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TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 02, 2005 Department of Education Works to Expose Diploma Mills Helping Open Source Developers Avoid Legal Trouble Red Hat Makes Inroads into Government Market HP Looking for Transistor Replacement DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION WORKS TO EXPOSE DIPLOMA MILLS In an effort to combat diploma mills, the U.S. Department of Education has launched an online database that lists legitimate U.S. colleges and universities, as defined by accreditation from an organization recognized by the federal government. Officials from the department pointed to growing confusion among consumers about the validity of online-degree programs, and to revelations about suspect degrees held by high-level government officials, as motivation for creating the database. Many consumers are deceived into believing a particular online degree comes from an accredited institution, and further confusion surrounds legal repercussions of using a bogus degree for employment. Vicky Phillips, the CEO of GetEducated.com, which works to expose diploma mills, said the new database could prove useful but by itself is inadequate. She described the database as a "superficial approach that is in some ways more dangerous since it leaves consumers with a false sense that if they are getting a degree from some place in the database, it's OK." Wired News, 2 February 2005 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66476,00.html HELPING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS AVOID LEGAL TROUBLE The nonprofit Software Freedom Law Center opened this week to provide free legal advice to nonprofit developers of open source applications in an effort to anticipate and avoid future intellectual property disputes. A primary impetus for the new organization is SCO Group's $1 billion lawsuit against IBM for allegedly adding SCO-owned code to Linux. Initial funding for the new center--totaling $4 million--comes from the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a consortium of companies promoting Linux, including IBM, HP, and Intel. Heading the new center will be Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University and a specialist in copyright law and software, who will be joined on the center's legal board by Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford University; Diane Peters, general counsel of the OSDL; and Daniel Weitzner, a lawyer and researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "The idea of the center," said Weitzner, "is to provide legal and strategic resources to help open source continue to grow." New York Times, 1 February 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/technology/01soft.html RED HAT MAKES INROADS INTO GOVERNMENT MARKET Open source software continues to make inroads into government markets, as Linux company Red Hat this week announced a new business unit dedicated to the government sector. Paul Smith, the Red Hat vice president heading the government business unit, said that open source is a natural fit because of the level of attention government pays to IT standards. Red Hat government customers include the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. General Service Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Defense. Red Hat is also working with the National Security Agency on a security-enhanced version of Linux, called SELinux. Meanwhile, Microsoft this week announced the Security Cooperation Program, under which the software giant will share information with government agencies. The move is seen as a response to the growing support for open source tools among governments. CNET, 2 February 2005 http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5560238.html HP LOOKING FOR TRANSISTOR REPLACEMENT A team of HP researchers said it has made important strides in developing a technology that could one day replace the transistor as the fundamental building block of computers. The ability to increase the number of transistors on a silicon chip--thereby increasing the processing power--is nearing its physical limit, as transistors reach a point where they simply cannot be made any smaller. The technique being investigated by the HP research team was developed in collaboration with James R. Heath, then at the University of California at Los Angeles, and creates circuits at the junction of tiny platinum wires. Early tests of the technology in 1998 showed that it was capable of storing data. In its recent findings, the HP team said it has now shown that the technology is also able to perform so called "not" functions and that electrical signals can be restored such that circuits can be chained together effectively. Wall Street Journal, 1 February 2005 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110721664527841769,00.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings, or access the Edupage archive, 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] ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE RESOURCES The EDUCAUSE Resource Center is a repository for information concerning use and management of IT in higher education. 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