DIGITAL DIVIDE
Disabled Make Themselves Heard
INTERNET
Judge Dismisses BT's Internet Patent Suit
Online School Faces Expulsion
From Unseemly To Lowbrow, The Web's Real Money Is In The Gutter
DIGITAL DIVIDE
DISABLED MAKE THEMSELVES HEARD
The Drake Music Project is using technology to help musicians with
disabilities create music. The project has developed its own software,
called E-scape, to allow musicians to punch in notes one key at a time using
a pad placed at their head. E-scape allows users to scroll down a menu that
lets them add notes and create different tracks using a variety of sounds.
Technology like E-scape is constantly evolving to meet the needs of
musicians in the project. But project participants point out that what need
upgrading more than the technology is the music industry's perception of
disabled musicians.
[SOURCE: BBC News, AUTHOR: Mark Eddo]
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2211744.stm)
INTERNET
JUDGE DISMISSES BT'S INTERNET PATENT SUIT
BT Group PLC (formerly British Telecom) has lost a case against Prodigy.
BT, who has claimed that it invented hyperlinking, used the suit against
Prodigy as a test case in an effort to receive money from every U.S.
Internet service provider. BT has owned the patent since 1989, but only
discovered that it owned the patent in 1996. U.S. District Judge Colleen
McMahon ruled that neither Prodigy nor the Internet itself infringed the
patent. In her opinion, the judge states, "No jury could find that Prodigy
infringes [the BT patent], either as a part of the Internet or on its Web
server viewed separate and apart from the Internet." Judge McMahon has
interpreted the patent to cover "a system in which multiple users, located
at remote terminals, can access data stored at a central computer. The data
is received by the remote terminals via the telephone lines." Since Judge
McMahon found that the Internet has no "central computer," she dismissed the
case.
[SOURCE: International Herald Tribune, AUTHOR: Bloomberg News]
(http://www.iht.com/articles/68644.html)
ONLINE SCHOOL FACES EXPULSION
Boards of Education and teacher associations are eager to see if new
hearings investigating the virtual school, Einstein Academy, will result in
a revocation of the school's charter. Teachers at the virtual school send
assignments online to students in their homes and interact with students
over the Internet and via telephone. Students are provided with a free
computer and Internet access and parents are required to monitor the child's
progress. Pennsylvania's Morrisville School District has alleged that the
online school refused to comply with educational standards and regulations
that include providing special education services, establishing a physical
presence within the school district and avoiding poor accounting practices.
Einstein has also been charged with misappropriations of public funds,
reckless spending and extortion. "We told them what to do in order to
survive, and they just wouldn't do it," said Morrisville's school
superintendent John Gould, who was instrumental in getting the school's
charter approved. Many education associations are hoping to use Einstein's
failure as fuel for their arguments against creating independent
cyberschools that operate beyond the reach of board regulations.
[SOURCE: WIRED, AUTHOR: John Gartner]
(http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54737,00.html)
FROM UNSEEMLY TO LOWBROW, THE WEB'S REAL MONEY IS IN THE GUTTER
More and more Internet users are complaining that spam, pornography,
questionable e-commerce sites and pyramid schemes have swamped the Web. "We
will lose the Internet if we don't save it," says science fiction author
Bruce Sterling. Despite the recent grumbling, many believe that the increase
in lowbrow content is just part of the process as a new industry matures.
Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray said, "Every
industry has its charlatans and e-commerce is getting its share. I don't see
evidence that it is more than you would expect, especially in a new
industry." Many see the Internet's diversity as a plus. Brewster Kahle,
creator of the Wayback Machine, a popular Internet archive, said he
preferred a complex ecosystem to a monoculture. Several projects are
underway to put more high-quality content on the Web, including Project
Gutenberg, which has put 400 books online, and the Million Books Project,
which hopes to create an online home for major works available in the public
domain.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Schwartz]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/technology/26CYBE.html)
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