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)
$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)
"THE FLOPPY IS OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY"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)