headers
Educause Educause | 3 Mar 2005 00:14

Edupage, March 02, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 02, 2005
  EDUCAUSE Launches Blog Service
  iPods Debut at Drexel
  Researchers Offer Planet Naming Rights
  Eolas Case Set to Go Around Again

EDUCAUSE LAUNCHES BLOG SERVICE
EDUCAUSE has launched the EDUCAUSE Community Blog Service, a pilot
project to create a new, vibrant medium for professional information
sharing in the higher education IT community. The blogs represent a
growing number of voices in this community, and postings span a wide
range of topics, including cybersecurity, teaching and learning, and
open source software. Postings are categorized by taxonomy term and by
blogger and can be browsed on the EDUCAUSE Web site or received through
an RSS syndicated feed.
EDUCAUSE, 2 March 2005
http://www.educause.edu/blogs/

IPODS DEBUT AT DREXEL
Students entering the School of Education at Drexel University this
fall will receive iPods as part of a program to explore and evaluate
the educational potential of the devices. Duke University launched a
similar program last fall, distributing iPods to all 1,650 of its
incoming freshmen. The program at Drexel, however, is much smaller in
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 5 Mar 2005 00:53

Edupage, March 04, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 04, 2005
  Hacker Exposes Admissions Records
  Undergrad Biologist Creates Database for Epilepsy Research
  New York Public Library Unveils Online Archive
  Library Experiments with iPods for Audio Books

HACKER EXPOSES ADMISSIONS RECORDS
A hacker who was able to access admissions records for dozens of
business schools posted instructions online for how applicants could
access those records. Among the universities whose records were exposed
were Harvard University, Stanford University, Duke University, Carnegie
Mellon University, and Dartmouth College. All of the affected schools
use an online application and notification system called ApplyYourself.
The vulnerability that allowed the unauthorized access has been fixed,
but during the nine hours in which the systems were exposed, several
hundred students attempted to find out if they had been accepted to
schools to which they applied. Final decisions and notifications of
acceptance are not expected for several more weeks. School officials
have been able to identify at least some of the applicants who gained
access to the records systems, and officials from some schools said
such activity would factor into the admission decision. Steve Nelson of
Harvard's MBA program said, "Hacking into a system in this manner is
unethical and also contrary to the behavior we expect of leaders we
aspire to develop." Even if a student saw a decision, said Nelson, that
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 8 Mar 2005 00:22

Edupage, March 07, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MARCH 07, 2005
  Texas Bill Would Benefit Graduates of Online Law Schools
  Court Ponders Protection of Online Journalists
  Tech Companies Coordinate Compliance Efforts

TEXAS BILL WOULD BENEFIT GRADUATES OF ONLINE LAW SCHOOLS
A bill working its way through the Texas legislature could give
graduates of online law schools more opportunities to practice law. The
American Bar Association (ABA) has so far refused to accredit online
law schools, saying that they do not train students adequately to
practice law. Although the ABA continues to refuse accreditation to
online law schools, the organization does accredit institutions that
offer some courses online. Currently in Texas, a graduate of an online
law school can only take the state's bar exam if he or she has
practiced law in another state for at least five years. The proposed
law would allow online graduates to take the Texas bar exam if they
simply had passed the bar in another state. A small number of other
states have similar statutes. California is currently the only state
that allows individuals to take the bar exam without having passed
another state's bar exam. The bill was prompted by the situation of
Julie Drenner, daughter of a state legislator, who graduated from Oak
Brook College of Law and Government in California, passed that state's
bar exam, and now wants to practice law in Texas.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 March 2005 (sub. req'd)
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 10 Mar 2005 00:21

Edupage, March 09, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 09, 2005
  Harvard Rejects Applicants Who Peeked
  Hackers Compromise Publisher's Database
  AOL Enters Phone Market

HARVARD REJECTS APPLICANTS WHO PEEKED
Officials from the Harvard Business School said they will reject 119
applicants who used a hacker's instructions to try to find out whether
they had been accepted by the school. Calling the action "unethical"
and saying that it cannot be rationalized, a statement from Harvard
said, "Any applicant found to have done so will not be admitted to this
school." Administrators at Carnegie Mellon University have also said
they will reject candidates who attempted to gain unauthorized access
to admissions records. Applicants to several other institutions
affected--including Stanford University, Duke University, and Dartmouth
College--will have to wait to find out how those schools decide to
treat the situation. Using the instructions posted online by a hacker,
applicants were able for a short period to use a name and password to
access the admissions records. Institutions have been able to identify
applicants who accessed admission records based on the name and
password. For many who looked, there was no decision in the system, and
school officials stressed that even if an applicant located an answer,
those decisions were not necessarily final. Some have criticized
Harvard officials for responding too harshly to the incident.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 12 Mar 2005 00:41

Edupage, March 11, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2005
  Schools Criticized over Rejection of Nosy Applicants
  Apple Wins Right to Subpoena E-Mail Records
  British ISPs Told to Turn Over File Traders

SCHOOLS CRITICIZED OVER REJECTION OF NOSY APPLICANTS
A number of business-school applicants who were rejected due to their
looking at university admissions records online without authorization
have spoken out against the universities' decision to exclude them.
Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, and MIT have rejected
the applications of 153 individuals who used a hacker's instructions
to try to find out if they had been accepted. Although some applicants
involved acknowledged that accessing the records was wrong, they
contended that the actions do not constitute hacking and that the
institutions have overreacted. One rejected applicant wrote a letter to
Harvard, admitting a "lapse in judgment" but noting that he "wasn't
trying to harm anyone and wasn't trying to get an advantage over
anyone." Len Metheny, CEO and president of ApplyYourself, the software
that all the affected schools used for applications, said the procedure
to access the records was sufficiently complicated that anyone doing so
would have to have known it was unauthorized.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 March 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/03/2005031104n.htm
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 15 Mar 2005 00:51

Edupage, March 14, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005
  Study Shows Online Citations Don't Age Well
  Internet Fuels Gambling Among College Students
  Dutch ISPs Issue Warnings to File Traders
  Sweden Raids ISP for File Trading
  Chicago Looks at City-Wide Wi-Fi

STUDY SHOWS ONLINE CITATIONS DON'T AGE WELL
A study conducted by two academics at Iowa State University has shown a
remarkably high rate of "decay" for online citations. Michael Bugeja,
professor of journalism and communication, and Daniela Dimitrova,
assistant professor of communication, looked at five prestigious
communication-studies journals from 2000 to 2003 and found 1,126
footnotes that cite online resources. Of those, 373 did not work at
all, a decay rate of 33 percent; of those that worked, only 424 took
users to information relevant to the citation. In one of the journals
in the study, 167 of 265 citations did not work. Bugeja compared the
current situation to that of Shakespearean plays in the early days of
printing, when many copies of plays were fraught with errors due to the
instability of the printing medium. Anthony T. Grafton, a professor of
history at Princeton University and author of a book on footnotes,
agreed that citation decay is a real and growing problem, describing
the situation as "a world in which documentation and verification melt
into air."
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 17 Mar 2005 00:25

Edupage, March 16, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2005
  U.S. Considers Restrictions on Social Security Numbers
  New FCC Chairman Expected to Stay the Course
  Microsoft and Student Settle over Software Resale
  Students Search the Web for Summer Jobs

U.S. CONSIDERS RESTRICTIONS ON SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
Following recent incidents that exposed personal information on more
than 175,000 individuals, U.S. lawmakers are considering placing new
restrictions on companies that gather and sell such information.
Relatively few regulations apply to companies such as ChoicePoint and
LexisNexis that collect data about driving records, financial records,
and other sensitive information. Social Security numbers appear to be
at the crux of the issue: because they are unique, data companies rely
on Social Security numbers to distinguish individuals, but the numbers
are also a powerful weapon in the hands of identity thieves, who can
use them to access confidential records, open new accounts, and wreak
havoc with a person's privacy. At separate hearings in the House and
the Senate, legislators discussed laws that would require data
companies to notify any individual before they sell that person's
Social Security number. Other suggestions included requiring disclosure
of any incident that exposes sensitive information. Don McGuffey, vice
president of ChoicePoint, which recently sold 145,000 records to
identity thieves, told a Senate hearing that personal information had
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 19 Mar 2005 00:21

Edupage, March 18, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2005
  Hackers Target Boston College Alumni Database
  New Campus Online TV Service Debuts
  GAO Says SEVIS Still Suffers Problems
  Report Offers Renewed Criticism for E-Rate Program

HACKERS TARGET BOSTON COLLEGE ALUMNI DATABASE
A computer at Boston College with access to an alumni database has been
found to be infected with a virus that may have exposed personal
information on more than 100,000 individuals. According to officials at
the college, the computer was operated not by the college but by a
third-party IT service, which officials declined to name. Although no
evidence has so far surfaced that any of the information in the
database was in fact accessed by hackers, officials decided to notify
anyone who might have been affected. Jack Dunn, spokesperson for Boston
College, said, "We thought it was necessary to send out the
precautionary advisory to alert the alumni and to offer them steps that
they could take to ensure their privacy." Dunn also noted that Boston
College will hereafter delete Social Security numbers from its records,
despite their usefulness in maintaining accurate records. Social
Security numbers have lately been highlighted as one of the pieces of
personal information that pose the greatest risk for identity theft.
Members of Congress have recently proposed strict restrictions for how
and when Social Security numbers can be gathered and sold.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 22 Mar 2005 00:12

Edupage, March 21, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, MARCH 21, 2005
  France Calls Google's Ante
  Agence France Presse Takes Google to Court
  Dartmouth Decides to Penalize, but not Eliminate, Hackers
  Students Sued for Selling Guidebooks Online
  Bender Advises Brazil to Go Open Source
  China Blocks Access to Campus Web Pages
  Applying Old Scams to New Technologies

FRANCE CALLS GOOGLE'S ANTE
High-level officials in France have put their support behind an
initiative to digitize European works of literature and make them
available free online. President Jacques Chirac, as well as Jean-Noel
Jeanneney, president of the National Library of France, and Renaud
Donnedieu de Vabres, minister of culture and communication, met
recently to discuss efforts to digitize the "cultural patrimony" of
France and Europe, a discussion evidently prompted by recently
announced plans by Google to digitize vast amounts of English-language
literature. Following the meeting, Donnedieu de Vabres published an
essay called "Google Is Not the End of History," in which he commented
that "we probably have a lot to learn from Google" and said the Google
announcement "comes in an intellectual and cultural climate in which
the digitization of documents and works seems to be the key to all
problems." French officials rejected the notion that their actions are
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Educause Educause | 23 Mar 2005 23:29

Edupage, March 23, 2005

*****************************************************
Edupage is a service of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit association
whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting
the intelligent use of information technology.
*****************************************************

TOP STORIES FOR WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2005
  Criticism Mounts for Federal Student Database
  Kuali Project Gets Boost
  Hackers Hit CSU Chico
  UNLV SEVIS Database Compromised
  Paying Students to Learn in Mississippi
  Study Blames Users for Encouraging Spam

CRITICISM MOUNTS FOR FEDERAL STUDENT DATABASE
The U.S. Department of Education has proposed creating a national
database of college students, but the idea has drawn heavy criticism
for its use of Social Security numbers to identify individuals. The
current system for reporting student progress, the Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System, reports aggregate data for
institutions and cannot accurately track students who start at one
college or university and transfer to another. The proposed database
would track individuals, offering more accurate data for graduation
rates and other statistics, but some argue that those gains would come
at the expense of student privacy. David Baime, vice president of
government relations for the American Association of Community
Colleges, said that despite the benefits to community colleges in
particular from such a system, his organization opposes the plan
"primarily due to privacy concerns, expressed to us by our members."
David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane