ELECTRICAL OUTLETS OFFER POTENTIAL FOR INTERNET ACCESS - St.
Louis-based Meren Corp. and other utilities are testing a technology that would provide
high-speed Web access through power lines, potentially making every electrical outlet a
connection to the Internet. Federal regulators support the concept as a means of
bolstering broadband access, among other benefits, and tout the advantage of employing
an existing infrastructure of power lines. Broadband providers, meanwhile, point out that
the idea has been around for years without concrete results. Network interference,
transformers, and surge arrestors have hindered broadband delivery, although improved
technology over the past few years has reduced many of these problems. Tests to date
have been small, and none of them has demonstrated the concept's technical and financial
viability. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/757525p-5471954c.html
(Nando Times, 9 Feb 03 - registration req'd)

MICROSOFT OFFERS GRANTS AND PROGRAMMING TOOLS TO
UNIVERSITIES - Microsoft this week announced a series of grants to two dozen
academic research projects. The grants total $3.5 million, including one to a professor
at the Georgia Institute of Technology who is studying the uses of mobile computing
devices in "nonmobile" situations, such as in an office. The software company also
announced a new, academic version of Visual Studio.Net that individuals can purchase for
$99. The academic version of the programming tool will include Assignment Manager, an
application that helps manage workflow of student assignments. Microsoft said it will
make the source code for Assignment Manager available to academics. The full article is
at: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-985305.html (CNET, 20 Feb 03 - Edupage 21
Feb 03)

STUDY SAYS OPEN-SOURCE CODE IS HIGHER-QUALITY CODE - A consulting
firm that offers software inspection services, the Reasoning company, found fewer errors
in the networking TCP/IP code in Linux than in five other closed-source operating systems.
Per 1,000 lines of code, the Linux defect rate was 0.1, compared to between 0.6 and
0.7 for general-purpose operating systems (two of three were UNIX versions) and
between 0.1 and 0.3 for two embedded operating systems. Reasoning obtained access
to proprietary software for the test but would not disclose the names of the operating
systems that were compared to version 2.4.19 of the Linux kernel. Offered through
Red Hat and SuSE, Linux competes with Microsoft Windows and UNIX-based
operating systems such as Sun Microsystems' Solaris, IBM's AIX, and Hewlett-
Packard's HP-UX. The study bolsters the view that open-source software is better than
proprietary code because it allows for wider scrutiny, which translates to quicker
identification and resolution of software problems. For complete information see:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-985221.html

VISUALIZATION - Ghent University, a leading institution of higher education in the
Benelux region of Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, signed a deal to use
SolidWorks three-dimensional computer-added design (3-D CAD) software in its
engineering design curriculum. Using the software, a team of two students working in
cooperation with the school's department of medicine redesigned a dentist chair in
only a few weeks, a feat that would have required almost a full semester using 2-D.
About 100 Ghent University students and 15 faculty members are currently using and
learning SolidWorks. For details about the software see: http://www.solidworks.com/