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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 05, 2003 Wake Forest Moves Toward VoIP Sun Courts Higher Education with Discounts Report Shows Users Deleting Music Files Microsoft Offers Reward for Virus Writers WAKE FOREST MOVES TOWARD VOIP Citing decreasing revenues from landline phone service it currently provides to students on campus, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., has announced plans to eliminate the landline service in favor of a voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) system. According to Jay Dominick, CIO at Wake Forest, all landline phones in the university's 1,900 dorm rooms will be replaced with VoIP phones within five years. Dominick noted that increasing use of cell phones by students has led to significantly lower use of university-provided landline phones, as well as a situation where the university does not have current phone numbers for all its students. Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., already uses a VoIP phone network for its 1,000 students. CNET, 4 November 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1037-5101633.html SUN COURTS HIGHER EDUCATION WITH DISCOUNTS Sun Microsystems this week announced the Java Enterprise System, a new software offering directed at the higher education market. Sun said that for an annual fee of $50 per staff member, the new product provides network identity management, communications and collaboration, Web applications, and security services. The software itself, as well as maintenance and consulting, are included in the subscription price. Sun has been making efforts to capture a larger share of the higher education market. Earlier this year, the company began offering higher education discounts on hardware and on software licensing through a program called Sun EduSoft Portfolio. ZDNet, 4 November 2003 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5101712.html REPORT SHOWS USERS DELETING MUSIC FILES Research firm NPD Group of Port Washington, N.Y., estimates that in August 1.4 million U.S. households deleted all music files from their computers. The estimate is based on a sample group of 10,000 users the company monitors. For comparison, the company estimated that 600,000 households deleted all music files during the month of May, prior to high-profile lawsuits filed by the recording industry. Russ Crupnick, vice president at NPD Group, attributed the rise in deletions to publicity surrounding the then-impending lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America, not to legal online music services, many of which were not available during the recent study. Of the users in NPD Group's sample group who deleted music files, most had fewer than 50 files on their computers. Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2003 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106799426534737400,00.html MICROSOFT OFFERS REWARD FOR VIRUS WRITERS Microsoft reportedly will offer $500,000 for information leading to the arrest of the writers of the recent MSBlast and Sobig viruses, which caused widespread damage across the globe to machines running Microsoft operating systems. Security experts suggested that the rewards are an effort to generate new leads for an investigation that has not turned up the culprits and has lately lost steam. Mikko Hypponen of the Finnish security firm F-Secure said that many experts have speculated that the MSBlast worm was written by a teenager to impress a girl with whom he was smitten. "I could see a teenager snitching on that one," said Hypponen. The Sobig virus, however, is regarded by many as the work of an organization or a group, written for the purpose of using infected computers as money-making tools in an organized spam scheme. Reuters, 5 November 2003 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=3759438 ***************************************************** 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. For information on EDUCAUSE publications see http://www.educause.edu/pub/ ***************************************************** CONFERENCES For information on all EDUCAUSE learning and networking opportunities, see http://www.educause.edu/conference/ ***************************************************** COPYRIGHT Edupage copyright (c) 2003, EDUCAUSE
