Daily Bulletin

Bell offers high-speed access

Bringing Sympatico service to K-W is the result of a three-year agreement between the company and UW, making "High Speed Edition" the "preferred solution for high-speed access to UW and the Internet" for UW people.

Jay Black, UW's associate provost (information systems and technology), says the UW agreement persuaded Sympatico to introduce the high-speed service here much sooner than it would otherwise have been available. First available in Toronto, Ottawa-Hull, Montréal and Québec City, it will also be introduced in London this fall, through a similar agreement with the University of Western Ontario. The University of Toronto has also signed up.

"Bell Sympatico High Speed Edition service provides an excellent alternative for students, faculty and staff whose desire to work from home at reasonable speeds exceeds the ability of the campus dial-up modem pool," said a statement from Roger Watt, director of the systems group in the IST department.

The Sympatico High Speed Edition service is "always on". It uses Nortel Networks' 1-Meg Modem, which provides a direct connection to the Internet said to be up to 30 times as fast than traditional dial-up access. In addition, no inside wiring changes in the home are required. Sympatico members will have the convenience of being able to use any phone jack in their homes. They also won't have to worry about missing phone calls because they will be able to use the Internet and simultaneously use their telephone line for calls or faxes.

Sympatico service doesn't include any special connection to UW and doesn't need one, says a summary provided by IST's Watt:

Bell's Sympatico facilities are connected to Bell's national Internet Transit Service (ITS). UW's campus network is connected to the provincial ONet network, which has a direct high-speed connection to Bell's ITS. Speed, latency, and reliability in the connection between UW at-home HSE subscribers and the UW campus network are therefore expected to be excellent without requiring any special HSE/UW direct local interconnect. However, UW will pursue such a connection in the future should usage and costs warrant doing so.

Black said Sympatico will pay a fee to UW based on the number of university-affiliated people who subscribe to the service. He added that discussions are going on about exactly how UW will use the money.

The service is a part of "smart community" infrastructure in K-W: "This new Sympatico Internet service using the 1-Meg Modem will be a high-speed gateway for residents to easily access through the Waterloo Information Network (WIN), all community information about Waterloo," said Waterloo mayor Joan McKinnon.

The price for Bell Sympatico High Speed Edition service will be $39.95 a month (including modem rental) for subscribers who use Bell Canada as their long distance provider, and $49.95 for others.

Sympatico is described as "Canada's leading Internet service in over 600,000 households. In addition to Internet access, the Sympatico service offers an award-winning web site that provides on-line information and resources. With more than 60 million page views per month, the Sympatico site has become one of the most popular Web destinations."

Enrolment expansion is expanded

Dianne Cunningham, minister of training, colleges and universities, said the Access to Opportunities Program "has been expanded to accommodate 23,000 students".

"The Access to Opportunities Program is creating exciting new opportunities for Ontario students," said Cunningham. "I am delighted that all our colleges and universities have responded so enthusiastically to this program."

Her announcement said an additional $78 million in funding for the program will increase the number of student places by almost 40 per cent from the target established a year ago. "The Ontario Government is providing funding of $228 million in the first three years of the program. This is in addition to an estimated $136 million, which will be contributed by the private sector."

"Support from the private sector has been even greater than we hoped it would be," said Cunningham's statement. "Together, we are helping students acquire skills that are in great demand, and at the same time meeting the needs of the fastest growing sector of the Ontario economy."

And science minister Jim Wilson spoke up as well: "Boosting the number of graduates in the high-demand fields of engineering and computer sciences will help ensure Ontario's future in the fast-evolving high-tech economy. We all benefit when Ontario companies can count on a well-educated and highly skilled home-grown workforce."

First announced in the 1998 provincial budget, ATOP was designed to more than double enrolment in university programs such as electrical engineering, computer and software engineering, communications engineering and computer science. College enrolment is expected to increase by more than 50 per cent in high-tech programs. UW will be adding more than 1,000 students in computer science and electrical engineering, starting with an addition of more than 100 first-year students in each of those fields this fall.

Education in public life

"There's a direct correlation between the number of degrees we give and the amount of nonsense we tolerate," Botstein told an audience of maybe 2,000 people in Chautauqua's huge Amphitheater. Yes, he said, Americans are highly educated, but somehow the benefits of education aren't being transferred into politics and public life.

And he was more than a little sceptical of suggestions that the Internet is going to make things any better. After all, he said, lively discussion on the Internet during the recent war in Kosovo "did not reduce the amount of hostility between Albanians and Serbs".

If anything, Botstein said, "the canons of truth and objectivity" are less respected than they once were, and personal opinion has been "privileged" -- "you don't care whether these facts are relevant or not." No one listening to a political debate ever hears one speaker acknowledge an argument offered by his opponent: "I never thought of that! You may be right!"

Contemporary technology, most of all the Internet, has discouraged people from remembering things or even listening properly, he said. "By comparison to previous societies, we've copied more and remembered less." Among students, he went on, absorbing information and ideas has given way to "underlining" -- or even just photocopying, with reading somehow put off until a time that never comes.

"What we need to do by making things more accessible," he suggested, "is to enable people to see things differently," not to give everyone the same experience of "universal" culture. "We need to find a way to restore amateurism," he said, suggesting that the Internet can "allow people to create, so long as they have the will to be different!" The arts, said the president of an arts-oriented college just north of New York City, are a field in which "individual expression", not to say opinion, is possible "with much less conflict".

Food and blood and so on

A blood donor clinic runs today through Thursday in the Student Life Centre. "We hope to collect 75 units over the three days," says Janet Piersma of Canadian Blood Services, "to ensure that enough blood is available during the summer months. Appointments to donate can be made at the turnkey desk." The clinic runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. all three days.

Bernard Dussault of the office of the federal Superintendent of Financial Institutions will be at UW today to speak on "The Independence of the Canada Pension Plan Actuary". The talk, sponsored by the Institute of Insurance and Pension Research, starts at 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158.

A noon-hour session on "Assertive Communications" will be offered tomorrow by the Employee Assistance Program. The speaker is consultant Michele Keens, who will talk about "how to increase effectiveness by developing assertive communication skills". The session will start at noon tomorrow in Davis Centre room 1304.

Next year's Ontario Engineering Competition will be held in the last week of February at the University of Toronto -- and now is the time for student competitors to start work, says Fakhri Karray of the systems design engineering department. He's the faculty advisor for UW participants in the OEC (and the national engineering competition that follows). "The Dean of Engineering will sponsor two official UW teams for each category," he says. Categories are Entrepreneurial Design, Corporate Design, Editorial Communication, Explanatory Communication, Parliamentary Debate, and Team Design. Karray's web page has more information.

Some campus phones were out of service for a while yesterday. "We had one shelf fail due to the electrical storm," explains Ginny Polai at telephone services. "This affected several phones throughout campus. Bell Canada was quick to respond and had the majority of them back up within an hour. A few sets failed to come back up with the system and had to have dial tone restored on an individual basis."

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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