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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2004 IBM Signs on with Liberty Alliance NEC Regains Title of Fastest Supercomputer Danish Academic Center Studies Video Games Kazaa's Popularity Slips to Number Two IBM SIGNS ON WITH LIBERTY ALLIANCE The Liberty Alliance has announced the addition of IBM to its board, marking what many see as the beginning of a necessary convergence between standards groups that so far have been working separately on similar specifications. IBM and Microsoft have been early and strong backers of the Web Services Interoperability Consortium (WS-I), while the Liberty Alliance began as an initiative led by Sun Microsystems and AOL. The two groups have sometimes done overlapping work in developing specifications to facilitate interoperability among applications from multiple vendors. Customers of products built on various platforms have increasingly called for those products to work with each another. According to IBM's Karla Norsworthy, "Once we get to the point where customers need us to support those solutions, we're going to do it." She said now is the right time for IBM to join the Liberty Alliance and that the best course over time would be a convergence of federated identity standards. Analyst Ronald Schmelzer agreed that the convergence of various standards is inevitable and noted that IBM's announcement gives credence to its claim that it supports open specifications. Internet News, 20 October 2004 http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3424441 NEC REGAINS TITLE OF FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER Just weeks after IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer broke the supercomputing speed record held for three years by NEC's Earth Simulator, a new supercomputer built by NEC has retaken the title for fastest processing. The Blue Gene/L machine achieved processing speeds of 36.01 teraflops, besting the Earth Simulator's rate of 35.86 teraflops. NEC's new SX-8 supercomputer, built to help meteorological studies in the United Kingdom, can reach processing speeds of 65 teraflops. According to Kazuko Andersen, a spokesperson for NEC, the new machine is designed for scientific and research applications, including "weather forecasting and environmental simulations, and automotive designs and collision analysis." SX-8 is a vector supercomputer that uses 25 percent less physical space and 50 percent less power than previous designs. Federal Computer Week, 21 October 2004 http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1018/web-super-10-21-04.asp DANISH ACADEMIC CENTER STUDIES VIDEO GAMES The Center for Computer Games Research in Denmark has emerged as one of the leading organizations in the study of theory and practice of video gaming. Located at the Information Technology University in Copenhagen, the center attracts a small cadre of academics interested in pursuing high-level research on various aspects of gaming. The center is the home for academics doing Ph.D.-level work in such areas as the economic, social, political, and educational effects of video games. A researcher from Spain is studying the ethics of games, while others study such topics as women's issues in gaming and the educational value of commercial games. Researchers at the center say that games such as Super Monkey Ball can improve players' hand-eye coordination and that the multiplayer mode provides an effective means of studying human rivalry. BBC, 21 October 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3727932.stm KAZAA'S POPULARITY SLIPS TO NUMBER TWO Kazaa, the longtime leader in P2P file sharing, last month slipped behind eDonkey in daily average of users, according to online tracking firm BayTSP. Jim Graham, spokesperson for BayTSP, said that since the company began tracking usage of file-sharing services 18 months ago, the number of Kazaa users has been steadily dropping as the number of users choosing eDonkey has risen, and last month marked the first time eDonkey numbers surpassed those of Kazaa. The usage data are skewed by users "planted" by recording companies to disrupt networks with nonfunctioning versions of music files, though it is not known how many such users there are. Kazaa's popularity may play a part in its slow decline: Sharman Networks, the distributor of the Kazaa software, as well as many individual Kazaa users, have been the targets of ongoing legal actions by the recording industry to try to limit the copyright violations that are common on P2P networks. Washington Post, 21 October 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49712-2004Oct20.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639 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/Edupage/639 ***************************************************** 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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