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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MAY 06, 2002 Court Says ISP Can Drop Spammers Quantifying Fiber-Optic Waste Researchers at Washington Shoot for Light Speed Transmission AND IT Job Market Heading for Rebound IDS Vendors Release New Products Graduate Student Raises Ire of Font Companies COURT SAYS ISP CAN DROP SPAMMERS A New York State appeals court has ruled that PaeTec Communications is allowed to disconnect MonsterHut from its service. MonsterHut is a bulk e-mailer and, according to PaeTec, an egregious spammer. After PaeTec notified MonsterHut that their service with the ISP would be discontinued for violations of PaeTec's policies, MonsterHut filed a lawsuit to stay in operation. Despite an earlier injunction from a state supreme court judge preventing the ending of service, the appeals court on Friday upheld PaeTec's complaint. The brief ruling agreed that MonsterHut had violated their agreement with PaeTec, saying that PaeTec did not need to prove that two percent of all recipients of MonsterHut's e-mail had complained. Newsbytes, 6 May 2002 http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176381.html QUANTIFYING FIBER-OPTIC WASTE Adventis Corp., a consulting firm in Boston, estimates that despite $139 billion that was "wisely" spent on fiber-optic infrastructure, another $70 billion was wasted. Another consultant, TeleChoice, said the mistake was having so many different companies building separate national fiber networks. Officials at Adventis said an inversion occurred when more money was spent on long-distance backbones than on local access, which typically requires more investment for the overall system to work efficiently. As a result of this inversion, less than 10 percent of the fiber backbone is active, and the broadband share of the market still lags far behind where some predicted it would be. Some observers defended the investments, saying telecommunications companies must plan 20 years in advance and predicting an end soon to the glut of bandwidth. Rocky Mountain News, 6 May 2002 http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/392666p-3119310c.html RESEARCHERS AT WASHINGTON SHOOT FOR LIGHT SPEED TRANSMISSION A research center at the University of Washington has been named one of six finalists for an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Center for Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research, headed by UW chemistry professor Larry Dalton, has been working on opto-chips for several years. These devices could bring data transmission up to the speed of light. Opto-chips convert electronic signals into light, require as little as one volt of energy, and offer up to a terahertz of bandwidth. According to Dalton, opto-chips have application in industries including defense, telecommunications, and all forms of computing. Dalton said the NSF award could mean as much as $100 million over ten years for the university. NewsFactor Network, 6 May 2002 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17597.html AND ***************************************************** IT JOB MARKET HEADING FOR REBOUND A new report from the Information Technology Association of America, an industry group, indicates that despite increasing levels of unemployment overall, the market for information technology jobs will improve soon. The report says that hiring managers plan to add 1.1 million jobs in the next 12 months, which would represent a substantial rebound from recent declines. According to the ITAA, the IT workforce will return to pre-2001 levels "if just half of these jobs are filled." The group said the upturn in IT jobs must have a corresponding increase in spending on IT infrastructure, including computer and networking hardware and services. Reuters, 6 May 2002 http://www.reuters.com/news.jhtml?type=technology IDS VENDORS RELEASE NEW PRODUCTS Amid mounting criticism of network security, several prominent vendors of intrusion detection systems (IDS) are set to unveil new and improved products at the Network+Interop Conference in Las Vegas. New products or added features to existing products are expected from Cisco Systems, Enterasys Networks, Intruvert Networks, and Recourse Technologies. According to Richard Mogull of Gartner Group, the industry must make significant progress in the areas of handling the high number of false positives typically returned by IDS devices and coming up with approaches to system security that do not rely on signatures of incoming traffic. InfoWorld, 6 May 2002 http://www.idg.net/ic_856882_1794_9-10000.html GRADUATE STUDENT RAISES IRE OF FONT COMPANIES A graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University has been receiving complaints from several font-creating companies, who argue that an application he wrote violates the DMCA. The student, Tom Murphy, wrote the application, called Embed, so that fonts he created could be used by anyone, whenever they wanted. Embed modifies "a few ones and zeroes" in the font file, allowing the font to be used without restrictions. Applying Embed to a copyrighted font, however, may be illegal because it would circumvent the copyright protections included in fonts. Murphy said he did not create the program to use copyrighted fonts illegally and has refused to stop posting Embed on his Web site. CNET, 3 May 2002 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-898777.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For past issues of Edupage or information about translations of Edupage into other languages, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE PUBLICATIONS EDUCAUSE publishes periodicals, including "EDUCAUSE Quarterly" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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