From cate3@netcom.com Tue Mar 28 09:42:11 1995
From: cate3@netcom.com
Subject: Life D.C
To: jwry.dli@netcom.com
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
---------------------------------------
Date: 25 Apr 94 15:29:57 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life D.C
The following are selections from Edupage, a twice weekly sumary of news items
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DESIGNER SATELLITE ANTENNAS
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a satellite antenna that could
double as a window shade. It consists of a plastic sheet 30 by 40 inches,
with tiny antenna wires and circuits printed on the surface. (Business Week
3/21/94 p.112)
NETWORKING ALOFT
Some of the new Boeing 777s will use on-board LANs to deliver movies,
interactive shopping and destination information to passengers, each of
whom will have a video screen installed on the seatback in front of them.
Passengers also will be able to send and receive e-mail using a modem jack
located on each seat's armrest. (PC World 3/94 p.57)
CLIPPER CHIP OPPOSITION
InfoWorld publisher Bob Metcalfe states in a Wall Street Journal op-ed
piece that he is against Clipper Chip technology, but for different reasons
than those cited by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Rather
than getting steamed up about the right to privacy issue, which he notes
was always a conditional right anyway, Metcalfe says, "I am against Clipper
simply because it will not work, and it will cost an unnecessary amount of
tax money to outfit government computers with the chips." Even if Clipper
were built into every computer and phone system, "smart criminals can
easily get around Clipper by using additional encryption. Stupid criminals
will continue to do stupid things and get caught." (Wall Street Journal
3/22/94 A14)
DIGITAL CINEMA
Pacific Bell's "Cinema of the Future" will begin transmitting movies
electronically to about a dozen movie theaters in Los Angeles this summer.
The new process involves converting the film to digital format, zapping it
along fiber-optic lines to a video server, which doctors it up for feeding
into high-definition film projectors in the local theater. (Wall Street
Journal 3/21/94 B10)
BRAINS OVER MUSCLE
1991 was the first year in which companies spent more on computing and
communications gear than on industrial, mining, farm and construction
machines. And today, a typical new automobile has $675 worth of steel and
$782 worth of microelectronics. (Fortune 4/4/94 p.25)
TELECOMMUTING
In 1990, there were an estimated 2 million telecommuters in this country. That
number has increased to 7.8 million this year. And by the year 2001, there
will be an estimated 30 million telecommuters. (NBC Nightly News 3/22/94)
SHRINKING SOFTWARE INDUSTRY A MYTH
Although it may seem software companies are merging every time you turn
around, the Software Publishers Association reports that the industry is
still attracting plenty of new players. "For every merger, there are five
new companies coming into the industry," notes the association's president.
(Investor's Business Daily 3/23/94 p.4)
THE VIRTUAL WORKFORCE
Bell Atlantic has expanded telecommuting from a trial of 100 managers three
years ago to an option for all 16,000 of its management people, and CEO Ray
Smith says the company is working with the union to "open the option as
much as possible to our 50,000 associates." (The Futurist Mar/Apr 94 p.13)
DIGITAL CAMERAS
NBC Correspondent George Lewis reports that the Associated Press is using a
$16,000 electronic camera that records pictures on a computer disc instead
of film. "It's dispatched to big events like the Oscars so the pictures
can be put on the wire service immediately. For the consumer market, Apple
computer sells a digital camera for 750 dollars. Nobody expects digital to
completely replace film in the near future...but as prices come down,
digital cameras will be a hot selling item." (NBC Nightly News 3/23/94)
LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE
When it comes to building the future information highway, the Japanese are
going slow. Although the recent economic downturn has been cited as
partially responsible, the cultural gap is also to blame. "The Information
Highway is so tied to American culture that we can't even understand what
we're getting into," notes Mitsubishi's chairman. (Business Week 3/28/94
p.28)
ENCRYPTION DEBATE
The Clinton Administration has underestimated the extent to which high-tech
and privacy groups oppose the Clipper and Tessara chips -- encryption
technologies that would allow federal agencies with court orders to
eavesdrop on data and voice communications. At the recent conference on
Computers, Freedom and Privacy, an Administration spokesman asked: "Do you
really want to live in a world where law enforcement can not do its job
because of the need for privacy?" Pressed to explain how crooks and
terrorists smart enough to use encryption could be stupid enough to use the
government's own encryption standards, the spokesman insisted: "You
shouldn't overestimate the I.Q. of crooks." (New York Times 3/26/94 p.19)
"PAPERLESS" JET
The new Boeing 777, the largest twin-engine plane ever built, was designed
entirely on computer screens and assembled without mockups. The first
"paperless" jet line, the plane was designed with eight IBM mainframes
supporting 2200 workstations. (New York Times 3/27/94 Sec.3 p.1)
SOFTWARE REPLACES SPORTSWRITERS
A $100 software program called Sportswriter is capable of churning out
reasonably good sports copy by intelligently stringing together words
between facts. Some 80 small newspapers in the Midwest have purchased the
program and are using it to cover high school sports events. (Wall Street
Journal 3/29/94 A1)
SOFTWARE PIRACY DOWN
Losses due to software piracy totaled $7.4 billion worldwide last year,
down from $9.7 billion in 1992. The Software Publishers Association noted
that the reduction in dollars lost was largely attributable to falling
software prices, and that the number of software products copied and sold
illegally actually rose about 1.5%. (Investor's Business Daily 3/29/94 p.1)
ELECTRONIC RIGHTS FOR AUTHORS
The Association of Authors' Representatives advises its agents that the
author should retain the right to approve the licensing of electronic
rights by the publisher; that the author should keep multimedia rights
(because of potential conflicts with film and audio versions of books); and
that as new technology arrives contracts might have to be re-negotiated.
(New York Times 3/28/94 C6)
EQUALITIES
In memory capacity terms, one human genome equals one-and-one-seventh
compact disks equals 536 1.4MB floppy disks equals equals 399,000 pages of
text. (Fortune 4/4/94 p.75)
THOUGHTS FOR ALL (OR AT LEAST 700) OCCASIONS
Computerized form letters have been written on 700 subjects to respond to
mail sent to the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. There are
"robo compassion letters" for people in declining health and a "robo
poetry" letter thanking people who send in poetry. The letters are signed
by an automatic pen. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 3/29/94 A14)
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT
A prison inmate who uses his time to file frivolous product liability
lawsuits has had his computer taken away by the judge. The Legal Aid
Society says the judge's sanctions are too harsh, although the prisoner
will still be able to continue to handwrite his complaints against numerous
companies, none of which (surprisingly?) a computer hardware or software
vendor. (New York Times 3/29/94 A16)
SMOKING OUT THE OPPOSITION
Lawyers for the American Tobacco Co. were granted a subpoena for the
membership list of a computer network used by anti-smoking groups. The move
to acquire SCARCNet's (Smoking Control Advocacy Resource Network) records
is believed to be the first legal action of this kind. The subpoena also
demands the names of those funding the network and copies of all posted
strategy sessions. Attorneys for the Advocacy Institute have filed papers
seeking to deny the subpoena on First Amendment grounds. (Wall Street
Journal 3/30/94 B1)
COMPAQS ON AISLE FOUR
Walmart will begin selling Compaq Presario 425 PCs in all 2,000 of its
stores. The computer is already available through Sam's Club, Walmart's
wholesale outlet. (Miami Herald 3/30/94 C3)
CHEATERS BEWARE
Massively parallel computers, relational databases, and expert systems are
changing the way the Internal Revenue Service hunts for tax cheaters. The
IRS is now starting to download selected excerpts of data onto workstations
to detect patterns of tax evasion, which deprives the federal government
alone of $150 billion each year. (Forbes 4/11/94 p.88)
OPEN SECRET
Instead of using mathematical codes to scramble and unscramble
messages, Georgia Tech physicists are devising a way of sending a message
with electronic noise generated by a flickering laser. By connecting
identical lasers over fiber optics, the same random pattern of noise is
generated at both the sending and receiving end, and the receiving simply
subtracts the noise to uncover the message. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4/7/94 E2)
PEOPLE OR MACHINES
Human-centered information technology managers concentrate on
people rather than machines. For example, machine-oriented managers assume
permanence of solutions; people-oriented managers assume transience of
solutions. (Harvard Business Review 3/4 94 p.119)
COMPUTERS DIMINISH TRUCK STRIKE IMPACT
The national truck strike called for midnight tonight may have less
impact that previous strikes because shippers using information technology
to track their shipments now find it easier to deal with such business
disruptions. (New York Times 4/11/94 C1)
CONCERT HALLS VIA COMPUTER
Computerized acoustics can transform an 11-by-13-and-a-half-foot
room into any of 16 places, including a practice room, a recital hall, an
intimate theater, a recording studio, a cathedral, a concert hall and a
stadium. The Wenger acoustical virtual environment, or Wave, also can
simulate an empty space or one filled with an audience. (Wall Street
Journal 4/11/94 B1)
FAX FACTS
Fax costs total about 36% of all phone-service expenses, according
to a Pitney Bowes survey of telecommunications managers. (Wall Street
Journal 4/14/94 A1)
PALMTOP FOR THE PITS
We've all heard how raucous Chicago futures trading can be -- now
there's a palmtop replacement for the paper cards that have been in use
since horse-and-buggy days. And the best news is, it's stomp-proof. Audit,
designed by Synerdyne, weighs a little over a pound and can operate 8 hours
on battery. (Business Week 4/18/94 p.95)
COMPUTERIZED COIN CHANGE
Controlled by Intel 386 microprocessors, Coinstar coin-sorting
machines deployed in Bellevue, Washington, grocery stores allow people to
deposit collections of coins for sorting and inserting them in rolls.
Customers pay 10 cents on every dollar of pennies rolled and 5 cents of
every dollar of other coin denominations. (New York Times 4/17/94 Sec.3,
p.12)
COMPUTERS FILL REAL POTHOLES
A new Automated Pavement Repair Vehicle engineered by Northwestern
University does more than talk about the information highway -- its
$400,000 worth of high-tech gear (including a 3-D infrared-laser-vision
system and two computers) fills potholes automatically by sensing the size
and shape of the hole and making just the right mix of rock and goo to plop
into it. (Wall Street Journal 4/15/94 A1)
NBC ON-LINE
NBC is taking the plunge next month and advertising a sweepstakes
competition on America On-line. (Wall Street Journal 4/15/94 B11)
EMOTIVE SPEECH SYNTHESIS
Movie-goers who have seen the movie "Taxi Driver" know that there
are many ways of saying, "You talking to me? You talking to ME?" Now a
U.S. patent (Patent No. 5,305,423) has been awarded to a system that can
supply emotional contours to computer-generated speech so that spoken words
can be changed the way written text is changed by putting a phrase in
italics or capital letters. You know what we MEAN? (New York Times 4/18/94
C2)
THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING
Brain-activated technology maps a person's brain waves and uses the
information to control physical objects, such as moving cursors on a
computer screen, steering a wheelchair, and maybe even flying an airplane.
(Discover 5/94 p.58)
FAX FACTS
A Gallop poll has found that fax transmission account for 36
percent of telephone bills at Fortune 500 companies, and that e-mail has
made little headway in being used routinely for corporate communications,
in spite of its considerable cost advantage. ANS (Advanced Network
Services) says that a one-page e-mail message sent by network costs less
than 2 cents, compared to 29 cents for a letter sent by mail and an even
higher cost for a fax message. (New York Times 4/19/94 C3)
TV ON YOUR PC
Intel and Cable News Network have enlisted several companies to try
out a new technology that allows PC users to view news broadcasts in a
small window on the monitor. LAN TV also can be used to distribute video
announcements or training material to workers. The system uses ordinary
local area networks rather than specialized wiring or switching
technologies, and compression technology that squeezes video from 30 still
pictures per second down to 10 to 15 frames -- leaving 97% of the network
capacity free for other work. (Wall Street Journal 4/22/94 B2)
BATTERIES THAT TELL YOU "I'M TIRED"
Duracell has developed a battery that includes a chip that keeps
track of exactly how much charge is left and communicates that information
to the owner of the device it is powering. In fact the chip keeps track of
34 parameters. Although the chip is proprietary, but the
information-reporting format is an "open" standard offered by Duracell and
Intel. (New York Times 4/23/94 p.19)
NOT PLAYING GAMES
Consumer devices that Nintendo, Sony and Sega are developing will
have computer power far in excess of what's now available in personal
computers; for example, Nintendo's $250 Project Reality video-game player
and personal communications device will be more powerful than the Cray I
supercomputer of 1976. Unlike the PC industry (which is constrained by its
installed base of hardware and software products), the electronics industry
will be able to make far bolder technology changes. Nintendo's CEO asks:
"If you put something this powerful and this cheap in the market, what
happens to everybody else?" (New York Times 4/20/94 C1)
TALKING INVENTORY
A wireless tracking program will be used by the Department of
Defense to find the location of items in inventory. Each lot in a warehouse
will be tagged with a tiny radio transmitter. For example, if you were to
call all toilet seats, they would call back and tell you where they are.
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution 4/21/94 F2)
CRIMINAL FAX
A criminal major N.Y. gambling ring has been broken because its
boss made the mistake of using faxes to get daily reports on his illegal
gambling profits. The faxes were intercepted under a court order. (New York
Times 4/21/94 A12)
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