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ACM TechNews - Friday, January 11, 2002
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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 298
Date: January 11, 2002
Top Stories for Friday, January 11, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Norwegian Authorities Charge Teen DVD Software Author"
"Unions a Casualty of Dot-Com Shakeout"
"New Data Encryption Method Throws Away the Keys"
"A World of Wee Devices Seeks Some Batteries to Match"
"The Geeks Who Saved Usenet"
"Charities Say No to Obsolete Crap"
"W3C Seeks Clout for Web Rules"
"Back Doors in AIM Security Tool Irk Pros"
"'Alien' Message Tests Human Decoders"
"Name That Worm--How Computer Viruses Get Their Names"
"AMD's Aiming for Tech Leadership"
"E-Voting: A Load of Old Ballots?"
"Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises"
"UCITA Changes Fail to Appease"
"Girding for Grids"
"Speech Recognition's Next Iteration"
"A Vertical Leap for Microchips"
"Grappling With the New Politics of Software"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Norwegian Authorities Charge Teen DVD Software Author"
Jon Johansen created DeCSS software when he was 15; now the
18-year-old has been indicted by the Norwegian Economic Crime
Unit under Norwegian Criminal Code Section 145(2), according to
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) attorney Robin Gross. The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item1
"Unions a Casualty of Dot-Com Shakeout"
The failure of workers to unionize at Internet companies such as
Amazon.com, Webvan, and Etown have seemingly ended most efforts
to organize workers in the tech industry. Stanford law professor
William Gould, former National Labor Relations Board chairman, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item2
"New Data Encryption Method Throws Away the Keys"
A new encryption method developed by Harvard University professor
Michael Rabin and electrical engineer Woody Yang could use
environmental data to protect private electronic communications.
Although the technique is likely to face opposition from the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item3
"A World of Wee Devices Seeks Some Batteries to Match"
A small group of researchers are investigating nuclear power as
an energy source for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Dr.
James P. Blanchard and Dr. Amit Lal of the University of
Wisconsin in Madison are developing prototypes of nuclear ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item4
"The Geeks Who Saved Usenet"
Google users can now search the site for 95 percent of the posts
ever made to Usenet, the huge public bulletin board composed of a
vast array of newsgroups. Users can use the improved Usenet
archives to learn about the early history of online ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item5
"Charities Say No to Obsolete Crap"
Nonprofit companies are becoming more specific about what kinds
of hardware they accept from donors, because obsolete systems
often mean repair or disposal costs that can drain them of money.
Computers that lack important components, such as key peripherals ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item6
"W3C Seeks Clout for Web Rules"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) says the end of last year saw
a spate of new Web interoperability recommendations, each of
which, if implemented widely, would help to ensure the
continuance of an open and independent Web. W3C members are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item7
"Back Doors in AIM Security Tool Irk Pros"
Upset security researchers from the w00w00 group, which released
the AIMFilter software as a patch to AOL's buggy Instant
Messenger product, say the code actually contained hidden
backdoors that gave the author special privileges. The AIMFilter ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item8
"'Alien' Message Tests Human Decoders"
Canadian researchers Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas have devised a
signal to be broadcast into space later this year, and have
forwarded it to scientists worldwide to see if it can be easily
decoded. The message consists of a two-dimensional image ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item9
"Name That Worm--How Computer Viruses Get Their Names"
Naming a computer virus is mainly up to the virus researcher,
although there are a few fundamental rules. Symantec Security
Response senior director Vincent Weafer says the virus author's
name is never used to avoid publicity. "We look to rename it ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item10
"AMD's Aiming for Tech Leadership"
AMD's HyperTransport bus design has a chance to become the
industry standard for high-end computing, servers, and network
equipment, displacing the PCI bus, which has been the dominant
bus technology since its introduction in 1992. HyperTransport ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item11
"E-Voting: A Load of Old Ballots?"
Internet voting will never be the sole method of carrying out the
democratic process, according to some experts. Nevertheless,
Robin Cook, leader of the British Commons, has said Britain
should be the first country to try e-voting. Several pilots ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item12
"Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises"
Wired News' Vaporware 2001 list ranks the top 10 most hyped, most
hoped-for, but ultimately unrealized products or services for the
past year, according to readers' votes. Gaming was a big
disappointment for many, with the No. 1 and No. 2 spots going to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item13
"UCITA Changes Fail to Appease"
The software vendors group backing the Uniform Computer
Information Transactions Act (UCITA) has changed some major
provisions that had generated the most opposition, such as the
remote disabling of applications. UCITA is billed as a way to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item14
"Girding for Grids"
Grid computing initiatives have been limited to mostly
universities and laboratories, but major hardware and software
firms are heavily hyping the technology in the belief that
corporate demand will soon surge. The technology promises ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item15
"Speech Recognition's Next Iteration"
IBM Research is working on ways to vastly improve speech
recognition technology, including software that can read the many
nuances of pronunciation and acoustics as well as contextual
interpretation. Current speech recognition systems are limited ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item16
"A Vertical Leap for Microchips"
Virtually all semiconductors are built horizontally, and
increasing computing power relies on smaller and smaller
transistors being packed into an expanding chip area. Stanford
University's Thomas H. Lee and colleagues have developed a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item17
"Grappling With the New Politics of Software"
Consumer-oriented software increasingly has agendas invisible to
users, either to pass personal information back to their creators
or to promote the commercial interests of the distributors.
Sometimes the software itself is secret, such as with the FBI's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0111f.html#item18
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