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ACM TechNews - Wednesday, December 6, 2000
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ACM TechNews
Volume 2, Number 138
Date: December 6, 2000
Site Sponsored by Gateway (http://www.gateway.com)
Top Stories for Wednesday, December 6, 2000:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Internet May Be Just a Fad, Says European Body"
"D.C. Council Votes Tech Tax Breaks"
"Battle Moving to Mobile Hardware Arena"
"Freedom to Criticize Belongs on the Web"
"State Department Disciplines Six in Laptop Case"
"Internet Firms Act to Ease Sharing of Personal Data"
"Net Privacy Law Could Pass, Despite Congressional Rancor"
"Can the Web Stand Up to the Strain?"
"What Detonated Dot-Bombs?"
"Facing Red Ink, Dotcoms Temper Their Idealism"
"The Net's .Us Domain Is Laden with Baggage"
"Cyberattack Report: Some Progress Made"
"The Great Patent Giveaway"
"Crossed Wires"
"Out of the Frying Pan and Into...The Frying Pan"
"Michael Dertouzos: Predicting How Technology Will Connect the Globe"
"Help Wanted (And How)"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Internet May Be Just a Fad, Says European Body"
The Internet may be nothing but a short-lived fad in the United
Kingdom and its popularity may already be on the wane, contends a
report from the Economic and Social Research Council's Virtual
Society project. The vastness of the Internet and the amount of . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item1
"D.C. Council Votes Tech Tax Breaks"
The D.C. Council yesterday approved tax credits and other
measures designed to attract high-tech companies to Washington,
D.C. The New E-Conomy Transformation Act of 2000, supported by
David Catania (R), would reduce the corporate franchise tax for . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item2
"Battle Moving to Mobile Hardware Arena"
Analysts predict that the next great battlefield for operating
systems will be mobile or handheld devices. Although Palm
currently dominates this market, holding a 70 percent share with
its Palm OS, Gartner expects that Microsoft will triple its . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item3
"Freedom to Criticize Belongs on the Web"
Esther Dyson, the former head of ICANN and the current head of
EDventure Holdings, argues that the TLD .sucks should have been
approved as domain in which freedom of speech is permitted and
companies, individuals, and officials can respond to criticisms. . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item4
"State Department Disciplines Six in Laptop Case"
The U.S. State Department has disciplined six employees in the
bureau of intelligence and research because a laptop from that
office disappeared last year. Two employees were fired outright,
while the others, including bureau of intelligence and research . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item5
"Internet Firms Act to Ease Sharing of Personal Data"
IBM, MircoStrategy, First Union, and several dozen other
e-commerce players have developed the Customer Profile Exchange
standard, with the aim of improving their ability to share
consumer data with one another. The XML-based standard is being . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item6
"Net Privacy Law Could Pass, Despite Congressional Rancor"
Despite the chaos of the presidential election, congressional
observers are still predicting that the next Congress will pass
some form of Internet privacy legislation. Andrew Shen, policy
analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), says . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item7
"Can the Web Stand Up to the Strain?"
The Web's ability to handle huge traffic spikes was tested twice
last week, first for the Madonna concert last Tuesday and again
for the Webcast of oral arguments in the Supreme Court over the
presidential election on Friday. Microsoft's MSN hosted the . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item8
"What Detonated Dot-Bombs?"
The large number of Internet companies that have failed in recent
months need only look to their business plans for the reason for
their failure, according to Boston Consulting analyst George
Stalk. Many of these substandard business plans were predicated . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item9
"Facing Red Ink, Dotcoms Temper Their Idealism"
The downturn of the e-economy this year has signaled a change in
the dot-com mindset. The optimism once seen online has been
reigned in, as the industry suddenly realized its growth had far
outpaced the market. Kirk Walden, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item10
"The Net's .Us Domain Is Laden with Baggage"
The high demand for new domain names led ICANN to approve seven
new TLDs, however few people know that every country has its own
country code. The United States' .us country code TLD has been
running since 1985 and is the third largest country code in the . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item11
"Cyberattack Report: Some Progress Made"
A new report from the National Partnership for Critical
Infrastructure Security (NPCIS) indicates that over the past year
many companies have made major progress in protecting their
infrastructures from attack, but that others are still . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item12
"The Great Patent Giveaway"
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is likely to curtail the
number of Internet business-method patents it grants in response
to mounting criticism. Business-method patents such as
Amazon.com's patent for one-click ordering are being challenged . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item13
"Crossed Wires"
Although high-tech issues were almost completely ignored in the
recent elections, many analysts expect technology to take center
stage during the next session of Congress. Political
commentators say technology makes for odd alliances across party . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item14
"Out of the Frying Pan and Into...The Frying Pan"
Many PC makers are relying on growth in the server market to
compensate for a slowdown in the PC sector, but servers could
follow the same path as PCs unless manufacturers change their
strategies, analysts say. Compaq, Dell, and IBM note that profit . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item15
"Michael Dertouzos: Predicting How Technology Will Connect the Globe"
Michael Dertouzos, director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science, says 25 percent of
the global population will have access to the Internet within 30
years. However, the one-to-one personal exchanges between people . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item16
"Help Wanted (And How)"
IT companies need to employ a range of tactics to cope with the
ongoing labor shortage. Three-fourths of the IT companies
responding to a recent Meta Group survey said they did not have
enough workers, and most respondents said they would increase . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2000-2/1206w.html#item17
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