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      Florida Lawyer Launches Anti-
Microsoft PAC 03/02/95 PALM BEACH,
FLORIDA, U.S.A., 1995 MAR 2 (NB) -- A
Florida lawyer and former adjunct
professor of law stood on the steps
of the Federal Election Commission
yesterday to announce he has
established a federal political
action committee (PAC) to keep
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) from
controlling the information
superhighway.

    Anthony "Andy" Martin said he has
petitioned the US Court of Appeals to
be heard in the pending appeal by
Microsoft and the Department of
Justice from the decision of US
District Judge Stanley Sporkin.

    "Normally in a lawsuit the
parties are adversaries. In this case
the plaintiff and the defendant,
Microsoft and the United States, are
on the same side. Both are
challenging the decision, and there
is no-one to defend it. Since I'm not
associated with, nor representing,
anyone in the industry I can present
a true public interest perspective
and argue the issue from the public
interest point of view." Martin said
he has no financial interest in the
outcome of the appeal and owns no
computer industry stock.

    Judge Sporkin recently disallowed
a proposed settlement between the US
Department of Justice and Microsoft
that would have settled the
government's investigation into
alleged anti-trust activities by the
software company. "(Microsoft) is
using the settlement as a sword, not
as a shield," said Martin. Martin
said his Committee to Fight Microsoft
Corporation is seeking to be
recognized as an Amicus Curiae
(friend of the court).

    Martin said the PAC will be a
starting point for lobbying and
legislative activity to require that
the anti-trust laws are sufficient to
meet the economic and electronic
challenges of the 1990s. "The purpose
is to agitate for legislative action
in the area of electronic rights and
also possibly amendments to federal
statutes that would permit the
government to have broader authority
in regulating things like the kinds
of abuses Microsoft is alleged to
have committed," he told Newsbytes.

    "I am not sure that litigation
can solve the problems presented by
the Microsoft situation. I believe
that legislation may be needed to
ensure that the information
superhighway is not controlled by one
man or one company and that our anti-
trust laws are explicitly extended to
cover predatory conduct in
cyberspace."

    Martin said his interest in the
matter is as a computer user and a
public interest advocate. "I have no
ties, no secret clients, and no
secret funding," he told Newsbytes.

    Martin said the next move by the
PAC is to lobby the anti-trust sub-
committees in both the House and
Senate to convene hearings on the
settlement, and also to talk to them
about "the possibilities of
legislation and oversight." The
Department of Justice is currently
looking at the Microsoft acquisition
of California-based Intuit Inc., and
according to Martin, "Some
legislative oversight might put a
little bit of a burner under them."

    Martin declined to identify other
individuals or companies supporting
the PAC, citing a concern over
possible retaliatory action on the
part of Microsoft. "The possibility
presents itself that Microsoft, as it
has been alleged to have done in the
past, intimidates and threatens
people who stand up to it, the Apple
controversy being the most recent."
He said none of the companies
currently involved in the
organization are connected to the
computer industry.

    (Jim Mallory/19950302/Press
contact: Cheryl Wells, Committee to
Fight Microsoft Corporation, 407-833-
6917; Public contact: Committee to
Fight Microsoft Corporation, 407-833-
6917)



     Autos May Soon Phone Home To
Report Problems 03/23/95 OREM, UTAH,
U.S.A., 1995 MAR 23 (NB) -- Don't be
surprised if your new automobile is
capable of phoning the repair shop to
tell the mechanic why it is running
poorly. Novell Inc., the company most
people associate with computer
networking, said this week it is
working with a major automobile
manufacturer to find a way to collect
data from the computers already
common in automobiles to diagnose
problems from remote locations.

    The company declined to identify
which company it's talking with or
even whether it is a US firm, but the
British news service Reuters said
Novell has talked with all three
major US car builders as well as one
international company. Novell chief
executive, Bob Frankenberg, told
Reuters he expects to see the
technology in the 1998 model car.

    Most major auto makers have been
installing diagnostics in their cars
for several years. When connected to
a computer at the repair shop, the
car can provide the mechanic with
some information about the cause of
the problem. But Novell wants to see
that information sent to the dealer
via cellular phone.

    Since more and more autos are
sprouting cellular antennas and
microprocessors already perform a
host of tasks in cars, it's just a
matter of having the two work
together. Frankenberg believes
Novell's NEST (Netware Embedded
Systems Technology) is the tool to do
just that.

    NEST is being demonstrated at
Novell's annual Brainshare conference
being held this week. While the
company didn't demonstrate NEST in an
automobile, it did show its value in
bringing network links to printers,
television set-top boxes and
printers.

    "If you look at a car there are
10 to 12 microprocessors. A lot of
the diagnosis of problems in a car
are done by those microprocessors. In
actual fact the car can tell you
what's wrong to a reasonable degree,"
Frankenberg told Reuters. The Novell
chief said it is a small step from
collecting the data to phoning it to
the dealer.

    Motorola spokesperson Jim Farrell
told Newsbytes microprocessors in
cars handle such tasks as replacing
the speedometer cable and
electronically depicting the entire
dash display.

    Frankenberg, who took the wheel
at Novell last year, wants to see the
company have wider name recognition
with the general public. Novell
recently put all its advertising
dollars in one location, hiring Young
& Rubicam as its ad agency.
Frankenberg said the Novell ad budget
will be increased by 40 percent to
$140 million, according to Reuters.

    (Jim Mallory/19950323/Press
contact: Shannon Smith, Novell, 801-
429-5850)



     Was Cray Computer A Cold War
Victim? 03/27/95 COLORADO SPRINGS,
COLORADO, U.S.A., 1995 MAR 27 (NB) --
A white flag, long considered a sign
of surrender, flew over the Cray
Computer Corporation headquarters
last week as employees carried out
cardboard boxes filled with their
personal possessions after the
company filed for bankruptcy
protection and laid off most of its
350 employees.

    The flag had apparently been
hoisted on the company flagpole, that
usually proudly displayed the stars
and stripes, by one or more
disgruntled employees. While their
exact meaning was unknown, it may
have signaled the surrender of one of
the last casualties of the cold war.

    Before the nuclear faceoff
between the US and the USSR, now a
non-existent political entity,
cooled, the United States government
spent millions of dollars on computer
equipment. Cray Computer Corp. had
hoped to collect some of those
dollars for its Cray-3, later to
metamorphose into the Cray-4,
supercomputer. But with government
spending sharply curtailed and
desktop computers dramatically
gaining in power, Seymour Cray's
dream may have evaporated long before
the white flag appeared over the
company's headquarters.

    That dream envisioned
supercomputers that used arsenide
instead of silicon, circuitry to
attain faster-than-lighting computing
speed. The company was spun off from
Cray Research Inc., in 1989 and like
most startup companies, lost money.
However, unlike startups that
succeed, Cray could never find a
buyer for its products. It got in
trouble when it lost the only
customer it ever had by missing an
important demonstration milestone. In
1993 the company reported a $47.9
million net loss. 1994 was slightly
better, with a reported net loss of
$37.7 million, mostly due to a $2
million development contract.

    Cray went to the financial well
several times, most recently seeking
foreign investors in order to avoid
the costly and time-consuming
registration process required by the
US Securities and Exchange Commission
in order to sell stock in this
country. Last month shareholders,
faced with few if any alternatives,
gave the company another OK to offer
$20 million in common shares, even
though that diluted the value of
their own holdings. But apparently
even foreign investors had had
enough, and that fifth money-raising
try was unsuccessful.

    Cray now lists its assets at
$22.9 million and its debts at $18.8
million. The bankruptcy filing says
the biggest creditors are supplier
Toshiba America Electronic Components
Inc., at $243,900; Colorado Springs
Utilities, owed $234,358; and
Advanced Visual Systems Inc. of
Waltham, Mass, $200,000. The company
says it also owes Cray Research Inc,
$157,766.

    (Jim Mallory/19950327)



    Institute Warns Of Engineer
Shortages 03/27/95 BOSTON,
MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A., 1995 MAR 27
(NB) -- In the software industry, the
"state of the practice" lags 15 to 20
years behind the "state of the art,"
and it is the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI)'s goal is help close
that gap, said Julia Allen, deputy
director for the SEI, during a talk
at the Object World Executive Forum.

    Now a $276 billion industry
worldwide, software is becoming
increasingly pervasive, appearing not
just in large systems but in "every
day products" like shavers, light
bulbs, TV sets, and parking meters,
noted the official of the US
government-sponsored agency.

    A new Norelco shaver incorporates
2,000 lines of program code for
battery management, Allen told the
executives. Some light bulbs are now
being produced with chips and
software for detecting sound and
motion, and for adjusting lighting
accordingly.

    French drivers are being called
upon to scan their credit cards
through parking meters, for automatic
billing, she said. In Pittsburgh --
home of the SEI -- parking meters are
outfitted with IR (infrared) sensors.
The aim of this parking meter
automation? To prevent drivers from
taking advantage of unexpired time
left on meters, according to the
deputy director.

    Firms like Citibank, Motorola,
General Motors, and Schlumburger,
that have traditionally considered
themselves service or hardware
companies, are now telling the SEI,
"We are becoming a software
company."

    But at the same time, Allen
warned, the complexity of new systems
is outstripping the training of
software professionals, straining
management capabilities, and
resulting in scrapped projects and
system failures, sometimes
"massive."

    And although the US still holds
"the technological edge in the
software industry today," more and
more development work is moving
offshore -- particularly to Bulgaria,
China, India, and Russia -- due to a
shortage of qualified personnel in
the US, she asserted.

    The SEI, she added, is best known
for creating a model called the CMM
(Capability Maturity Model for
Software), but the agency -- together
with its "customers and strategic
partners" -- is also tackling these
problems on many other fronts.

    These efforts include the SEI's
already established CERT (Computer
Emergency Response Team); RMA (Rate
Monotonic Analysis); and MSE (Master
of Software Engineering) programs;
participation in international
standards groups; and new activities
in the areas of product line
architectures and integration of COTS
(commercial-off- the-shelf)
software.

    Allen explained that the CMM
gives software vendors a way of
predicting their costs and
performance, and planning their
schedules, by determining where their
companies belong on a five-level
scale, ranging from Level 1,
"initial," to Level 5, "optimizing."

    According to Allen, an SEI
customer was recently quoted in the
Journal of ATC (Air Traffic Control)
as saying, "Since the inception of
(the CMM) initiative, we have
increased our software productivity
by 233 percent, the cost of fixing
and preventing errors is down 66
percent, and we have saved over $17
million in rework."      The SEI's
CMM has also led to spinoffs called
SPINs (software process improvement
networks), consisting of "grassroots
organizations" of CMM practitioners
interested in sharing "lessons
learned," she told the audience.

    Since 1992, the number of SPINs
has grown from four to 47, both
domestic and international,
representing more than 10,000
software engineers, said Allen.

    An SEI-created curriculum for an
MSE degree is now being utilized at
over 25 universities, according to
Allen. The agency's CERT team
troubleshoots attacks on the
Internet, and also carries out
research on network security.

    The agency has also developed the
RMA model for predicting "a priori"
whether or not a system will meet its
timing and throughput requirements
upon deployment.

    The SEI works with the ISO
(International Standards
Organization) 9000 and ISO SPICE
(Software Process Improvement
Capability Determination)
international standards groups to
provide input into these standards,
and to help assure that US products
will meet international
specifications, she told the group.

    What's up next? The SEI is
currently developing a set of
processes and methods "that support
an organization in evaluating (its)
current products to determine if a
{SHIFT-*}product line architecture' is
feasible and can be realized,"
according to Allen.

    Under the "product line
architecture" approach, companies
provide all feature variation among
their products through software, she
explained.

    "We're also launching a COTS
initiative, examining what it would
be like to integrate existing
components in producing new products
and systems, as contrasted with new
development," the deputy director
reported.

    (Jacqueline Emigh/19950323/Reader
Contact: Object World, 508-879- 6700;
Press Contact: Cress O'Brien, Object
World, 508-879-6700)