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Edupage, 6 September 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about
information technology, is provided three times a week as a service of
EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to
transforming higher education through information technologies.
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TOP STORIES
Compaq, HP, IBM Challenge Intel On Bus Design
Analysts Foresee "Portal Melee"
Cadence To Acquire Chip-Design Software Maker Ambit
Appellate Court Dashes Long-Distance Hopes Of Bells
ALSO
The Intelligent Essay Assessor
Feds Revise Estimate For Fixing Year 2000 Problem
Gates Won't Testify
Internet Outranks Beer-Drinking In What's Cool On Campus
COMPAQ, HP, IBM CHALLENGE INTEL ON BUS DESIGN
Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard and IBM have developed a new design for a
computer bus -- the circuitry that routes data and instructions between a
computer's microprocessor and peripherals such as the hard drive or a
networking device. The companies are trying to persuade Intel to adopt
their technology rather than pursue its own proprietary next-generation bus.
The computer makers fear that if Intel's newest technology is widely
adopted, they will be forced to make royalty payments for its use. Since
1991, many computer makers have used a technology called Peripheral
Component Interconnect, or PCI, which is now governed by an industry
committee. "Control of PCI bus is a very important issue because it is a
technology that is used widely throughout the industry, not just in Intel
computers," says a Dataquest analyst. (Wall Street Journal 4 Sep 98)
ANALYSTS FORESEE "PORTAL MELEE"
With companies scrambling to take on Yahoo! as the top "portal" -- the site
that Web users use as a "home base" for their Internet activities --
analysts are predicting a major shakeout in the portal industry. "This is
the first time since Yahoo started that it will be vulnerable," says rival
CNET CEO Halsey Minor. "In the next nine months, things will be vastly
different." Most experts are placing their bets on America Online, whose
12.5 million subscribers comprise 36% of the Web traffic that comes from
households, but Microsoft's new msn.com site launched late last month is
also expected to garner a healthy share of Web surfers. The stakes are big
-- by 2003, portals are expected to grab 20% of all Web traffic and $3.2
billion in Web advertising dollars. (Business Week 7 Sep 98)
CADENCE TO ACQUIRE CHIP-DESIGN SOFTWARE MAKER AMBIT
Cadence Design Systems is acquiring competitor Ambit Design Systems for $260
million, its second purchase in a week of a semiconductor-design company.
Last week Cadence announced it was buying a chip-design unit of Lucent
Technologies' Bell Labs division for $90 million. The consolidation will
give Cadence an extensive set of software tools for designing
systems-on-a-chip. (Wall Street Journal 4 Sep 98)
APPELLATE COURT DASHES LONG-DISTANCE HOPES OF BELLS
Overturning a lower court ruling, the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of
Appeals has upheld provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that
restrict the regional Bell telephone companies from offering long-distance
service until they have opened their own local phone service markets to
meaningful competition. The ruling is likely to extend the status quo. The
Bells have so far been unable to prove to the FCC that they have opened up
their markets, and the FCC has already rejected four separate requests to
let them offer long-distance service. (New York Times 5 Sep 98)
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THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR
A psychology professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder is
spearheading the creation of an Intelligent Essay Assessor, a computerized
tool to assist professors in grading students' written essays. Thomas
Landauer says that to use the program, a professor must first teach it to
recognize both good and bad essay writing by feeding it examples of both,
which have been manually graded. The program can also be trained using what
he calls a "gold standard" -- passages from textbooks or other materials
written by experts on the same subject as the essay to be graded. While
earlier digital essay graders work by analyzing essays mechanically --
looking at sentence structures and counting commas, periods and word lengths
-- Landauer says his program can actually "understand" the student's writing
using sophisticated artificial intelligence technology called "latent
semantic analysis." It does so by comparing the patterns of word usage in
student essays with the usage patterns it has learned from the initial
samples, enabling the computer "to a good approximation, to understand the
meanings of words and passages of text." If an essay appears to convey the
same knowledge as those used in the examples, the computer gives it a high
score. The Intelligent Essay Assessor is not meant to be used to grade
essays in English-composition or creative-writing assignments, where a
student is being graded more on writing skill than subject knowledge.
(Chronicle of Higher Education 4 Sep 98)
FEDS REVISE ESTIMATE FOR FIXING YEAR 2000 PROBLEM
The federal government's Year 2000 Conversion Panel now says it will cost
the government at least $5.4 billion to reprogram its computers to solve the
Year 2000 problem caused by old programs using two-digit year codes that
leave a computer not knowing what century's it's in. This new estimate is
about $400 million higher than the last one. (New York Times 6 Sep 98)
GATES WON'T TESTIFY
Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates will leave it to eight other senior
company executives to testify in Microsoft's defense in the antitrust suit
brought against it by the U.S. Justice Department. A Microsoft spokesman
says, "Bill is a visionary for this company and the overall leader, but
these people on our witness list were there handling the day-to-day
operations." (AP 5 Sep 98)
INTERNET OUTRANKS BEER-DRINKING IN WHAT'S COOL ON CAMPUS
A survey of 1,200 students at 100 colleges and universities nationwide,
conducted by research firm Student Monitor LLC, shows that when asked what
was "in" on campus, 72.5% of the respondents answered "the Internet,"
whereas only 70.8% named "drinking beer." Up until now, beer-drinking has
held the top spot since the biannual surveys began in 1988. (Information
Week 31 Aug 98)
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: WALT WHITMAN
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the famous American poet Walt Whitman,
described himself as "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turburlent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No
sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more
modest than immodest." Does he say anything to help us honor Labor Day?
Certainly. "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of
mechanics ..., The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing ..., the deckhand singing." For more on Whitman, see the
very end 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:
EDUCOM '98, "Making the Connections," October 13-16, 1998, Orlando, Florida,
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
EDUPAGE & EDUCOM REVIEW STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST We will announce the contest
results sometime before the end of September.
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HONORARY SUBSCRIBER
Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
Born on Long Island, near New York City, Whitman was an office worker and a
teacher before he turned to journalism and poetry. His major work of poetry
was "Leaves Of Grass," which, after several revisions, was expanded to a
size of more than 400 pages. Here's his poem, "When I Heard The Learn'd
Astronomer":
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Here's how the historian Saul K. Padover describes the inauspicious
publication of "Leaves of Grass":
"In 1855, at thirty-six, Whitman put together a small number of his
poems, polished a little ('I had great trouble in leaving out the stock
"poetical" touches, but succeeded at last'), set up type in the shop of a
friend ('the brothers Rome, in Brooklyn'), and printed some 1,000 copies of
'Leaves of Grass.' No respectable New York bookseller would handle the
amateurish book by an unknown poet; it was distributed through a
'phrenological depot' on Broadway. It did not sell. The press generally
ignored it. The few notices it received were contemptuous. The Boston
Intelligencer reviewed 'Leaves of Grass' as 'a heterogeneous mass of
bombast, egotism, vulgarity and nonsense... The beastliness of the author is
set forth in his own description of himself, and we can conceive of no
better reward than the lash for such a violation of decency. The author
should be kicked from all decent society as below the level of the brute.
He must be some escaped lunatic raving in pitiable delirium"
The piece reproduced above, "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer," is
not one of the Whitman poems the Boston Intelligencer had in mind when it
published this fierce attack on his work.
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EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association dedicated to transforming
higher education through information technologies
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