Collection of Education/collectionofeducationcarat1997.iso/COMPUSCI/EDU0995.ZIP/EDU09025.DOC

Text File | 1996-05-01 | 10KB | 179 lines

Subject: Edupage, 7 September 1995

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Edupage, 7 Sep 95.  Edupage, a summary of news items on information
technology, is provided three times each weeks 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
        Electronic Media Protected Under Copyright Law
        U.S., Japan Cooperate On Software Systems
        The Future According To Moore
        Web Measuring Alliance

ALSO
        Sharebots Learn To Work Together
        3DO Moves Beyond Games
        Sony Stops Satellite Dish Shipments
        3-Com Park?
        Laurel Says VR Is Body/Mind Link

ELECTRONIC MEDIA PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW
A presidential task force has recommended that electronic transmission of
books, magazine articles and software should be classified as copies
subject to existing copyright laws.   The task force also recommended that
it should be illegal to make or distribute products aimed at decoding
encrypted software without the consent of the copyright owner.  "This is
great news," says the president of the Software Publishers Association.
"To see online delivery predominantly as a commercial tool is to seriously
threaten its applicability for education and the preservation of American
culture," cautions Vassar College's director of libraries.  (Wall Street
Journal 6 Sep 95 B3)  Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Bruce Lehman,
who headed up the task force says:  "Without enforceable laws in place,
intellectual property owners will be unwilling to put their works at risk
in this rapidly expanding digital environment."  (New York Times 6 Sep 95
C5)  The November/December issue of Educom Review will feature an interview
with Bruce Lehman;  see information in the Edupage footer for subscription
details.

U.S., JAPAN COOPERATE ON SOFTWARE SYSTEMS
Component Integration Laboratories Inc., a U.S. association formed to
promote Apple's OpenDoc technology, and the IntelligentPad Consortium, a
Japanese group advocating IntelligentPad technology, will work together to
ensure the two technologies are compatible.  Both systems are intended to
make software creation easier by providing interchangeable building blocks
for basic functions.  The two groups, which represent the interests of
Apple, Adobe Systems, IBM, Novell, Fujitsu and NEC, will face competition
from Microsoft, which is developing its own object-oriented software.
(Wall Street Journal 6 Sep 95 B3)

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO MOORE
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicts:  "With the processing power and
software developing together, we're not many years away from using the
computer as a dictating machine.  You'll be able to talk into a computer and
it will print out what you said.  Or you'll be able to type out a message in
English -- and it will be translated into Japanese or Hindi or Chinese
instantly."  (Forbes 11 Sep 95 p167)

WEB MEASURING ALLIANCE
Nielsen Media Research will work together with Internet Profiles to offer a
service that will track the number of visits to Internet Web sites.  The
new service, called Nielsen I/Pro I/Count and Nielsen I/Pro I/Audit, will
be able to tell subscribers how many times an individual visited the site,
and the company name and location, assuming the individual is using a
corporate account.  (Wall Street Journal 6 Sep 95 B2)

SHAREBOTS LEARN TO WORK TOGETHER
A computer scientist at Brandeis University has been teaching robots how to
work together and learn from each other.  Each robot in the Nerd Herd is
programmed with certain behaviors -- instructions for accomplishing a task
-- and a rating system that rewards for tasks completed and subtracts points
for mistakes.  By teaching the robots to share the work (in this case
locating and picking up pucks), she found that it took only 15 minutes of
practicing for the robots to turn altruistic, doing an "After you!", "No,
after you!" routine as they hunted down pucks.  Working together, they
accomplished the task twice as quickly as working alone.  "I'm looking at
getting specialization in the society so they can say, `I'll do this, and
you do that.' ... And I imagine one robot might emerge as a leader because
it happens to be the most efficient.  But if it stops being efficient, some
other robot will take over," says the researcher.  (Discover, Sep 95 p37)

3DO MOVES BEYOND GAMES
Video game maker 3DO says it is expanding into markets for specialized
circuit boards and chips for PCs.  CEO William Hawkins says:  "It makes
sense for us to try to have more than one way to make money, and more than
one way to utilize the technology we're developing.  The commercial game
market requires a tremendous amount of capital, and requires that you
achieve a large size very quickly.  It's hard to be a small participant."
(New York Times 7 Sep 95 C5)

SONY STOPS SATELLITE DISH SHIPMENTS
Acknowledging consumer complaints over its 18-inch satellite dish, Sony
Corp.  announced it has stopped shipping the receivers until it can work
out the kinks.  The reported problems involve the appearance of horizontal
green lines and frozen images on the television screen.  "We estimate that
only 2.5% of our consumers have experienced the problems, but we're taking
this matter seriously," says a Sony spokesman.  "We expect to have a
solution quickly," he adds.  Defending Sony, one industry executive
explains, "Manufacturing a digital video product is extremely difficult
because it involves so many chips as well as the interplay with a variety
of new technologies.  I'm sure Sony will get this right, but it isn't an
easy process to master in the beginning."  (Wall Street Journal 7 Sep 95
B6)

3-COM PARK?
If the deal goes through, San Francisco's famous Candlestick Park will be
rechristened 3-Com Park, in gratitude for an annual cash infusion of $2
million.  The funds are needed to spruce up the facility before the 1999
Super Bowl.  (Business Week 11 Sep 95 p50)

LAUREL SAYS VR IS BODY/MIND LINK
Writing in Scientific American, virtual reality expert Brenda Laurel says
that VR makes little or no distinction between body and mind, and that it
"may function as a link from the technological manifestations of humanity
back to the world that technology has ostensibly supplanted.  VR may
transform our understanding of computers from severed heads to extensions
of our whole selves."  (Scientific American, Sep 95 p90) ... Laurel, an
expert on interactive media, video games and virtual reality, will be a
featured speaker at the upcoming Educom'95 conference, which is described
in more detail in the Edupage footer information.

Edupage is written by John Gehl ([e-mail]) & Suzanne Douglas
([e-mail]).  Voice:  404-371-1853, Fax: [phone].

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EDUCOM'95 CONFERENCE, the premier national conference on information
technology in higher education, will be held this year October 31 to
November 3 in Portland, Oregon.  In addition to almost 75 concurrent
presentations from leaders in information technology in higher education,
the conference will feature management visionary Don Tapscott, legislator
Carol Fukunaga, ABC-TV correspondent Brit Hume, and computer interface
designer Brenda Laurel.  For conference information check out <
http://educom.edu/ >, call 202-872-4200, or send email to [e-mail].

EDUCOM REVIEW is our bimonthly print magazine on learning, communications,
and information technology.  Subscr