Clips April 28, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips April 28, 2003

ARTICLES

New weapon for spam: bounty
3 E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight 
Interagency team studies geospatial preparedness 
Monster backpedals on listings purge 
Britain to Launch Electronic Voting Systems
Rollison Web Name In Opponent's Hands 
Spread of Buggy Software Raises Questions 
Looted Iraqi Art Displayed Online  
Homeland Security to take immigration filings online 
TSA gears up for smart-card pilot 
Legal Blip in Digital Piracy Fight? 

*******************************
Mercury News
New weapon for spam: bounty
By Michael Bazeley
Mercury News

Spammers beware. Larry Lessig wants to put a price on your head.

The Stanford law professor will team with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, on Monday to unveil a bill that would require unsolicited commercial e-mails to be identified as advertising -- and then put a bounty on anyone who breaks that law.

If the law passes, citizens could be eligible for rewards of thousands of dollars or more if they're the first to provide the government with proof and the identity of offending spammers.

``It's like bounty hunters in the old West,'' said Lessig, who most recently argued a landmark copyright protection case before the U.S. Supreme Court. ``You bring 'em in and get the bounty.''

Lessig is so sold on his idea, he's offering a guarantee: He'll quit his Stanford job if the bill becomes law and ``does not substantially reduce the level of spam.''

Lessig's idea is only the latest in a long list of efforts to combat what has become the scourge of the Information Age.

Despite myriad technological and legal efforts to curb spam, Internet users are getting more unsolicited e-mail come-ons than ever, accounting for about 40 percent of all e-mail traffic.

Lessig said his idea, which he first proposed more than two years ago, is better than many of the technological ploys used to combat spam, such as blacklisting e-mail servers allegedly used to send spam.

The first piece of his plan, labeling, is a common approach to the problem. Any unsolicited commercial e-mail would have to include the tag ``ADV'' in the subject line, clearly identifying it as an advertisement. The label would allow Internet service providers or individual users to filter out -- or filter in -- messages before viewing them.

In the past, labeling efforts haven't worked.

California passed a law in 1998 that required senders of unsolicited e-mail advertisements to add ``ADV:'' or ``ADV:ADLT'' to the subject lines of their messages. Violators are guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a $500 fine.

Since then, almost no one has been prosecuted under the law, chiefly due to a lack of consumer complaints and the difficulty in tracking down the spammers.

``Just labeling alone has been demonstrated not to be effective,'' said Ray Everett-Church, chief privacy officer of the ePrivacy Group in Philadelphia. ``There are many spammers ignoring it.''

That's why, Lessig and Lofgren said, lawmakers need to back up the labeling requirement with strong enforcement. Despite its best efforts, the government doesn't have the resources to hunt down and prosecute every illicit spammer. Hence, the citizen spam cop, motivated by a reward.

``This gives a tool for people to fight back,'' Lofgren said. ``And it gives a disincentive to spammers to continue.''

Lessig predicted that plenty of ``technically qualified and eager people'' -- college students, perhaps -- would jump at the chance to track down spammers for the right price.

The bounty hunters would need to trace the offending e-mail to its source, identify the sender and provide proof to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC would investigate and fine the offender, if appropriate. The bounty hunter would get 20 percent of the fine.

``You have to be a little private investigator,'' Lessig said.

Lofgren's bill, which will be introduced next week, would also require commercial e-mails to include a way for recipients to opt out of future mailings. Companies or individuals that send e-mail to people who opted out would face penalties.

It will have competition in Congress. Another bill would outlaw e-mails that have deceptive subject lines and hide the senders' identity. California lawmakers, meanwhile, are considering a bill that would allow Internet users to sue e-mail marketing firms for $500 for each piece of unsolicited advertising.
*******************************
Washington Post
3 E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight 
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo Seek Ways to Curtail Unwanted Solicitations 
By Jonathan Krim
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A02 

Three of the nation's largest e-mail account providers, normally bitter rivals, today are to announce a joint assault on spam, vowing to collaboratively hunt down unsavory e-mailers and explore industry standards that would curtail the ability to create bulk electronic mailings.

Representatives of America Online, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. stressed that their initiative against unsolicited e-mail is a first step in what they hope will be a broader industry effort. The initiative, however, lacked specific legislative or technical remedies.

Such an alliance is rare in the competitive world of consumer technology and is testimony to the devastating effect spam has on digital communications. The volume of spam has mushroomed in the past two years, now accounting for an estimated 40 percent of all e-mail traffic and $8 billion to $10 billion in costs to business a year.

"We're putting spammers on notice that the industry will collaborate to drive the bad guys out of business," said Brian Arbogast, a Microsoft vice president in charge of the MSN network.

Nicholas J. Graham, an AOL vice president and spokesman, said the companies were "driven to this point by our members," and that "we recognize spam is out of control." Collectively, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have more than 200 million e-mail account holders, both subscription-paying and free.

Those numbers have made each of the company's services prime targets of spammers. The easy creation of e-mail accounts that are often free allow bulk e-mailers to spam using AOL, Microsoft or Yahoo accounts. Computer programs enable spammers to randomly generate millions of e-mail addresses of the companies' members, many of which match existing account holders.

With the Federal Trade Commission holding a three-day forum on spam this week in Washington, the companies got the jump by promising to make it harder for spammers to use their systems to send unsolicited e-mail.

The companies want the industry to examine technical means for digitially marking e-mail so that it would be identified more easily by users and spam filters. The approved e-mail would have to conform to certain criteria, for example, such as working links to unsubscribe from a mail list, accurate information from the sender and subject lines that accurately reflect the content of the message.

The companies also want to work together to identify networks that are open to being commandeered by spammers, which enable spammers to hide the true originating Internet address of the spam and make it difficult to track down the senders.

On the legal and enforcement side, the companies said they intend to share more complaint data, building evidence files that can be given to assist state and federal prosecutors in cracking down on e-mailers that violate laws prohibiting fraudulent subject lines, originating addresses and other tactics used by spammers.

Many of these techniques already are widely used by anti-spam activists, who have posted large databases of information about alleged spammers that are used by many network operators as blacklists. In general, mail from Internet addresses on the lists are automatically blocked, causing the spammers to create new ones in an endless game of digital cat and mouse.

Executives of AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo said they would welcome participation by spam-tracking groups in helping to formulate strategies, but how those groups would react is not known.

Anti-spam activists have considered the companies as part of the problem, not only for the ease with which spammers have used their systems, but for the firms' own marketing practices. The activists argue that there is no distinction between e-mail from legitimate marketers and from spammers who peddle sexually explicit material, fad diets, get-rich-quick schemes and products for body enhancements.

In this view, marketers should never be allowed to send commercial e-mail unless potential customers have first requested the mail. This opt-in notion contrasts with general industry practice, including AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo, in which users receive marketing mail from their service provider and affiliates unless they specifically opt out.

The escalation of the spam problem and the fight against it also is generating activity on Capitol Hill, where several bills have been introduced or are soon to be proposed. The scope of the bills vary: stricter criminal penalties for deceptive marketing; creating a national do-not-e-mail list; and requiring that the letters ADV, for advertisement, be put in the subject line of all commercial messages.

A bill to be introduced this week, for example, would propose a bounty for anyone who tracks down a spammer.

The executives declined to say which of the three companies first broached the notion of the alliance, which has been the subject of intense negotiation over the past several weeks. Geoff Ralston, a Yahoo vice president, said the purpose of the alliance is not to formulate or get behind a single piece of legislation.
*******************************
Government Computer News
04/28/03 
Interagency team studies geospatial preparedness 
By Patricia Daukantas 

An interagency team is developing a comprehensive national strategy for delivering geospatial data to emergency responders. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency formed the team in February because geospatial technology is critical to response and recovery efforts in natural and manmade disasters, said Susan Kalweit, who heads the Interagency Geospatial Preparedness Team. 

?Regardless of what causes the incident, the kinds of response and recovery are basically the same,? Kalweit said. Geospatial technology addresses the universally important questions of where the disaster happened and how responders can get to it. 

The team will assess the needs and existing capabilities of federal, state and local agencies, Kalweit said. Its capabilities assessment will leverage work being done for the Geospatial One-Stop Portal program, one of the 25 e-government initiatives, and the National Imaging and Mapping Agency?s 133 Cities project, she said. 

The assessments will take eight or nine months, but those may not be contiguous months, Kalweit said. Hurricane, wildfire and flooding seasons have started or will begin soon, and workshops the interagency team plans to hold in each of the 10 FEMA regions may have to wait until the threats of natural disasters have abated. 

The team is reaching out to state and local governments through the National States Geographic Information Council. 

Kalweit, who was deputy chief of NIMA?s North America and Homeland Security Division, is working at FEMA on detail until February.
*******************************
CNET News.com
Monster backpedals on listings purge 
By Declan McCullagh 
April 25, 2003, 5:08 PM PT

WASHINGTON--Monster.com, the popular career Web site, has partially backed away from a decision to limit which nations could be listed on résumés and job postings. 
Citing a desire to comply with federal laws, Monster this week deleted some references to seven federally sanctioned countries from job listings and résumés. Iran, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, Cuba, Libya and North Korea are on the list. 

Now Monster has relented, at least in part. By the middle of next week, it now will permit its customers to describe where they went to school--using the Web site's pull-down menus--even if it was in one of the seven sanctioned nations. But people will continue to be prohibited from selecting a sanctioned country as a place they'd like to work. 

 

Arab-American groups have protested the policy shift as not required by federal laws, which restrict U.S. companies' ability to provide services to sanctioned countries. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington said it had contacted the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and learned that Monster was not required to alter résumés at all. 

"This is not a complete retraction of their policy because individuals with addresses in these countries are still being affected," a National Iranian American Council (NIAC) representative said Friday. "However, it's a step in the right direction." 

NIAC's Web site highlights Monster's actions and warns of a potential boycott. "Iranian-American executives have urged NIAC to encourage Iranian-American employers and employees to notify Monster.com of a possible boycott in order to prevent Monster's actions from becoming common practice in corporate America," the site states. 

Monster's current policy will not affect textual descriptions of jobs that customers type in themselves, such as a description by a U.S. photographer of work that involved a trip to Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. Instead, the career site has removed those seven nations from pop-up lists of countries that customers use to construct their listings. 

Monster Kevin Mullins said, however, that if the company learned that a job seeker had expressed a desire to work in Iran or any other sanctioned country, that person's résumé could be removed. "We'll have to evaluate when they come up on a case-by-case basis," Mullins said. 

Scott Maberry, an attorney of counsel to the Fulbright and Jaworski law firm that is representing Monster, pointed to Treasury Department OFAC regulations that say the sale "of any goods, technology, or services to Iran or the Government of Iran is prohibited." Maberry said similar regulations exist for the other six nations on the list and warned that the Bush administration could view "services" broadly enough to cover providing job ads and résumé distribution. 

"We live in a different world now," Maberry said. "The U.S. government, including OFAC, is ever more active in identifying and addressing national-security and foreign-policy threats." 

Monster said it has asked OFAC for guidance and received a reply, but refused to make the reply public. "Monster has never, and will never, discriminate against individuals based on their ethnic origin or background," Mullins said. "Millions of job seekers from all over the world use Monster to advance their careers and their lives--we would never engage in any discriminatory practices." 

Monster's parent company is TMP Worldwide. Its shares closed Friday at $13.48, down 42 cents.
*******************************
New York Times
April 27, 2003
Britain to Launch Electronic Voting Systems
By LEE DEMBART
International Herald Tribune

PARIS, April 27  More than 1.5 million Britons will have a chance to vote Thursday in 17 local elections using electronic voting systems that computer security experts on both sides of the Atlantic say are fraught with danger and an invitation to fraud.

Britain's pilot projects in computer voting  which include voting over the Internet  are the latest examples of the move to electronic voting by several European countries in the interest of efficiency, speed and ease of voting, which is hoped will increase voter turnout. Although Thursday is election day in Britain, the electronic polls are already open in some of the pilot districts.

Elections by computer have previously been conducted in Sweden, Switzerland and France, as well as in Britain. The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Estonia and the European Union have announced their intention to allow such voting.

Electronic voting has also been conducted in several states in the United States, spurred at least in part by the fiasco in Florida in the 200 presidential election.

In all electronic elections in Europe and most of the United States so far, security experts say, the systems used were vulnerable to wholesale attack and could have been manipulated in undetectable ways that would have made it impossible to determine that the results of an election had been changed, either by accident or design.

Specifically, the experts say, Internet voting could be crippled by a "denial of service" attack against the computer servers recording the vote, for which there is no known defense, and which could disenfranchise large numbers of voters. In addition, they say, since voters use their own computers, election officials have no control over what software is installed on those machines or what viruses might be lurking in it that could be activated in an election to change votes.

Voting over the Internet, said Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is "an election that a teenager could circumvent."

Rebecca Mercuri of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, one of the world's leading specialists in electronic voting security, said of the voting systems now being used in Britain: "It's horrifically scary. This is an abomination, and I fear for democracy as a result."

David Jefferson, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., who headed the technical committee of the California Internet Voting Task Force three years ago, said, "All remote Internet voting from private PC's, no matter how you structure it, is seriously dangerous."

In London, Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, an independent organization that studies the interaction between information technology and society, said: "We are worried about the security of electronic voting systems, especially remote ones, where people can vote from home using their PC or a mobile phone, which is the kind of technology the British government has been keen on.

"No matter what the twists and turns of the specific scheme that they use, we don't think that home PC's are a secure enough platform for something as truly vital to democracy as the voting system."

David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University in California, agreed, saying, "These systems are open to wholesale vote fraud."

The basic problem in current electronic voting systems, the security experts say, is the lack of an audit trail that would enable all voters to verify for themselves in real time that their vote was recorded as they intended and was counted as they intended.

In addition, they say, there needs to be a publicly available electronic ballot box that can verify that the announced vote total is an accurate tabulation of all the votes cast. This must all be done in a way that maintains the secrecy of each individual's ballot.

About 500 computer technologists in the United States have signed a resolution put forward by Dr. Dill warning that no electronic voting system should be adopted that does not have these protections. A list of the signers and their affiliations is at verify.stanford.edu/EVOTE/endorsements.html.

None of the voting systems that are being used in Britain or elsewhere meet these requirements, Dr. Dill said, though it is technically possible to have such a system using advanced cryptographic techniques.

Jim Adler, the president of VoteHere, a company in Seattle that has provided the software for six of the local elections now under way in Britain, acknowledged that the security protections did not meet the highest standards. "Governments often make usability-security tradeoffs," he said, "and you can see that in the U.K."

In a separate e-mail, he elaborated: "There is no requirement for voters to be able to verify that their vote was `cast as intended' or for election observers to verify that all ballots were `counted as cast.' The technology exists, but the U.K., so far, has not required it."

Mr. Adler, who is in the business of selling electronic voting systems, said: "I applaud the Avi Rubins and Rebecca Mercuris." He said their critiques of current voting systems were correct.

In London, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which runs British elections and oversees them, responded to questions by e-mail.

"There is a range of measures in place to guard against abuse in the e-voting pilots," according to the statement by a spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The statement said that the votes were encrypted and that the security requirements were "devised in consultation with the government's security experts."

"When a voter casts a vote," the statement said, "they will receive confirmation from the voting channel that the vote has been recorded," adding that the confirmation would be "along the lines of `Thank you  your vote has been accepted.' "

But computer security experts said that this was no guarantee that the vote had not been tampered with, either on the machine where it was cast or in transmission to the counting place or in the tabulation itself.

"You know your vote has been counted because you get an `I voted' sticker back," Dr. Dill said. "But that doesn't say it was going to be counted correctly. It doesn't say it's counted as cast or counted as intended. How is it that the voter knows that the vote that went into the electronic ballot box is the vote he intended?"

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister also said, "All e-voting pilots will be subject to pre-election independent security checks (Qinetiq and Echelon are doing the work) and post-election surveys and evaluation, the results of which will be made available to participating authorities and the public."

But Peter Neumann, principal scientist at the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., said: "The pre- and post- testing stuff doesn't prove anything at all. I can build a system that will show you that your vote went in correctly and still did not record it correctly.

"What you do is build a shadow system that lurks underneath and that demonstrates that everything is perfect, except that the actual results are coming from the other system. There are a lot of ways that you can skin the cat without any evidence whatsoever."

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister also pointed to e-voting pilots conducted in Britain in 2000 and 2002 and said that analysis "showed that the arrangements put in place did not enhance the opportunity for fraud or undermine the secrecy and security of the poll."

To which Dr. Rubin of Johns Hopkins responded: "Everything in security is predicated on paranoia. The question is, `Is there an existing vulnerability?' not, `Has it ever been exploited?' "

Several experts noted that if people intended to rig an electronic election, they would not waste their time and effort on a minor local election with little consequence, thereby tipping off the authorities to the vulnerability of their election system. Such people would ignore small, pilot project elections, like those currently under way, in order to increase the authorities' confidence in the system. They would wait until a big election, such as a national one, before attacking.

"If it were a national election in any country, I would consider this to be a national security issue for that country," said Dr. Jefferson of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

Dr. Mercuri of Bryn Mawr said, "It's only a matter of time before somebody's going to target one of these elections."

She and others spent a week in London last autumn explaining all of the dangers to cabinet officials and the election authorities, without persuading them to implement stricter controls, according to her and Mr. Brown, the London researcher, who was also at the meeting. (Minutes of the meeting can be found at www.notablesoftware.com/Papers/UKTranscript.html.)

"These are basic underlying computer technology facts," Dr. Mercuri said, "but no one wants to listen to this. They want to operate under, `It's not going to happen to us,' or, `This is just gloom and doom' or `You're a bunch of Luddites.'

"But that's not the case. The virus problems and the auditability problems strike at the underpinnings of major computer science concepts that we have not been able to solve. The people are just shunning this and flying in the face of this."

Mr. Brown recalled: "They just said, `We're convinced it's secure. All we need is that it's at least as secure as the existing system, and paper ballots aren't perfect.' My response to that is, yes, there are opportunities for fraud, but it's on a much smaller scale. You can't invisibly, quietly manipulate the vote across the entire country, which would be possible with an electronic system."

Dr. Rubin said: "You hear the famous line, `Why are we using 18th-century technology to vote in the 21st century?' And the answer is because it works, and 21st-century technology is not well-suited to elections."
*******************************
Washington Post
Rollison Web Name In Opponent's Hands 
Delegate Calls Registration 'Dirty Trick' 
By Michael D. Shear
Saturday, April 26, 2003; Page B01 

RICHMOND, April 25 -- A well-known politician in Northern Virginia said today that he is in danger of losing control of one thing that really matters in his coming reelection bid: his own name.

Del. John A. "Jack" Rollison III (R-Prince William), a 17-year-veteran of the General Assembly, said his Republican primary opponent, Jeff Frederick, has snatched up the rights to the Web site name www.jackrollison.com.

"I feel like my reputation and my identity have been stolen," Rollison said. "My fear is that he will be able to use my name for any purpose whatsoever."

The Web site is registered to a Baton Rouge, La., political consulting company run by Brent Barkesdale, who lives in Warrenton, Va. Frederick lists Barkesdale as one of his top campaign contributors, having given $3,000 in consulting advice.

Rollison said the political tactic violates ethical campaign standards and federal trademark laws that regulate the use of Web sites. He said he is outraged by what he called "dirty political tricks" by his opponent, a political newcomer.

Rollison also noted that when Web surfers type his name into the Google search engine, the first listing is to Frederick's campaign site. Rollison and Frederick are competing for the Republican nomination to run for the House of Delegates' 52nd District seat in the General Assembly.

Frederick did not respond to several calls made today to his home phone -- the only one given to county election officials -- or to a message sent to an e-mail address on his campaign Web site. Barkesdale could not be reached at his Warrenton home or his Louisiana business address.

Rollison said a campaign aide discovered that the Web site was taken when he attempted to register it for use as Rollison's main campaign Web site. For now, Rollison has chosen www.rollison2003.com instead.

An attorney for Rollison wrote a letter to Frederick and Barkesdale on Thursday, demanding that they hand over control of the Web site to Rollison or face a lawsuit based on the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which Congress passed in 1999.

Under that law -- U.S. Code, Title 15, section 1125(d) -- individuals are prohibited from acquiring the rights to other people's names, attorney Robert L. Brooke said.

"I'm hoping that everyone will just cooperate and they will turn it over," Brooke said.

If that doesn't happen, Brooke said Rollison could ask a federal court to order the exchange. But that could be a costly effort that would almost certainly not be resolved before the June 10 primary election, Rollison said.

Rollison has been criticized by conservatives in the Republican Party for his leadership on efforts to increase Northern Virginia's sales tax rate by a half-cent to pay for transportation improvements.

Sean T. Connaughton, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, said he expects this year's primaries to be "vitriolic."

"Jack [Rollison] has a very conservative voting record. Mr. Frederick is conservative as well. You generally have the same philosophy, so you start focusing on the marginal things," said Connaughton (At Large), the highest-ranking Republican in the county. "That becomes particularly so when you have an incumbent who has a record and a non-incumbent who doesn't."

Connaughton, who has a primary of his own this year, called the Web site dispute "fascinating."

"What this demonstrates is the growing importance of Web sites for getting out information both for yourself and your opponents," he said.

"At one level, it is extremely savvy to do. On another level, it's also devious."
*******************************
Associated Press
Spread of Buggy Software Raises Questions 
Sun Apr 27, 7:31 PM ET
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer 

NEW YORK - When his dishwasher acts up and won't stop beeping, Jeff Seigle turns it off and then on, just as he does when his computer crashes. Same with the exercise machines at his gym and his CD player.


"Now I think of resetting appliances, not just computers," says Seigle, a software developer in Vienna, Va. 


Malfunctions caused by bizarre and frustrating glitches are becoming harder and harder to escape now that software controls everything from stoves to cell phones, trains, cars and power plants. 


Yet computer code could be a lot more reliable  if only the industry were more willing to make it so, experts say. And many believe it would help if software makers were held accountable for sloppy programming. 


Bad code can be more than costly. Sometimes it's lethal. 


_A poorly programmed ground-based altitude warning system was partly responsible for the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam that killed 228 people. 


_Faulty software in anti-lock brakes forced the recall of 39,000 trucks and tractors and 6,000 school buses in 2000. 


_The $165 million Mars Polar Lander probe was destroyed in its final descent to the planet in 1999, probably because its software shut the engines off 100 feet above the surface. 


Of course, more deaths are caused by human error than by bad software, and modern society would be unthinkable without Web servers, word processors and autopilot. 


But software's usefulness means people tolerate it even when quality is not the best. 


Last year, a study commissioned by the National Institute of Standards (news - web sites) and Technology found that software errors cost the U.S. economy about $59.5 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product. More than half the costs are borne by software users, the rest by developers and vendors. 


Most software is thrown together with insufficient testing, says Peter Neumann, principal scientist at SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. 


"The idea that we depend on something that's inherently untrustworthy is very frightening," he says. 


When Neumann's group worked with NASA (news - web sites) on software for the space shuttle, developers were so careful about bugs that they produced just three lines of code per day, an unthinkable pace in an industry where a major application may have a million lines of code. 


Developers say defects stem from several sources: software complexity, commercial pressure to bring products out quickly, the industry's lack of liability for defects, and poor work methods. 


Programmers typically spend half their time writing code and the other half looking for errors and fixing them. 


That approach may have worked in the infancy of computers, when programs were small, says Watts Humphrey, former director of programming quality at IBM Corp. But as demands on software balloon, the size of programs seems to double every year and a half  just like microprocessor speeds, says Humphrey, now with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute. 

   



Most programs in testing have five to 10 defects per 1,000 lines of code, or up to 10,000 bugs in a million-line program. It would take 50 people a year to find all those bugs, Humphrey says. 

Consequently, Humphrey teaches engineers to plan and pay attention to details early, and reject aggressive deadlines. 

Echoing such ideas, Microsoft Corp.'s Trustworthy Computing initiative held up coding for 10 weeks last year to teach employees to spend "more time in planning stages and thinking about quality," says Microsoft vice president S. Somasegar. 

Windows Server 2003, now being released, is the first software product affected by the initiative, Somasegar says. Its launch was delayed by a year. 

"It took a much longer time because we did the right thing on security and reliability," Somasegar says. "We hope our customers will see a huge improvement." 

Unfortunately, Microsoft customers won't know how well the software works until they've tried it. That's something the Sustainable Computing Consortium wants to remedy. 

The problem, says consortium director Bill Guttman, is that unlike other engineers, programmers have no way of measuring the reliability of their designs. 

"It always takes us by surprise when the rocket blows up or the ATM goes down," Guttman says. 

The consortium wants to create automated tools that analyze software and rate its reliability. 

But others say bugs would be greatly reduced if software makers were held legally responsible for defects. 

"Software is being treated in a way that no other consumer products are," said Barbara Simons, former president of the Association for Computing Machinery. "We all know that you can't produce 100 percent bug-free software. But to go to the other extreme, and say that software makers should have no liability whatsoever, strikes me as absurd." 

Software developers are hard to sue for shoddy products because regulators have been afraid to rein in what was, for a long time, the nation's fastest-growing industry, said Cem Kaner, a professor of software engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology. 

Microsoft contends that setting standards could stifle innovation, and the cost of litigation and damages could mean more expensive software. 

But Kaner favors making companies liable only for bugs not disclosed to customers, and for limited damages. 

"If we are not going to make manufacturers stand behind their products, we could at least force them to give enough info to make appropriate buying choices," Kaner says. 

If software makers haven't done the best job, consumers are hardly blameless. We have long favored flashy products over reliable ones. 

"That's what we pay for," Guttman says. "We say: `Give me the phone that takes the picture. Don't give me wireless (news - web sites) security!'" 
*******************************
Wired News
Looted Iraqi Art Displayed Online  
02:00 AM Apr. 28, 2003 PT

Archaeologists and art historians are outraged at the U.S. government for allowing Iraq's cultural heritage to be looted. They're using technology to retrieve what they can find. 

U.S. forces in Iraq promised to guard museums and archaeological sites and then, after the rampage, dismissed the seriousness of the crimes. At least, that's what a group of art historians claims.

Working to locate those treasures -- which reach back 7,000 years to the advent of civilization -- archaeologists are building a comprehensive, searchable image database of the tens of thousands of objects that are missing and presumed to be in the hands of professional art thieves. 

The Lost Iraqi Heritage project is a joint effort of over 80 universities, museums and individuals working to create a tool that law enforcement, customs officials and art dealers can use to prevent the sale and export of stolen objects. The group, which is coordinated by professors at the University of Chicago, includes the Archaeological Institute of America, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. 

Archaeologists say they are motivated by what they see as an unprecedented, incalculable loss. 

"Imagine if Michelangelo's statue of David and the Mona Lisa and the Magna Carta and Botticelli's paintings and all the major Impressionist painters' works were in one museum that got looted," said Dr. Clemens Reichel, a research associate at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. 

Nicholas Kouchoukos, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago who heads up the technical effort, says the project will be built in phases. The first online effort is to display images of some of the most famous pieces from the museum in order to show the extent of the losses. 

Iraq's Lost Heritage will be the backbone of an extensive effort to catalog the losses, as well as to facilitate the objects' return and the rebuilding of the Iraq Museum. The first version will show only images of the museum's known masterpieces, but the organizers plan to turn it into a searchable database as soon as possible. 

The effort faces severe challenges. Little is known outside Iraq about the extent of the holdings, which makes the process of learning what has been looted almost impossible. 

The museum's own records have apparently been destroyed in the two days of looting. Some say that was an attempt on the part of professional art thieves to cover their trail. Some hope that smashed computer hard drives can be salvaged. 

But even if the information can be retrieved, Kouchoukos says the computerized records included only a small fraction of the collection -- the museum's access to software and hardware was extremely limited during the 12-year embargo against Iraq. 

The database is being populated with images from published books and museum exhibition catalogs, as well as unpublished images from scholar's notes and from institutions that excavated artifacts in Iraq and documented them before turning them over to the museum. 

Copyright laws also complicate the task, requiring the permission of those who have photographed these items. 

Reichel, the project's coordinator, said publishing houses have granted permission to publish their copyrighted images, and museums and researchers will permit the display of previously unpublished images. 

Kouchoukos says the group will watermark each image, both visibly and digitally, to make sure that copyright holders don't lose control of their images. 

"We will never be able to fully recreate what was in the museum," said Reichel.

Perhaps the second biggest unknown is whether Iraq Museum officials approve of the idea. 

"We still don't know whether the Iraqi curators want us to do this," said Oriental Institute Professor McGuire Gibson, who has been involved in archaeological digs in Iraq since 1964. "If they don't want the entire catalog on the Web, then we won't publish it."

The group has not been able to contact any museum employees -- the only communication in and out of the country presently is through satellite phone. However, Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum is in Baghdad to meet with museum officials and survey the damage. 

On May 8th, a group of archaeologists will travel to Baghdad to meet with officials in order to address what Kouchoukos calls "key ethical questions." For instance, how much should the public be allowed to see? Nobody wants the site to aid the illegal sale of artifacts by verifying their authenticity. 

Kouchoukos stresses that these conversations will be essential to determining the format and content of the system, given that the long-term goal is to turn the database and the website over to the museum. 

In the meantime, Kouchoukos is using PostgreSQL, an open-source Unix database application developed in Berkeley in the 1980s, to create the database's backend. 

A self-described "dedicated open-sourcer," Kouchoukos says he chose the application because he thinks it is the most stable and balanced database application. He also worries that a database built on commercial platforms could be subject to export restrictions. 

Kouchoukos wants the database to be much more than a law-enforcement tool. 

"This is something we want to hand over as the information technology backbone for the museum as it rebuilds," said Kouchoukos. The database could run on Linux or Mac OS X. 

Because of the need for quick action, the project is currently relying on donations from individuals and some money from the University of Chicago. However, the group is searching for grants from foundations and hopes to get funding from government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

But "the government moves too slowly," as one archaeologist dryly noted, a reference to the lack of U.S. response when the treasures were looted. 

So far, the much criticized State Department has not been involved in the project, though its International Cultural Property Protection office, which works to prevent the illegal sale of cultural artifacts, does link to the project from its website. 

On April 14, Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a statement that said that individuals in possession of looted items from Iraqi museums or archaeological sites would be prosecuted under the National Stolen Property Act. 

Both Interpol and the FBI have teams of agents heading to Iraq to start tracking down the stolen artworks. For its part, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, held a meeting of 30 experts in Paris on April 17th and is planning to send a delegation to Iraq as soon as possible. 

But according to Dr. Ellen Herscher, an anthropologist with the Archaeological Institute of America, all these efforts may be too late. 

Although Herscher supports the image database project, she doubts whether much of the looted heritage will be recovered by the FBI or by Customs. 

"First of all, these professionals will launder it, then go through a couple of middlemen and get fake papers," said Herscher. "And these people are willing to sit on this stuff for years and years. They aren't going to be bringing it in this week or next week." 

"Right now, Customs and the FBI are being very vigilant about looking for these works," continued Herscher. "But how long are they going to stay vigilant?"

Effort to catalog items lost in  the War:
http://www.oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html
*******************************
Government Computer News
04/28/03 
Homeland Security to take immigration filings online 
By Wilson P. Dizard III 

Beginning May 29, the Homeland Security Department will accept some immigration filings online. 

The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services will let the public electronically submit Form 1-765 for employment authorization and Form I-90 for green-card replacement. 

The two forms represent about 30 percent of all the applications for immigration benefits that BCIS, part of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, receives each year. 

The bureau in the fall plans to extend online filing to six more forms. 

The filing system will confirm an applicant?s identity early in the process. The bureau will collect a photograph, signature and fingerprint for each person who uses the system. Applicants will receive high-quality immigration documents with security features produced from the bureau?s central card production facility, the bureau said last week in a statement announcing the e-filing program. 

The system is an extension of a project INS launched last year to let benefit applicants review their case status online. About 30,000 applicants use that service every day, according to bureau statistics. 

The bureau?s Web site gets 2.8 million visitors each month and handles 1 million form downloads. 

The Federation for Immigration Reform, a Washington organization that advocates strict immigration limits, lauded the effort. ?Our position is that INS is finally emerging from the Dark Ages and beginning to use modern technology as an asset for enforcement and for providing services to immigrants,? spokesman David Ray said. 

The new system would ?free up BCIS resources from providing services and help it focus on enforcementit really needs to modernize and electronically track as many of these transactions as possible,? Ray said.
*******************************
Government Computer News
04/28/03 
TSA gears up for smart-card pilot 
By Vandana Sinha 

The Transportation Security Administration has drafted a Reston, Va., company to help it develop smart cards that will serve as identification cards for port, airport, railway and other transportation employees. 

TSA chose Maximus Inc. for a $3.8 million contract to test components for its Transportation Worker Identification Credential program. The agency will run a pilot this fall in two areas: Philadelphia-Wilmington, Del., and Long Beach, Calif.-Los Angeles. 

The cards will ?plug the holes? caused by employees with ?dubious backgrounds,? said TSA?s administrator, retired Coast Guard Adm. James M. Loy, in a statement. A universal smart-card system will keep ?us one step ahead of the terrorists,? he said. 

In preliminary plans, TSA identified six types of technologies and six potential entry locations at transportation facilities. Some technologies being considered for inclusion on the cards are magnetic stripes, 2-D bar codes and biometrics. 

The smart-card system?s nationwide rollout will likely begin next year and ultimately affect 12 million transportation workers. TSA officials said the program must meet three goals: privacy, security and commerce. 

Under the Maximus contract, the development and testing phase will also tap several subcontractors, including Actcom Inc. of Virginia Beach, Va.; ActivCard Corp. of Fremont, Calif.; Data Trac/SEI Technology Inc. of Harrisonburg, Va.; EDS Corp.; and Information Spectrum Inc. of Annandale, Va. 

The program is behind schedule because TSA took longer than originally planned to assess pilot sites and choose entry points. But the smart cards are a priority and the program is ?still going to go forward? despite an overall agency budget shortfall, CIO Patrick Schambach said last month http://www.gcn.com/22_5/news/21367-1.html
*******************************
Washington Post
Legal Blip in Digital Piracy Fight? 
By Cynthia L. Webb
Monday, April 28, 2003; 9:42 AM 

A federal judge has handed two online file-sharing sites a major victory in the ongoing digital piracy battle, marking one of the first times that a court has ruled against the mighty entertainment industry. Is it only a one-time ruling, or a seminal precedent for the post-Napster file-sharing industry?

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled on Friday that file-swapping sites Morpheus and Grokster are legal operations. More importantly, Wilson found that the two companies are not responsible for any violation of copyrights that users of their software might commit. 

The Washington Post wrote of the ruling: "The surprise decision -- which likened music-sharing services to companies that sell VCRs -- was counter to a series of victories for the recording industry in recent years, specifically the 2001 lawsuits that led to the closing of Napster, the seminal and dominant Internet song-sharing service of the 1990s. Since the end of Napster, it was generally thought that the legal tide had turned against free song-swapping on grounds of copyright infringement. Performers are not paid royalties and record companies don't make money on songs traded free on the Internet." An important programming note: Unlike Napster, the design of Morpheus and Grokster relies on users' own systems, not the companies' computers, to scan and copy digital files, technically putting them at an arms' length from any online hanky panky. 
? The Washington Post: File-Swap Sites Not Infringing, Judge Says 
? Judge's Order via FindLaw.com (PDF) 
? Original complaint via FindLaw.com (PDF) 

Morpheus and Grokster argued that their sites mostly harbor legal online activity, and apparently that argument convinced the judge. "It's a vindication. We are not pirates," Wayne Rosso, president of West Indies-based Grokster, said, according to the Australian IT. "This is teaching the record companies and the movie companies a lesson. ... They need to rethink their business model." 
? Australian IT: P2P Companies 'Not Guilty' 

CNET's News.com concluded: "While the ruling in no way validates the legality of downloading copyrighted music online, it would shield companies providing decentralized file-swapping software such as Gnutella from liability for the actions of people using their products. As such, it could provide new leverage for file-swapping companies such as Grokster, Streamcast and Sharman in negotiations with record companies and other copyright holders to license works legitimately." 
? CNET's News.com: Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal 

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are promising an appeal of the ruling. And in the end, their goal of stamping out digital piracy might be supported, because Friday's ruling may signal a warning to individuals who download copyrighted files without paying. According to the Los Angeles Times, the "ruling leaves the record labels with a clear, if uncomfortable, option for attacking file sharing, which they blame for decimating CD sales: suing individual users. On that front, Wilson's ruling adds to the growing body of cases that say it is illegal to copy or make copyrighted works available through a file-sharing network. Historically, the record labels have been loath to pursue individual users out of fear of alienating other fans. That attitude, though, is changing." And other court rulings are following that logic too. Recall that a federal judge on Thursday ruled that Verizon Communications must cough up the names o!
 f two 
customers the recording industry claims are illegally trading songs online.

On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times points out that Friday's ruling at least means good news for free file-sharing sites that are looking to boost their market share. "In the meantime, the ruling could invite more entrepreneurs to launch and promote free file-sharing systems, which have operated largely in the Internet underground. And by giving Morpheus and Grokster the court's stamp of legitimacy, it could make both more attractive to the blue-chip advertisers that had avoided them," the newspaper said. 
? The Los Angeles Times: Music, Movie Companies Rebuffed In File-Sharing Suit (Registration required) 
*******************************


From owner-technews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Wed Apr 30 14:54:51 2003
Return-Path: <owner-technews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Received: from sark.cc.gatech.edu (sark.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.7.23])
	by cleon.cc.gatech.edu (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h3UIspIw014326
	for <goodman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:54:51 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from postel.acm.org (postel.acm.org [199.222.69.7])
	by sark.cc.gatech.edu (8.12.9/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h3UIsWjk002448;
	Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:54:35 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from postel (postel.acm.org [199.222.69.7])
	by postel.acm.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA16326;
	Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:52:11 -0400
Received: from LISTSERV2.ACM.ORG by LISTSERV2.ACM.ORG (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release
          1.8d) with spool id 0010 for TECHNEWS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Wed, 30 Apr
          2003 14:17:16 -0400
Approved-By: technews@xxxxxxxxxx
Received: from hq.acm.org (hq.acm.org [199.222.69.30]) by postel.acm.org
          (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA10534 for
          <technews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:15:45 -0400
Received: by hq.acm.org with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2656.59) id <JMT9RJAJ>;
          Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:15:48 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2656.59)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Message-ID:  <8DFA8DABC2E6FA438EDCFD26881380A5D37A54@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date:         Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:15:47 -0400
From: technews <technews@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:      ACM TechNews - Wednesday, April 30, 2003
To: TECHNEWS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Content-Length: 9700
Status: 
X-Status: 
X-Keywords:                   

Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the April 30, 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.

ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM
activities, member benefits, and industry issues,
visit http://www.acm.org/membernet

Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion
magazine, Ubiquity, at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 489
Date: April 30, 2003

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( <http://www.hp.com> )
     HP is the premier source for computing services,
     products and solutions. Responding to customers' requirements
     for quality and reliability at aggressive prices, HP offers
     performance-packed products and comprehensive services.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

Top Stories for Wednesday, April 30, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Scientists Protest EU Software Patents"
"Sending of Spam With Fraud Is Now Felony in Virginia"
"DARPA Funds TIA Privacy Study"
"Are Internet Ballots a Vote-Fixer's Dream?"
"The War Against Spam"
"As Privacy vs. Security Debate Heats Up, NSF Primes Sensor Pump"
"Licensed to War Drive in N.H."
"Speech Recognition Programs Still on ABCs"
"A New Way to Catch a Hacker"
"Geek Debate Gains National Prominence"
"Middleware Initiative Contributes Third Software Release"
"Suppliers Spar as Fast USB Nears"
"Borg Aimed for Achievement"
"Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control Robotic Device"
"Halting Nanotech Research 'Illogical', Says Pioneer"
"Digital Cells"
"Sliver of the Pie"
"Leveraging a Global Advantage"
"Who Loves Ya, Baby?"

******************* News Stories ***********************

"Scientists Protest EU Software Patents"
A cadre of 31 European scientists has signed a petition submitted
to the European Parliament opposing a proposal that they fear
could establish a U.S.-style patent system in the European Union
that allows software ideas and algorithms to be patented.  They ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item1

"Sending of Spam With Fraud Is Now Felony in Virginia"
Growing public anger toward unsolicited commercial email and the
deceptive methods that spammers use is causing Congress and U.S.
states to consider tough solutions, and one of the harshest
anti-spam measures was passed into law by the state of Virginia ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item2

"DARPA Funds TIA Privacy Study"
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate
has awarded a $3.5 million contract to the Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) to study the individual privacy protections of the
Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.  The TIA is being ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item3

"Are Internet Ballots a Vote-Fixer's Dream?"
A number of computer experts are worried about government
elections being electronically tabulated, with some even
collecting votes via the Internet.  The United Kingdom is
conducting 17 such electronic elections this week in different ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item4

"The War Against Spam"
Jupiter Research estimates that the number of unsolicited
commercial emails users receive annually has skyrocketed from 140
billion in 2001 to 319 billion in 2003, while the average email
recipient is expected to have to wade through more than 3,900 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item5

"As Privacy vs. Security Debate Heats Up, NSF Primes Sensor Pump"
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is set to fuel
standards-setting and new products in the nascent wireless sensor
sector.  John Cozzens, program director for the NSF's Signal
Processing Sensor Program, said at a recent Palo Alto Research ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item6

"Licensed to War Drive in N.H."
New Hampshire is considering legislation that could make it legal
to exploit open wireless networks in the state, a first that the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) calls "enlightened."  "It
seems like a fairly clean way of accommodating the geek-culture ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item7

"Speech Recognition Programs Still on ABCs"
The adoption of speech recognition technology has proceeded at a
slow pace due to computers' general inability to understand the
many nuances of human speech.  Speech software and embedded
speech devices are doing well, but they specialize in niche ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item8

"A New Way to Catch a Hacker"
The nonprofit Honeynet Project, the brainchild of computer
security expert Lance Spitzner, has spent the last four years
studying hackers and the intrusion methods they use by allowing
them to break into honeypots--systems intentionally designed to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item9

"Geek Debate Gains National Prominence"
Major American institutions have begun to work on balancing out
the public and private ownership of ideas--a topic formerly
limited to computer enthusiasts--in a way that spurs innovation
without hindering follow-on innovation.  This debate stems from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item10

"Middleware Initiative Contributes Third Software Release"
The National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) has
made the third release of its software toolset available to the
public.  NMI seeks to create the middleware and other software
components necessary for wider online scientific collaboration ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item11

"Suppliers Spar as Fast USB Nears"
A 480 Mbps "high-speed" version of the USB 2.0 connectivity
standard is expected to come out before 2004, and most vendors
are mating it to the "On The Go" (OTG) specification.  USB
On-The-Go products are already being offered by several ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item12

"Borg Aimed for Achievement"
Computer scientist and pioneer Anita Borg, who passed away on
April 7 at the age of 54, dedicated much of her professional life
to encouraging women to pursue careers in the high-tech and
science fields.  "The industry owes Anita, the woman, the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item13

"Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control Robotic Device"
A research team at Georgia Institute of Technology's Laboratory
for Neuroengineering aims to build computing systems whose
performance mirrors that of the human brain.  Their latest
innovation is the Hybrot, a robotic device that is controlled by ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item14

"Halting Nanotech Research 'Illogical', Says Pioneer"
Foresight Institute Chairman Eric Drexler, who coined the term
"nanotechnology," argues that a ban on nanotech research, as
suggested by a team of researchers at the University of Toronto's
Joint Center for Bioethics, makes little sense.  Although he ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item15

"Digital Cells"
Researchers are working to implant computer programs into human
cells so they can fulfill a wide array of functions, including
pollutant cleanup, detection of cancer cells, and the manufacture
of antibiotics or molecule-sized electronics.  Cells have their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item16

"Sliver of the Pie"
IT salaries appear to have more or less flattened, while job
satisfaction has declined 10 percent over the past two years,
according to InformationWeek's 2003 National IT Salary Survey; to
succeed in the current market, IT workers must focus on ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item17

"Leveraging a Global Advantage"
Dynamic, just-in-time software development is being driven by
increases in freelance programmers, open-source skills, and
offshore outsourcing.  The gap between dispersed workers is being
bridged by emerging frameworks and the application of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item18

"Who Loves Ya, Baby?"
Social-network software that visualizes the interactions and
relationships within groups of people promises to radically
transform large organizations.  Mapping social interactions has
become easier thanks to the advent of email, chat rooms, Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.html#item19


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- To review Monday's issue, please visit
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html

-- To visit the TechNews home page, point your browser to:
http://www.acm.org/technews/

-- To unsubscribe from the ACM TechNews Early Alert Service:
Please send a separate email to listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with the line

signoff technews

in the body of your message.

-- Please note that replying directly to this message does not
automatically unsubscribe you from the TechNews list.

-- To submit feedback about ACM TechNews, contact:
technews@xxxxxxxxxx

-- ACM may have a different email address on file for you,
so if you're unable to "unsubscribe" yourself, please direct
your request to: technews-request@xxxxxxx

We will remove your name from the TechNews list on
your behalf.

-- For help with technical problems, including problems with
leaving the list, please write to:  technews-request@xxxxxxx