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Edupage, 21 June 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information
technology, is provided three times a week as a service of EDUCAUSE,
a consortium of leading colleges and universities seeking to transform
education through the use of information technology. The organization
has offices in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colorado.
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TOP STORIES
Lucent Sues Cisco For Patent Infringement
Ericsson Is Shopping Around
IBM Picks Apache As Web Server Software
Industry Given More Time To Develop Privacy Rules
ALSO
Disney Makes Deal With Infoseek
TI To Sell Chip Business To Micron
Software Piracy Battle Heats Up
Microsoft To Invest In Korean-Language Software
LUCENT SUES CISCO FOR PATENT INFRINGEMENT
Lucent Technologies has filed a lawsuit against rival Cisco Systems,
accusing it of violating eight patents related to digital networking
technology. Lucent holds several thousand patents previously owned by Bell
Labs, the research division of AT&T that became part of Lucent when it was
spun off into a separate company. "The patents cover a substantial amount
of Cisco's sales," says a Lucent spokesman. Lucent's suit was filed in
response to an Oct. 8 letter from Cisco charging Lucent with violating three
patents held by a Cisco subsidiary. "That's sort of the standard: If
someone goes after you, you pull out your portfolio," says a technology
patent attorney. "That's why you keep your portfolio: for defense... What
is surprising is that given the kind of firepower that Lucent has, that
Cisco would go after them... Lucent probably took its top 100 patents and
filtered them down to eight that they could sue on." The aggressive move on
Lucent's part does not bode well for other high tech companies, warns a
telecommunications analyst. "This could impact of lot of Cisco's products,
not to mention other companies' and maybe the entire industry."
(TechInvestor 19 Jun 98)
ERICSSON IS SHOPPING AROUND
Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, the Swedish telephone giant, is in talks with
three U.S. telecommunications networking companies and has its eye on seven
more. The company declined to name the companies, but says it won't overpay
for its acquisitions. "Recently, there have been big acquisitions in
Silicon Valley that were overpriced," says Ericsson's CEO, referring to the
Northern Telecom-Bay Networks deal. "We have certain acquisition targets,
but the price has to be right." Ericsson is expected to have $1.5 billion
to $2 billion in cash by the end of the year. (Reuters 19 Jun 98)
IBM PICKS APACHE AS WEB SERVER SOFTWARE
IBM is becoming part of a team developing "Apache," Web server software
developed and distributed without charge by a worldwide coalition of
programmers. Although Apache controls the majority of this market (in
competition with Microsoft's free Internet Information Server software and
Netscape's $1300 Enterprise Server software), it has until now not been
adopted by large corporations that usually demand fully supported commercial
products when they choose software. (Washington Post 19 Jun 98)
INDUSTRY GIVEN MORE TIME TO DEVELOP PRIVACY RULES
The Clinton Administration says it will give Internet businesses more time
to develop privacy rules that will protect personal information collected
over the Internet, such as names, addresses, credit card numbers, medical
histories, and purchasing habits. Commerce Department associate
administrator Becky Burr says, "We believe it is a mistake for government to
regulate unless it's clear that this problem is not going to be taken care
of." Privacy advocates are critical of the delay, and David Banisar of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center says, "They've had 20 years to
practice self-regulation and have yet to come up with anything moderately
useful. It's hard to imagine in the next few some miracle will occur."
(San Jose Mercury News 19 Jun 98)
===============================================
DISNEY MAKES DEAL WITH INFOSEEK
A $900 million deal with search engine company Infoseek will allow the Walt
Disney Company to construct an Internet "gateway" or "portal" site that
customers can select to be their entry point for exploring the World Wide
Web. Industry analyst Alec Ellison says, "The search engines have become to
the Internet what Windows is to the computer desktop," and Disney executive
Jake Winebaum claims, "There is no site that has both the breadth of
Infoseek's search and directory service and the depth of Disney's news,
sports, entertainment and family content." (New York Times 19 Jun 98)
TI TO SELL CHIP BUSINESS TO MICRON
Texas Instruments is selling its struggling DRAM chip business to Micron
Technology for about $830 million. Average DRAM prices dropped 60% in 1997,
and TI plans to focus on more profitable DSP chips, used in cell phones and
other electronic devices. Under the terms of the deal, TI will receive a
12% stake in Micron, becoming its largest shareholder. Micron will assume
about $190 million of TI's debt and give TI an additional $750 million in
cash to refurbish its chip plants. (Los Angeles Times 19 Jun 98)
SOFTWARE PIRACY BATTLE HEATS UP
A report released earlier this week by the Software Publishers Association
and the Business Software Alliance shows the industry lost $11.4 billion to
pirates who produce illegal copies of software. SPA now acknowledges that
its strategy of settling infractions with a fine and a confidentiality
agreement has not been very successful, and vows to begin pressing charges
and publicizing the names of offenders. "I don't like doing that, but it
serves as an education to companies in a similar situation," says the SPA's
director of anti-piracy efforts. "If they want to keep ripping off our
members, why should we treat them nicely?" Some areas have shown
improvement -- Europe, which had a piracy rate of 90% five years ago, is now
down to 50% -- still, that's almost twice as high as the U.S., which is 27%.
(TechWeb 19 Jun 98)
MICROSOFT TO INVEST IN KOREAN-LANGUAGE SOFTWARE
Microsoft is investing between $10 million and $20 million for a 19% stake
in Hangul & Computer, which specializes in Korean language word processing
software. (Investor's Business Daily 19 Jun 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 Sir Karl Popper (1902-94), the Austrian-born
philosopher who taught at the London School of Economics from 1949 to 1969.
Popper studied the philosophical and political consequences of work in the
sciences and what he called the pseudo-sciences, and he attacked historicism
(the idea that there are historical laws). His books included "The Logic of
Scientific Discovery" (1931), "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (1945),
"Objective Knowledge" (1972), and "The Self and Its Brain" (with J.C.
Eccles; 1977).
Popper's "theory of falsification" says that, although scientific
generalizations can't be conclusively verified, they can be conclusively
shown to be false, by a counterinstance. As a result, science is not
certain knowledge but rather a collection of "conjectures and refutations"
that approach (but without reaching) a definite truth.
He called his philosophy "critical rationalism" and "evolutionary
epistemology" because he regarded the growth of human knowledge as a
constant process of evolution and refinement. Applying his philosophy to
political theory, Popper suggested that the question "Who should rule?"
should be replaced by "What institutional arrangement can best prevent
abuses?" Popper politicians, like scientists, should be acutely aware of
their own fallibility and constantly on the alert for mistaken policies.
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