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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2003 RealNetworks Offers Digital Rights Management Microsoft Backs away from .NET Branding Strategy IBM to Provide Supercomputing on Demand AND American University Says It Is SEVIS-Compliant Report Charges E-Rate Program Riddled with Fraud Publisher Accepting Dissertations and Theses Online New Plagiarism Service for British Universities REALNETWORKS OFFERS DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT A day after Microsoft announced licensing discounts intended to persuade consumer electronics makers to use its Windows Media software, RealNetworks announced new digital rights management (DRM) technology that works with a wide range of formats. DRM tools, which control access to electronic media files, are typically specific to individual formats. As a result, consumers need separate DRMs for different formats, and electronic devices require multiple DRMs to play files of several formats. RealNetworks's new technology, called Helix DRM, supports MPEG-4, H.263, MP3, AAC, Narrowband AMR audio, and its own RealAudio and RealVideo streaming formats. Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research said the new technology is an important step for MP3 and MPEG-4, which have not been widely accepted by many content providers because they lacked any rights management tools. CNET, 8 January 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979792.html MICROSOFT BACKS AWAY FROM .NET BRANDING STRATEGY Less than six months after Microsoft announced that its next major operating system would be called "Windows .NET Server 2003," the company has decided to call the product simply "Windows Server 2003." The change is part of Microsoft's revised approach to marketing its NET technology, which is designed to support Web services. After several months of attaching the .NET tag to most of its products, Microsoft now will simply refer to those products as ".NET connected," indicated with a logo. Ted Schadler of Forrester Research said Microsoft's strategy should never have been to lump everything under the .NET umbrella, which many consumers did not understand and found mysterious. The .NET technology included in Microsoft's products will not change, but the ".NET connected" logo can be applied to independent software vendors' products based on the technology, according to an official from Microsoft. Wall Street Journal, 10 January 2003 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1042210597413487704,00.html IBM TO PROVIDE SUPERCOMPUTING ON DEMAND IBM recently announced its supercomputing-on-demand service, targeted to businesses whose computing needs are cyclical, that offers an alternative to the costly practice of building and maintaining computer infrastructure used only during busy periods. The service uses a Linux cluster of rack servers based on Intel's Xeon processor or a network of UNIX servers running IBM's Power4 processors. Customers sign a contract with IBM detailing the project length and resources required, with price contingent on these factors. PGS Data Processing, an energy company, has signed up for the Linux-Intel service. The clusters are currently located at IBM's facility in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with plans to roll the technology out to IBM data centers worldwide. IBM hopes to evolve the technology to the point where clients could access computer resources like �flipping a light switch.� IDG, 9 January 2003 http://www.idg.net/ic_1018994_9677_1-5044.html AND ***************************************************** AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SAYS IT IS SEVIS-COMPLIANT American University, in Washington, D.C., said this week that after working since last summer to centralize student information, the institution is prepared to comply with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), the new student information system from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Fanta Aw of American University said the university already collects most of the information required to comply but formerly did not have a single system to track all of it. The difference with SEVIS, she said, is that institutions are compelled to submit student information each semester rather than waiting for the INS to request such information. Aw also said that the most important piece of information is whether the student is enrolled. American University, which hosts more than 1,400 foreign students, is perhaps the first institution to announce its ability to be fully compliant with SEVIS. Voice of America News, 8 January 2003 http://www.voanews.com/ REPORT CHARGES E-RATE PROGRAM RIDDLED WITH FRAUD A report from the Center for Public Integrity says that the federal government's E-Rate program is rife with "fraud and financial shenanigans." The E-Rate program gives subsidies for telecommunications projects and is credited with bringing Internet access to thousands of schools and libraries that would otherwise have difficulty affording them. The report is based largely on information collected by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which, according to the author of the report, "found problems everywhere they�ve looked, and they haven�t looked very hard." A review by Arthur Anderson uncovered several million dollars' worth of "inappropriate" payments under the program, and recently the first criminal charges were filed against a New York company for attempting to steal millions of dollars from the program through misrepresentation. The inspector general of the FCC said the program is "subject to unacceptably high risk of malfeasance." Representatives from the Universal Service Administrative Company, which administers E-Rate for the FCC, and from the American Library Association defended the program, arguing that although some abuse is likely, the problem is not excessive and may turn out to be less than indicated by the Center for Public Integrity's report. New York Times, 10 January 2003 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/education/10FRAU.html PUBLISHER ACCEPTING DISSERTATIONS AND THESES ONLINE Developers of a new online-submission tool for dissertations and master's theses hope the system will make the submission process--required by most institutions--easier for students and will speed availability of the papers. ProQuest Information and Learning receives about 55,000 dissertations and theses each year, but only about 3,000 are submitted online. The $55 fee for submissions is the same for online and paper submissions, and some observers predicted that the ability to submit papers electronically will encourage students to include less traditional features in their work, such as embedded databases or audio and video files. The University of Texas at Austin, which has one of the nation's largest populations of graduate students, will begin testing the system this month, and it will be available to other institutions later this year. Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 January 2003 http://chronicle.com/free/2003/01/2003011001t.htm NEW PLAGIARISM SERVICE FOR BRITISH UNIVERSITIES The Plagiarism Advisory Service, based at the University of Northumbria, is a new electronic plagiarism-detection service available to all British colleges and universities. Papers are returned four hours after being submitted to the service and are color-coded to indicate the level of matching to documents available on the Internet. Red indicates that more than 75 percent of the text has been copied, blue means less than 10 percent, and other colors are spread in between. Instructors also see which Web site(s) the copied content comes from. Because of the ease with which students can cut and paste content from the Web, plagiarism is a growing problem in the United Kingdom, as well as in many other parts of the world. Ananova, 8 January 2003 http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_737513.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 "EQ" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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