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Clips October 17, 2002
- To: "Lillie Coney":;, Gene Spafford <spaf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, John White <white@xxxxxxxxxx>;, Jeff Grove <jeff_grove@xxxxxxx>;, goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>;, glee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;, Andrew Grosso<Agrosso@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;, ver@xxxxxxxxx;, lillie.coney@xxxxxxx;, v_gold@xxxxxxx;, harsha@xxxxxxx;, KathrynKL@xxxxxxx;, akuadc@xxxxxxxxxxx;, computer_security_day@xxxxxxx;, waspray@xxxxxxxxxxx;
- Subject: Clips October 17, 2002
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:03:29 -0400
Clips October 17, 2002
ARTICLES
Cyber chief speaks on Data network security [DMCA]
Visa roadblock could delay DMCA case
Bill would ease gun info-sharing
FOIA on the block
You are here Personal location technology
******************************
Boston Globe
Cyber chief speaks on Data network security
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 10/17/2002
President Bush's point man on computer security says that the nation has a
long way to go in securing its data networks but that new federal
regulations would be a step in the wrong direction.
Richard Clarke, head of the White House Office of Cyber Security, also said
the government should modify a controversial law designed to prevent
exploitation of software security flaws because it can be used to stifle
research to improve computer security.
''We don't want to create the Federal Internet Security Regulatory
Agency,'' said Clarke. Clarke wants businesses and government agencies to
work together voluntarily on tougher network security standards to protect
their computer systems from small-time criminals and international
terrorists alike.
Clarke, a Dorchester native and graduate of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, came to the Boston area yesterday for a town meeting at MIT,
one of a series held to gather feedback on a proposed White House strategy
for securing America's computer networks. A draft of the proposal has
attracted criticism from some security experts since it was published on
the White House Web site last month. Skeptics say businesses and
individuals won't undertake the costly and expensive work of upgrading
their networks without an element of government compulsion.
At the town meeting, Clarke responded to a question about the controversial
Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The act makes it illegal to publicize the
existence of security flaws in computer software, but computer software
companies have used the law to threaten legal action against academic
researchers who publicize their discoveries of such flaws.
Clarke said such threats were a misuse of the law and that reform is
needed. ''I think a lot of people didn't realize that it would have this
potential chilling effect on vulnerability research.''
Clarke said that researchers should share vulnerability information with
reponsible authorities who can produce repair patches before a problem
becomes widely known.
Bruce Schneier, author of a textbook on data encryption and founder of
Counterpane Internet Security Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., scoffed at the
White House's support of businesses and government agencies working
together voluntarily to prevent breaches of security.
''It's a lot of feel-good rhetoric,'' he said. ''The hard choices have not
been made.''
Schneier said the only hope for real improvement is to pass laws that make
computer hardware and software companies liable for security flaws.
''If you do leak private information, you will be held personally liable
for it,'' Schneier said. ''If that happens, companies will figure out how
not to do it.''
But Clarke said it would be very difficult to fairly assess the liability
of computer companies in a security breakdown. ''To date there's not been a
successful case of anybody bringing a legal liability case,'' he said in an
interview before last night's town meeting. ''I'm told by the lawyers that
liability law doesn't cover that kind of thing, has never covered that kind
of thing.'' Clarke added that the Bush administration doesn't support the
idea of drafting such a liability law.
Instead, Clarke wants computer experts in particular industries, such as
banking and health care, to work together on security standards and systems
that are compatible with the way computers are used in those industries.
Clarke said the banking industry and several others already have formed
such working groups, called Information Sharing and Assessment Centers, or
ISACs. Each ISAC will be able to establish a set of ''best practices'' for
computer security. Companies that fail to meet those standards could suffer
a loss of business, as clients seek out those with better data security.
Clarke wasn't totally opposed to government action. He noted that strict
standards can be imposed on businesses already under federal regulation.
For example, financial institutions are subject to federal laws that set
standards for their data privacy practices. Companies that don't meet the
standards of this law can be forced to do so.
He also favored a proposal contained in the pending homeland security
legislation that would give businesses a limited exemption to the Freedom
of Information Act when they reported security lapses to the federal
government. Companies have sometimes failed to report such security
problems for fear that a rival could file a FOIA request and gain access to
their proprietary information.
Clarke said he backed federal involvement in efforts to redesign the basic
data protocols used on the Internet. Some of these protocols, such as those
used for e-mail, contain well-known security weaknesses. But in order to
reform them, the entire Internet community must adopt the improved designs.
Although the US government privatized the Internet in the early 1990s,
Clarke said that it has a role to play in rewriting the basic code of the
network.
''There's got to be a middle ground between the federal government running
the Internet ... and abandoning it,'' he said.
And Clarke said the federal government can play a major role in setting
tougher security standards by simply applying such standards to its own
purchases of computer hardware and software. Because federal agencies spend
billions on data processing and networking products, businesses will
upgrade their products in order to bid on federal contracts, and these
improvements will be passed on to private sector customers as well.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@xxxxxxxxxx
**************************
CNET News.com
Visa roadblock could delay DMCA case
By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer CNET News.com
October 16, 2002, 12:20 PM PT
Witnesses in the ElcomSoft trial have been denied visas to enter the United
States, a move that could delay a court date in the first criminal test of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and CEO Alex Katalov, both Russian
residents, are scheduled to appear in court as early as next Monday.
According to people close to the matter, officials at the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow have denied their visa applications to enter the United States.
ElcomSoft is facing charges of violating the criminal provisions of the
DMCA, which prohibits offering technology that circumvents copyright
protections. The Russian company created software that could crack
protections on Adobe Systems' eBooks.
The case first gained attention in the summer of 2001, when Sklyarov was
arrested at a Las Vegas convention after giving a speech about the
software. Programmers throughout the country protested his detention,
saying he was only doing his job.
The visa tangle, first reported by planetPDF.com, could pose problems for
Sklyarov in particular, as U.S. prosecutors dropped charges against him in
exchange for his testimony in the case against ElcomSoft. Katalov is
expected to represent ElcomSoft in the case.
ElcomSoft representatives said company attorneys were working to sort out
the visa problem. Meanwhile, representatives from both sides are scheduled
to appear in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday to sort out
last-minute matters surrounding the trial.
It's not the first time ElcomSoft employees have had trouble with
immigration issues related to the DMCA case.
Katalov was tangled up earlier this year by immigration officials after
landing in the United States for a court hearing, in part because he
indicated in immigration documents that he had been accused of criminal
charges--the very reason he was coming back to the country.
******************************
Federal Computer Week
Bill would ease gun info-sharing
BY Judi Hasson
Oct. 16, 2002
As the nation's capital region reeled from sniper attacks, the House passed
legislation to make it easier for states to share information with a
federal database of people prohibited from owning guns.
The legislation was approved unanimously Oct. 15 as law enforcement
officials continued their manhunt for the sniper who has terrorized the
Washington, D.C., area.
The legislation requires states and federal agencies to provide the FBI
with all relevant records to conduct a criminal background check.
The bill establishes a nationwide grant program to state law enforcement
agencies and state courts to automate and transmit records to be included
in the federal instant background check database. The bill would provide
more than $1 billion during the next three years to help states get records
into a database.
Rep. Connie Morella (R-Md.), who represents the area in suburban Maryland
that was the site of several of the shootings, said authorities don't know
how the sniper got a high-powered gun.
But, she said, "Ten thousand people who shouldn't have, got guns because of
incomplete records. We don't know if this depraved killer would be 10,001."
The bill now moves to the Senate, where supporters hope it will pass before
Congress recesses in advance of the November election.
With the mood in Congress grim over the sniper attacks, lawmakers as
diverse as Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has been a leading
foe of expanded gun control laws, and Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), a
National Rifle Association board member, support the legislation.
**************************
Federal Computer Week
FOIA on the block
A Legal View
BY Carl Peckinpaugh
Oct. 14, 2002
Under basic constitutional concepts of "due process," American citizens who
are potentially affected by decisions of their government have a right to
notice and an opportunity to comment on those decisions. Consistent with
this, Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966 in order to
strengthen citizens' rights to obtain information from government agencies,
subject only to certain narrowly tailored exceptions.
In 1996, Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act (EFOIA)
in order to reinforce those rules and to require agencies to provide the
public with electronic access to most types of information without having
to ask. This includes:
* All orders and final opinions an agency issues.
* All statements of policy and interpretations that an agency adopts.
* All administrative staff manuals and instructions to staff that may
affect a member of the public.
* All records released to any person that are likely to be requested by others.
Following the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the start of the war on
terrorism, government agencies naturally have looked harder at information
they make public to ensure that sensitive defense-related data does not get
out. However, the Bush administration has repeatedly stated that it does
not want to curtail the release of information that is clearly public in
nature.
Unfortunately, the public availability of such information is being
reduced, although it sometimes appears to be the result of carelessness
more than intent. Ironically, one of the most egregious examples is in the
U.S. Office of Government Ethics (USOGE).
In September, USOGE announced that it was replacing a long-standing,
publicly available electronic newsletter, the "Government Ethics Newsgram,"
with a new electronic "Ethics News and Information E-mail List Service,"
which would be available only to government employees. This is the opposite
of what should be happening. Under the EFOIA, agencies are supposed to make
more information electronically available to the public, not less.
Moreover, USOGE's announcement closely follows a separate notice in the
Federal Register that the office was soliciting comments on possible
amendments to the government's conflicts of interest rules.
What was startling about this notice was the contrast between it and a set
of much more specific questions contained in a letter from the USOGE to the
American Bar Association requesting its views on the same subject.
There is an inconsistency between that behavior and the congressional
mandate that agencies should publicly disseminate general information as
widely as possible.
The administration must ensure that federal agencies comply with the
statutory mandate to make information readily available to the public as
far as practicable.
Peckinpaugh is corporate counsel for DynCorp in Reston, Va. This column
represents his personal views.
***************************
Mercury News
You are here Personal location technology tracks you down wherever you are
By Maureen Fan
Mercury News New York Bureau
NEW YORK - In Rhode Island, battered women, stranded sailors, lost hikers
and others in need of emergency help can dial 911 from a Sprint, Verizon or
T-Mobile cell phone and authorities will automatically know where they are,
thanks to Global Positioning System technology embedded in their phones.
The only statewide e911 system in the country still has kinks to work out,
but officials expect Cingular, AT&T and Nextel phones to be connected by
the end of the year. It's one of many developments that experts and
analysts are studying closely as location tracking becomes the latest
business opportunity and battleground for privacy advocates.
The idea that your boss, parent or spouse can accurately track your
whereabouts in real time is not some far-fetched vision of Big Brother as
the technology that makes this possible gets cheaper and smaller every day.
Many devices are already on the market.
``The big difference in the last year or so is that the technology has
finally got small enough and cheap enough and more importantly, low-power
enough that you can start to track a whole slew of different things,'' said
Roger Hayward, chief technology officer of Axiom Navigation, a Costa Mesa
company that makes wireless GPS devices that track vehicles, packages and
people.
``We have customers using almost throw-away devices that would be embedded
in cardboard shipping boxes and we're selling devices to police departments
that are putting them into a variety of police vehicles.'' Axiom also sells
a $120 GPS-enabled battery pack attached to a cell phone that allows police
officers to be tracked when they're out of the vehicle.
In Palm Beach, Fla., a company called Digital Angel expects to launch a
product in November that uses biosensor, GPS and wireless technology to
locate missing people, monitor patients and track their temperature, pulse
and other medical conditions. The company is also targeting owners who want
to find stolen pets or property and farmers who need to manage livestock.
And in the Bay Area, bicyclists and runners have found new uses for the
small handheld GPS devices more often used by boaters and hikers. Menlo
Park software engineer Tim Pfafman straps a small GPS to his bike to
monitor his speed and elevation, then downloads the information to the Web
to track his progress over time. Pfafman helped create a company to do
this, Softbug.com, which has been merged with Axiom Navigation.
Location tracking is not new. Trucking companies, the Coast Guard and the
Navy have used Loran-C technology to pinpoint cargo or the location of
vessels at sea. Lost pets can be returned to their owners thanks to
implanted chips that respond to a scanning device. But the size and
accuracy of GPS technology is widening the field of business opportunities,
from concierge services in your car to cell phones that can find friends in
the area to new ways of tracking your private ambulance fleet or your
construction crew.
Many applications
? Tracking patients, fleet management
``Some of the cool things that are going on are within the medical realm.
There's a need for monitoring and tracking the elderly. I see more
applications coming up in fleet management. People are also talking about
detention centers -- if you're on probation and your truant officer is
trying to locate you, basically they can find you,'' said Ken Nagai,
marketing manager for Motorola's Radio Products Division. ``It's basically
Big Brother is looking down on you.''
Imagine being able to find a lost spouse at the shopping mall, track down
the jerk who stole your laptop or automatically locate the nearest burrito
joint when you're in the neighborhood. The potential advantages as well as
the intrusions on privacy have already caught the attention of the Federal
Trade Commission, which began bringing together privacy experts,
advertisers, analysts and e-commerce businesses two years ago. Guidelines
adopted by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association ask
companies to clearly inform consumers about the collection of location
information and not use the information unless they have permission.
But those guidelines don't always apply. A Merced man has already been
reported to authorities by his sport-utility vehicle. Scott Eugene Knight,
a former Army recruiter, is expected to be sentenced Wednesday for his role
in a hit-and-run collision last year. Knight was in a new Chevrolet Tahoe
when he hit and killed a pedestrian but kept going. The vehicle's air bags
deployed and its OnStar GPS tracking system automatically gave the Highway
Patrol the location of the crash.
And yet, a growing number of people are willing to pay for location
tracking services in their cars, primarily for emergencies, navigation and
theft prevention, according to a Jupiter Research survey of 1,961 online
consumers in February.
The 2.4 million subscribers in the ``telematics'' market are growing at
about 170,000 a month. Assuming an initial $400 installation fee, 44
percent of people surveyed were willing to pay for basic services such as
automatic collision notification and stolen-vehicle tracking. Half said
they would pay for basic and premium services such as help with navigation,
business finders and e-mail. And 32 percent were willing to pay for basic,
premium and luxury services such as concierge services and live help with
restaurant reservations, said Jupiter automotive analyst Julie Ask.
In Europe, location tracking in cell phones is more widespread and
emergency guidelines are more relaxed. Legislators in England have
considered forcing cellular carriers to use location tracking devices in
order to prevent cell-phone theft. Carriers are more focused on coming up
with commercial applications using a network-based technology known as
Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD), in which signals sent to a cell
phone from three different places produce a triangulation effect that helps
pinpoint a location.
But in the United States, companies are still struggling to find the right
balance between GPS technology and network-based technology. GPS technology
is more accurate, but also more expensive and doesn't always work in dense
urban areas. Network-based technology is cheaper, but is less accurate and
doesn't always work in rural areas where there are fewer cell towers.
Cingular and AT&T Wireless have recently concluded that EOTD technology
doesn't meet federal requirements for accuracy, and both carriers are
likely to face fines for being behind schedule, Hyers said.
On the other hand, AT&T Wireless is the first to use location technology
for commercial services. It's launched a mobile buddy-list service called
Find Friends. Users can see who among their friends or co-workers are
nearby, call or send text messages to meet up, then get directions to a
nearby restaurant, bookstore or bar. Verizon and Sprint are currently
focusing on making sure their 911 networks operate properly -- all carriers
are under a federal mandate to be able to connect 911 systems with the vast
majority of cell-phone users by 2005.
``Nextel says they're pretty far along on both emergency uses and plans for
commercial services and they're primarily a business person's carrier,''
Hyers said. ``You're going to see things like how do I find directions to
my client sites, how do I track employees, let's find all the members of a
work crew, say a construction crew.'' Nextel phones, which operate like
walkie-talkies and are often paid for by a company, may also help companies
get around sticky privacy issues, Hyers added.
Wireless carriers
? Incentives to keep customers happy
But carriers say they have their own incentive not to annoy existing
customers. ``If ma and pa coffee shop sends out coupons and people
inadvertently sign up and every time they walk by, the coupon comes up on
the screen and they get annoyed, they're not going to blame the coffee
shop,'' said Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. ``They're going to blame us.
We're the one who has the relationship and I can assure you we're going to
protect that relationship.''
Whether GPS-based location tracking will take off faster among cell phone
consumers, motorists or in businesses is not clear. Telecommunications
analyst Andrew Seybold at Outlook 4Mobility is watching the action in all
three arenas. GPS devices such as Wherify.com's wristwatch, designed to
help nervous parents keep tabs on their children, ``scare me to death,''
Seybold said. ``It could give people a false sense of security. The bottom
line is that these things work, but not all the time.''
While emergency 911 networks are not yet ready except in Rhode Island and a
handful of counties in other states, the benefits are clear. In Rhode
Island, battered women have picked up a cell phone to call police only to
have it knocked from their hands, said Raymond LaBelle, the executive
director of the state's e911 system.
``If you're the victim of a car-jacking, you could call from the trunk and
police would know your whereabouts,'' LaBelle said. Not long ago, before
the system was in place, an elderly woman came home, got out of her car and
collapsed on the back stairs leading up to her house. ``She called us but
she was totally incoherent. You listen to that for 10 minutes, it'll tear
your heart out. We found out later she had expired. You hear things like
that and you realize the importance of this.''
*************************
Reuters Internet Reports
Stop Piracy with Law, Microsoft Exec Says in China
Thu Oct 17, 6:44 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - The research chief of Microsoft Corp (NasdaqNM:MSFT -
news) said on Thursday copy protection technology was not enough to stop
software piracy and that a strong legal system was the best defense for
intellectual property.
"The best way to protect intellectual property is through the legal
system," Rick Rashid, the head of Microsoft Research, told Reuters in an
interview in Beijing.
Rashid had been asked if Microsoft's research team in China -- a country
notorious for rampant illegal copying of software, movies and music -- was
working on stronger anti-piracy measures for products like the Windows
operating system and Office set of productivity programs.
"We could put measures in place to try to reduce piracy, and we have some
in Windows and Office today, but if the legal system isn't behind you, if
it's not designed to protect intellectual property, then it's never going
to work," Rashid said. "You could put up awfully high fences around your
property, but somebody could still get in if it was worth their trouble,"
he said.
With personal computer use rapidly climbing, China is a potentially huge
market for Microsoft, but virtually all PCs are sold with unlicensed copies
of the Redmond, Washington-based company's products.
In recent years, Microsoft has aimed to tap a deep pool of Chinese computer
programming and engineering talent. Beijing boasts one of a handful of
Microsoft research centers and Rashid said its contribution to the company
was growing.
"It's been really exciting how much happening here is making it into the
products," Rashid said.
Microsoft's Beijing researchers were working on technologies such as more
realistic graphics, more efficient ways to download information and more
accurate voice and handwriting recognition, Rashid said.
A video editing feature in Windows XP (news - web sites), speech
recognition in Office XP and handwriting, or "digital ink," technology in
the new Tablet PC all contained the fruits of Microsoft's China lab, Rashid
said.
A better way to download data over the Internet developed in Beijing would
be included in the upcoming on-line service to be offered for Microsoft's
Xbox (news - web sites) video game console, he said.
***************************
Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx
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Volume 4, Number 413
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Top Stories for Monday, October 21, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Feds Planning Early-Warning System for Internet"
"Global Organization Seeks Voice in Internet Addressing System"
"Little Gain Seen in Patent Filings"
"Slowdown Sending Tech Jobs Overseas"
"Nanotechnology Takes Off"
"Voiceprints Make Crypto Keys"
"Tiny Atomic Battery Developed at Cornell Could Run for Decades
Unattended, Powering Sensors or Machines"
"Council and Parliament Agree on Electronic Waste Directive"
"A Boon for Nonprofits With Software Needs"
"The New Software Controversy"
"Scientists Build Musical Search Engine"
"Challenges: Speed Bumps Ahead For Semantic Web"
"Work Force Summit Could Miss Key Labor Issues, Critics Say"
"They'll Be Registering .Org Names in Horsham"
"Technology Needs to Change Us"
"Enterprise Play"
"Unplugged U."
"Super Soldiers"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Feds Planning Early-Warning System for Internet"
The Global Early Warning Information System (GEWIS) that the U.S.
National Communications System (NCS) plans to create will be
designed to monitor the Internet's performance and alert federal
and industrial users of any threats. Such a system "will provide ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item1
"Global Organization Seeks Voice in Internet Addressing System"
Last week at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
organizational conference, ITU member representatives voted for a
resolution calling on the ITU to take an active role in all
"discussions and initiatives" involving domain names and the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item2
"Little Gain Seen in Patent Filings"
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office logged only 350,000 new
patent applications for fiscal year 2002, which ended in
September, compared to the 345,000 patent applications submitted
the year before. Some say this relatively anemic growth in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item3
"Slowdown Sending Tech Jobs Overseas"
Experts note that more technology jobs are being shifted overseas
as a result of the economic slump. Giga Information Group's
Stephanie Moore reports that roughly two-fifths of Fortune 500
companies ship software operations overseas, and reckons that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item4
"Nanotechnology Takes Off"
U.S. researchers believe the next three to five years will
witness nanotechnology breakthroughs that will revolutionize
medicine, environmental controls, and manufacturing. However,
such advancements can only be achieved by thoroughly ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item5
"Voiceprints Make Crypto Keys"
So that users can upgrade computer password security without
making it more difficult to access computing resources, Bell Labs
researchers are developing cryptographic keys by merging
passwords and voiceprint technology. Prototype software ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item6
"Tiny Atomic Battery Developed at Cornell Could Run for Decades
Unattended, Powering Sensors or Machines"
Speaking at a meeting of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) investigators, Amil Lal and Hui Li of Cornell
University described a prototype microscopic battery that taps
energy from a radioactive isotope that could last for decades and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item7
"Council and Parliament Agree on Electronic Waste Directive"
The European Parliament and the European Council reached
agreements on Oct. 11 regarding two environmental directives--the
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) and
the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS). Under ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item8
"A Boon for Nonprofits With Software Needs"
Although major software companies have been smarting from the
technology downturn, especially in Silicon Valley, they can still
maintain visibility and keep their products widely distributed by
donating them to nonprofits. Microsoft, for example, contributed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item9
"The New Software Controversy"
Washington, D.C., attorney Joel Wolfson and Carnegie Mellon
University professor Stephen Cross have different opinions on the
effect of the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transaction
Act (UCITA), which seeks to amend the rules regarding the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item10
"Scientists Build Musical Search Engine"
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London say they have
created an online search engine for musical pieces that could one
day be as popular as the Google search engine. Users may soon be
able to locate songs just by singing tunes into their PCs, the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item11
"Challenges: Speed Bumps Ahead For Semantic Web"
Architects of the Semantic Web are now occupied with developing
an XML-based computing environment even though XML is still an
emerging business tool. Developers have largely accepted XML as
the lowest-level language for recognizing such concepts as cost ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item12
"Work Force Summit Could Miss Key Labor Issues, Critics Say"
The National Academies conference in November is designed as a
forum where electronics industry organizations, academia, and
professional associations can talk about critical American
science and technology workforce issues and recommend government ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item13
"They'll Be Registering .Org Names in Horsham"
ICANNWatch.org editor and University of Miami Professor Michael
Froomkin believes that Afilias will do a good job of making the
.org domain work, but he says that ICANN's process for selecting
the .org registry to succeed VeriSign was "a lost opportunity to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item14
"Technology Needs to Change Us"
Technology futurist Esther Dyson says the hallmark of
long-lasting technologies is that they change society in some
way. In contrast to many dot-com technologies, which simply
glossed over existing business processes or products, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item15
"Enterprise Play"
The gaming industry is rapidly rolling out advancements in data
speed, graphics, and interactive computing that have attracted
the attention of corporate computer users. Video cards that game
developers use to deliver 3D graphics have been adopted by ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item16
"Unplugged U."
Dartmouth College's campus-wide wireless network, which consists
of over 500 Wi-Fi antennas distributed over about 200 acres, is
significantly influencing education, study habits, social
interaction, and security. The importance of knowledge sharing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item17
"Super Soldiers"
The U.S. military is investing $50 million in a project that
seeks to enhance the performance and capabilities of soldiers
through nanotechnology. MIT earned this contract after
demonstrating actual products, such as an "artificial muscle" ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1021m.html#item18
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