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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2006 Iowa State Fires Up New Supercomputer British Library Worries about Access to Electronic Content JPEG Patent Under Review Expected Damage from Kama Sutra Worm Doesn't Materialize IOWA STATE FIRES UP NEW SUPERCOMPUTER Researchers at Iowa State University will use a recently acquired supercomputer to work on a map of the genome of the corn plant. The $1.25 million IBM BlueGene computer, which was financed by the university and the National Science Foundation, can perform up to 5.7 trillion calculations per second, according to Srinivas Aluru, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State, allowing research projects to proceed that otherwise would be impractical due to processing needs. Three other universities are also working on the corn genome. Researchers hope that understanding the genome will allow them to engineer a corn plant "that, for example, produces biodegradable plastic or ethanol," said Patrick Schnable, an agronomy professor and director of the Center for Plant Genomics. The supercomputer will also be used in biomedical research to study protein networks. NewsFactor Network, 1 February 2006 http://www.newsfactor.com/news/story.xhtml?story_id=0010001JZMRW BRITISH LIBRARY WORRIES ABOUT ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC CONTENT In comments submitted to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group, which is investigating digital rights management (DRM) technologies, the British Library has expressed strong concerns about the long-term viability of electronic resources. Content producers increasingly use DRM to limit unauthorized access to electronic materials, but officials from the library said the protections also threaten legitimate uses of content. Use of materials held by libraries constitutes an important exception to copyright laws, according to Clive Field, the British Library's director of scholarships and collections, but DRM tools inadvertently upset the balance between appropriate exceptions and the rights of content owners. Moreover, long-term access is at risk. Even when copyright expires for a work, the DRM tools applied to its electronic version will still be in place. If the owner cannot be contacted, there might be no way to unlock materials that are no longer covered by copyright. "This will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege," according to the British Library's statement, "and undermine...legitimate public good access." BBC, 3 February 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4675280.stm JPEG PATENT UNDER REVIEW The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to review a patent held by Forgent Networks on the JPEG compression technique. An organization called the Public Patent Foundation had petitioned the patent office to review the patent. The Public Patent Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to minimizing what it sees as damage that patents cause, and last year it reportedly persuaded Pfizer to narrow its patent claims on Lipitor. The JPEG patent is extremely lucrative for Forgent, especially since the explosion of digital cameras in the past few years. The company has reportedly earned more than $100 million from the patent, which officials from Forgent said could be worth $1 billion. CEO Richard Snyder said his company has thoroughly investigated the patent and is confident it will be upheld. He said there are no "convincing arguments of invalidity" and the company "look[s] forward to an efficient reexamination." The Public Patent Foundation said that when the patent office agrees to reconsider a patent, it makes changes in 70 percent of cases, though that does not always mean the patents are invalidated. ZDNet, 2 February 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6034544.html EXPECTED DAMAGE FROM KAMA SUTRA WORM DOESN'T MATERIALIZE The latest high-profile worm making the rounds on the Internet has so far failed to unleash the damage that some had predicted. The Kama Sutra worm, also known as Nyxem.E, MyWife, and Blackworm, was scheduled to attack infected computers on Friday and begin deleting files and causing other headaches for users. However, Paul Ducklin, head of technology at Sophos Asia-Pacific, said there have been no reports of problems so far. Ducklin attributed the lack of consequence to effective efforts by businesses to identify the worm and keep computers from becoming infected. Allan Bell, marketing director for McAfee, echoed Ducklin's remarks. "No local outbreaks reported," he said, "and very few reports of infections." F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen noted, however, that home users are typically much less aware of security threats and therefore much more widely affected by such worms. "The full scope of the problem won't come to light until during the weekend or early next week," he said, when home users turn on their computers. CNET, 3 February 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6034706.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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