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*****************************************************************
Edupage, 5 May 1996.  Edupage, a summary of news items on information
technology, is provided three times each week as a service by Educom,
a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities
seeking to transform education through the use of information technology.
*****************************************************************

TOP STORIES
        No Merger In Cards For British Telecom And Cable & Wireless
        The Selling Of Ada
        Pentium Pro Prices Poised To Plunge
        EU Takes A Closer At The Internet
        $500 Internet PC Won't Fly, Says Forrester

ALSO
        The PC's A Printing Press, Not A TV
        Chipping Away From Within
        Canadian Satellite Targeted
        "The Floppy Is Obsolete Technology"
        Payment By The Word
        Digital's New Servers Dish Up A Challenge
        LCD TVs

NO MERGER IN CARDS FOR BRITISH TELECOM AND CABLE & WIRELESS
Abandoning merger talks that would have created the world's fifth-biggest
communications group in terms of revenue, British Telecommunications and
Cable & Wireless said that financial and regulatory obstacles were too great
to overcome.  However, a business partnership between the companies will
continue, and the chairman of C&W said that "you can do a lot of things
without mega-mergers."  (New York Times 3 May 9 C4)

THE SELLING OF ADA
The U.S. Department of Energy is committing $2 million to promote commercial
software products written in Ada 95, a programming language developed with
substantial government support.  (Computer Industry Daily 6 May 96)

PENTIUM PRO PC PRICES POISED TO PLUNGE
A senior Intel official predicts deep cuts in prices for computers powered
by Intel's top-of-the-line Pentium Pro microprocessor, from an average of
$4,000 now to about $2,500 by the end of the year.  This trend is expected
to spark a new round of corporate upgrading, augmented by new Intel
motherboard and chip set technology that are both cheaper and easier to
maintain than current models.  The new technology, called Desktop Management
Interface, uses hardware and software standards designed to facilitate
remote diagnosis of PC problems and reduce repair and maintenance costs.
(Wall Street Journal 3 May 96 B4)

EU TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE INTERNET
European Union culture and telecommunications ministers met last week to
discuss ways of controlling access to the Internet to prevent criminal
activity and protect children.  "Many member states perceive the need now
for some discipline, some kind of regulatory framework or code of ethics,"
says the Italian telecommunications minister.  Some European governments,
such as Germany and Great Britain, have already adopted Internet-related
laws and others are considering it.  (Wall Street Journal 3 May 96 B5B)

$500 INTERNET PC WON'T FLY, SAYS FORRESTER
A new report released by Forrester Research predicts that the $500 Internet
PC "won't deliver" and aren't cheap enough to qualify as a successful
consumer electronics product.  "The technology is not good enough, the
content will be inadequate, and distribution will pose a substantial
hurdle."  Forrester says that low-cost full-feature PCs priced in the $1,000
range will present a more viable alternative.  (Investor's Business Daily 6
May 96 A6)

======================================================

THE PC'S A PRINTING PRESS, NOT A TV
Jonathan Wallace, co-author of "Sex, Laws and Cyberspace," (Henry Holt,
1996) thinks Congress made a mistake in its attempt to ban "indecent"
content from the Internet:  "If Congress had taken a deep breath, it would
have realized the correct analogy for the Net is the printing press.  Every
computer can be used as a tool to create text or redistribute text created
by others.  The analogy is so exact that there's no justification to apply
laws that are different than those for the printing press.  What Congress
did instead was to treat the Net like broadcast TV -- a grievous mistake."
(Information Week 29 Apr 96 p12)  The Communications Decency Act is now
being challenged in court by the American Library Association, whose
legislative counsel Adam Eisgrau notes, "Fear plus ignorance shouldn't equal
public policy."  (Business Week 6 May 96 p58)

CHIPPING AWAY FROM WITHIN
The problem of microchip theft from high-tech industries is so widespread
that law enforcement officials estimate it adds about $150 to the cost of a
personal computer system.  Though an increasing number of chip thefts have
taken the form of violent armed robberies, the majority of such thefts are
accomplished by company insiders.  A 1994 survey released by the American
Society for Industrial Security indicated that employees were responsible
for 57% of all component thefts, with vendors and independent contractors
accounting for another 13%.  (San Jose Mercury Center News 5 May 96)

CANADIAN SATELLITES TARGETED
The race into space with direct broadcast satellite TV has created a
regulatory black hole that the U.S. government is struggling to fill.  A
plan by Telesat Canada to finance its $1.6-billion satellite program by
leasing capacity to American broadcasters has prompted the Federal
Communications Commission to hold special hearings in Washington to
investigate whether it can regulate the use of Canadian satellites.
(Toronto Financial Post 4 May 96 p1)

"THE FLOPPY IS OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY"
Kim Edwards, CEO of removable-disk-drive-maker Iomega, says the days of the
floppy drive are over:  "We believe that the floppy disk is essentially
obsolete technology.  It isn't big enough to do anything with, and it's
very, very slow.  Software is all shipped on CD-ROM.  In fact, it's really
shipped on the hard drive.  Gateway 2000 Inc., for example, preconfigures
their machines with software right on the hard drive.  Microsoft Crop. has
announced that they're going to stop providing software on floppies.  I
think that's a huge signal.  But to make the Zip the floppy for the
multimedia age, we're going to have to do more than just sell the drive as
an external box.  We've got to get inside the computers."  The Zip drive,
which sells for $200, uses special removable disks that hold 100 megabytes
of data, compared with 1.4 megabytes on a conventional floppy.  Iomega's Jaz
drive stores one gigabyte on each disk.  (Investor's Business Daily 6 May 96 A6)

PAYMENT BY THE WORD
James Gleick reports that some Web-searching services will now let
advertisers sponsor an individual word.  For example, if you search for
"golf"at Yahoo, an ad for golf offers to let you win a set of clubs, and a
click on "golf" at Lycos gets you an ad and a contest offer from Cobra Golf.
Another example:  AT&T and Sprint both have bought the word "telephone" from
various search services.  (New York Times Magazine 5 May 96 p32)

DIGITAL'S NEW SERVERS DISH UP A CHALLENGE
Digital Equipment Corp.'s new line of computer servers, with prices starting
at $50,000 each, are taking aim at the lucrative mid-range server market now
dominated by Sun Microsystems, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.  "This finally gives
Digital a workhorse in the midrange," says an industry analyst, who predicts
that "within an 18-month ramp-up period, they could be doing one billion
dollars of business with this machine."  The new products can handle large
memory and database functions previously available only on Digital's
high-end Turbolaser machines, which start at $100,000 each.  (Wall Street
Journal 3 May 96 B4)

LCD TVs
Sharp's new 43-inch rear-projection TV uses a liquid crystal display panel
to display images.  The system is nearly as slim as a conventional 14-inch
CRT TV, and is about 1.5 times brighter than conventional rear-projection
TVs.  The TV is currently sold only in Japan (for about $3,600), but will be
available in the U.S this fall.  (Popular Science May 96 p12)

Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl@educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas
(douglas@educom.edu).  Voice:  404-371-1853, Fax: 404-371-8057.  

Technical support is provided by the Office of Information Technology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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