***************************************************** Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. *****************************************************
TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MARCH 06, 2006 Hacker Accesses Georgetown Server China Looks to HP for Grid Web Site Aims to Provide Reliable Information on Everything AOL Catches Flack for E-Mail Postage Proposal Working Group Pushes for Storage Compatibility HACKER ACCESSES GEORGETOWN SERVER An external hacker has accessed a server at Georgetown University, according to officials from the Washington, D.C., institution. The server contained personal information on more than 41,000 individuals being tracked by the District of Columbias Office of Aging. The office was working with the university as part of a grant to manage the information. According to the university, the breach was discovered on February 12. Although the server was immediately taken off line, the Office of Aging was not notified until February 24 because school officials did not understand the scope of the exposure for some time. The Secret Service was then notified and is working with the university to try to identify the hacker. David Lambert, CIO at Georgetown, said the university would undertake a thorough review of its computer systems, "focused on enhancing the security of confidential information contained on campus and departmental servers." ComputerWorld, 6 March 2006 http://www.computerworld.com/ CHINA LOOKS TO HP FOR GRID The government of China has recruited HP to help it build and develop the ChinaGrid, which will be used by thousands of researchers in the country as well as more than 290 million Chinese college students. The facility that houses the grid opened in late February, and researchers from HP Labs and from the ChinaGrid are working on technologies to support the grid, including a monitoring system to minimize human intervention and tools to increase security of the grid. When finished, the grid is expected to be one of the most powerful in the world, with a capacity of 15 teraflops of computing power. The grid will be used for a language-instruction program at a university in Hong Kong, for various bioinformatics applications, and to support a videoconferencing system. The grid is overseen by the China Ministry of Education. Yahoo, 6 March 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060306/bs_nf/41931 WEB SITE AIMS TO PROVIDE RELIABLE INFORMATION ON EVERYTHING Internet entrepreneur Joe Firmage is working on a Web site that he hopes will outdo Google and Wikipedia, but for a fee. Digital Universe recruits experts, mostly academics, to develop encyclopedic content and provide links to associated online content on virtually any topic. Unlike Wikipedia, the contributors to Digital Universe are paid, and unlike Google, the online resources are filtered and vetted by experts. Firmage said the key to his project is the trustworthiness of the information it will contain. That trust comes at a price, though: subscriptions to the service cost $7.95 per month. Firmage predicted 10 million people would become subscribers within seven years; currently the site has about 10,000 paying customers. Consumers can also buy e-mail or Internet service from Digital Universe, which launched in January with about 50 portals on broad topics that lead to more specific resources. Firmage said that number would increase to 500 by next year and 10,000 by 2011. Some academics noted that aside from the pay they receive for their contributions, the site provides them an opportunity to post clear, accurate information about fields of study that may be largely unknown. Critics say the site is reaching too far. John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, "They want to cover everything, which is generally a bad way to go." San Jose Mercury News, 6 March 2006 http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/14028263.htm AOL CATCHES FLACK FOR E-MAIL POSTAGE PROPOSAL AOL's announcement last month that it would implement a fee system for e-mail has drawn a stern backlash from nonprofit organizations. A group of more than 50 nonprofits has signed an open letter to AOL calling the proposal a threat to a free Internet. Signers of the letter, including the Democratic National Committee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that they do much of their fundraising by e-mail and that AOL's plan would severely limit their ability to raise money. The letter also argues that the plan would create a two-tiered Internet, one for those who pay and one for those who don't. AOL's fee system is intended to cut down on spam by charging senders between .25 and 1 cent per e-mail. For that fee, the sender's messages will be delivered without being screened for spam. Unpaid messages will be subject to spam and other filters. The idea is that spammers would be unwilling to pay for each of the billions of messages they send to people who don't want them. Since its original announcement, AOL has said it would not charge nonprofits the delivery fee. BBC, 6 March 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4778136.stm WORKING GROUP PUSHES FOR STORAGE COMPATIBILITY Four companies have launched the Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) Working Group to increase standardization of storage hardware, which members of the group said will lower costs and provide users more flexibility. Dell, EMC, Intel, and LSI Logic are the founding members of the group, and a number of other companies have also joined the effort. Currently, interface controllers are specific to different classes of storage, including JBOD (just a bunch of disks) and RAID (redundant array of independent disks). By developing specifications for a new type of interface, SBB hopes to allow users to change storage technologies without also changing all the associated hardware components. Bill Dawkins, SBB chairman and Dell technology strategist, said, "Once you design one enclosure with SBB-compliant slots, you can change the function of that enclosure by changing the SBB canisters [controllers]." This kind of standardization, Dawkins said, "brings with it an efficiency and affordability, and we expect to see it passed on to the customer." Internet News, 6 March 2006 http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3589326 ***************************************************** 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. To access resources including articles, books, conference sessions, contracts, effective practices, plans, policies, position descriptions, and blog content, go to http://www.educause.edu/resources ***************************************************** CONFERENCES For information on all EDUCAUSE learning and networking opportunities, see http://www.educause.edu/31 ***************************************************** COPYRIGHT Edupage copyright (c) 2006, EDUCAUSE
