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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2004 UT Dallas Concedes Student Access Points Schools Turn to Electronic Tutors Feds Nab Software Pirates AOL Drops Microsoft's Antispam Technology UT DALLAS CONCEDES STUDENT ACCESS POINTS Administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas have withdrawn a policy that banned students from setting up Wi-Fi access points on campus. The policy was implemented to help deal with interference from 802.11b and 802.11g access points (802.11a access points were not banned) that some students had set up that were causing interference with the university's own wireless network. Students who disagreed with the policy noted that the Federal Communications Commission in June had issued a statement that supported individuals' right to operate access points using the Wi-Fi spectrum. University administrators conducted a review and decided to withdraw the policy because it was not clear that the university had the authority to enforce it. According to Steve McGregor, a spokesman for the university, the growing number of access points is causing interference in some areas of the campus, but the university will not try to regulate the access points. "Folks will have to figure it out individually," McGregor said. CNET, 16 September 2004 http://news.com.com/2100-7351_3-5369921.html SCHOOLS TURN TO ELECTRONIC TUTORS Intelligent tutoring software is finding its way into a number of classrooms around the United States. Intelligent tutors are applications that attempt to "learn" how individual students approach certain types of problems in an effort to understand their strengths and weaknesses. The tutors then provide feedback and hints based on that assessment. One of the leaders in the market for such tools is Cognitive Tutor, the product of a company called Carnegie Learning, which began at Carnegie Mellon University. Art Graesser, a professor of psychology and computer science at the University of Memphis who had done research on such systems, describes the Carnegie system as "the standard" of intelligent tutors, and studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University have shown consistently higher performance by students who use the application than by those who do not. Some observers note that while intelligent tutors work for subjects such as math that have clear answers, they are not as useful for subjects with less well-defined answers, such as sociology or psychology. Still, teachers, students, and administrators at the 1,700 middle and high schools where Cognitive Tutor is used generally have glowing praise for the system. New York Times, 16 September 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/technology/circuits/16tuto.html FEDS NAB SOFTWARE PIRATES Federal officials have broken up a software-piracy ring and seized pirated copies of Microsoft, Adobe, and Symantec software valued at nearly $87 million. The two-year investigation, called Operation Digital Marauder, also led to indictments of 11 individuals from California, Texas, and Washington. Those arrested are accused of making illegal copies of software--mostly of Microsoft products--and of printing counterfeit packaging materials and other documentation to accompany the software in distribution. Microsoft has worked to make its packaging materials more difficult to copy, adding security features such as copper holographic interwoven threads that spell out certain words, but pirates are increasingly able to replicate many of those features. Microsoft advises consumers who are unsure of the legitimacy of software they are buying to be wary of prices that seem too good to be true. Internet News, 17 September 2004 http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3409361 AOL DROPS MICROSOFT'S ANTISPAM TECHNOLOGY Following a new rift between Microsoft and the open-source community over a standard to fight spam, America Online (AOL) decided it will not adopt Microsoft's Sender ID tool. Sender ID is designed to identify spoofed return addresses in e-mail, allowing ISPs to reject those messages. Although Microsoft has said it will not charge royalties on Sender ID, the software company does hold patents for some of the technology on which the tool is built. Those patents have led to the recent dispute between Microsoft and advocates of an open-source approach to an antispam standard. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) rejected the Sender ID standard, and a statement from AOL released shortly after that decision said that the company "will now not be moving forward with full deployment of the Sender ID protocol." A spokesperson from Microsoft said that despite the IETF's decision, "It's still going to be one standard, there's just going to be two flavors." Reuters, 16 September 2004 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=6258496 ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ 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/ ***************************************************** 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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