The Gendex personal organizer is a Java-programmable PDA which not only tracks personal data and appointments, it also stores and tracks digital cash. Better yet, the inventor is selling the first 20,000 copies for only $9.85 apiece. If this sounds too good to be true, it is. Delivery isn't scheduled until 2001 (maybe not until 2004), and the "company" apparently doesn't yet employ any programmers; the web site (http://www.gendex.com/) is advertising for Java programmers to develop interactive demos.
Congress hopes to extend the Higher Education Act by easing federal-aid restrictions for colleges that offer more than 50 percent of their courses via distance education. At the same time, the Administration has asked accrediting agencies to develop standards for distance-learning programs.
At the recent CeBIT trade fair in Germany, Intel demonstrated a PC running a 700-MHz Pentium II. At the same time, Intel officials also showed a simulation of the Merced processor, due out next year and running at even higher speeds. Finally, the semiconductor giant showed its new 300-MHz Celeron brand of processors targeted at PCs priced from $800.00 to $1200.00.
According to a survey conducted by the Campaign Study Group (and commissioned by Reuters), Microsoft spent almost as much money lobbying the federal government last year as three of its top competitors combined. According to a recent report, Microsoft lavished $1.9 million on Washington, while Sun, Oracle, and Netscape spent only about $2 million total in their lobbying efforts. Furthermore, Microsoft has so far donated about $183,000 to 1998 political campaigns. The report was based on Federal Election Commission data.
The OpenGL Architecture Review Board has ratified the OpenGL 1.2 specification, which includes several extensions to the API's core functionality: improved Microsoft Windows support; improved visual 3D quality; texture coordinate-edge clamping; packed pixel formats; normal rescaling; texture level of detail; vertex array enhancements; 3D texturing; and optional imaging feature set. Platforms supporting OpenGL include AIX, BeOS, HP/UX, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS, OS/2, Windows 95/NT, and Solaris. OpenGL 1.2 implementations are expected to be available for various platforms in late fall 1998. For more information, see http://www.opengl.org/.
A key component of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 involved "e-rate" discounts for Internet access for schools and libraries serving disadvantaged children. The discounts are to be underwritten by the Universal Service Fund, which historically has been used to encourage telecom services into rural areas. The USF is subsidized by telephone carriers and administrated by the FCC. The plan has hit a snag, however, as Southwestern Bell Telephone and its subsidiaries have filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the USF structure, including the e-rate.
What do computer-game developers have in common with movie stars, professional athletes, and paroled congressmen? Agents. In a recent trend, agents have cropped up in the Silicon Valley, bringing the Hollywood way of doing business to the $5.1 billion entertainment software industry. For closing game deals, the agents take about 10 percent of the royalties. Programmers on the front of Wheaties cereal boxes should be coming soon.
In deciding to sell its implementation of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software in Europe, Network Associates may be signaling a challenge, or workaround, to U.S. export laws. To get around export restrictions, Network Associates claims never to have provided source code to Cnlab Software, a Switzerland-based company developing the international version of PGP. According to Network Associates' Richard Hornstein, all the company did was ask for a functionally similar product, and Cnlab took it from there, perhaps from the source code published in publicly available books on PGP. The U.S. Commerce Department is examining this issue.
Hewlett-Packard has developed its own Java implementation and plans on using it with electronic devices and printers. The company claims to have implemented a subset of Java, along with a virtual machine (VM) for executing Java programs. HP plans on marketing the VM to other companies, including Microsoft, which has already licensed HP's Java for Windows CE. According to an HP spokesperson, the company took the steps out of frustration over Sun's licensing fees.
Intel has signed on as the new sponsor for the Science Talent Search (STS) -- the "Nobel Prize" competition for U.S. high-school seniors. The STS was previously sponsored by Westinghouse. The Science Talent Search will award a total of $330,000 in scholarships through a grant from the Intel Foundation, with the top prize a $50,000 four-year scholarship. The Science Talent Search is administered by Science Service, a nonprofit organization that promotes appreciation of science. For more information, http:// www.sciserv.org/abtsts.htm.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are developing drug-delivery "cards" with embedded nanomachines that will let us receive medication by simply placing the card in contact with our skin. The nanomachines consist of microscopic mixers and bubble pumps that fit on a patch the size of a thick credit card, delivering drugs through a needle no larger than a mosquito's snout. Drugs are mixed in a small flat chamber 0.6×1.5×0.025 mm, making a total volume of about 15 nanoliters. Fluid is pumped in and out of four holes in the chamber in a sequence that creates a chaotic flow. The pump uses a bubble as a piston. The system is one of the first practical devices to emerge from a field called "microfluidics" -- the science of moving and mixing fluids in environments no larger than a human hair.
UC Berkeley researchers predict the drug-delivery cards would be useful as emergency medicine, or merely as an easy way to deliver a number of drugs, from antibiotics to painkillers.