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ACM TechNews - Friday, July 12, 2002
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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 372
Date: July 12, 2002
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Top Stories for Friday, July 12, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"New Pessimism On '02 Revival Is Pervading Silicon Valley"
"Cybersecurity-Research Bill Stalls in Senate"
"Recycling Law Could Mean Costly PCs"
"A New Code for Anonymous Web Use"
"Pirates on the Web, Spoils on the Street"
"Battle is Brewing over Tech Visas"
"Lawmakers: Keep Your Tunes to Yourself"
"Security Flaw Afflicts Popular Technology for Encrypting E-Mail"
"Promising Prospects Dim for Bluetooth"
"UK Lab Creates What Companies Imagine"
"China Wakes to New Destiny"
"A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front"
"Beware the Gotcha in the New Intel Feature"
"Creating the Poor Man's Supercomputer"
"Computer, Heal Thyself"
"Approximating Life"
"Experts Predict Major Cyberattack Coming"
"Core Reality"
"Six Degrees of Speculation"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"New Pessimism On '02 Revival Is Pervading Silicon Valley"
The optimism Silicon Valley business leaders had for a mid-2002
economic recovery is weakening as executives and analysts observe
that the projected upturn in electronics sales is not yet
happening. For example, Advanced Micro Devices has downgraded ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item1
"Cybersecurity-Research Bill Stalls in Senate"
Legislation calling for increased computer network security
research has encountered a roadblock in the Senate. Provisions
calling for federal agencies to adopt computer-security standards
developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item2
"Recycling Law Could Mean Costly PCs"
European environmental laws will soon be enacted requiring PC
manufacturers to recycle discarded computers, a move that could
cause PC prices to rise, experts warn. The enforcement of the
directives could cost British industry more than 3 billion ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item3
"A New Code for Anonymous Web Use"
Hacktivismo, a political offshoot of the Cult of the Dead Cow
hacker group, is planning the release of new peer-to-peer
software protocol that will enable anonymous Internet use.
Although current techniques for veiling one's identity online ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item4
"Pirates on the Web, Spoils on the Street"
Internet piracy continues, despite major busts such as the raids
conducted to flush out the members of the DrinkorDie ring, some
of whom have earned jail terms for illegally copying and
distributing software, games, and movies online. Pirates such as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item5
"Battle is Brewing over Tech Visas"
The H1-B visa program is being roundly criticized by opponents
who want it scaled back or eliminated altogether. They argue
that the annual cap of 195,000 new visas for foreign-born tech
workers is excessive, adding that the economic slump has produced ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item6
"Lawmakers: Keep Your Tunes to Yourself"
This month will likely see the introduction of a proposal from
Reps. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that
restricts Americans' copying of digital content and clarifies the
legal rights of Webcasters. The bill, which the authors drafted ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item7
"Security Flaw Afflicts Popular Technology for Encrypting E-Mail"
A programming flaw in the highly popular Pretty Good Privacy
(PGP) email encryption standard could give hackers the ability to
commandeer users' computers as well as decrypt sensitive emails.
The flaw, which eEye Digital Security researchers uncovered weeks ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item8
"Promising Prospects Dim for Bluetooth"
Bluetooth's future is being called into question by several new
studies, while mixed signals filled the air at the recent
Bluetooth Congress in Amsterdam. The technology's rapid,
high-volume penetration into the mobile phone and automotive ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item9
"UK Lab Creates What Companies Imagine"
Companies across the nation are finding the University of
Kentucky Center for Robotics and Manufacturing's rapid
prototyping lab useful for product design, software installation,
and boosting plant efficiency. The lab can translate simple ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item10
"China Wakes to New Destiny"
China's future seems inexorably linked with technology. Foreign
companies are increasing their investments there, spurred by
China's recent entry into the World Trade Organization, the
growing domestic demand for technology, the global IT slowdown, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item11
"A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front"
Future battles could be waged by robot drones that communicate
via a wireless network that mimics the human brain; determining
the building requirements of such a network is the goal of a
five-year, $11 million project from the Office of Naval Research.
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item12
"Beware the Gotcha in the New Intel Feature"
Intel is working on technology that could be used to limit
personal use of digital content. One example is the Trusted
Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), a technology designed to
ensure secure e-commerce transactions that Intel is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item13
"Creating the Poor Man's Supercomputer"
A researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory
has written a better message-passing program for supercomputers
created from PC clusters. David Turner's MP_Lite program helps
different nodes communicate more reliably and effectively, and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item14
"Computer, Heal Thyself"
Christof Teuscher of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Lausanne (EPFL) believes that biological systems can
revolutionize computing. "Looking at computing from a biological
point of view gives us an entirely new perspective and opens the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item15
"Approximating Life"
Alice, the brainchild of computer programmer Richard Wallace, is
an artificial intelligence program so lifelike that some people
who interact with it mistake it for a real person. It is based
on the theory that human conversation is simpler than most people ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item16
"Experts Predict Major Cyberattack Coming"
Former senior intelligence and security officials postulate that
a terrorist-coordinated cyberattack against America's networks
and businesses is inevitable. Experts are expecting terrorists
to first launch a physical attack against a private U.S. firm, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item17
"Core Reality"
Some physicists indicate that quantum physics may have hidden
depths, since theory alone is a matter of predicting probable
measurements rather than certainties. People are attempting to
find a "hidden variable theory" that most physicists dismiss as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item18
"Six Degrees of Speculation"
In the late 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram
popularized his theory that there are an average of six
intermediate people--"six degrees of separation"--connecting any
two individuals chosen at random. Some mathematicians claim ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/0712f.html#item19
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