OPINION

Bones and Joints Get Older; Media Gets Unreadable

By Terry Calhoun, IT Trends Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

Back in about 1985, I was busy staying at home with my kids and working free-lance–writing, typesetting, designing books, etc. I recall laying out more than $3,000 for a Radio Shack daisy-wheel printer that would be able to print out some of the nicely laid-out things I produced for customers. I spent days learning how to use WordStar to get that printer to create bullets–I finally succeeded with a superscripted, bolded, period and, of course, every time I used it a lot, I broke another daisy wheel.

That printer was driven by a couple of early PCs which used 5 1/4-inch floppy drives. I began naming each new floppy that I used after planets, and then moons of planets. Eventually, I ran out of moons of the planets circling Sol and began using fictitious planets from the many science fiction novels and short stories I had read. By the time I got up to nearly 1,000 floppies I gave up and created a numbering system. I still have those floppies, but they’re (almost?) worse than useless. See, I still can’t make my mind up, and that’s what this column is about. Should I just throw them all out?

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IT NEWS

Pasadena City College Puts Internet Filter on Faculty/Staff Computers

This sounds like the harshest policy we've seen yet on a college campus. (Pasadena City College Courier Online)
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Duke University Engineers Join Robotic Vehicle Team

Why are Duke and Carnegie Mellon building a tank trap? Why, to win $2M from the Department of Defense, why else?
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Computer Log-in Issues at Butler University Frustrate Students

Students returning for spring semester found random instances of being unable to log into the campus network. It just might have something to do with the ongoing network replacement. (Butler University’s Student News)
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Southwest Baptist Mandatory "Tech Fee" Draws Fire from Students

However, much of the fee increase is for unwiring campus buildings, so students are likely to end up appreciating the value. (Omnibus Online)
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Smart Classrooms Evolving on Two-Year Campuses

DC-area community colleges are finding that touch screens are an essential part of classroom technology. (American Association of Community Colleges
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RESOURCES

Internet: The Mainstreaming of Online Life

The online world has come to mirror the offline world, and vice versa. Meanwhile, the demographcs of the online world have markedly changed. (Pew Internet and American Life Project) [pdf]
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DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

CDW-G Announces Multiple State Award Contract Wins

CDW Government, Inc., the government and education subsidiary of CDW Corporation and supplier of brand-name Information Technology (IT) products and services to governments and educators, announced it is providing new technology to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Ohio. (CDW News)
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