnitude of the problem the euro poses is unbelievable" and another says:
"Think about it. We're talking about taking all of this information and
changing it all. It's crazy... They are more than just technology issues.
They are strategic business issues." (New York Times 9 Mar 98)
NEARLY HALF OF U.S. HOMES OWN A PC
Computer Intelligence reports that more than 45% of U.S. homes now own
personal computers, up from 40% in 1996. As might be expected, households
with the highest incomes and those with children are more likely to be PC
owners: 80% of homes with annual incomes of $100,000 or more own PCs,
compared with 25% of homes with income under $30,000; and 60% of families
with children own PCs, compared with 38% of childless households. (Wall
Street Journal 10 Mar 98)
LOCAL LEADERS ASKED FOR INPUT ON INTERNET BILLS
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) told the meeting of the
National League of Cities that the Senate would not act without the group's
support on Clinton-proposed legislation that would place a moratorium on
efforts by state and local governments to tax Internet transactions and
online services. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) also addressed the
group but made no similar promise. (AP 10 Mar 98)
THIRD WORLD PROTESTS TAX-FREE INTERNET
A coalition of developing nations, led by Egypt, India and Pakistan, are
protesting a World Trade Organization proposal for an Internet "free trade
zone," saying that such a development would reinforce the dominance of North
America and European countries in the online world. The coalition is
proposing that no decisions regarding the creation of a tax-free Internet
trading zone be made until the problem of Western dominance of the Internet
is resolved. Trade officials predict that negotiations on creating the
free-trade zone will begin next year at the earliest. (TechWeb 9 Mar 98)
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UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS MEET TO DISCUSS MICROSOFT PRICING
A group of 28 education-technology administrators met recently with
Microsoft officials to discuss a controversial change in the company's
licensing policy, but a company official says no changes will be made
immediately: "There was no 'ta-_da' result." Microsoft's licensing policy
used to be based on how many users could access a Microsoft program at any
given time, but now is based on how many computers are linked to the
school's network, costing some colleges thousands of dollars more. The
initial protest of the new policy occurred at last year's CAUSE conference
in Orlando, Fla. (Chronicle of Higher Education 13 Mar 98)
LEARNING CO. TO ACQUIRE MINDSCAPE INC.
Educational software maker Learning Co. has agreed to purchase Mindscape
Inc. for $150 million in cash and stock from owner Pearson PLC. The move is
expected to give Cendant Corp. some serious competition for the No. 1 spot
in the rapidly consolidating educational software industry. Pearson had
bought Mindscape in 1994 for $462 million, but times have changed in the
past couple of years, points out one market analyst: "Companies are no
longer commanding the huge premiums they did when all the market share was
up for grabs." (Wall Street Journal 9 Mar 98)
BOOK PARTY
Two major booksellers -- Borders Group and the German media conglomerate
Bertelsmann AG -- are preparing to engage in direct competition with Amazon
and Barnes & Noble for the online bookbuyer's purchasing dollar. Amazon
founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos claims not to be too concerned: "I'm
paranoid about Barnes & Noble's purchasing power, and I'm paranoid of
Bertelsmann's marketing skills, extensive customer base and their publishing
background. Our advantage is that we know more about e-commerce than
anybody else. We've been doing it longer, and we've already leveled the
playing field." Publishers are happy with the tendency of electronic
customers to prefer older "backlist" titles (such as those written by many
of the Edupage honorary subscribers!) to current best-selling authors; for
example, aided by electronic search engines, Amazon customers bought at
least one copy of 90% of the Penguin Group's backlist. (New York Times 9
Mar 98)
ONLINE NEWS PARTNERSHIP BREAKS THE CONNECTION
Unable to agree on a direction for the business, a consortium of nine major
newspapers formed to make the publications available on the Internet is
dissolving. Called New Century Network, the group included Advance
Publications, Cox Newspapers, Gannett, Hearst Knight Ridder, New York Times
Co., Times-Mirror, Tribune Co., and the Washington Post. (USA Today 10 Mar 98)
GATEWAY TO OFFER FLAT RATE INTERNET ACCESS
Gateway 2000 plans to offer unlimited Internet access through its
Gateway.net service at a flat rate of $16.95 a month and a low-use rate of
$9.95 for 20 hours. Previously, the company charged $12.95 for 30 hours.
Gateway launched its Internet access business last November for buyers of
its desktop and notebook computers. (Wall Street Journal 10 Mar 98)
Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl@educom.edu) and Suzanne Douglas
(douglas@educom.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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Today's Honorary Subscriber is the Oklahoma-born African-American writer
Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), whose most famous work was the novel "Invisible
Man" (1952). Ellison's father died when he was three years old and he was
brought up by his mother who worked as domestic help in order to support
herself and her two sons. After attending Tuskegee Institute in Alabama on
a music scholarship, he moved to New York, where he met the writers
Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. In the 1930s he began contributing to
the Federal Writers' Project, set up as part of Roosevelt's New Deal, and
soon his short writing began to appear in various periodicals. In 1943 he
joined the United States Merchant Marines, and after the war he returned to
New York. Ellison is now considered one of the major figures of
twentieth-century fiction.
Here is an excerpt from "Invisible Man":
"I was overcome by a sense of alienation and hostility. My overalls
were causing stares and I knew that I could live there no longer, that that
phase of my life was past. The lobby was the meeting place for various
groups still caught up in the illusions that had just been boomeranged out
of my head: college boys working to return to school down South; older
advocates of racial progress with utopian schemes for building black
business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own,
without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the
community "leaders" without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught
up in post-Civil-War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones
who possessed nothing beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small
jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast,
though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of
certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile
old roosters in a barnyard; the younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt
such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they
dream -- the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was
a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah's Ark but who yet were
drunk on finance. Yes, and that older group with similar aspirations, the
"fundamentalists," the "actors," who sought to achieve the status of brokers
through imagination alone, a group of janitors and messengers who spent most
of their wages on clothing such as was fashionable among Wall Street
brokers, with their Brooks Brothers suits and bowler hats, English
umbrellas, black calfskin shoes and yellow gloves; with their orthodox and
passionate argument as to what was the correct tie to wear with what shirt,
what shade of gray was correct for spats and what would the Prince of Wales
wear at a certain seasonal event; should field glasses be slung from the
right or from the left shoulder; who never read the financial pages though
they purchased the Wall Street Journal religiously and carried it beneath
the left elbow, pressed firm against the body and grasped in the left hand
-- always manicured and gloved, fair weather or foul -- with an easy
precision (Oh, they had style) while the other hand whipped a tightly rolled
umbrella back and forth at a calculated angle; with their homburgs and
Chesterfields, their polo coats and Tyrolean hats worn strictly as fashion
demanded.
"I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the time when they
would know that my prospects were ended and saw already the contempt they'd
feel for me, a college man who had lost his prospects and pride. I could see
it all and I knew that even the officials and the older man would despise me
as though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had betrayed
them..."
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Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology
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