The International Electrotechnical Commission is recommending that "kibibyte" replace "kilobyte" as the name for 1,024 bytes. Powers of 1,024 would be called mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi, and exbibytes. The IEC defines standards for electronic technologies, and is supported by NIST in this. [Science, 12Mar99. Edupage.]

The London Science Museum (England) has agreed to host the annual "Turing Test" Loebner Prize competition for the next 44 years. Dr. Loebner will provide a prize fund of $125K, after the 28Jan00 contest at Dartmouth, . $100K and a gold medal will be awarded for the first program to fool judges into believing it is human. . [Hugh Gene Loebner , comp.ai, 15Mar99.]

Star Wars fans can see the new preview trailer for "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" in QuickTime 3.0 format (11MB to 25MB), at or . Apple says that 600K copies of QuickTime 3.0 and 1M copies of the trailer were downloaded within the first 24 hours. [TidBITS, 15Mar99.]

DigiBand Radio lists over 1800 radio stations that broadcast RealAudio on the net -- from over 100 countries -- at . [, net-hap, 26Mar98.]

The Springer Pre-Y2K Computer Book Sale at is offering discounts up to 65% on 104 titles. You can also view Springer's full catalog or sign up for a monthly email bulletin of discounts. [Jason Roth , comp.lang.c, 15Mar99.]

BookBrowse features an excerpt of every book in their catalog. . [Robin Nobles , net-hap, 15Jun98.]

The BIGWORDS website lets you buy new or used college textbooks at 40% off. Or you can rent them. At the end of the semester you send the books back. . [Techno-File News, 22Sep98. Louis Bookbinder.]

Last call for papers: "Constraint agents"; Constraints journal, early 2000. 01Apr99; Peggy S. Eaton . . [comp.constraints, 15Mar99.]