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ACM TechNews - Friday, May 4, 2001
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ACM TechNews
Volume 3, Number 198
Date: May 4, 2001
Site Sponsored by Gateway (http://www.gateway.com)
Top Stories for Friday, May 4, 2001:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Chinese Arrested for Tech Theft"
"Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code"
"Populist Parade"
"Global IT Spending $1.4 Trillion by 2005"
"Entertainment Firms Target Gnutella"
"Scientists Beam Light to Send Microscopic Objects Spinning"
"U.S.: DVD Decoder is Terrorware"
"Microsoft Warns of Vulnerability in Windows 2000"
"Dear New Employee: Welcome, and Goodbye"
"Women Are Geeky People, Too"
"Search Engines Ready to Learn"
"Smaller Va. Firms Are Bigger on Ethics, Survey Finds"
"Chip Sales Set to Remain in the Doldrums"
"You Will Be Reprogrammed. Your Toaster Too."
"New Media Player Escapes Windows"
"New Legislation Calls For Federal CIO"
"Future Computing: Faster Than Silicon"
"Salary Strongholds"
"March of the A.I. Robots"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Chinese Arrested for Tech Theft"
On Thursday, federal authorities arrested two Chinese scientists
employed with Lucent Technologies and a man alleged to be their
business associate, charging them with stealing product designs
from Lucent and giving them to a company that the Chinese . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item1
"Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code"
Microsoft senior vice president Craig Mundie, in a speech at New
York University on Thursday, explained the company's stance on
the free-software movement, which he maintained is harmful to both
innovation and the companies that base business models on it. . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item2
"Populist Parade"
Although Linux, with its cult of dedicated, often
Microsoft-hating users and its obscure vocabulary of programming
terms, may not be known to the majority of computer users who
still run Windows as an operating system, the open-source . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item3
"Global IT Spending $1.4 Trillion by 2005"
A just-released study by Dataquest on the global information
technology services industry predicts that the market will expand
to $1.4 trillion in 2005 from the current figure of $700 billion.
The IT services industry expanded 9.7 percent globally last year . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item4
"Entertainment Firms Target Gnutella"
With the number of daily downloads on the Napster file-sharing
network having fallen 40 percent from February to April,
according to the research group Webnoize, the entertainment
industry is turning its attention toward Gnutella, a peer-to-peer . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item5
"Scientists Beam Light to Send Microscopic Objects Spinning"
Scientists at St. Andrews University in Scotland in the latest issue
of the journal Science reveal that they have devised a method to
spin microscopic objects using a beam of light. Among the
objects the researchers have already spun using an infrared laser . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item6
"U.S.: DVD Decoder is Terrorware"
Attorneys for the federal government told a federal appeals court
this week that DeCSS, the software code that breaks the
encryption on DVDs, poses the same kind of threat as software
that disrupts hospital systems or the navigation of airplanes. . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item7
"Microsoft Warns of Vulnerability in Windows 2000"
Microsoft is advising users of Windows 2000 to install a patch or
to disable Internet Information Services (IIS) version 5.0
because of a "extremely serious" design flaw that makes the
software open to being hacked. A hacker could compromise any . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item8
"Dear New Employee: Welcome, and Goodbye"
This spring's college graduates and MBA students are receiving
some unusual welcomes at companies they interviewed with during
the fall. Tech firms such as Cisco and Intel as well as
consultant firms such as Boston Consulting and Charles Schwab are . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item9
"Women Are Geeky People, Too"
As part of the University of Maryland at Baltimore County's
Center for Women and Information Technology, director Joan
Korenman uses the Internet to highlight issues related to women
and IT. "The center's mission is to achieve women's full . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item10
"Search Engines Ready to Learn"
Tom Mitchell, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and the
chief scientist at WhizBang Labs, recently described new advances
in the technology behind search engines. These advances could
assist users in the increasingly difficult task of finding . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item11
"Smaller Va. Firms Are Bigger on Ethics, Survey Finds"
A Marymount University survey of tech firms in Northern Virginia
found that small firms, those with less than 100 employees, weigh
ethical issues more heavily than large firms do. The survey of
43 Northern Virginia tech CEOs also found that employees at small . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item12
"Chip Sales Set to Remain in the Doldrums"
Semiconductor sales in March totaled $14.4 billion, a 7 percent
drop from February's sales total, the Semiconductor Industry
Association reported on Wednesday. The association said its
customers still had backlogs in their chip inventory. A drop in . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item13
"You Will Be Reprogrammed. Your Toaster Too."
An underground movement of people who tinker with gadget hardware
and software has arisen, developing innovative new creations and
uses well beyond manufacturers' intentions. Companies are trying
to adapt to the growing number of inquisitive people who hack . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item14
"New Media Player Escapes Windows"
Internet sites offering an unauthorized, downloadable version of
Windows Media Player 8 may face litigation from Microsoft if they
do not remove the files. The program was apparently taken from
the latest beta release of the up-coming Windows XP operating . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item15
"New Legislation Calls For Federal CIO"
Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) have
introduced legislation to establish a permanent federal CIO post
within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The White
House would appoint the CIO. The measure is long overdue, says . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item16
"Future Computing: Faster Than Silicon"
IBM scientists are working on the next generation of
microprocessors--molecular electronics, or "molectronics," as
some have coined it. Carbon nanotubes, only a few molecules
wide, are folded together to form long strands of circuitry. . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item17
"Salary Strongholds"
The latest InformationWeek Research National IT Salary Survey,
which covers some 20,000 staff and managers in the IT field,
found that for February and March, the median annual salary for
IT staffers was $71,000, an 8.5 percent increase over last year, . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item18
"March of the A.I. Robots"
Steven Spielberg could do wonders for consumer robotics this
summer with A.I, his new movie that features supersensitive,
superhuman robots. Japan is much further along than the United
States in commercial success with robots--service robots can now . . .
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2001-3/0504f.html#item19
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