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Clips February 25, 2003
- 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;, computer_security_day@xxxxxxx;, waspray@xxxxxxxxxxx;
- Subject: Clips February 25, 2003
- From: Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:31:31 -0500
Clips February 25, 2003
ARTICLES
Senate OKs Revised 'Virtual' Child-Porn Ban
U.S. Targets Purveyors Of Gear for Illicit Drugs
An ID With a High IQ
DOD will sponsor biometrics training at West Virginia University
Bush signs cybersecurity strategy
E-filing popularity taxes IRS systems
Library of Congress to save data 'born digital'
GPS: Changing the landscape
DOD deploys high-tech arsenal
Tools demystify Web site performance
Space Shuttles Bound to Technologies of the Past
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Associated Press
Senate OKs Revised 'Virtual' Child-Porn Ban
Mon Feb 24, 7:23 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate approved a bill on Monday that would strengthen existing child-pornography laws, aiming to help authorities track down pedophiles on the Internet while avoiding free-speech concerns that derailed a similar law last year.
The Senate voted 84 to 0 to require those charged in child-pornography cases to prove that their material did not depict actual children, making it easier for prosecutors to use computer images as evidence in trials.
The Supreme Court struck down a similar law last April on free-speech grounds, saying it could criminalize legitimate movies that depicted underage sex, like "Romeo and Juliet."
Lawmakers worried that the move would make child-porn cases impossible to prosecute as defendants could claim that any images in question were entirely computer-generated and did not depict real children.
The bill passed by the Senate would shift the burden of proof so defendants in child-pornography cases would have to prove that the material did not depict minors. Most criminal cases in the United States place the burden of proof on prosecutors.
Child pornography has become more widely available over the past decade as pedophiles across the globe sign up for Internet chat groups and visit Web sites with names like "Candyman" and "I Love Older Men."
Producers of adult pornography, a $70 billion business worldwide, would be required to keep records to show that none of their actors are underage and would be prohibited from marketing their products as underage pornography.
The bill, known as the PROTECT Act, also outlaws the sale or trade of child pornography, bans the use of child pornography to entice a minor for sex, and allows victims of child pornography to sue for damages.
Depictions of child sexual intercourse, or adults passing themselves off as children while having sex, would be classified as obscenity and thus stripped of many free-speech protections.
"It goes without saying that we have a compelling interest in protecting our children from harm," said bill sponsor Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican. "The PROTECT Act strikes a necessary balance between this goal and the First Amendment."
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who sponsored the bill as well, urged the House of Representatives to take up the bill and pass it promptly.
"Although this bill is not perfect, it is a good-faith effort to provide powerful tools for prosecutors to deal with the problem of child pornography within constitutional limits," Leahy said.
Both the Senate and the House passed child-pornography laws last year, but negotiators could not agree on a common solution and neither one was signed into law.
A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee said he was not sure when the committee would tackle the issue. The Bush administration said it supported the bill.
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Washington Post
U.S. Targets Purveyors Of Gear for Illicit Drugs
By Susan Schmidt
Tuesday, February 25, 2003; Page A07
Federal law enforcement officials announced a major crackdown on purveyors of drug paraphernalia yesterday, indicting 55 people and 10 national distribution companies that have become multimillion-dollar businesses allegedly by using the Internet to sell items such as marijuana pipes and bongs.
Many of those indicted were arrested in simultaneous raids across the country, from Pennsylvania, where the investigation began, to California, where one raid involved a bong manufacturing firm associated with Tommy Chong, who lampooned the drug culture as part of the comedy team Cheech and Chong. The firm, Chong Glass, was not indicted.
In addition to raiding warehouses and head shops, federal agents led by the Drug Enforcement Administration disabled a dozen Web sites that allegedly marketed drug paraphernalia. Officials said yesterday's action shut down more than half the distribution of drug paraphernalia in the United States.
"With the advent of the Internet, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has exploded," said Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who announced the indictments. He and other officials said the products, which include marijuana pipes hidden in lipstick tubes and markers, have in some cases been specifically marketed to young people.
"Quite simply, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge," Ashcroft said. "This illegal billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law enforcement."
Federal law expressly prohibits the sale or importation of water pipes, bongs, marijuana pipes, cocaine freebase kits and crack pipes. Distributors indicted yesterday also allegedly marketed items to drug dealers, including scales and substances used to dilute raw narcotics, as well as products intended to defeat drug tests.
If convicted, they face three years in prison and forfeiture of property and proceeds from the sales.
Organizations that favor drug legalization criticized the crackdown on an industry that has not faced broad legal challenge in recent years. "These paraphernalia laws exist in no other advanced democracy," said Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs. "There is no evidence that these laws have any impact on reducing drug use whatsoever."
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Washington Post
An ID With a High IQ
'Smart Cards' Are in Demand as Concerns About Security Rise, but Privacy Issues Loom
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Sunday, February 23, 2003; Page H01
Far from a mere photo ID, the government badge dangling from Doug Verner's belt is also a high-tech security key.
When Verner, chief technology officer at the National Credit Union Administration, works from home on weekends, he slips his badge through a reader in his laptop and within seconds he is able to access the agency's secure computer network. By next year, when his office building is retrofitted, Verner will use the same badge to open the front door.
With security tighter than ever, "smart card" IDs are becoming a first line of defense against terrorists or hackers seeking to penetrate computer networks and office buildings. The cards are hot items with government agencies and corporations -- and their popularity is set to expand significantly.
The government has launched 64 smart-card programs in various agencies. The largest program will give cards to an estimated 15 million transportation workers, many of whom do not work for the government. The contract, expected to be offered by the Transportation Security Administration later this year, is a potential bonanza for smart-card manufacturers competing to supply the cards over the next few years. The TSA expects the cards to improve its ability to document and manage workers who have access to secure areas of the nation's airports, ports, rails, intercity buses and trucks.
"Security is one area that is likely to grow pretty rapidly," said Donald Davis, editor of Card Technology magazine, a monthly trade publication. "You can issue a single employee ID card to protect buildings and networks."
Smart cards contain a computer chip or other device that stores personal information about the cardholder. The technology quickly verifies employees in good standing and grants access to doorways and databases. For added security, the cards can store fingerprints, photos and facial recognition information on a central database.
The Defense Department issued 1.6 million smart-card IDs last year to military and civilian employees. Credit card companies, such as American Express Co., use the technology to add security to their services. Other companies, including Shell Oil Co., Microsoft Corp. and Pfizer Inc., have issued smart-card IDs to employees to protect their computer networks and buildings around the globe.
According to the Smart Card Alliance, an industry association, smart-card shipments grew 34 percent last year, to 72.7 million cards, in the United States and Canada, although the North American market represents only a fraction of the $3.5 billion global business.
As the cards swiftly proliferate, privacy advocates worry that security badges may be a first step toward national identity cards that contain masses of personal information. The data-storage capability of the cards continues to grow as the industry expands, and governments and companies have found wide uses for the cards.
Prepaid phone cards in Europe are by far the most common use for smart cards, which are widely used by Europeans for public and cellular telephones. Financial services firms, such as banks and American Express, are also big card buyers. These firms issue credit cards embedded with computer chips to customers for added convenience in storing passwords and other data, although analysts say Americans rarely use these services.
Retailers such as Target Corp. are beginning to experiment with smart cards as customer loyalty programs that also track spending habits. Target issues "smart" credit cards to customers who can earn discounts based on the amount of money they spend, although it's still early to measure its success.
The TSA will launch its pilot smart-card security program later this year at an airport and a port on each coast. Under the program, workers will undergo background checks and will probably be asked to offer a fingerprint to receive a card. Badge holders will then have access to secure parts of a facility based on the information stored on the card.
"Currently, the existing physical access security systems by transportation personnel are inadequate and present a significant risk to the country," TSA chief James M. Loy recently told a group of transportation officials in Washington.
Airports, pilots and flight attendants pushed hard for a more uniform system to conduct background checks and issue standard high-tech ID badges to trusted airport workers even before the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings. Computerized badges, which can be inactivated instantly after an employee is terminated, could have helped prevent an incident in 1987 when a fired airport employee used his standard badge to gain access to a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight. Shortly after takeoff, the employee fatally shot both pilots and the plane crashed into the ocean, killing 44 aboard.
"We've been calling for this since way back then," said John Mazor, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest pilots union. Mazor said smart cards would also replace the variety of ID badges pilots carry for the many airports they visit. "There's no uniformity," he said.
Dreams of winning the TSA contract have already sparked fierce competition and political brawling among rival vendors and manufacturers.
Three smart-card companies, Gemplus SA, SchlumbergerSema and Oberthur Card Systems, have formed an alliance and hired a lobbyist to press their case with the TSA and on Capitol Hill for their cards, which include an embedded computer chip. Rival companies Datatrac Information Services Inc. and Lasercard Technologies Corp. claim the alliance is spreading false information about their smart-card products, which use an "optical card" technology that functions like a mini CD burner. Both groups said they intend to bid on the TSA contract.
The contract "means a lot of money for one of the technologies," said Shalini Chowdary, smart-card analyst at the Frost & Sullivan consulting firm in Santa Fe, N.M. "If you talk to optical-card people, they will claim the optical card is more secure than the [computer chip] card. The [computer chip] card people will tell you theirs is better than the optical card."
After getting the cards into the hands of workers at airports and other transportation facilities, the TSA is considering a program that would allow passengers to receive cards for offering information about themselves. In exchange, passengers might be allowed priority movement through airport-security checkpoints.
The TSA hasn't decided what information it would require either of the transportation workers or the passengers to gain a card.
"Our basic concern is that the program could be a bridge to a broader national ID program," Katie Corrigan, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the TSA program. "A lot of it depends on how it gets implemented and whether it extends beyond the transportation worker. That's the type of thing where you build a system for one purpose and immediately you see other uses built on top of it."
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Government Computer News
02/24/03
DOD will sponsor biometrics training at West Virginia University
By Dipka Bhambhani
The Defense Department?s Biometrics Management Office and West Virginia University have developed a Graduate Certificate Program in Information Assurance and Biometrics.
University professors, using curriculum they developed with DOD?s biometrics office, will teach 25 students about the uses for biometrics, security system principles, the scientific foundation for biometrics, and about social, psychological, ethical and legal policies in the field.
The university offers the program through the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. ?This program allows participants to combine professional expertise with the course curriculum to gain perspective on public policy, strengthen managerial skills, and interact across agency and executive and legislative branch boundaries,? said Walter McCollum, biometrics education program manager for the biometrics office.
The program includes introductory courses in biometric systems and information assurance, as well computer security and advanced study of biometric and forensic statistics, digital image processing and computer network security.
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Federal Computer Week
Bush signs cybersecurity strategy
BY Diane Frank
Feb. 24, 2003
The Homeland Security Department will develop a system to help public and private organizations respond to cyberattacks, according to the final version of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.
The strategy, released Feb. 14 by the Bush administration, details action items based on five priorities outlined last November in response to criticism that a draft of the strategy lacked focus.
The plan includes:
* Creating a national security response system, including expanding the government's Cyber Warning and Information Network to the private sector.
* Developing a national security threat and vulnerability reduction program, including directing the Homeland Security Department to work with the private sector and conduct assessments of infrastructure and systems.
n Securing the government through methods such as the administration's e-Authentication e-government initiative and conducting a comprehensive review of whether to expand the Defense Department's product evaluation requirements to civilian agencies.
n Fostering international cooperation and identifying international threats, including conducting a study to examine how to improve coordination among law enforcement and national security and defense agencies worldwide.
Many in industry approved of the final strategy's sharper focus. The Computing Technology Industry Association applauded the recommendations to increase information security training and certification, while the Information Technology Association of America praised the focus on cooperation and information sharing between government and the private sector.
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Federal Computer Week
E-filing popularity taxes IRS systems
Business returns prove to be complex
BY Diane Frank
Feb. 24, 2003
The Internal Revenue Service has found that online tax filing may not be as easy as it first seemed. The IRS' initiative to bring the benefits of e-filing to businesses is forcing the tax service to accelerate an information systems upgrade.
Individuals are already filing online more than 47 million filed electronically last year and 54 million are projected to do so this year. The joint government/ industry partnership offering the Free File e-government initiative is intended to make that option even more popular.
But individual citizens file a relatively small portion of the total tax returns the IRS receives every year. Businesses make up a larger group in both their numbers and the sheer size of their returns.
The IRS' e-filing infrastructure cannot yet support these large returns, said Mary Ellen Corridore, the initiative's project manager. Corporate forms can be up to 36,000 pages just for the form response, she said.
The forms are straining the agency's systems, which were due for an upgrade, just not so soon. "We knew that we needed to develop a whole new modernized e-file system," Corridore said.
The Expanding Electronic Tax Products for Businesses initiative's biggest project is enabling companies to file their corporate income tax form 1120 electronically. While the initiative has progressed on many fronts, it will have to take a step back as it overlaps with and moves into the overall IRS business systems modernization effort, Corridore said, speaking Feb. 11 at the E-Gov Web-Enabled Government conference in Washington, D.C. E-Gov and Federal Computer Week are both owned by 101communications LLC.
For the 1120s, the IRS has focused on using Extensible Markup Language to make it easier to file multiple returns and the many attachments that are often included in them. The tax-specific XML forms developed also will help automatically validate much of the information, saving IRS employees time, Corridore said.
The IRS' e-government initiative has become so much more complex than agency executives anticipated that the tax service is writing a new business case to support the initiative's needs.
The initiative team is working with the Office of Management and Budget to find interim funding while revising the business case to fit the modernization requirements, she said.
Initiative leaders also expect to launch another project within the next month. The Internet Employer Identification Number (EIN) project will allow companies to apply for and receive their employer number online, reducing the application time, Corridore said.
Currently, companies must apply by fax or mail. On average, the fax process takes four days and mail takes 10. By moving the process online, applying will take only five seconds, she said.
Even with e-filing growing 16 percent annually, the IRS is still unlikely to meet the congressionally mandated goal to process 80 percent of tax returns electronically by 2007, Robert Wenzel, acting IRS commissioner, admitted Feb. 13 to the House Ways and Means Committee's Oversight Subcommittee.
But the move to enhance the infrastructure to handle the 1120 forms will not only improve that tax filing area, but will allow the IRS to support many other electronic returns, said Kevin Belden, chairman of the IRS' Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee.
And that is very much on IRS officials' minds. "This modernized system is very important to us and our customers," Corridore said.
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Free File making progress
Only a month after its launch, the Internal Revenue Service's Free File e-government initiative is showing results, with almost 640,000 returns filed through the innovative public/ private partnership, officials said Feb. 13.
Free File is one of many ways the IRS is hoping to make electronic filing easier for citizens. These initial reports on the returns filed through Free File are "very encouraging," said Robert Wenzel, acting IRS commissioner, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee's Oversight Subcommittee. The almost 640,000 returns represent about 22 percent of the 2.9 million returns filed electronically so far this tax season, he said.
"Cost to the taxpayer has been a barrier to further e-file growth," he said. "That has changed with Free File."
The 17 industry partners in the Free File Alliance which must meet strict business, security and privacy standards set by the IRS will report the number of returns filed via the program every month.
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Federal Computer Week
LOC to save data 'born digital'
BY Sara Michael
Feb. 21, 2003
The Library of Congress introduced a plan last week for preserving Web sites, CDs, electronic journals and other digital information.
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has been approved by Congress and received funding, and now archivists face the daunting task of figuring out just how to save information that was "born digital."
"Your great-great-grandchildren will have a picture of the early days of the Internet," said Laura Campbell, associate librarian for strategic initiatives.
The plan develops a nationwide strategy for collecting and preserving digital information across many federal agencies and private entities. The strategy would create a network of partners, determining who gathers what information, and build a digital architecture for preservation, Campbell said.
Digital photographs, movies, music, Web-based journals and other cultural electronic items would be preserved for future generations while trying to keep up with constantly changing technologies. Archivists must first determine a format that everyone can agree on to preserve the digital data, while keeping in mind that the format likely will change as technology advances.
"You have to consider the ability to play back and provide access to it in 100 years," Campbell said. Today, users trying to read information from a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk are out of luck, so choosing the correct format is not only important, it's ever-changing.
"This will be an continuing process," Campbell said, noting that new digital information will have to be archived and already-archived information will need to be updated. "There won't be an end date," she said. "We try to create some efficiencies in terms of responsibility, technology and cost of preserving digital information."
In December 2000, Congress authorized the establishment of the preservation program and provided the library with $100 million, $5 million of which was dedicated to developing the plan.
With the recent approval of the plan, an additional $20 million of the $100 million is available to embark on the early stages of the plan. For Congress to dole out the remaining $75 million, the money must be matched dollar-for-dollar by nonfederal sources in the form of cash, hardware or software.
The plan is in its early stages, Campbell said, as participants are selecting items that are at risk of disappearing, such as articles about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Web sites covering the 2000 presidential election.
The National Archives and Records Administration is facing similar obstacles with its electronic records archive, which launched last fall to preserve all the government's public records.
As with NARA's archive, Library of Congress archivists must find a format that is hardware and software independent so the information can be accessed in its original form 100 years from now, said Reynolds Cahoon, assistant archivist for human resources and information services at NARA.
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Federal Computer Week
GPS: Changing the landscape
BY Matthew French
Feb. 24, 2003
A dozen years ago, the Global Positioning System was in its infancy. Now the satellite-based geolocation technology is sophisticated enough to be included in cars, handheld devices and wireless phones.
And experts say that the use of GPS technology on the battlefield could be one of the most important advances for the armed services.
GPS enables a person to determine his or her precise location on the Earth via devices that receive signals from a constellation of 24 satellites. The advantages for a large force that's constantly on the move are enormous, said Robert Martinage, a senior defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
"Only 16 of the 24 [GPS] satellites were operational during Desert Shield and Desert Storm [in the early 1990s], and there weren't many GPS receivers," he said. "Now, [receivers] are on every plane and vehicle and carried by every infantryman."
Martinage said the military is looking for ways to link GPS receivers so battlefield commanders can have an overview of where all of their troops are at any given time. That could eliminate some of the recent friendly fire incidents involving allied forces overseas. The Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System may be part of that solution (see "Joint STARS: Ready for action," Page 22).
When dealing with precision guided weapons, Martinage said, a spotter's ability to give his precise location in relation to a target could mean the difference between U.S. forces taking out an enemy's bunker or accidently firing on civilians or their own troops.
Retired Navy Adm. Archie Clemins, who was commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet in the late 1990s, said the Navy SEALs have always taken advantage of cutting-edge technologies, including GPS. The rest of the services are just catching up, he said.
For example, in a desert, which has few geographic features to distinguish one area from another, the ability to determine one's location can be vital. Knowing where friendly lines end and enemy lines begin is important for troops coordinating air strikes or calling in fire support from ships or artillery batteries.
However, Navy Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the armed services should not become overly dependent on GPS. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this month, Jacoby warned that GPS jammers are beginning to find their way into more and more hands. The technology prevents GPS devices from pinpointing a location.
U.S. enemies will continue to seek ways to undermine the military's precision intelligence and attack systems, including using such jammers, he warned.
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Federal Computer Week
DOD builds high-tech supply chain
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Feb. 24, 2003
During the Persian Gulf War, the Defense Department relied on paper-based, "just in case" logistics to support its troops in the field. Officers would order a few items, ranging from sunglasses to ammunition, and if the supplies didn't arrive in a few days, they would order more, "just in case."
That system resulted in thousands of containers of mystery items that helicopters were sometimes called in to lift up just so military personnel could see what was inside.
Today, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has made possible what is known as "just in time" logistics. DOD can embed containers with electronic tags that can be read like bar codes using a handheld device or an automated scanning system (see "A visible improvement," opposite page).
Containers can be scanned at various points in transit, with the information captured in an online database so logistics experts worldwide can track the progress of supplies they ordered. DOD officials refer to this as "total asset visibility."
DOD's network monitors and manages 270,000 cargo containers transporting military supplies through 400 locations in more than 40 countries. Now military officials know exactly where a shipment is in its journey from factory to foxhole, and they can even reroute containers if a more urgent need arises.
The Army recently awarded a three-year, $90 million contract to Savi Technology to enable military personnel to buy, directly from the company, a range of automatic identification and data collection technologies and software to track, monitor, locate, secure, process and deploy military supplies worldwide.
Last month, Gen. Paul Kern, commander of the Army Materiel Command, issued an order requiring that all air pallets, containers and commercial sustainment shipments supporting Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and future military actions be identified with RFID tags.
That order came after a similar one last summer from Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, which is leading the military component of the war on terrorism and would lead operations in a possible war with Iraq.
"Compliance with this RFID tagging policy is absolutely essential," Kern wrote. "No other existing system provides the necessary visibility or level of detail.... RFID is the only tool that allows [Coalition Forces Land Component Command] to identify critical cargo, locate it and anticipate its arrival. The technology is proven, widespread and is positively required for CFLCC operations."
John Osterholz, director of architecture and interoperability in DOD's chief information officer's office, said the ability to support "just in time" logistics in Iraq has enabled the United States to be fully prepared for war in half the time it took to gear up for Desert Storm. Total asset visibility enables users to "dive deep" into the flow of information and quickly get items to the units that need them, he said.
Vic Verma, Savi's president and chief executive officer, said the integration of RFID technologies into DOD's management information systems has "made military logistics as predictable as FedEx logistics."
RFID technologies can be used for numerous logistics operations, such as tracking warehouse inventories, assessing in-transit and checkpoint transportation, and controlling military convoys.
Savi's RFID tags are the only tags that currently comply with the International Committee for Information Technology Standards' 256-2001 standard, a minimum DOD requirement, Verma said. That means only Savi's tags can be used for transporting containers, while other vendors' tags can be used to track goods once they are inside DOD facilities, he said.
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Federal Computer Week
DOD deploys high-tech arsenal
Twelve years after the Persian Gulf War, IT gives new shape to battle strategy
BY Dan Caterinicchia and Matthew French
Feb. 24, 2003
It's the difference between sending unreliable satellite receivers into the field with a limited number of special forces and fielding enough troops with high-grade equipment to paint a complete digital view of the battlefield.
It's the difference between risking pilots' lives during dangerous reconnaissance missions and sending out small, unmanned aircraft to gather intelligence and relay images back to camp.
It's the difference between sorting through pallet after pallet of unlabeled containers to catalog supplies and tapping into an online system to see when and where supplies should arrive.
The technology that has evolved since the United States sent troops to the Persian Gulf more than a decade ago could mean the difference between life and death for a new generation of soldiers preparing for a possible war. Those soldiers are armed with better and more accurate data provided by the latest information systems, according to defense experts.
During the current military buildup in the Middle East, much is being made of improvements to precision guided weapons and other arms since Operation Desert Storm in 1991. But information technologies, though less showy, could play a vital role as well, supplying warfighters on land, at sea and in the air with a constant flow of information that can be used to better target weapons and plan attacks.
The radio was the main line of military communication during Desert Storm, which commenced just when the Defense Department was beginning to test computers on the battlefield. Most computer systems were installed in vehicles, planes or camps behind the front lines.
Today, technology is less expensive and more reliable than what Desert Storm-era soldiers could have imagined. These days, IT has worked its way into the field. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, for example, is now ubiquitous among the rank and file, while network technology has begun to change how commanders plan and direct battles.
New technology often means new problems, as DOD officials readily acknowledge. But there's no doubt that 10 years of technology evolution has provided a generational leap in how IT supports war.
Col. Dan Gerstein, commander of the 93rd Signal Brigade, Fort Gordon, Ga., served in Desert Storm and Bosnia, and will most likely be involved in homeland defense missions. "The Gulf War was an analog conflict with little, if any, digital input," he said.
Information in Motion
As the leader of a reconnaissance unit involved in an offensive against the Iraqi Republican Guard, retired Army Capt. John Hillen was a front-end user of IT solutions during Desert Storm. Being at the "tip of the spear" required Hillen and his team to use whatever technology they had available to gain an advantage. And when technology failed, which it often did, they would adapt.
"I went to war with the tactical communications systems of [the] Vietnam" era, said Hillen, who received a Bronze Star for his actions in the Gulf War. His armored vehicle sported five antennas, which were "essentially a big 'shoot me' sign for the enemy...[but] we needed all those systems for redundancy."
Hillen, now senior vice president of American Management Systems Inc.'s defense and intelligence practice, said DOD was just beginning to use digital IT systems during the Gulf War. The Internet was not yet ready for the battlefield.
Two systems, though still in their infancy, made a tremendous difference to Hillen and his team in the desert: the satellite-based GPS and the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS).
Those systems have matured, dramatically increasing the quantity and quality of information available on the battlefield (see "GPS: Changing the landscape" and "Joint STARS: Ready for action"), while other technologies have emerged to keep troops better connected than ever before. E-mail, videoconferencing and high-speed networks, for example, have improved communications across the battlefield.
Military commanders can now combine GPS-based information about their troops' locations with intelligence gathered on the whereabouts of enemy forces what's known as "situational awareness." That awareness makes it easier to devise battle strategies and, ideally, avoid incidents of friendly fire.
In the past, troops would head into battle with a reasonable picture of the battlefield, but they would have limited access to information as events progressed and troops and weapons moved. That is no longer the case. DOD officials believe that by using technology to track troop locations on the battlefield, forces can avoid mistakenly firing on their comrades and allies.
Constant access to information also gives commanders much more flexibility in devising and revising their plans. They can now send aircraft or ships in a general direction and then provide them with a specific target and battle plan, all of which can be updated and modified on the fly, said Vice Adm. Richard Mayo, commander of the Naval Network Warfare Command, Norfolk, Va.
This approach gives commanders a jump on an attack, while also making it easier to change tactics if the target moves after forces are already on their way.
"During the first phases of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, 80 percent of Navy strike sorties attacked targets that were unknown to the air crews when they left the carrier," Mayo said. "The networked sensors and joint communications enabled them to decisively respond to active targets."
One promising new system is the Joint En-route Mission Planning and Rehearsal System-Near Term, which was tested during last year's Millennium Challenge exercise. The application includes chat rooms, streaming video and voice applications, and electronic whiteboards, all of which enable commanders to access and discuss intelligence data as it comes in.
"It's a quantum leap over Desert Storm, where an airplane trip meant looking forward to little more than a long, easy ride," said John Osterholz, director of architecture and interoperability in DOD's chief information officer's office. Joint force commanders planning missions while en route and making changes based on last-minute intelligence are "worth their weight in gold." They can plan better attacks and possibly save lives.
The Army has fielded a limited number of helicopters with such command and control capabilities so commanders don't have to hand off control to their deputies while relocating, which was required during Desert Storm.
The momentum of battle and the speed of command are maintained at the joint task force and tactical levels, a tremendous advantage for the ground forces expected to play a more significant role in the Persian Gulf this time around, Osterholz said.
Bigger and Better Pipes
All that data would be useless, though, if it weren't for the dramatic increase in network bandwidth, former DOD officials say.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Cassity Jr., director of command, control and communications systems for the Joint Staff during the Gulf War, said network bandwidth is the greatest area of evolution since Desert Storm, when DOD's limited communications capabilities sometimes relied on old UHF satellites.
During that conflict, ships often had to prioritize messages as flash, immediate or priority, because there was not enough bandwidth to send everything at once.
In particular, air task orders, which relay information about upcoming missions, could not wait hours to be transmitted, said retired Navy Adm. Archie Clemins, who was commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet in the late 1990s and pushed the fleet to begin linking itself through computer networks on land, in the air and at sea.
"Sometimes it would be quicker to send the plans by messengers in a plane," said Clemins, currently vice chairman of Advanced Electron Beams Inc.'s board of directors. "Now people don't even think about networks. All communications are done in flash."
That speed, he said, will allow forces to get inside an enemy's "decision cycle" and enable allies to analyze all of an enemy's possible options and decide how to counter them before any action takes place.
But it's not just the technology that has changed. "The quantum leap is people," said Cassity, who retired from active duty in 1991 and is a vice president at Suss Consulting Inc. "In the Gulf War, we had a little bit of e-mail" and often relied on phone banks. "Now everyone, from the fighter pilots to the satellite technicians, understands computers and how to use them. All the people doing the fighting are very literate with IT."
Still a Battle
The promise of technology, however, should be tempered by the realities of war. Hillen said DOD officials must address information overload. So much information is available that the services need to determine the right level of data to send to front-line troops, and they need to teach them how to use it.
"There's still a long way to go in processing information so we don't have friendly fire incidents...but there will never be a 100 percent guarantee," Hillen said. "It's a key priority for the services."
Osterholz said the military services are better prepared to track forces in Iraq this time, which should minimize friendly fire casualties. But urban areas could be a problem, because a concentration of systems in close quarters could stress DOD's combat identification systems and reduce situational awareness.
Still, given the advances in planning and technology, "we'll do better this time," Osterholz said.
Coordinating military efforts with allies will be another challenge, because the systems used by different countries are not designed to exchange information, Osterholz said.
"Interoperability is key," said Retired Navy Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, director of DOD's Force Transformation Office. "If you're not interoperable, it means you're not connected. If you're not interoperable, you're not benefiting from the Information Age, you're not contributing to the Information Age, and you're a liability."
Troops may also be forced to perform information- intensive operations in environments made unsafe by chemical or biological weapons. Setting up satellite antennas and other IT equipment, maintaining systems or even typing on PC keyboards hasn't often been done by troops wearing protective gear, and that will affect the speed of command and the overall battlefield advantage, Osterholz said.
But the 93rd Signal Brigade's Gerstein, for one, is not worried. "In short, the IT integration of the force, [which] has been enhanced since the Gulf War and which was honed in Bosnia and most recently Afghanistan, has made the U.S./Iraq balance even more one-sided in favor of our capabilities," he said.
***
How it works
A visible improvement
Commercial logistics technology gives Defense Department officials new insight into cargo shipments:
* A radio frequency identification tag stores information about the contents of the container to which it is attached.
* A scanner either handheld or attached to a post or gate reads the tag and sends the information to a database, recording when and where the data was captured. A container can be scanned at various checkpoints while in transit and at its final destination when it is opened and the contents distributed.
* The database, available through an intranet, makes it possible for Defense Department officials anywhere in the world to track the status of their supplies.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Joint STARS: Ready for action
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Feb. 24, 2003
The Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) was an experimental program tested and evaluated in the skies over the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s.
Joint STARS passed those tests, and many since, and has evolved from surveillance-only aircraft into one of the Air Force's premier battle management and command and control systems, said Maj. John Grivakis, Joint STARS functional manager at Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Va.
A joint Army/Air Force program, Joint STARS is an aircraft-based system that uses sophisticated radar sensors to track slow-moving vehicles. While flying in friendly airspace, Joint STARS crew members can detect and track ground movements deep in hostile territory, collecting valuable data for planning attacks and assessing their success.
The system, carried on Air Force E-8C aircraft, uses a high-powered computer server to process and analyze data, then relays the information to Army ground stations and other command and control systems. It has a range of more than 150 miles, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Joint STARS provides "wide-area surveillance," Grivakis confirmed, but the exact range is classified.
Retired Army Capt. John Hillen led a reconnaissance unit involved in an offensive against the Iraqi Republican Guard in the Gulf War and said that his team relied heavily on the moving-target intelligence that Joint STARS provided.
Hillen said his ground commander had direct links to the strategic system, and although it couldn't differentiate friendly forces from enemy forces, "we could see what was behind the next wave and how they were moving," which saved lives, time and money.
The Air Force is still developing solutions that will enable those relying on Joint STARS to differentiate friendly and enemy forces, Grivakis said. "The technology has still not evolved yet...and we need funding and a schedule to put it on board. It's the biggest challenge and would really be helpful."
Joint STARS has grown from the two aircraft used during Desert Storm to a fleet of 14 soon to be 15 aircraft, he said, adding that capabilities have grown along with the number of planes.
"Joint STARS went from surveillance-only to a battle management platform...that can direct fighters and bombers onto [moving or fixed] targets," Grivakis said.
*******************************
Federal Computer Week
Tools demystify Web site performance
New vendor wares increasingly blend two main types of system monitoring
BY Brian Robinson
Feb. 24, 2003
As agencies conduct more of their affairs using Web-based technologies, government Webmasters and network administrators are under greater pressure to keep those Web sites humming.
Fortunately, developers of Web performance management tools have not been idle and instead offer agency staff members a blend of solutions to give them a leg up on maintaining their increasingly important and complex systems.
A far cry from simple products a few years ago that did little more than log the number of visitors to a site, the current crop of tools monitor a Web infrastructure from end to end. They isolate and flag problems with specific components databases, application servers, network gear and storage and can even drill down into data to track the performance of individual applications.
In fact, for many agencies there's increasingly little difference between what they expect performance management tools to do for Web applications and for the network overall. That's because Web-based architectures have become mainstream for many internal- and external-facing applications.
"Our customer is the warfighter," said a spokesman for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). "And, due to this, performance monitoring tools utilized within the technology insertion division must have a wide range of features [that] enable monitoring and testing of all IP traffic types utilized on [Defense Department] networks."
The focus for performance monitoring tools has shifted dramatically in just the past year, according to Mike Baglietto, senior product manager for Keynote Systems Inc.
"Even as recently as two or three years ago, people were basically just measuring one Web site against another to give them an idea of where they should be" on Web performance, he said. "Since then, [business objectives] have driven the move away from measuring the performance of Web sites to actually improving the user experience with the application itself."
At the same time, tools have evolved from seeing how long it took Web site visitors to execute a certain number of steps to asking whether they can quickly get what they need from the site, such as information or completing a transaction, he said.
"You are trying to connect end-user behavior to application performance," Baglietto said.
For Computer Associates International Inc. (CA), that objective means adding components to its Unicenter family of integrated enterprise management solutions to follow a user through a Web-based transaction, according to Bob Ure, the company's Unicenter brand manager.
"To the end user, their Web experience is cumulative across a series of smaller tasks, such as searching or adding items to a shopping cart," he said. "We monitor the response times of each of those interactions."
Mirroring a trend in the industry, CA's solutions now employ both active and passive approaches to performance monitoring.
With the active approach, the CA system simulates a typical user transaction and periodically sends that through the Web site to check the system's response. Meanwhile, another part of the CA system uses passive monitoring to watch in real time how such activity as requests to a Web application server affect the system and, by extension, the user experience.
"The industry has finally realized that it's not enough just to know whether the end-user experience is fast or slow," Ure said. "If the transaction response time is slow, they need to know why."
Some agencies have come to the same conclusion. NASA uses both active and passive approaches to monitor latencies on its internal networks, an important measure of performance given the Web-like integration of applications used by its various centers. It also measures the "hit rate" at its public Web sites.
That provides NASA with an integrated view of the performance of its information systems, said Al Settell, vice president of NASA programs at NCI Information Systems Inc., a contractor that oversees performance management at NASA sites.
Officials at Brix Networks Inc. believe the active approach is necessary if you want to get an in-depth view of how applications behave from one end of the network to another. The company's Verifier solution involves installing a number of tightly coupled hardware boxes and management software throughout a network and then generating application traffic every few minutes to flow between this mesh of devices.
By monitoring the performance of this traffic and seeing where any degradation occurs, the company claims it can proactively flag problems before they can seriously affect the performance of Web-based applications.
"If those degradations are not caught in time, they can seriously disrupt the performance of applications," said Jamie Warter, the company's vice president of marketing and business development. "With higher bandwidth, real-time applications being developed, even small jitters in the 10 millisecond range can create problems."
Brix's solution, which also includes passive monitoring capabilities, has been deployed in many telecommunications carrier and service provider networks. DISA is one of its first federal government customers.
Candle Corp. officials also believe that both active and passive approaches must be employed to get a "granular" view of what's going on with Web-based applications. But many organizations have still not installed much passive monitoring, which means they are getting an incomplete look at their Web performance, said Jim Hamm, Candle's senior director of service-level management business operations.
"A problem for people enlightened enough to look [at their Web applications] from the user experience is that, if they want a certain quality of data for each user transaction measured against each [piece of infrastructure] on each site, they can quickly end up with large quantities of data, and they just don't want to handle that," he said. "Unless you as a vendor can provide the whole solution to dealing with this, they don't want to know."
Candle's eBusiness Assurance Network managed service measures how applications are performing from an organization's external and internal users' perspectives for any geographic site, at any time and for any server. The eBA ServiceMonitor measures how long users wait at a particular Web site and reports on navigation problems. The CandleNet ETEWatch measures each Web-based transaction from when it is initiated on a user workstation until it is completed.
The results can be provided through a secure portal to the company, or various packaged surveys and reports can be filed according to the organization's specific requirements.
The goal is to allow systems administrators to address problems before they get out of hand. "Everyone wants to be as proactive as possible," said Russ Currie, director of product marketing for NetScout Systems Inc.
NetScout's nGenius performance management suite uses a system of probes to gather information throughout a network. It looks at traffic according to the URL it is coming from or going to and estimates what the traffic capacity should be based on that information.
"Because we can establish thresholds [for traffic flows], if those are threatened, we can send alarms and [e-mail messages] to various places warning them of that, so they can intervene before something happens," Currie said.
Be aware that choosing Web applications management tools will likely not get easier, at least in the short term. Market watcher META Group Inc. sees applications management as a still- maturing process because the number and complexity of Web applications are increasing and the need for those tools is expanding into the operational side of organizations.
With this lack of tool maturity and a continuing churn in the more than 60 vendors currently offering some aspect of Web management capability, "users should view any investment made in the next year as a [one- or] two-year investment, expecting the technology to be obsolete after that time," META analyst Corey Ferengul said.
Robinson is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. He can be reached at hullite@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
***
Web services pose new challenges When Web applications using the still-emerging Web services family of standards become more commonplace, they will likely require a major change in performance management tools. Right now, those applications, which can be highly distributed and reliant on interactions among multiple components, are still in pilot testing, but they will eventually move to the public Internet. "You'll need a distributed set of tools to monitor the behavior and response [of Web services] because you don't [necessarily] know where any particular service is being originated from," said Mike Baglietto, senior product manager for Keynote Systems Inc. This will "drive the need for performance management tools that include a lot more intelligence" than the current crop has, according to Bob Ure, Unicenter brand manager for Computer Associates International Inc.
*******************************
Washington Post
Space Shuttles Bound to Technologies of the Past
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 25, 2003; Page A01
University of Maryland reliability expert Michael Pecht was recently approached by a company that wanted to obtain an evaluation of an older piece of machinery.
The company was a NASA subcontractor, and the device to be evaluated was the space shuttle's robotic arm, which astronauts use to work outside the craft. It was 20 years old, and NASA -- under pressure to extend the life of the spacecraft -- was anxious to find out how long it could last.
Pecht found that the arm was still in good working order. But while the engineer answered NASA's questions, the space agency never answered his. "Why are we using this old technology?" he asked repeatedly. "Why don't we change the ways we buy and design so we can always be updating, so we can always be putting in the latest technology? I could never get the clearest answer on that."
America's space shuttles, once heralded as futuristic, today find themselves chained to the technologies of the past. The machines that fly astronauts into space represent design ideas from the 1970s. Many components that run vital parts of the shuttles are obsolete, and NASA has had to create a network of suppliers to provide it with vintage parts, occasionally even scouring Internet sites such as eBay.
Although older components are not being blamed for the loss of Columbia on Feb. 1 -- indeed, NASA hangs on to many older parts because they are reliable -- the shuttle fleet's intensifying battle against obsolescence will figure prominently in the coming debate about the space program's future.
Critics suggest there is a real safety issue: As obsolete parts become ever more difficult to find, the viability of systems may be threatened not by the challenges of the future, but by the requirements of the past. The paradox for NASA is that the longer it keeps its shuttle fleet running, the further it falls behind in terms of technology, especially in its computer systems.
The age gap is not only about machines. Engineers at NASA are graying, too, and critics say budget cuts and a lack of bold goals have eroded the agency's ability to attract young engineers focused on visionary change.
"It seemed futuristic, but 30 years later, the shuttle program is a shell of the future," said Rosalind Williams, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Science, Technology and Society. "It's not only that the components are difficult to find but the expertise is difficult to find. What engineer wants to go into this business when it is basically about maintenance?"
Solutions will not be easy -- or cheap. Unlike unmanned missions, where a stream of new vehicles means technology can be regularly updated, putting astronauts in space requires lengthy design periods and extreme caution. It takes years to test components, and once a system is ready, engineers are wary of making changes. Yet without change, obsolescence is certain.
Cost, engineering and design barriers have forced the space program to run hard just to stay in place. But the biggest impediment to change goes back to the strategic decision to make the shuttle the centerpiece of the U.S. manned spaceflight program.
"The problem that NASA has faced is they put all their eggs in the shuttle basket," said Bruce Murray, a former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The fundamental problems are conceptual in design. It was promoted and sold as a very safe, cheap way to access space. It was neither safe nor cheap."
Early plans to fly 50 shuttle missions a year were quickly halved, and then halved again, Murray said. After the Challenger explosion, even that seemed too ambitious. Instead of quick turnarounds, NASA began to focus on extending shuttle longevity. Now the agency is considering flying the fleet until 2020.
Given that the first shuttle flew in 1981, that would mean a lifespan of nearly 40 years for the fleet. For a highly complex system that regularly faces the immense rigors of space travel, that is an extraordinary length of time.
In the case of the shuttle fleet's computer systems, such longevity runs smack into what is known as Moore's law. Named after Intel Corp. founder Gordon Moore, the law predicts that the sophistication of microchip technology will double every couple of years, meaning that a score of technological generations will be packed into 40 years.
The shuttle fleet's IBM computers have been upgraded once -- in 1988-89.
"They have these ancient computers that are really pathetic," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., and a space program analyst. "They are many years out of date."
Indeed, to run high-speed science experiments, McDowell said, astronauts have to carry and plug in laptops. "It's a strange mix of very robust but very old computers that will absolutely work, and a bunch of notebooks that are running the latest version of Windows," he said.
The five main computers that run each shuttle have a memory of about 1 megabyte apiece, McDowell said. Today's most basic home desktop computers come loaded with 20,000 times as much and have Pentium processors. Two years ago, Intel turned over its original Pentium processor to the government so that it could be tested and prepared for space travel, said Chuck Mulloy, a company spokesman. But that processor came out in 1994, meaning that even as it is being readied for space travel, it is already nearly a decade old.
"The computers haven't changed a lot since the advent of the vehicle," agreed Jeff Carr, a spokesman at United Space Alliance, a Houston company that runs the shuttle fleet. "It's one of those things that are very adequate for the job and have always been very adequate. They don't need to be faster. . . . There has never been any impetus or need to change them."
The testing of processors and computing equipment is extraordinarily rigorous, Carr and others said, and NASA has always placed reliability ahead of speed. A home desktop computer that crashes once a week is merely annoying, but a failed computer aboard a space shuttle could be catastrophic.
Computer chips and other components are subjected to intense bouts of radiation testing, and the software that runs the shuttles may be among the cleanest programs ever written.
Paradoxically, one reason that newer computer chips are superior -- they pack more components and circuits into smaller spaces -- can make them more vulnerable in space. A single cosmic ray, a stream of high-energy particles in space, might damage a large number of transistors in a densely packed chip, while previously it would have damaged only a few, McDowell said.
The space agency is taking into account the rapid pace of technological change in designing the next generation of space vehicles, said Gary Martin, NASA's space architect. One idea, he said, is to design systems based on modules. When better technology arrives, a module can be pulled out and replaced with something better.
Standardizing different sections can also help, he said. Martin drew an analogy to gas tanks in cars. Although newer models come out frequently, the tank is standardized to fit nozzles in gas stations anywhere in the country. In the same way, he said, parts of launch vehicles can be standardized, making it easier to incorporate improvements.
Ultimately, the scale of designing a new launch system and the complexity of making components work together mean the agency will always be behind the cutting edge, said John Rogacki, chief of the Space Transportation Technology Division in NASA's Office of Aerospace Technology.
"We don't build new space transportation systems very often," he said. "You may create an open architecture where you plug and play computers, but it's much more difficult if you are talking of a propulsion system. We come out with a new rocket engine every 20 years."
Once a decision has been made to start implementing a design, so much testing and work has been done that "you just have to make a decision and go with it and save the new technology for a new system," Rogacki said.
Obsolescence is a growing issue outside NASA, and new ideas for design may come from teams working on military, commercial aviation and other complex systems, said Pecht, the University of Maryland engineer, who directs the university's CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center.
By their very nature, improvements in science are unpredictable. It is safe to predict there will be widespread technological improvements over the next 10 years, but it is very difficult to predict what exactly those breakthroughs will be.
"How do you make the systems flexible enough to take account of technological improvements that will surely come along in the life of the system?" asked Norine Noonan, a member of NASA's Advisory Council. "It's easier to ask the question than answer it." *******************************
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 462
Date: February 26, 2003
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Top Stories for Wednesday, February 26, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Critics Call for Electronic Voting Halt"
"PCI Express to Usher in PC Changes"
"Electronics Recyclers Vow to Clean Up"
"Warchalking Hype Raises Wireless-Security Consciousness"
"The Future of Java"
"Computer Made From DNA and Enzymes"
"Nanotech to Pave Way for Micro-Machines"
"Wi-Fi Security Gets a Boost"
"A Radio Chip in Every Consumer Product"
"Swarm Intelligence: An Interview With Eric Bonabeau"
"Software Uses In-Road Detectors to Alleviate Traffic Jams"
"Taking the Bioterrorism Fight to Home PCs"
"Promise of Intelligent Networks"
"Making Cars That Drive Themselves"
"Spyware Epidemic Rallies Call for Action"
"Government Agencies Recruiting IT Workers"
"Is Total Information Awareness a Homeland Security Answer or Big
Brother?"
"Evolution of the IT Lab"
"Geekcorps Wants You!"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Critics Call for Electronic Voting Halt"
Silicon Valley scientists want a moratorium on electronic voting
declared until touch-screen voting machines can be modified to
produce a paper trail in order to ensure that vote counts are
accurate and to deter tampering. Critics' chief concern over ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item1
"PCI Express to Usher in PC Changes"
PCI Express interconnect technology is expected to succeed the
PCI-X standard for connecting PCs to peripherals and other
systems; PCI Express chips should arrive by the end of 2003,
while PCI Express-enabled PCs will become available the following ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item2
"Electronics Recyclers Vow to Clean Up"
Sixteen North American electronics recyclers signed a pledge on
Tuesday to responsibly handle electronic waste in order to
prevent the buildup of such trash in landfills, as well as halt
e-waste exports to Third World countries where poor laborers, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item3
"Warchalking Hype Raises Wireless-Security Consciousness"
Wireless company networks tempt techies with new challenges to
prove their skills, free high-speed Internet access, and possibly
valuable corporate secrets. Finding these opportunities is not
difficult due to a low-tech method of marking spots where ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item4
"The Future of Java"
The Java programming language is not gathering as much media
attention as in years past, but industry insiders say that is
because it is now taken for granted as part of the enterprise IT
infrastructure. Java has become another common tool, but is also ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item5
"Computer Made From DNA and Enzymes"
Israeli researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have
followed up last year's development of a programmable molecular
computer synthesized from DNA and enzymes with a new device
fueled by the single DNA molecule that also acts as input data. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item6
"Nanotech to Pave Way for Micro-Machines"
Speaking at the Nanotech 2003 conference on Monday, Albert Pisano
of the University of California at Berkeley predicted that
smaller, less expensive products and new markets could become a
reality within the next decade thanks to advancements in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item7
"Wi-Fi Security Gets a Boost"
A new, more secure 802.11 standard will be released later this
year by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), but several technologies are already available to help
secure wireless LANs. Cisco's Sri Sundaralingam says a simple, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item8
"A Radio Chip in Every Consumer Product"
Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are being tested and
touted by retailers as an alternative to the limited practice of
tracking items with bar codes. Joint ventures between
manufacturers, retailers, and customers aim to use the technology ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item9
"Swarm Intelligence: An Interview With Eric Bonabeau"
Wasp and ant colonies provide insight into future IT management
systems, says Eric Bonabeau, a keynote speaker at the upcoming
Emerging Technologies conference and an expert on swarm
intelligence. Bonabeau used swarm intelligence ideas to speed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item10
"Software Uses In-Road Detectors to Alleviate Traffic Jams"
An Ohio State University engineer has developed software that
could help alleviate traffic jams faster using loop detectors
that are currently used to control traffic lights and scan
traffic. In the March issue of Transportation Research, Benjamin ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item11
"Taking the Bioterrorism Fight to Home PCs"
The effects of a terrorist-engineered smallpox outbreak could be
mitigated by a joint effort between Texas-based United Devices
and Oxford University to harness idle computers to search for a
cure. "We basically have a way for people who are concerned ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item12
"Promise of Intelligent Networks"
Intel researchers are developing a way for wireless networks to
self-organize into "mesh networks" that can automatically
re-route data in response to fluctuating demand as well as the
addition or removal of data devices. Mike Witteman of Intel's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item13
"Making Cars That Drive Themselves"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenged
inventors on Saturday to build unmanned, self-navigating robot
vehicles to race from the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas--a distance
of approximately 250 miles--within 10 hours, without any human ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item14
"Spyware Epidemic Rallies Call for Action"
The last year has witnessed a significant proliferation of adware
and spyware--software that resides on Web surfers' computers
without their knowledge, usually to serve ads or to gather
information on user behavior and send it back to a parent ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item15
"Government Agencies Recruiting IT Workers"
With 50 percent of the federal IT workforce expected to reach
retirement age by 2004, the U.S. government is hungry for new
blood. Seventy percent of the nearly 60,000 federal IT workers
counted by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item16
"Is Total Information Awareness a Homeland Security Answer or Big
Brother?"
Michael Wynne, principal deputy under secretary of Defense for
acquisition, technology, and logistics, and Sen. Ron Wyden
(D-Ore.) hold differing views on the Pentagon's Total Information
Awareness (TIA) system, which would integrate databases about ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item17
"Evolution of the IT Lab"
IT labs are changing to better fit enterprise goals, in which
on-the-fly testing and verification of products prior to
implementation is de rigueur. "What we have is an environment
where we can replicate changes that we need to [make] with the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item18
"Geekcorps Wants You!"
The nonprofit startup Geekcorps aims to give international IT
projects a leg up by sending volunteers to developing countries
to provide IT and business expertise to small companies and
community organizations. Geekcorps founder and executive ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0226w.html#item19
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:
Welcome to the January 22, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
week. For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this
service, please see below.
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 448
Date: January 22, 2003
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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Top Stories for Wednesday, January 22, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Recording Firms Win Copyright Ruling"
"As Linux Nips At Microsoft, Its Advocates Talk Numbers"
"Profiling the Hackers"
"Uh-Oh: Spam's Getting More Sophisticated"
"In Software Industry, a Passage to India"
"IBM Aims to Get Smart About AI"
"Scientists Giddy About the Grid"
"Job-Rich Silicon Valley Has Turned Fallow, Survey Finds"
"High-Tech Voting Raises Questions"
"Digital Defenses"
"Where the Girls Aren't"
"After the Copyright Smackdown: What Next?"
"X11: Apple's Secret Formula"
"Cell Phone, PDA Makers Work to Find Ideal Mix of Features"
"Multimedia Programming Comes in New FLAVOR"
"Reaching for the W-Band"
"Security's Next Steps"
"Hardware Hangover"
"How You'll Pay"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Recording Firms Win Copyright Ruling"
In a triumph for music labels, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates
upheld the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) yesterday
when he ruled that Verizon Communications had to disclose the
name of a customer who had downloaded a large volume of songs ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item1
"As Linux Nips At Microsoft, Its Advocates Talk Numbers"
The lineup of speakers at this year's Linux World conference in
New York shows how the business community has embraced the
open-source operating system, spawned by programmers devoted to a
share-and-share-alike ideology. In previous years, open-source ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item2
"Profiling the Hackers"
State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo researchers are
working on a system that can profile network users in real time
and catch cybercriminals in the act. These profiles are built by
tracking each command a user executes at each computer terminal; ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item3
"Uh-Oh: Spam's Getting More Sophisticated"
Spammers are employing increasingly complex methods to sneak
commercial email solicitations past anti-spam measures, and
POPFile author John Graham-Cumming detailed several such
strategies at an MIT conference today. Some of the simpler ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item4
"In Software Industry, a Passage to India"
Software programming is set to follow the pattern of the textile
industry in the United States as the low-end, hands-on work of
coding gets done overseas. But, just as with apparel
manufacturers today, design, marketing, and retailing operations ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item5
"IBM Aims to Get Smart About AI"
The demand for machines with a relative sense of autonomy is
growing thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, the
increasing numbers of computers people are using, and the
burgeoning types of data the Net supports. To help meet this ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item6
"Scientists Giddy About the Grid"
Scientists wanting to connect supercomputers together for
collaborative research have been stymied by a lack of feasibility
thanks to incompatible standards, but grid computing offers them
new hope. "The assumption is that people will buy into this and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item7
"Job-Rich Silicon Valley Has Turned Fallow, Survey Finds"
Jobs in Silicon Valley fell 9 percent between the first quarter
of 2001 and the second quarter of 2002, estimates a report that
Joint Venture Silicon Valley will publish on Monday; the 127,000
jobs lost in this period accounted for more than 50 percent of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item8
"High-Tech Voting Raises Questions"
North America's transition to computer-based voting systems has
raised a number of issues, including concerns about machine
failure, flawed software, and code tampering. Rebecca Mercuri of
Bryn Mawr College notes that the election officials who bought ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item9
"Digital Defenses"
For a business' electronic defenses to continue to offer maximum
network protection, adaptation is key. The challenge lies in
keeping sensitive company information secure while still
maintaining network openness in order to sustain commerce and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item10
"Where the Girls Aren't"
Opinions are divided as to why computer programming is unpopular
among girls: One camp subscribes to the theory that girls are
socially conditioned to avoid computer science, while another
reasons that they are naturally disinclined toward the field. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item11
"After the Copyright Smackdown: What Next?"
Siva Vaidhyanathan of New York University writes that the Supreme
Court's recent decision to extend the term of copyright by 20
years may be disheartening for advocates of copyright reform, but
notes that their movement is gaining momentum, thanks to greater ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item12
"X11: Apple's Secret Formula"
Apple Computer this month released a beta version of the Unix
windowing environment X11, which allows Unix applications to run
concurrently with those on the Mac OS X, and provides a more
friendly Unix developing environment. Analysts say the Apple X11 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item13
"Cell Phone, PDA Makers Work to Find Ideal Mix of Features"
The global market for converged devices--devices that combine
cell phone and handheld computer functionality--will boom from 4
million units sold in 2002 to around 59 million units in 2006,
predicts International Data (IDC). However, equipment ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item14
"Multimedia Programming Comes in New FLAVOR"
Formal language for audiovisual object representation (FLAVOR) is
an open-source extension of C++ and Java that can be used to
formally describe coded multimedia bitstreams, which are used to
format data such as JPEG, GIF, and MPEG. "Most of the multimedia ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item15
"Reaching for the W-Band"
The FCC is considering licensing the upper-millimeter wave band,
or W-band, to enterprises as well as carriers. Industry
advocates claim that this would boost bandwidth capabilities
while lowering its cost, while others characterize the technology ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item16
"Security's Next Steps"
New security tools are being developed to face new kinds of
electronic threats. Security experts such as Raleigh Burns of
Northern Kentucky's St. Elizabeth Medical Center expect future
security products to have simpler features and smoother ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item17
"Hardware Hangover"
With spending on corporate hardware falling off as a result of
the economic recession and the maturation of the IT market, tech
companies are focusing on software and services that help
enterprises unify and boost the efficiency of existing systems. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item18
"How You'll Pay"
Manufacturers are in a race to develop high-tech payment systems
that offer superior security, versatility, and convenience.
Smart cards, which come equipped with both microprocessors and
memory chips, have become commonplace in Europe, but their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item19
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- To review Friday's issue (there was no issue on Monday {Martin Luther
King, Jr. Day]), please visit
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From owner-technews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fri Feb 7 14:12:27 2003
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:
Welcome to the February 7, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
week. For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 455
Date: February 7, 2003
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( <http://www.hp.com> )
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Top Stories for Friday, February 7, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare"
"NSF Panel Recommends $1B Annually For Cyberinfrastructure"
"Cascading Failures Could Crash the Global Internet"
"Bush Data-Mining Plan in Hot Seat"
"What Are the Chances?"
"Bush Database Plan Raises Privacy Concerns"
"Spam Deluge Leads to Search for Silver Bullet"
"Computers Driving Shuttle Are to Be Included in Inquiry"
"'Slammer' Attacks May Become Way of Life for Net"
"The Theory and Practice of the Internet"
"Quantum Computers Go Digital"
"Pervasive Computing: You Are What You Compute"
"New Chapter in Success Story"
"Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Together at Last?"
"Workin' on the Brain Gang"
"House and Senate Committees Unveil High-Tech Priorities"
"Chaos, Inc."
"Transforming IT"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare"
Bush administration officials say the president has signed a
secret order to outline a strategy for a cyber-strike on the
computer networks' of America's foes. When asked whether such a
strategy would be employed if military action in Iraq moves ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item1
"NSF Panel Recommends $1B Annually For Cyberinfrastructure"
A report from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Blue Ribbon
Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure recommends that the
organization spend $1 billion a year on cyberinfrastructure
development so that it can take advantage of a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item2
"Cascading Failures Could Crash the Global Internet"
Arizona State University scientists Adilson Motter and Ying-Cheng
Lai report that the global Internet could be brought down by
hackers who target specific network nodes, triggering a cascade
of overload failures. Although the Internet is composed of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item3
"Bush Data-Mining Plan in Hot Seat"
The Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, which would use
data-mining technology to search public and private databases as
well as the Internet for signs of terrorist activities, has
spurred grass-roots organizations to mobilize and call for more ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item4
"What Are the Chances?"
Evaluating the risk of "low-probability, high-consequence
events"--natural disasters, nuclear accidents, and spacecraft
catastrophes, for example--lies at the core of probabilistic risk
assessment, which is used by mathematicians, engineers, insurance ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item5
"Bush Database Plan Raises Privacy Concerns"
President Bush's proposal for a Terrorist Threat Integration
Center designed to mine federal databases for terrorists and
terrorist activity is already drawing criticism from privacy
advocates and could also run into trouble with Congress. The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item6
"Spam Deluge Leads to Search for Silver Bullet"
Spurred by dire warnings that spam will soon overwhelm legitimate
email, experts are considering a number of solutions, ranging
from legislation to existing filtering tools to a "silver bullet"
that can effectively demolish spammers' business model. Some ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item7
"Computers Driving Shuttle Are to Be Included in Inquiry"
The on-board computers were driving the Columbia space shuttle
when it descended into the earth's atmosphere Saturday, Feb. 1,
and ordered the ship to steer right slightly in compensation for
drag registered on the left side. The shuttle's computer are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item8
"'Slammer' Attacks May Become Way of Life for Net"
The SQL Slammer worm that infected corporate servers at an
unprecedented rate last month was able to severely affect
customer-facing systems such as such as ATMs and email, something
that few other viruses or worms have been able to do. Computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item9
"The Theory and Practice of the Internet"
The overwhelming volume of data stemming from the history of the
rapidly evolving commercial Internet has people clamoring for a
simple theory that will help them cope and function better in the
Web environment, writes Michael Rogers. Although such a theory ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item10
"Quantum Computers Go Digital"
In an attempt to build a solid-state quantum computer,
researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have
devised a method for reducing the number of errors produced when
computing with qubits, or quantum bits. Traditional digital ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item11
"Pervasive Computing: You Are What You Compute"
Panelists at the recent Cyberposium 2003 focused on pervasive
computing, and took the opportunity to note their respective
companies and institutions' advances in that area. Stephen
Intille of MIT commented that researchers there are investigating ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item12
"New Chapter in Success Story"
India's IT market is soaring due to weak markets in mature
economies, such as in the United States, which is driving
software programming and mundane business processing overseas.
Indian firms deliver quality code, such as at Infosys, where ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item13
"Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Together at Last?"
Representatives from the music and technology industries agreed
to reject government legislation on the use of copyright
protection measures and devise their own solutions to curb
digital copyright infringement, according to a recent accord ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item14
"Workin' on the Brain Gang"
The majority of Canada's IT employees work less than 40 hours per
week, and only 10 percent work overtime, according to a report
authorized by Human Resources Development Canada and the Software
Human Resource Council. Such findings contradict the popular ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item15
"House and Senate Committees Unveil High-Tech Priorities"
In both the U.S. House and Senate this year, congressional
committees will push for a variety of initiatives in technology
and telecommunications. Ken Johnson, the majority spokesman for
the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says the committee will ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item16
"Chaos, Inc."
Agent-based computer simulations based on complexity science are
being used by companies to improve their bottom lines.
Complexity science promotes the theory that all complex systems
have common characteristics: They are massively parallel, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item17
"Transforming IT"
IT is essential to business productivity, yet many corporate IT
departments have not properly deployed the processes and metrics
needed to optimize their IT efforts. To change this, some
enterprising CIOs are following a three-year, seven-step ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0207f.html#item18
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0205w.html
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From owner-technews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mon Feb 10 13:44:28 2003
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:
Welcome to the February 10, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 456
Date: February 10, 2003
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( <http://www.hp.com> )
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Top Stories for Monday, February 10, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Pentagon Names Boards to Oversee Data-Search Plan"
"Don't Underestimate Cyberterrorists, Experts Warn"
"NASA Leads Efforts to Build Better Software"
"Scientists of Very Small Draw Disciplines Together"
"'Sticky' DNA Crystals Promise New Way to Process Information"
"The Linux Kernel's Next Incarnation"
"See Here!"
"Group Hopes to Give New Life to Desktop Linux"
"Suits Test Limits of Digital Copyright Act"
"Journalist Perpetrates Online Terror"
"For the Smart Dresser, Electric Threads That Cosset You"
"The Fate of UCITA"
"Proving IT"
"10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World"
"Pssst! This Note's For You"
"Tech's Biggest Battle"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Pentagon Names Boards to Oversee Data-Search Plan"
The Defense Department announced on Feb. 7 the creation of two
panels tasked with overseeing the controversial Total Information
Awareness (TIA) project, in response to criticism from Congress
and other organizations that such a project, supposedly designed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item1
"Don't Underestimate Cyberterrorists, Experts Warn"
Security experts warn that America's enemies can exploit
cyberspace to wreak havoc with the nation's public
infrastructure, unless its online defenses are beefed up with the
installation of security software and increased awareness among ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item2
"NASA Leads Efforts to Build Better Software"
The 1999 crash of the Mars Polar Lander, which was attributed to
a software bug, made NASA officials realize that preventing a
similar embarrassment would require an upgrade in software
quality and the development of failure-proof systems. Following ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item3
"Scientists of Very Small Draw Disciplines Together"
A recent three-day conference in Los Angeles was a rallying point
for scientists and other advocates who wish to merge the
disciplines of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information
technology, and cognitive research into a single discipline ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item4
"'Sticky' DNA Crystals Promise New Way to Process Information"
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have succeeded in
forming a regularly structured DNA crystal with gold
nanoparticles attached. Electrical engineering professor Richard
Kiehl, who leads the project, says it is significant because ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item5
"The Linux Kernel's Next Incarnation"
As Linux becomes a more important component of enterprise
computing portfolios, IT managers should be aware of upcoming
changes in the Linux kernel. Although popular Linux software
such as Apache and Samba create a front-end for the open-source ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item6
"See Here!"
York University scientists are building an automated
videoconferencing system that responds to hand signals, and its
development includes research into the psychology of body
language and camera-operator training. The research team, led by ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item7
"Group Hopes to Give New Life to Desktop Linux"
The Desktop Linux Consortium (DLC), which is composed of leading
vendors and open source organizations, hopes to deepen the
penetration of Linux on the desktop, which Linux creator Linus
Torvalds declared as "inevitable" in a press statement. "Linux ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item8
"Suits Test Limits of Digital Copyright Act"
New lawsuits by Lexmark International and the Chamberlain Group
are testing the limits of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), which observers say has been interpreted broadly by
courts. Lexmark is suing Static Control Components and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item9
"Journalist Perpetrates Online Terror"
Computerworld has retracted a story about terrorists claiming to
be the author of the recent Slammer worm after learning that
Brian McWilliams, former Newsbytes.com reporter, was imitating
the cited terrorist group when this group ostensibly asserted ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item10
"For the Smart Dresser, Electric Threads That Cosset You"
Electrotextiles--electrically conductive cloth--are being
developed so that they can be applied to many wearable products
in both the military and civilian sector. The cloth is fashioned
from synthetic or metallic fibers that can be linked to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item11
"The Fate of UCITA"
Ed Foster writes an open letter to the American Bar Association's
(ABA) House of Delegates in which he urges them to kill the
Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA), which has
long been a target of criticism from customers of IT products. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item12
"Proving IT"
Prior to committing to big IT investments, companies are now
setting up test labs to prove the business value of tech
projects. The in-house testing facilities are usually overseen
by CIOs and other IT executives, while personnel are made up of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item13
"10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World"
New technologies with significant implications for computing,
manufacturing, security, and other vital areas are being
developed by some of the best minds in their fields. University
of California, Berkeley, scientist David Culler is working on ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item14
"Pssst! This Note's For You"
Mainstream adoption of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology
has reached critical mass, as evidenced by unexpected uses far
beyond what its inventors intended. Originally developed as a
way for smart bombs to more precisely locate targets, GPS has ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item15
"Tech's Biggest Battle"
Intel plans to crowd IBM and Sun Microsystems out of the 64-bit
server market with its Itanium 2 chip, but rivals may still be
able to triumph by using the time between the announcement of
Itanium and its long-delayed launch to deepen their roots and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0210m.html#item16
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:
Welcome to the April 23, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
providing timely information for IT professionals three times a
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 486
Date: April 23, 2003
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Top Stories for Wednesday, April 23, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam"
"Is Open Source Apple's Salvation?"
"Facing Up to the Threat From Cyber Terrorism"
"Report: College Grads Will Suffer From High-Tech Job Slowdown"
"Tech Forum Tackles Big Ideas"
"Machine-to-Machine Integration: The Next Big Thing?"
"Snaky Tape May Enliven Computer Interactions"
"Will Code for Food"
"Military Academies Face Off in Blunting Cyberattacks"
"Planning for the Next Cyberwar"
"Next Mac OS X Puts User at the Center"
"Artificial Intelligence Scopes Out Spam"
"The Web's Next Leap"
"September 11 Information Failures: A Semiotic Approach"
"Writing Software Right"
"Recycling Not Easy for PC Makers"
"The Grid: Computing Without Bounds"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam"
Despite the push to eradicate unsolicited commercial email,
spammers still have the upper hand, and are battling automated
filters and other antispam measures using various methods,
ranging from as simple a method as rewording spam messages to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item1
"Is Open Source Apple's Salvation?"
Although Apple's OS X operating system is based on the
open-source Darwin OS from BSD, and the core of its Safari Web
browser is the KHTML rendering engine, this does not mean that
Apple is wholly embracing open source. Only certain components ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item2
"Facing Up to the Threat From Cyber Terrorism"
Internet Security Systems CEO Tom Noonan says the United States'
unparalleled reliance on computer automation has not only made it
the most productive country in the world, but also the most
vulnerable to cyberattacks. It is reasonable to assume that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item3
"Report: College Grads Will Suffer From High-Tech Job Slowdown"
Companies are devoting less money to technology investments, so
hiring large numbers of high-tech college graduates is less of a
priority, concludes a new Challenger, Gray & Christmas report.
"Because of major cost-cutting, companies are not updating their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item4
"Tech Forum Tackles Big Ideas"
Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, one of the organizers of this week's
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, describes the event as
"a three-day jam session for geeks," with its overarching theme
being the future of technology. Attendees will be able to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item5
"Machine-to-Machine Integration: The Next Big Thing?"
The potential advantages of machine-to-machine integration for
conventional IT organizations include lower costs, better
responsiveness, improved efficiency, a tighter supply chain, and
even new business models, writes Forrester Research analyst Carl ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item6
"Snaky Tape May Enliven Computer Interactions"
A research team led by Ravin Balakrishnan of the University of
Toronto has developed "ShapeTape," a flexible tool that can be
used with specialized software to build computer-generated
shapes. Calling ShapeTape a revolutionary form of computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item7
"Will Code for Food"
The current hiring atmosphere for technology professionals is
bleak, if Silicon Valley tech job fairs are any indication.
Whereas most attendees of such events were gainfully employed at
the height of the tech boom, today the majority are unemployed; ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item8
"Military Academies Face Off in Blunting Cyberattacks"
Computer experts in the top three U.S. military academies as well
as the Coast Guard and other agencies participated in the third
annual Cyber Defense Exercise last week in order to evaluate the
military's ability to wage "network-centric warfare" as well as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item9
"Planning for the Next Cyberwar"
The U.S. victory in Iraq validates the concept of network-centric
or digital warfare, which is poised to grow in scope and
sophistication in anticipation of future conflicts. Part of the
Pentagon's $500 billion budget for 2004 will be allocated for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item10
"Next Mac OS X Puts User at the Center"
Apple is readying its new Mac OS X 10.3, or "Panther," expected
to ship in September; the system is reported to include many
personalization features Apple is calling User at the Center that
promise to be competitive with those in development at ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item11
"Artificial Intelligence Scopes Out Spam"
Spammers currently have the upper hand because they are
always probing email filtering solutions for vulnerabilities, but
artificial intelligence mail-filtering software that uses
natural-language processors could outpace their rate of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item12
"The Web's Next Leap"
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and leader of the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), believes the Semantic Web is the
next step in Web technology; he describes it as "webbing" the
traditional relational database so that companies' back-end ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item13
"September 11 Information Failures: A Semiotic Approach"
The useful exploitation of collected data will depend on the
integration of information-gathering systems and associative
applications, write Kevin C. Desouza of the University of
Illinois and Tobin Hensgen of Loyola University, who believe a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item14
"Writing Software Right"
Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and IBM are trying to retool
software engineering and eliminate "laissez-faire" attitudes
toward software design that can lead to potentially major bugs
slipping through the testing process, while also saving time, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item15
"Recycling Not Easy for PC Makers"
PC manufacturers have started to study product recycling
processes in detail, and are finding both pluses and minuses: They
are learning how difficult it is to remove and dispose of certain
materials, such as mercury filaments in scanners, but they are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item16
"The Grid: Computing Without Bounds"
Grid computing is expected to "virtualize" general computational
services and make processing, storage, data, and software so
ubiquitous that computing will seem like just another utility.
An extension of the Internet, grid computing melds computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item17
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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