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News Update

5/6/2008

News

Next-gen WiFi Expected To Be in 99% of North American Campuses by 2013: Although the wireless standard 802.11n is found in less than 3 percent of North American universities currently, it will be available in 99 percent by 2013, according to a new study by ABI Research. According to the research firm, the increases are driven by a variety of needs and demands in both K-12 and higher education.
Microsoft Scraps Yahoo! Acquisition Plans: Citing a hefty price tag and other concerns, Microsoft this weekend officially scrapped its plans to acquire Yahoo! In a letter to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed the possibilities of both a friendly buyout and a hostile takeover, stating he believed that in a hostile takeover situation Yahoo! would take steps to make itself an unattractive acquisition target.
Report: STEM Gap Widens for Underrepresented Minorities: It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise to our readers, but research released this month shows an expanding ethnicity gap for Americans pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. A new report from the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) reveals that the number minority students pursuing STEM degrees and careers has flattened out or even declined in recent years.
Stanford Lab Tackles Parallel Computing: Stanford University and a consortium of technology companies are announcing a joint effort to build a Pervasive Parallelism Lab. The initiative pools the efforts of many Stanford computer scientists and electrical engineers with support from Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, IBM, HP, and Intel.
Glitch Postpones Windows XP SP3 Availability: One of Microsoft's retail point-of-sale applications has an incompatibility with Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Consequently, Microsoft has postponed Web access to downloading Windows XP SP3. However, the company is still making Windows Vista SP1 available via Microsoft Download Center or Windows Update.
Woz To Address Blackboard Crowd: Blackboard Thursday announced details for its upcoming BbWorld '08 conference, which will be held July 15 through 17 in Las Vegas. The show will feature about 140 sessions covering education technology strategies and issues, as well as keynote addresses from Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak (largely credited for inventing the first practical personal computer) and U Miami President Donna Shalala.
Idaho State Simulates Emergency Response in Second Life: Imagine entering the virtual world Second Life to discover that a flu pandemic requires you, a health care professional, to attend to stricken patients lying on the streets around an over-capacity virtual hospital. When you report in to collect your virtual uniform, you're told what your responsibilities will be during the disaster and to whom you'll report.
Tel-Aviv U and Check Point Establish InfoSec Research Institute: Tel-Aviv University (TAU) and security company Check Point Software Technologies have announced a partnership to establish an information security research institute. The institute, under the auspices of the School of Computer Science at TAU, will be managed by a joint board, with representatives and financing from both the vendor and the university. The set-up investment is estimated at about $1 million.