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Clips March 19, 2003



Clips March 19, 2003

ARTICLES

Marking File Traders as Felons
236,000 Tech Jobs Were Cut in 2002 
Taking Aim at Military Technology  
Iraq war could herald a new age of Web-based news coverage

*******************************
Wired News
Marking File Traders as Felons
March 19, 2003
02:00 AM Mar. 19, 2003 PT

Some students have been downloading copyrighted files since they were in junior high and seem to think it's a perfectly legitimate activity, Steinbach said. When they get to college, their ability to keep doing it is facilitated by many universities' large network capacity. 

"We have a unique opportunity and obligation to teach young men and women about the rights and obligations surrounding intellectual property," he said.

Spanier said Penn State's approach is to educate students about illegal file trading and to enforce the rules within the university judicial system. 

At Penn State, students are limited to 1.5 GB of inbound or outbound traffic per week. If students exceed that allotment, they are given a series of warnings. After the third warning, their network access is terminated. 

If the school receives a notice from the RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America or other group that a student has violated copyright, the student will lose his or her network access and the school's office of judicial affairs will investigate the allegations. 

Penn State also has an ongoing educational program on the topic of file sharing. 

Universities could also explore developing a licensing arrangement with a music service that could give students free but legal access to music, Spanier said. The IT staff at Penn State is looking into this very idea. 

"In the eyes of some members of Congress, it would have a way of turning thousands of criminals into good citizens overnight," he said. 

One college network administrator said threatening jail time is not likely to stop illegal file trading. 

"I'm not sure that approaching this with a bigger hammer is going to help very much," said John Lerchey, computer and network security administrator at Carnegie Mellon University. "Whatever they are going to do (to discourage illegal file trading) has got to be consistent, and it's got to be very widespread. 

"I've heard from students that as long as the chance of them getting caught remains low, they're likely to continue to do peer-to-peer file sharing, regardless if they are violating copyright laws," Lerchey said. 

Colleges have not found an effective way to stop the problem of online piracy despite an increase in notices of violations from copyright holders. 

Lerchey said that in the past few months, Carnegie Mellon has received, on average, about four requests per week from groups like the MPAA and RIAA to take action against pirates. Over the past few weeks, though, Universal Studios has bumped up the number of notices it sends to CMU to 20 or 30 per day, he said. 

When a request comes in, the offending machine is disconnected from the network, and the user typically loses network access for a set period of time. The school has not had a problem with repeat offenders. 

Still, for the time being, illegal file trading continues to grow on college campuses. Penn State's Spanier testified before the congressional subcommittee on intellectual property that it's a fair estimate that thousands of students on Penn's campus -- and other universities around the country -- illegally download copyrighted materials. 

"I actually think (piracy is) aggravating for everyone involved," Lerchey said. "It does take up time and energy -- there is a lot of things that I would rather be doing with my time. It's certainly an inconvenience for the people who get busted, and it's likely costing the MPAA and RIAA money because they are spending a lot of time looking for this stuff."
*******************************
Washington Post
236,000 Tech Jobs Were Cut in 2002 
In Past 2 Years, 10% of Sector's Workers Were Laid Off 
By Ellen McCarthy

Technology workers who hoped 2002 would bring an end to layoffs were probably disappointed, according to a new report that said the sector lost 236,000 more jobs last year. 

In 2001, 324,000 jobs were lost.

The American Electronics Association's Tech Employment Update said the nation's technology industry shed 10 percent of its jobs in the past two years, with high-tech manufacturing workers taking the biggest hit. Of the 560,000 jobs lost between January 2001 and December 2002, 415,000 were high-tech manufacturing positions, including computer, electronic and communication equipment makers. 

"We knew it was going down; I guess I was surprised it was that much," said William T. Archey, the association's president and chief executive. "I think that everybody and their brother and aunt and uncle are waiting for this economy to turn around."

The report, based on surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said declines were recorded in every month of 2002.

The communication service sector lost 135,000 positions, while software and computer-related services cut 9,300 jobs during the last two years.

Archey said some of the high-tech manufacturing positions that were lost may not return with an economic rebound because production innovations have reduced the number of workers needed. And while he declined to forecast the time frame for a turnaround, Archey said it would depend, in part, on the strength of foreign markets. 

"This is not a function of the U.S. economy" said Archey, who called technology "an industry that looks at the world as the marketplace, not just the United States."

Companies that tried to hang on to employees though 2001 were forced to shed workers when it became clear that spending would not pick up in 2002, said Maria Schafer, a program director with Meta Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn., research and consulting firm. Schafer also said she did not expect a rebound in tech employment during 2003.

"I think it's not going to happen until 2004, probably sometime in the first quarter. A lot depends on this war situation -- that is dampening a lot of sectors," Schafer said. "Budgets are pretty much done right now, so whatever you've got, you've got. It's the corporate spending side of this that is going to determine when we come out."

While job losses have affected technology sectors across the board, Archey said a few bright spots have emerged in recent months.

"I think that if you work in the field of software you should feel pretty optimistic about your own future and that of the industry, because software continues to grow," he said. "The medical technology business is going very well. There is a limitless demand for high-end medical technology."
*******************************
Wired News
Taking Aim at Military Technology  
March 19, 2003


As America is poised to launch into a high-tech war in Iraq, a growing group of military thinkers is questioning the U.S. military's reliance on gadgetry. 

U.S. precision weapons, Predator drones, and the like were less responsible for recent victories in Afghanistan and in the first Gulf War than is generally assumed, they argue. And increasing American dependence on technology leaves U.S. troops dangerously vulnerable to low-tech attacks.

"Just as technology gives you capabilities, it also gives you an Achilles heel," said Deborah Avant, a George Washington University international affairs professor. "It becomes something you have to protect." 

In Afghanistan, the conventional wisdom goes, all it took was a handful of Special Forces, some spy sensors, and a few thousand smart bombs to roll over al Qaeda and the Taliban. But that's a myth, according to Army War College professor Stephen Biddle. 

Predator drones and other advanced spy sensors were only sporadically effective in Afghanistan, Biddle argues in a recent study (PDF). Before the battle of Takur Ghar -- one of the bloodiest in the Afghan campaign -- a massive U.S. reconnaissance effort "focused every available surveillance system on a tiny, 10-by-10 kilometer battlefield," Biddle notes. But despite all the technology used, Americans couldn't find more than half of the al Qaeda positions there before the fight. 

Smart-bomb attacks did little to alter the equation, either. In the battles of Takur Ghar and Bai Beche, day after day of American precision bombing failed to take out dug-in al Qaeda defenders. Only American and Northern Alliance ground forces could evict bin Laden's troops from their positions. 

That's evidence, in Biddle's eyes, that Afghanistan was a "surprising orthodox" military campaign, one determined largely by in-close, on-the-ground effort of our allies' infantry. 

Jim Lewis, an analyst with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, thinks Biddle is just rehashing an age-old military argument. 

"Fliers have been saying since about 1912 that you don't need an army because air power can (win a war)," Lewis writes in an e-mail. "The Army always pushes back and says, 'no, you need well-trained, well-led ground pounders.'" 

Biddle acknowledges that the new technologies offer a "major increase in air power's lethality." But having better toys is no guarantee of military triumph, he notes. American losses in Somalia and Vietnam are but two examples of this. 

Nevertheless, the Pentagon seems poised for a high-tech approach, both in Iraq, and going forward decades into the future. Its major thrust for weapons development, the Future Combat Systems initiative, leans heavily on "networked warfare" -- the idea that every infantryman, every pilot, every drone and every general will share everything they see and hear over a new Internet for combat. 

Giving small groups a common set of information makes sense, military observers say. The advantages of linking together every last soldier to one another, however, are murky, at best. 

Generals in Tampa were able to observe the battle of Takur Ghar through the eyes of a Predator drone flying overhead. That didn't stop seven American servicemen from getting killed, and another 11 from being injured there. 

"More information to more people does not necessarily lead to victory in combat," said Jeff Cares, president of Alidade Incorporated, a defense consulting group. "Much of it is a waste of time -- just creating more work for ourselves. And when every person is sending every last detail, it makes it harder for the really important (information) to stand out."

Moreover, as military-information networks become more and more central to how our forces fight, they become an increasingly ripe target to attack. Why fight American soldiers directly if you can take down their Internet? 

"Any capability leads to a parallel vulnerability," said Kenneth Allard, a retired Army colonel, now a professor in Georgetown University's National Securities Studies program. 

For now, many soldiers can do their jobs just fine without plugging into military networks. In the future, however, as the military grows more reliant on information technology, that may not be as possible. Artillery gunners accustomed to network-delivered, ultra-precise targeting information might find themselves at a loss if they suddenly need to go back to paper-based targeting tables. Similarly, the fog of war might get a whole lot thicker for infantrymen if the network goes down, and they have a hard time finding fellow soldiers. And smart munitions could get a whole lot dumber if satellite links are severed. Adversaries may not have to do much in order to dismantle this core asset. The Defense Department's "IT infrastructure is expensive, limited in capabilities, subject to chronic technical and operator-induced failures, and vulnerable to attack," John Gentry, a retired lieutenant colonel and defense analyst with the Mitre Corporation, writes in a recent article in Pa!
ra!
mete
rs, an Army professional journal. 

To Cares, the problem isn't that the U.S. military is relying too heavily on such networks -- it's that the Pentagon isn't embracing information technology tightly enough. The Defense Department is merely grafting network connections onto existing battle plans, he argues, rather than allowing IT to revolutionize how wars are fought. 

But it's easy to understand why such a wholesale transition might be avoided, when crippling a military network could be done, conceivably, for about $400. 

That's how much it would cost to put together a crude flux compression generator -- a so-called "e-bomb" that could fry circuitry for miles around, according to Robert Williscroft, an editor at DefenseWatch. Connect a capacitor bank to some copper coil, wrap the wire around an explosives-packed tube, and set it off in a strategic spot. Suddenly, a military growing increasingly dependent on its electronic eyes and ears would be nearly deaf and dumb. 

It seems like awful shaky ground on which to base your defenses. But then again, when it comes to technology, the Pentagon has always been willing to take a leap of faith. 

*******************************
USA Today
Iraq war could herald a new age of Web-based news coverage
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
March 19, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO  Radio had World War II. Television had Vietnam. Cable TV had the Gulf War. Now, the Internet may have the U.S. war with Iraq.

CNN, ABC and other TV networks have ambitious online plans to bring viewers to the frontlines after a trial attempt last year in Afghanistan. The Taliban's ban of the Internet made it difficult then for reporters to file online, forcing many to use satellite phones.

This time, reporters and producers with wireless laptops and handheld digital cameras will file reports from battlefields and military installations. Cameras are at key locations for live feeds 24 hours a day. Interactive, 3-D maps will update troop movements, casualties and weapons used.

"You're combining the speed of television with the depth of print," says Mitch Gelman, executive producer of CNN.com. "This could define how future wars are covered."

And, perhaps, determine whether consumers are willing to pay for war coverage. CNN.com and ABCNews.com have both started selling enhanced services such as TV-quality video on broadband by monthly subscription.

Whether surfers will pay for online news is a growing debate within the broadcast industry. So far, few have signed up for content that's often available elsewhere for free. "I'm skeptical of people paying for video news at work when they can watch it on TV later," says analyst David Card of market researcher Jupiter Research. "But because it's war and on-demand video, some might try it out."

Even without fees, there are benefits for broadcasters. With high-speed Net use spreading in offices and homes  bringing TV-quality video to personal computers  networks see an opportunity to reach millions of viewers who don't have daytime TV access. Larger Web audiences, as in TV, translate to more ad revenue.

There are some 28.2 million broadband connections in U.S. offices and 36.2 million in homes, says Nielsen//NetRatings Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who use Net video or audio has nearly doubled, to 44%, since 2000, says Arbitron's MeasureCast.

Networks' online plans:

CNN.com. A War Tracker page will continuously feature live and taped video reports from the frontline. CNN Radio will be available live on the site the first 48 hours of a potential conflict. Two-minute video updates every hour, which cost extra, will be produced exclusively for the Web. 
To put it all in context, CNN.com will unveil 3-D charts that track bombs dropped, Iraqi defections and casualties. Battlefield maps will depict military strikes, troop movements and terrain. "At any time, you'll be able to click on an interactive map and see how the war is going," Gelman says.

ABCNews.com. Correspondents and producers will file streamlined live and taped reports. That will be a staple of ABC News Live, a paid service for broadband Internet users. Fixed TV cameras will be trained on locations in Kuwait and Qatar 24 hours. 
A virtual control room on the site lets viewers toggle between four screens at once to view coverage, says general manager Bernard Gershon.

MSNBC.com. Chat rooms will let viewers ask correspondents questions. New, more portable (140 lbs. vs. 550 in Afghanistan) satellite video transmitters that run off car cigarette lighters will be used. "It's not a stretch to say our reporters in Iraq can file almost as easily as they can (in New York)," says editor-in-chief Dean Wright. 

CBSNews.com. Besides free video, the site is rich with maps and backgrounders on weaponry and political history that put the conflict into context. Correspondents are "multitasking" with online notebooks and video feeds in addition to their network chores, says Betsy Morgan, who oversees CBSNews.com. 

FoxNews.com. The War on Terror page includes a correspondent tracker with video clips from the front, a War At Home section with features on how the war affects Americans and videos on key weapons. 

Given the eight-hour (ET) time difference with Iraq, a growing broadband market and developing wireless laptop technology, the Net will "be on parity with TV and other media audiences for the first time during a major news event," says Merrill Brown, former MSNBC editor who is now with video-streaming leader RealNetworks.
*******************************


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the March 19, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 471
Date: March 19, 2003

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Top Stories for Wednesday, March 19, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"U.S. Heightens Cybersecurity Monitoring"
"236,000 Tech Jobs Were Cut in 2002"
"Senate Wants Oversight of CAPPS II Program"
"Computer Virus Writers Mostly Obsessed Males--Expert"
"NASA Launches New IT R&D Programs"
"Redesigning the Net to Save It From Spam"
"Apple Dips Toes Into Clustering"
"PARC Cedes AspectJ Technology to Eclipse"
"Setting a Course for Shipshape Software"
"Chip Device Gets to the Point"
"Open Source Gets Booster Program"
"Privacy Advocate Warns of Microchip Invasion"
"Software Issues Hinder Bluetooth Interoperability"
"Virtual Reality Training and Terrorist Attack Preparation"
"Real World Robots"
"Flu Shots for Computers"
"Microprocessors March On"
"Harnessing Quantum Bits"

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

"U.S. Heightens Cybersecurity Monitoring"
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced that it
is stepping up its Internet monitoring efforts as the U.S.
prepares for war with Iraq.  The department will work with other
government agencies to "monitor the Internet for signs of a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item1

"236,000 Tech Jobs Were Cut in 2002"
The U.S. technology industry lost 236,000 jobs last year,
according to the American Electronics Association's Tech
Employment Update, and has lost 10 percent of its workforce in
the last two years.  Many of the jobs were lost in the high-tech ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item2

"Senate Wants Oversight of CAPPS II Program"
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has called for congressional oversight of
the Transportation Security Administration's proposed Computer
Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II).  Wyden also
led the legislation that cancelled funding for the Total ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item3

"Computer Virus Writers Mostly Obsessed Males--Expert"
Virus writers are mostly socially inadequate males, between 14-
and 34-years-old, who are obsessed with computers and creating
self-replicating code.  This generalization was offered by Jan
Hruska, CEO of U.K.-based Sophos, the world's fourth-largest ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item4

"NASA Launches New IT R&D Programs"
NASA's Advanced Information Systems Technology program has
selected 20 IT projects for funding, with the goal of building
more efficient, less costly systems for in-flight use and on the
ground.  Altogether, the selected projects will receive $19.4 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item5

"Redesigning the Net to Save It From Spam"
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on Thursday is
convening for the first time a physical meeting where anti-spam
experts and Internet engineers will discuss radical solutions to
solving the problem of unwanted email.  Companies such as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item6

"Apple Dips Toes Into Clustering"
Apple Computer has tailored its Xserve machine for clustered
settings, joining the popular trend toward networking server
computers for greater processing power.  So-called Beowulf
clusters are commonly built using cheap Intel-based servers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item7

"PARC Cedes AspectJ Technology to Eclipse"
Developers dealing with large software systems will soon have
open-source access, through the Eclipse project, to the AspectJ
Java language extension.  Created at the Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC) with funding from the Department of Defense, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item8

"Setting a Course for Shipshape Software"
Economic belt-tightening means companies must better utilize
resources, and this traditional concept is carrying over into the
IT department in the form of more efficient software that is
focused on business performance.  Whereas free-wheeling IT ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item9

"Chip Device Gets to the Point"
University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers have built a
microelectromechanical system (MEMS) positioner that is able to
move individual atoms, a development that could give rise to
ultra-high capacity data storage and molecule-size machines.  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item10

"Open Source Gets Booster Program"
A new hybrid software licensing program promises to let vendors
reap profits from their product while reassuring buyers their
purchases do not lead to proprietary lock-in.  Former U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer Tony Stanco is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item11

"Privacy Advocate Warns of Microchip Invasion"
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) holds tremendous promise
for manufacturers and retailers in being able to control their
inventory and product, but also market to individuals based on
databased personal information.  This information could be ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item12

"Software Issues Hinder Bluetooth Interoperability"
Bluetooth devices may or may not interoperate, depending on which
software profiles they have installed, warned a panel at the CTIA
Wireless 2003 showcase in New Orleans.  Although hardware
interoperability was pretty much "watertight," CSR's Eric Janson ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item13

"Virtual Reality Training and Terrorist Attack Preparation"
The University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) plans to develop a virtual
reality system to train police officers, firefighters, and
hazardous material personnel, especially in regard to possible
terrorist acts, says Dr. Ming Leu, a professor in the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item14

"Real World Robots"
Real world applications for robots, or machines that make
decisions by themselves, are on the rise.  At the hospital at the
University of California, San Francisco, for example, a
600-pound, five-foot robotic cabinet called Elvis carries blood ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item15

"Flu Shots for Computers"
Researchers have applied computing to biology to map the human
genome, but now biology is being applied to computing to fight
electronic viruses and worms.  Sana Security has borrowed the
concept of the human immune system in its effort to create ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item16

"Microprocessors March On"
Chipmakers expect to get another 10 years or so of progress out
of the silicon semiconductor before it may be necessary to switch
to another technology, but even now as the number of transistors
per chip proceeds toward a billion, the cost of designing and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item17

"Harnessing Quantum Bits"
Quantum computers designed to exploit the unique nature of
quantum physics to carry out calculations far beyond the capacity
of conventional computers have begun to move out of the
conceptual phase, thanks to pioneering work by researchers such ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0319w.html#item18


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the April 28, 2003 edition of ACM TechNews,
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service, please see below.

ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM
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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

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 488
Date: April 28, 2003

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     performance-packed products and comprehensive services.
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Top Stories for Monday, April 28, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal"
"As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise"
"In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws"
"Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight"
"Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?"
"IT: More About People Than Technology"
"E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan"
"Gadgets Go Back to Basics"
"Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation"
"So Many Countries, So Many Laws"
"Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones"
"Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman"
"Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United
 States"
"Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition"
"Scientists Test Wider Use of IP"
"Messaging Convergence"
"Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers"
"A Sensor Model Language"

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

"Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal"
The music and movie industries lost an important suit against
file-trading software firms Streamcast Networks and Grokster on
April 25, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled the
defendants were not liable for illegal use of their products.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item1

"As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise"
Glitches are becoming more commonplace as software becomes
embedded in more and more everyday appliances, but although most
bugs are merely an annoyance, some can lead to fatal errors:  A
1997 airplane disaster in Guam was partly attributed to a buggy ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item2

"In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws"
A plethora of privacy legislation awaits Congress when it
reconvenes next week, and Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation thinks Internet privacy issues will again become a
priority now that the war against Iraq is nearly over.  Sens. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item3

"Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight"
AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have overcome their rivalry to team up
in an anti-spam initiative that they hope will lay the foundation
for a wider industry endeavor.  "We're putting spammers on notice
that the industry will collaborate to drive the bad guys out of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item4

"Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?"
While Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and IBM continue with
fat-thread processors that handle huge amounts of work speedily,
Sun Microsystems is developing a four-processor chip for release
by 2005.  Each processor performs slowly compared to those from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item5

"IT: More About People Than Technology"
A study of IT at eight hospitals by University of Notre Dame
researchers Rajiv Kohli and Sarv Devaraj finds that analyzing
actual IT usage rather than technology investment is a better way
to determine IT's repercussions on organizational performance.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item6

"E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan"
A coalition of 28 online advertisers has developed "Project
Lumos," a plan that will hold companies in their industry more
accountable for the email that they send.  The Network
Advertising Initiative's Email Service Provider Coalition (NAI ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item7

"Gadgets Go Back to Basics"
Hewlett-Packard's U.K. research labs in Bristol will be the site
of an international conference May 6 to May 8 highlighting new
technologies and gadgets.  Today's researchers are urging
developers to create tools that are truly useful.  University ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item8

"Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation"
Dan Gillmor hopes that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's $98,000
grant to the Open Source Applications (OSA) Foundation's Chandler
Project in March portends a surge of philanthropic investments to
ensure the openness and universal availability of tomorrow's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item9

"So Many Countries, So Many Laws"
E-commerce was supposed to support border-free online trade, but
an international e-commerce architecture that shields the rights
of retailers or shoppers and deters digital piracy has not been
established, despite years of negotiations.  As a result, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item10

"Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones"
As Wi-Fi technology's popularity surges, companies are developing
ways to integrate Wi-Fi networks with Web-enabled cell phones and
wireless Internet devices.  The goal is to create devices that
take advantage of Wi-Fi's easy Internet access when users are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item11

"Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman"
At the Embedded Systems Conference held April 23 in San
Francisco, ARM Holdings Chairman Robin Saxby said the electronics
arena will be led by medical devices within 10 years.  He said
the devices will be handheld as well as implanted within bodies, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item12

"Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United
 States"
The "Sixth Status Report Under ICANN/US Government Memorandum of
Understanding," dated March 31, 2003, describes an ICANN that
functions like Brownian motion, writes ICANN board member Karl
Auerbach.  Brownian motion is a concept pertaining to the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item13

"Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition"
A forerunner to this summer's international RoboCup 2003 in Italy
will be next week's first American Open of robot soccer in
Pittsburgh, where autonomous machines designed by academic teams
will compete without human assistance.  The robots are programmed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item14

"Scientists Test Wider Use of IP"
NASA is pioneering mobile static IP connections that could be
used to connect devices both in space and on earth.  The first
demonstration of the Mobile IP protocol, developed together with
Cisco, was in November, when NASA researchers set up a system in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item15

"Messaging Convergence"
Industry players are rallying behind the open-source eXtensible
Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) messaging protocol in
answer to the SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging
Extensions (SIMPLE) protocol advocated by Microsoft and IBM.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item16

"Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers"
Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner writes that honeypots are
unique because they can be applied to multiple problems, unlike
most current security solutions; they can be deployed on a
variety of platforms and are available commercially, as free ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item17

"A Sensor Model Language"
The Open GIS Consortium (OGC), whose members include NASA, EPA,
and the National Imaging and Mapping Agency, is building and
testing a standard XML encoding framework that could facilitate
the remote discovery, access, and use of real-time or stored ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item18

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