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Edupage, 13 August 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 technologies. The organization
has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
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TOP STORIES
L.A. School District Accused Of Software Piracy
The Bloatware Debate
New Software From Netscape
Lawyers Prepare For "Complicated" Depositions
ALSO
Scrapping Over Unix
E-Mail Gaining In Popularity
Bandwidth And Facemail
Honorary Subscriber: Noah Webster
L.A. SCHOOL DISTRICT ACCUSED OF SOFTWARE PIRARCY
It may cost the Los Angeles Unified School District as much as $5 million to
amend for the software piracy accusations brought by the Business Software
Alliance against an adult vocational school under the district's
jurisdiction. The Business Software Alliance says it found 1,400 copies of
unlicensed software at the school, including copies of Microsoft Word and
Adobe Word. The business group wants the school district to replace the
pirated copies with licensed ones. One educational technology consultant,
Jamieson A. McKensie, thinks the piracy problem is widespread in schools:
"In many places, people think 'the software is for kids; it's a good cause
and there's nothing illegal about it.'" Microsoft spokeswoman Sarah B.
Alexander says the problem is that often people who would not dream of
stealing other things believe it's legitimate to use software without paying
for it: "How do they justify it? Just because it's easier to make a copy
of software than a desk or a book." (New York Times 12 Aug 98)
THE BLOATWARE DEBATE
A 100-company survey by Standish Group International found that 45% of a
software application's features are never used, 19% rarely used, 16 %
sometime used, 13% often used, and 7% always used; yet, in spite of the
fact that most of an application is seldom used, software gets bigger all
the time. For example, Windows went from 3M lines of code (Windows 3.1) to
14M lines (Windows 95) to 18M (Windows 98). Booze, Allen & Hamilton chief
information officer Roger Walters is one of the people complaining now about
this "bloatware" phenomenon: "My problem is, I'm forced to upgrade all the
time -- not for functionality I want, but for features someone wanted for
me." But industry analyst Jeffrey Tarter defends the software makers by
noting: "I can't think of a single lite version of any product that has
ever succeeded. It may be inelegant and sluglike, but bloatware sells."
(Computerworld 10 Aug 98)
NEW SOFTWARE FROM NETSCAPE
To provide a way to help organizations extend their activities beyond their
own boundaries and reach out to customers and suppliers, Netscape is
offering a completely Web-based and secure application that designs, deploys
and manages automated business processes from the enterprise intranet to the
Internet. Costing about $10,000 to support 100 users, the pilot deployment
bundle consists of the new application, a directory server, and an
enterprise server. (TechWeb 12 Aug 98)
LAWYERS PREPARE FOR "COMPLICATED" DEPOSITIONS
At the same Microsoft is appealing U.S. Judge Penfield Jackson's decision
that the depositions of Bill Gates and other top Microsoft execs must be
open to the public, Jackson is trying to work out the ground rules that
answer questions such as whether cameras and cell phones will be allowed.
The judge remarked that some of the procedural issues are "a little more
complicated" than people think. (San Jose Mercury News 13 Aug 98)
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SCRAPPING OVER UNIX
A report from International Data Corp in Framingham, Massachusetts, says
there is a virtual three-way tie leading the corporate competition in the
Unix server market: IBM has 20% of the market and Hewlett-Packard and Sun
each have 19%. The low-end Unix products increasingly compete against
servers running Microsoft's Windows NT. (Commerce Business Daily 12 Aug 98)
E-MAIL GAINING IN POPULARITY
A study sponsored by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine found that 55% of
computer users surveyed used e-mail more often than they make long-distance
phone calls, and 33% use it more often than they make local calls. (AP 11
Aug 98)
BANDWIDTH AND FACEMAIL
At the end of Edupage we'll be devoting some bandwidth to Noah Webster.
"Bandwidth?" you ask. Well, why not; he deserves some bandwidth, and he
comes to mind because the Thursday "Circuits" section of the New York Times
has a feature on "Microjargon" -- the lexicon evolving among workers at
Microsoft. Example: "Bandwidth: A cumbersome synonym for 'time,' as in,
'I don't have the bandwidth to deal with that with that issue,' but with
implications beyond the merely temporal, encompassing the larger issue of
mental resources or capacity." Another example: "Facemail:
Technologically backward means of communication, clearly inferior to voice
mail or e-mail. Involves actually walking to someone's office and speaking
to him or her face-to-face. Considered highly inefficient and declasse."
To see more, go to: http://cinepad.com/mslex.htm. But then return
immediately to get some bandwidth on our good friend Noah! (New York Times,
Circuits Section 13 Aug 98)
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: NOAH WEBSTER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is Noah Webster. For details, see the very
bottom of Edupage.
Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl@educause.edu) and Suzanne Douglas
(douglas@educause.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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UPCOMING CONFERENCES SPONSORED BY EDUCAUSE:
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http://www.educause.edu/conference/e98/.index.html
CAUSE98, "The Networked Academy," December 8-11, 1998, Seattle, Washington,
http://www.educause.edu/conference/c98/c98.html
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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the great lexicographer Noah Webster
(1758-1843), who spent 22 years working on his magnum opus, "An American
Dictionary of the English Language," which welcomed into the English
language such distinctively American words as "skunk," "hickory," and
"chowder." He also succeeded in changing the spelling of many words (for
example, "colour" became "color" and "musick" became "music"), but failed in
changing others ("women" remained "women," though Webster preferred
"wimmin," because that is the way the word is pronounced).
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, into a farming family, Noah attended
Yale during the years of the Revolutionary War, graduated in 1778, and
became a schoolteacher, an experience which convinced him that American
children should learn from American books rather than ones imported from
England. The result was his first book: "A Grammatical Institute of the
English Language." Eventually Webster and his wife and children moved to
Amherst, Massachusetts, where he helped start Amherst College.
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EDUCAUSE -- Transforming Education Through Information Technologies
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