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Edupage, 7 April 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
Educom Publishes Standards For Digital Labels
Cheap Chips From National Semiconductor
Skirmishing Against The Power Of Microsoft
Encryption Alternative Separates The Wheat From The Chaff
E-Commerce Potential Widely Underestimated
ALSO
Paul Allen Acquires Cable Company
Computer Census On Hold
Nunn And Tenet Warn Of Cyberspace Attacks
Opposition To Proposed Ban On Internet Gambling
Jobs Wants To Help Broadcasters Go From Analog To Digital
EDUCOM PUBLISHES STANDARDS FOR DIGITAL LABELS
Educom has devised a set of digital labels, called metatags, that can be
embedded in educational documents, making it easier for search engines to
find them on the Web. The metatag specifications are posted on the
Instructional Management Systems Web site < http://www.imsproject.org >, and
documents containing metatags will provide information about the page's
contents, its title and publisher, and when it became available online,
among other things. The tags could also include information such as whether
a license is required to use a particular software program. The
introduction of metatags will enable computer companies to build educational
software around a common labeling standard. (Chronicle of Higher Education
10 Apr 98)
CHEAP CHIPS FROM NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR
National Semiconductor Corp. is developing a new microprocessor that
integrates the circuitry of more than a dozen additional chips needed to run
a PC. This "PC-on-a-chip" could drive the price of PCs down below the $400
price point as early as next year, says National Semi CEO Brian Halla. In
addition to lower overall costs, using a PC-on-a-chip would enable a laptop
to operate for as long as nine hours on battery power. National
Semiconductor has invested $1 billion in developing the PC-on-a-chip, and
another $1 billion in a manufacturing facility in Maine. (Wall Street
Journal 6 Apr 98)
SKIRMISHING AGAINST THE POWER OF MICROSOFT
A group of industry executives critical of Microsoft has delivered a
10-point memorandum to the U.S. Justice Department suggesting that Justice
force Microsoft to separate its applications businesses from its operating
system business; establish a system to monitor Microsoft's business
practices; force Microsoft to be more open about its description of the
operating system; prohibit Microsoft from tying new products to the Windows
operating system; divest Microsoft's software compatibility laboratories
(which award a Windows 95-approved logo to products meeting Microsoft's
standards); etc. A Microsoft executive scoffed: "This is a wish list from
Microsoft competitors with no basis in the facts of this industry or the
laws of this country." (New York times 7 Apr 98)
ENCRYPTION ALTERNATIVE SEPARATES THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF
An alternative approach to electronic privacy has been proposed by MIT
cryptographer Ronald Rivest that could render the current debate over
third-party encryption keys moot. Unlike conventional encryption programs,
Rivest's new technique doesn't rely on altering message bits; rather, each
bit is tagged with a "message authentication code" (MAC) and then mixed in
with random bits tagged with incorrect MACs, called "chaff." The intended
recipient can then use a secret code shared with the sender to "winnow" out
the fake bits. (Science 3 Apr 98) A description of the process can be
found at < http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt >.
E-COMMERCE POTENTIAL WIDELY UNDERESTIMATED
Government estimates on the future of electronic commerce fall far short of
private predictions, according to speakers at a recent Web publisher's
conference. While the government has pegged e-commerce activity at $365
billion by 2000, industry experts say the real figure will be closer to $1
trillion. MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte said about 70% of the
transactions will be business-to-business commerce. Meanwhile, Sun
Microsystems chief scientist John Gage touted the benefits of using
Java-based smart cards, predicting that the widespread availability of such
cards will serve as a catalyst for increasing online consumer spending.
(Computer Reseller News 6 Apr 98)
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PAUL ALLEN ACQUIRES CABLE COMPANY
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is buying Dallas-based Marcus Cable, the
country's largest closely held cable-TV operator. The deal is the first in
what is expected to be a series of purchases by Allen -- people familiar
with his plans say he eventually hopes to cobble together enough smaller
cable systems to allow him to build a nationwide platform for selling
services such as Internet access over cable. (Wall Street Journal 6 Apr 98)
COMPUTER CENSUS ON HOLD
The Census Bureau has decided to postpone its plans to use the Internet to
compile census information, noting that security concerns have prompted the
delay. The bureau now plans to use the Internet in data gathering in 2010.
(St. Petersburg Times 6 Apr 98)
NUNN AND TENET WARN OF CYBERSPACE ATTACKS
At a Georgia Tech forum on information security, former U.S. Senator Sam
Nunn (the host of the forum) warned that "we must not wait for a cyberspace
Pearl Harbor," launched by interests unfriendly to the United States, and
CIA director George Tenet said that the Central Intelligence Agency must be
able to decipher the messages that our enemies send to each other: "When
the building blows up and 30, 40, 2,000 people are killed, there will be
hell to pay, because we the government didn't think through the issue."
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution 7 Apr 98)
OPPOSITION TO PROPOSED BAN ON INTERNET GAMBLING
Proposed legislation to ban gambling on the Internet is being vigorously
opposed both by gambling interests (including the horse-racing industry and
Indian tribes) and by computer businesses (including software makers who
joined in formation of a group called the Committee for Freedom of the
Internet). The proposed bill's chief sponsor, Arizona Republican Senator Jon
Kyl, hopes to bring the measure to a vote in several weeks, and plans to
make sure that a 1961 law prohibiting interstate gambling is extended to
cover satellite communication and virtual games such as online roulette.
(AP 6 Apr 98)
JOBS WANTS TO HELP BROADCASTERS GO FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL
Apple interim chief executive Steve Jobs told a convention of TV
broadcasters that Apple is "dying to work with you" in managing the change
from analog to digital transmission, which will be required of all
broadcasters by 2006. He thinks he can help them deal with the different
digital standards for producing video imagines for the Internet, computers,
video conferences, and television: "The problem right now is a very simple
one. What we basically got is a tower of Babel." (AP 6 Apr 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 great lyricist Alan Jay Lerner
(1918-1986), who collaborated with composer Frederick Loewe on such musicals
as 'Brigadoon' (1947), 'Paint Your Wagon' (1951), 'My Fair Lady' (1956),
'Gigi' (1958), and 'Camelot' (1960). Lerner was one of three sons of Joseph
J. Lerner, who founded Lerner Stores, Inc., a women's apparel company. He
was educated in England and at the Choate School in Connecticut, before
entering Harvard. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music during
vacations from Harvard. His first job after college was writing advertising
copy and radio scripts for such programs as the "Philco Hall of Fame."
'My Fair Lady,' of course, was based on the George Bernard Shaw play
'Pygmalion,' in which an uneducated English cockney girl was accepted in
society as a 'lady' by learning to speak good English. Theater critic
Brooks Atkinson wrote that when 'My Fair Lady' opened in 1956, "the climax
came, not when one of the two principal characters said or did anything
romantic; it came when an ignorant flower girl mastered the pronunciation
of a difficult English phrase: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
The audience cheered as if some great social issue had been resolved."
Atkinson continues: "Since Shaw had been dead for six years, he could
not object to the violence done to his style. A militant anti-romantic, he
had never intended that Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins would progress
from speech lessons to wooing. When the early audiences for 'Pygmalion'
jumped to that popular conclusion, he rebuked them by writing an epilogue in
which Eliza married Freddy, a good-natured simpleton [the singer of 'On The
Street Where You Live'], and settled down to a dreary bourgeois life. But
the logic and emotional momentum of 'My Fair Lady' intimated a marriage
between Eliza and Henry. Mr. Lerner took responsibility for what he had
done to Shaw's whim of continence: 'I have omitted the epilogue,' Mr.
Lerner wrote, 'because in it Shaw explains how Eliza ends not with Higgins
but with Freddy and -- Shaw and heaven forgive me! -- I am not certain that
he is right.' But 'My Fair Lady' was never profligate: it may be the only
musical play in which the hero and heroine never kiss or embrace.'"
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Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology
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