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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2001)
Cisco donates to research ! ■The technology giant will make a donation for the development of television quality Internet broadcasts By Andrew Adams Oregon Daily Emerald The University’s efforts to devel op better Internet broadcasting technology and maintain a vibrant research-based business park were recently bolstered by the Internet network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems, Inc. The technology company, based in San Jose, Calif., gave $257,300 to help fund the University’s Inter net multicast technology, and en tered into a lease agreement for a 6,820-square-foot space in the Uni versity’s Riverfront Research Park. Cisco’s donation is the first in stallment of a nearly half-million dollar donation to expand the Uni versity’s network research efforts. The research park, located on the south bank of the Willamette Riv er, is home to many companies that license, market and develop information technology products derived from University research. Cisco Systems, Inc. will employ about 24 people at their new loca tion, which is expected to open by early April. Computing Center director Joanne Hugi said the donation will ensure that the University has ac cess to the latest technology and will be able to provide profession al opportunities for students and researchers at the University. She said both the grant and lease agree ment were obtained through the work of David Meyer, director of the Advanced Network Technolo gy Center. Meyer is also a senior network engineer with Cisco Sys tems, Inc. He was unable to be reached for comment. Hugi said due to Meyer’s work and other research agreements be tween the University and Cisco Systems, Inc., the company even tually decided to give the grant. “I would say it was because we have a staff member who works with Cisco,” she said. “One thing led to another, and Cisco felt that a gift was in order.” She said the funding will go to ward the University’s efforts to de velop secure transmission tech nologies to deliver television quality broadcasts over the Inter net. Hugi said she was glad Cisco Systems, Inc. had pledged the funding, and was pleased the com pany decided to open a facility in Eugene because it will bring more talented researchers to the area and provide opportunities for stu dents and staff to enter the profes sional field. “You can’t have too many good network engineers in Eugene,” she said. Hans Kuhn, an academic user specialist at the Computer Center, is developing the broadcast tech nology. He said the funding allows the University to continue expand ing their research efforts, while giving Cisco Systems, Inc. valuable feedback about the technology. “The research we do ties in with the products they offer,” he said. Kuhn said the technology in question has already been used by the Computing Center to broadcast I events such as the Prefontaine Clas- ■ sic track meet held last June. Unlike standard Web broadcast technology that sends out one stream of data to every viewer logged on, multicast technology enables hundreds and thousands of viewers to watch one source of data. Even though Cisco Systems, Inc. has provided funding and equip ment, Kuhn said that does not mean the University is in any way obliged to the company. “Cisco does not dictate the terms on which we purchase or use tech nology,” he said. “We’re constant ly evaluating other products out there.” Diane Wiley, director of the Riverfront Research Park, said Cis co Systems, Inc. has entered into a five-year agreement with the Re search Park Associates company. She said Cisco Systems, Inc.’s space is not one of the largest loca tions in the research park, but the University is still happy to have a new tenant. China rebukes Tiananmen Papers By John Leicester The Associated Press BEIJING — Stung by newly pub lished documents that vividly ex posed how Chinese leaders split over the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, China’s government on Tuesday rejected the papers and suggested they were fake. “Any attempt to play up the mat ter again and disrupt China by the despicable means of fabricating ma terials and distorting facts will be futile,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said in a statement issued early Tuesday via the official Xinhua News Agency. The crackdown was “highly nec essary to the stability and develop ment of China,” Zhu said, adding that the ruling Communist Party’s “correct conclusion” about the 1989 protests would not change. It was the first official reaction to the papers, which were purportedly smuggled out of China by a disaf fected civil servant and published in the United States. Beijing has long argued the protests were an anti-government rebellion that had to be crushed to safeguard economic growth and communist rule. It has ignored calls for an inquiry into the crackdown that began June 4, 1989, in which hundreds were killed and thou sands arrested in a nationwide ef fort that also froze debate about po litical reforms. Initially, the government had no comment about the documents and China’s wholly state-run media did not report them. But news of the pa pers leaked into China via the Inter net, foreign radio broadcasts and word of mouth, stirring the begin nings of debate. Chinese Web site censors sought to silence the discussion. One mes sage that detailed CNN’s coverage of the documents was deleted within minutes of appearing on a popular chat site. But other messages, some questioning why news of the docu ments was suppressed and whether they were authentic, briefly got through. “To know whether the Tianan-. men Papers are true or not, just look at them on an overseas Web site and judge for yourself.... If one has done no wrong why fear other people knowing?” one surfer, using the name “sakel,” said in a Web posting that was later deleted. Said to be based on the minutes of secret high-level meetings, Chi nese intelligence reports and records of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s private phone calls, the documents were published in “The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People.” The 489-page book was released in the United States over the weekend. If genuine, they offer a rare glimpse into the motivations and fears behind the communist leader ship’s decision to order troops into Tiananmen Square. The papers detail how hard-line and reformist Chinese leaders dis agreed about how to handle the huge pro-democracy demonstra tions. The documents show how Communist Party elders led by Deng imposed martial law, ousted reformist party chief Zhao Ziyang and replaced him with Jiang Zemin, now China’s president. As with “Deep Throat,” the secret source whose information helped expose the Watergate scandal, the identity of the civil servant who compiled the materials was a per plexing mystery for Chinese. Wu Guoguang, a former aide to purged party chief Zhao, said the fact the papers got out indicated the existence of a faction within the Communist Party that supports po litical reform and wants the Tianan men crackdown re-examined. “Maybe the person who carried the documents is not a very high level official, but quite senior lead ers must have known about this,” Wu said by telephone from Hong Kong. The former civil servant, who uses the pseudonym Zhang Liang, painstakingly transcribed original records from files in Beijing and elsewhere onto computer disks, which he brought out ofiGhina.-ac* cording to the book’s editors, An drew Nathan, a professor of politi cal science at Columbia University, and Perry Link, a professor of Chi nese language and literature at Princeton University. Nathan says Communist Party members associated with the civil servant believe that challenging the official view that the Tiananmen protests were a violent anti-govern ment riot will help spur political change. But Bao Tong, a once senior com munist official and adviser to Zhao who was imprisoned after the crackdown, said the documents could have the opposite effect. “It’s possible some people will be scared and therefore say ‘politics cannot be reformed, news must continue to be blocked off, rights must be stripped away to an even greater extent,”’ said Bao, who spent seven years in prison and an other year detained in a guest house for leaking word of the crackdown. But Bao also said the documents would be a revelation to a majority of today’s government officials who were not privy to the leadership bat tles of 1989. “It will make them reconsider how this incident happened, what kind of problem it was, what kind of society China’s is, what kind of system we work under, what proce dures and systems are used in Chi nese decision-making, how did Tiananmen happen and how can we avoid a recurrence?” Bao said. “Everyone will be bound to consid er these questions. ” Dai Qing, a journalist of the 1980s also imprisoned after the crack down, said the documents’ release could convince President Jiang and Li Peng, China’s No. 2 leader who as then-premier declared martial law in 1989, that it is not safe for them to step down in the coming iwo years, as is expected. “If it has an effect on political re form in China it will be a bad one. 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