Techno-News Blog Ray Schroeder, editor, OTEL - University of Illinois at Springfield |
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Technology News for Higher Education Times and Dates Coordinated Universal Time
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Saturday, September 21, 2002
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=8626026 Canesta launches invisible keyboard Andrew McLindon Finger cramps from typing into mobile phones or PDAs could be a thing of the past following the launch of a full-sized keyboard made out of light. San Jose-based Canesta claimed on Wednesday that it had developed the world's first fully integrated projection keyboard for mobile and wireless devices. The technology enables a keyboard to be projected onto a flat surface using a beam of light, which can then be typed on. Such a development could spell the end for the styluses and thumb keypads that are usually used for the laborious process of inputting into machines such as mobile phones and personal organisers. It could also mean that the full potential of wireless devices would be properly unleashed.... http://www.distance-educator.com/dnews/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7560 Guidelines For Creating Accessible Online Learning Technologies Source: WGBH Boston, MA. September 19, 2002. A groundbreaking collaboration among international players in the online learning field has resulted in a set of guidelines to educate the eLearning community about the challenges that people with disabilities face in accessing online education, and to provide solutions and resources to solve them. Major support of these efforts is provided by the Learning Anywhere Anytime Partnerships program* of the U.S. Department of Education. Online Version Available Free of Charge: http://ncam.wgbh.org/salt http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,,5911_1466661,00.html American Surfers Keep It Simple Robyn Greenspan According to findings from a Jupiter Research (a unit of this site's corporate parent) September 2002 report conducted among 4,341 Americans, 35 percent of Internet surfers are using AOL for access, and the primary activity for 93 percent of the respondents was e-mail. While the research indicates that Internet users are relying on the Web for increasingly more sophisticated activities — online banking and bill paying, research, and software downloads — many are still nascent users that were lured by the ease of AOL and increased pressure to correspond via e-mail. Jupiter reports that AOL experienced a 5 percent increase from the year prior, seemingly unaffected by MSN's "switcher" campaign aimed to convert AOL users. However, MSN continues to lag considerably behind AOL, capturing only 14 percent of the market. AOL usage jumps to 40 percent among "newbies" (defined by Jupiter as those having less than one year of online experience), whereas MSN holds 22 percent of the emerging market.... http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958804.html HP dumps Evo notebook for tablet PC John G. Spooner, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Hewlett-Packard plans to discontinue a mini-notebook from its Compaq Evo line in favor of the company's upcoming tablet PC design for businesses. The company will replace its lightweight Evo Notebook N200 with its upcoming Evo tablet PC, a portable computer based on Microsoft's Tablet PC software. HP plans to introduce several new Evo models over the next few months. Tablet PCs, actively touted by Microsoft as the next wave in portable computing, are small computers that can be "written" on, just as pad of paper, with a pen-like stylus. The Evo tablet PC will be roughly the same size and weight as Evo Notebook N200, a notebook that weighs 2.5 pounds and sells for about $1,500.... Friday, September 20, 2002
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/19/020919hnmswireless.xml?s=REUTERS Microsoft unveils hardware for wireless networking Reed Stevenson Microsoft Corp. , eager to spread its software and services throughout the home, has set its sights on a new market: wireless home networking. The world's biggest software maker said on Thursday that it will begin selling within the next few weeks Microsoft-branded hardware that will let users connect their personal computers and notebooks through wireless connections using the 802.11b standard, also called Wi-Fi. "The overall strategic vision is to get into anything to do with Microsoft's vision of delivering information any time, any place," said Adam LeVasseur, the hardware division's Group Product Manager.... http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/09/19/sun.computers.reut/index.html Sun plans low-cost Linux PC - Computers will lack multimedia bells and whistles Reuters Computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. said it would begin selling early next year inexpensive desktop computers based on the free Linux operating system in a bid to undermine arch rival Microsoft Corp. Marking Sun's second plunge into the world of Linux -- a free, collaboratively developed operating system -- the machines will be based on cheap commodity parts and marketed in bundles of 100 for users in call centers and other environments that use a limited set of features, such as a Web browser.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/19/020919hnlindows.xml?s=IDGNS Lindows upgrades OS Scarlet Pruitt RENEGADE SOFTWARE STARTUP Lindows.com released the 2.0 version of its Linux-based operating system (OS) this week, offering users features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up ad blocking capabilities and boosted networking support. The release is Lindows' most significant product announcement so far, the San Diego, Calif., software maker said, although the 2.0 version is only available to users who have purchased LindowsOS computers.... http://www.gridcomputingplanet.com/news/article/0,,3281_1466541,00.html Library Of Congress Goes Grid Paul Shread Grid computing technology may soon be used to preserve such priceless artifacts of American history as films of the Spanish-American War and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the photographs of Matthew Brady and Ansel Adams, and Walt Whitman's notebooks. The Library of Congress is evaluating Grid technology developed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center to archive and preserve these works and the Library's other digital collections.... http://www.arizonarepublic.com/arizona/articles/0917PHXInternetArt17.html Professor brings Net to homeless Sara Thorson, The Arizona Republic An Arizona State University professor spent her summer helping homeless women find a home in cyberspace. Muriel Magenta, an art professor, and seven students spent the summer teaching computer skills to residents of the Phoenix YWCA's Thunderbird Haven House, a transitional shelter for abused or homeless women and their children. The result was the InternetArt Project in which the 13 women completed personal Web sites in August. The sites will be launched online with the YWCA's Web site during the first week of October.... Thursday, September 19, 2002
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000454AE-7675-1D7E-90FB809EC5880000&catID=2 Computers for the Third World - The simputer is a handheld device designed for rural villagers Fiona Harvey FARM WORKERS in Bolare, a village located southwest of Bangalore, India, try out a literacy tutorial program on the Simputer. Because the device can convert text to speech, it can help teach villagers how to read the local language, Kannada. It doesn't look like much. A drab, gray piece of plastic, about five inches long and three inches wide. A black-and-white screen, three inches by two inches, showing a few simple snippets of text. And yet this nondescript little computer may hold the key to bringing information technology to Third World countries.... http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992796 Speed of light broken with basic lab kit Charles Choi Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department. Scientists have sent light signals at faster-than-light speeds over the distances of a few metres for the last two decades - but only with the aid of complicated, expensive equipment. Now physicists at Middle Tennessee State University have broken that speed limit over distances of nearly 120 metres, using off-the-shelf equipment costing just $500.... http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958352.html DVD groups agree to disagree Richard Shim, Staff Writer, CNET News.com The two industry groups fighting to set a rewritable DVD standard are showing no interest in working together, but technology tricks and behind-the-scenes talks could inch the sides toward a compromise. The DVD+RW Alliance, an industry group promoting one of the chief DVD recording formats, came away from a quarterly meeting last week resolving to hold its ground in the standards fight. The DVD Forum, which promotes the DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM formats, doesn't appear to be budging, either.... http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3975 $20 billion ed-tech project awaits action by Congress Cara Branigan, Assistant Editor, eSchool News Legislation that would funnel an estimated $20 billion in revenue toward educational technology research and development (R&D) is languishing in committee in both the Senate and the House, and supporters of the measure say it’s doubtful that Congress will take up either bill before the end of the current legislative session. The Senate’s version of the legislation, called the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act (S. 2603), proposes creating a billion-dollar government agency—on par with the National Institutes of Health or National Science Academies—to enhance federal ed-tech programs.... Wednesday, September 18, 2002
http://staging.infoworld.com/articles/ct/xml/02/09/16/020916ctfuture.xml?Template=/storypages/ctozone_story.html The future is now Jack Mccarthy GRID TECHNOLOGY, ONCE just a glamorous vision for marshaling computing power to link far flung users for collaborative projects, is gaining traction. And as CTOs begin to develop these new distributed networks that offer computing power as a utility, new technologies -- from high speed VPNs to server clusters to Web services integration platforms -- are being included. Grids at present are like the early stage of the Internet, a staging ground for new technologies, says Wes Kaplow, the CTO of government services at Qwest Communications in Denver. Qwest is partnering with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and laboratories and colleges throughout the United States to build the TeraGrid network, one of the largest grids yet constructed.... http://news.com.com/2100-1001-958311.html?tag=fd_top Penn State plugs into Dell cluster John G. Spooner, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Dell Computer is enrolling more customers for its computing clusters. The PC maker on Tuesday said it is working with Pennsylvania State University to build a new high-performance computing cluster, a group of computers linked together to perform heavy-duty computing tasks. Penn State will use the new cluster, which currently has 80 nodes and will grow to 256, to carry out research in biology, chemistry, physics and meteorology. Each of the 80 nodes is a Dell PowerEdge server with dual Xeon processors from Intel and RedHat's Linux operating system.... http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2880466,00.html The rise of P2P worms--and how to protect yourself Robert Vamosi, Senior Associate Editor, CNET/ZDNet Reviews It's been exactly a year since the Nimda worm first took the Internet community by surprise. Though last year many antivirus vendors predicted a wave of Nimda-mimics, the original remains in a class by itself; the virus-writing community simply didn't play along. But now that school's back in session, and new viruses are starting to appear again after their usual summer hiatus, we're starting to see a new strain that's completely different from Nimda. These new viruses either use peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, such as Kazaa or Morpheus, as a means to infect innocent victims, or they use P2P technology to construct worms that can communicate with one another and may someday even be resistant to antivirus measures.... http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19419.html Who Are the Hackers? Masha Zager, NewsFactor Network Once there were "black hat" hackers and "white hat" hackers -- bad guys who broke into computers to wreak havoc, and good guys who tried to find and plug loopholes before the bad guys found them. Today, as opportunities for hacking have increased, the ranks of hackers have grown, and their activities and motivations are more diverse than ever. "The term hacker doesn't even mean anything any more," said Michael Rasmussen, research director for information security at Giga Information Group, in an interview with NewsFactor. Still, security experts like Rasmussen try to profile hackers and divide them into broad categories.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/17/020917hnnanobill.xml?s=IDGNS Nanotechnology bill introduced in Senate Gretel Johnston A U.S. Senate subcommittee is ... to hear testimony on a bill that would spend hundreds of millions of government dollars on nanotechnology research. Representatives of the NanoBusiness Alliance, a New York-based industry association, and Hewlett-Packard are among the officials scheduled to testify on the bill, which earmarks $446 million for nanotechnology research in fiscal year 2003 and $547 million in 2004.... Tuesday, September 17, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/16/technology/16NECO.html A Battle Over Software Licensing LAURIE J. FLYNN A proposed law intended to standardize software licensing from state to state has ignited a battle between its supporters — most notably, the business software industry — and the many forces who have joined to defeat it. Opposition has united a strange collection of bedfellows: librarians, information-technology managers and corporate chief information officers, insurance and aerospace executives, and consumer groups.... One of the proposed law's main effects would be to make binding contracts of the consumer licenses that come with shrink-wrapped software — despite the fact the buyer often cannot read the licensing agreement before buying and opening the package.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/16/020916hnslapthreat.xml?s=IDGNS Security experts divided on Slapper's threat Paul Roberts THE APACHE/MOD_SSL, OR "Slapper" worm that is fast infecting Web servers worldwide marks a new milestone in the evolution of computer worms, experts say: the creation of a peer-to-peer network by a worm for the purpose of conducting distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. But experts are divided on how big a threat Slapper poses to the Internet infrastructure as a whole.... http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19406.html The Coming Virus Armageddon Jay Lyman, NewsFactor Network In addition to being stealthy, experts said, the ultimate computer virus would be polymorphic -- able to change its code, message and form to avoid detection. Computer virus writers are known for building on each other's work to create ever-deadlier malware. In the future, a truly malicious code might not create an immediate uproar by hitting the Internet with a big bang. Instead, it could slowly and quietly seize control of a vast number of computers, doing significant but not immediately apparent damage to data.... http://news.com.com/2100-1001-958135.html?tag=fd_top HP, Red Hat team on Linux workstation Stephen Shankland, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Hewlett-Packard has begun selling new workstations using Intel's Itanium 2 processor and a new higher-end version of Red Hat Linux, company executives said Monday. Red Hat had planned to release its Advanced Workstation product in the first half of 2003, but accelerated the schedule as part of an expanded alliance, said Mike Evans, vice president of business development at Red Hat.... http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55145,00.html Video-Conferencing Hole Exposed Michelle Delio Malicious hackers are no longer limited to looking at private data -- now they can also see their victims. Even a relatively unskilled attacker can transform some video-conferencing systems into video-surveillance units, using the devices to snoop, record or publicly broadcast presumably private video conferences.... Monday, September 16, 2002
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/slapper.shtml Slapper Worm F-Secure Virus For general information and geographic infection data on Linux.Slapper, see the Global Slapper Worm Information Center at http://www.f-secure.com/slapper/ . Slapper is a network worm that spreads on Linux machines by using a flaw discovered in August 2002 in OpenSSL libraries. The worm was found in Eastern Europe late on Friday September 13th 2002. The worm affects Linux machines that are running Apache web server with OpenSSL enabled. Apache installations cover more than 60% of public web sites on the internet. It can be estimated that less than 10% of these installations have enabled SSL services. SSL is most often used for online commerce, banking and privacy applications.... http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/09/15/wired.students.ap/index.html Internet an integral part of college life Associated Press Andy Perez uses the library at Rice University in Houston for the quiet, not the books. He does his research online. Edell Fiedler taps into the Internet to register for classes and check grades at Minnesota State University, Mankato, sometimes saving her the 60-mile drive to school. Rakesh Patel regularly uses e-mail to ask his professors at Chicago's DePaul University questions about assignments.... http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/534475p-4230821c.html 'Sony Dream World 2002' offers glimpse of future gadgets YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer A digital television set that learns its owner's tastes and a dancing baby-sized robot are among new gadgets being displayed by Sony Corp. at an exhibition that offers a dazzling, and perhaps a little unsettling, glimpse of the future as seen by the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant. "Sony Dream World 2002" opens this weekend in the port city of Yokohama and pictures a day when Sony-made machines bombard people practically everywhere with Sony singers, games and movies through always-on broadband links.... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/16/technology/16NET.html Student Skill Is Expected to Bolster Technology JOHN SCHWARTZ Today's college students — the first truly wired generation — are far more Net-adept than the general population, and will graduate with expectations of a high-speed Internet world that could push the technology development of the workplace and the home, according to a new report. "The Internet is as commonplace in college students' lives as books, or pizza and beer," said the study's author, Steve Jones, professor and head of the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "And probably, now that I think about it, a lot cheaper than pizza and beer. They're getting the Internet for free."... Sunday, September 15, 2002
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/535946p-4241774c.html Communications industry adopts crisis plan DAVID HO, Associated Press Communication industry officials adopted emergency procedures Friday intended to help maintain the nation's telephone, cable and Internet networks in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. The plans would help companies in a crisis contact and work with partner firms or competitors to keep services running for customers. The procedures were developed by a council of more than 50 industry officials formed by the Federal Communications Commission in January to recommend ways to strengthen communications networks to resist attack. The group is called the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/12/020912hniepatch.xml?s=IDGNS Security vulnerabilities persist after IE 6 patch Paul Roberts ONLY THREE DAYS after the official release of the first service pack for Microsoft's Internet Explorer Version 6 Web browser, security experts are raising concerns about security vulnerabilties that were not addressed by the company. The patch release, known as "Service Pack 1" was posted Monday on Microsoft's Web site and contains fixes for more than 300 issues with Internet Explorer 6, which was first released with the Windows XP operating system in October of 2001. Despite the fixes, however, security experts warn that significant vulnerabilties remain even after applying the patch.... http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/13/020913hnmswordhack.xml?s=IDGNS Microsoft Word, Outlook vulnerabilities identified Paul Roberts VULNERABILITIES have been identified in two widely-used Microsoft products, Microsoft Word and Outlook Express. In Microsoft Word's case, an attacker could steal data from a victim's hard disk, according to alerts posted on the Bugtraq Web site weeks ago and acknowledged by Microsoft on Friday. It would work like this: The attacker creates a Word 97 document and embeds hidden fields, such as the "IncludeText" field, in it. The attacker then e-mails the malicious document to the intended victim. When the victim opens the document, the fields retrieve data from the hard disk. The attacker would then receive the stolen data in the document when the victim e-mails it back to him.... http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/reviews/chi-0208120004aug12.story ProScope puts close-ups on computer screen in a snap Craig Crossman, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Ever want to look at something more closely? Now you can with the ProScope, a digital microscope that connects to your computer's USB port. Designed for Windows and Macintosh platforms, you place the ProScope over anything you wish to magnify. Whatever it sees is instantly displayed on your computer's screen in full color. If you like what you see, click the Snap Shot button to preserve the image. Or click the Movie Shot button to record full motion videos. There's an Interval Shot button for time lapse images so you don't have to wait for that bacteria culture to grow. |
