Clips May 1, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips May 1, 2003

ARTICLES

TSA to Cut 6,000 Airport Security Jobs 
Internet pioneer Barry Leiner dies at 57
GAO: Merge terror watch lists 
Can spam be stopped?
States Object to Spam Legislation 
Music Industry Tries Fear as a Tactic to Stop Online Piracy
The Homeland Security office says USVisit will be phased in later this year
*******************************
Washington Post
TSA to Cut 6,000 Airport Security Jobs 
National to Lose 103 Screeners, BWI to Pare 3; No Cuts Planned at Dulles 
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Thursday, May 1, 2003; Page E06 

The federal government announced a plan yesterday to reduce the number of uniformed federal airport screeners at some major airports and warned that passengers might encounter longer lines at security checkpoints. 

James M. Loy, who heads the Transportation Security Administration, said 3,000 positions will be trimmed from the workforce by May 31 and 3,000 more by Sept. 30. The cuts should save $280 million in the next fiscal year. The agency will depend on normal attrition rates, about 700 to 800 screeners per month, and will also encourage screeners to take part-time jobs. Security supervisors will begin performance evaluations this month and lay off poor performers, if necessary, to reach reduction targets.

In the Washington region, the TSA plans to cut 103 screeners from Reagan National Airport and three from Baltimore-Washington International. At Dulles International Airport, no screeners will be eliminated.

Nationwide, the biggest cuts will come at John F. Kennedy International and Salt Lake City International airports, where the TSA estimates checkpoints are overstaffed by 396 and 385 screeners, respectively. 

Congressional budget leaders have pressed the TSA to reduce its 55,600-screener workforce to save money. It appeared to many travelers and lawmakers that the agency had hired too many security personnel, prompting jokes that its initials stood for "Thousands Standing Around." Loy said the agency initially hired too many screeners at some airports and not enough at others because it used a model based on the private-sector screening workforce that has been used. Also, it at first didn't take into account that most airports are very busy at certain hours but nearly empty at others.

To come up with its reduction targets, the agency assessed staffing needs at airports across the country. Some were found to need additional personnel, and the TSA will offer screeners at overstaffed airports $5,000 each to relocate to ones that are understaffed.

"TSA is entering a new stage in its maturation as an agency," Loy said. "We realize there could be impact on passenger wait times, but we'll be careful of monitoring customer service indices." 

The American Federation of Government Employees, which is trying to organize screeners, said yesterday that it "doesn't favor staff reductions based upon a budget rather than security," according to spokeswoman Diane Witiak. 

TSA officials said that security levels would remain high and that the cuts would improve efficiency. 

Loy also announced yesterday that law enforcement officers will no longer be required to stand guard at each security checkpoint. Beginning May 31, the officers will be assigned to rove around the terminals.

*******************************
Mercury News
Internet pioneer Barry Leiner dies at 57
By Joshua L. Kwan

Internet pioneer Barry Leiner was admired as much for his agile mind as his humble heart -- a rare combination, colleagues said, among the blindingly bright.

Mr. Leiner died of complications from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, on April 2 in Sunnyvale. He was 57.

He is recognized as one of the key people instrumental in the development of the Internet.

``Barry has far more claim to inventing the Internet than Al Gore,'' said Robert Filman, a senior scientist at NASA/Ames Research Center who has worked with Mr. Leiner.

Of Mr. Leiner's many contributions, perhaps the most significant to the growth of the Internet was his leadership in herding a multitude of private companies working on their own systems to share a common language, called TCP/IP, that would become the bedrock for connecting computers around the world, Filman said.

He compared the achievement to persuading the peoples of the world to stop speaking English, French, Russian or Chinese and instead invent and adopt a new language that works even better and allows everyone to communicate with one another.

``He had the organizational foresight to bring people together to work on this,'' Filman said.

One of the benefits of a common, shared language for connecting computers is that no single company controls the Internet, and many Internet experts credit Mr. Leiner for helping ensure the openness of the Internet.

``You can find people who are bright and understand their niche, but he had a sense of where the world ought to be going,'' Filman said.

Ted Linden, who worked with Mr. Leiner for many years, said: ``He asked the tough questions and was technically very astute and he provided a lot of high-level vision for where things were going in the long term.''

Mr. Leiner, who danced among jobs at think tanks, private industry and the government, last worked at Ames Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, where he once served as director.

His talents as a manager may have been honed at home, where he excelled at dissipating arguments between his daughter, Deirdre, and his son, Jason, who is two years younger than his sister.

``He was very fair,'' Deirdre Leiner said. ``When we were children, and my brother and I were arguing, he was just good at resolving disputes.''

Away from work, Mr. Leiner enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren, his daughter said.

``He was very good and very loving with them,'' Deirdre Leiner said. ``My 2-year-old, who doesn't sit still for anything, would always sit on his lap and play on the computer.''

The son of an American G.I. and his British wife, Mr. Leiner was born in 1945 in Liverpool, England. The family moved to the United States soon after his birth.

When he was a college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, Mr. Leiner was introduced to his future wife, Ellen, on a blind date.

``He was just very friendly,'' Ellen Leiner said. ``He was like my best friend. After being married 35 years, you sort of become one person.''

Barry Leiner

Born: Sept. 26, 1945, in Liverpool, England.

Died: April 2, 2003, in Sunnyvale.

Survived by: His wife, Ellen of Sunnyvale; his daughter, Deirdre Leiner, and son-in-law, Andrew McConnell, of Sunnyvale; his son, Jason, of Rocklin; and three grandchildren.

Services: Have been held.

Memorial: In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Barry Leiner's name to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (www.mdausa.org) or the Universities Space Research Association's Educational Scholarship Fund, 10227 Wincopin Circle, Suite 212, Columbia, Md. 21044; (410) 730-2656.
*******************************
Government Computer News
05/01/03 
GAO: Merge terror watch lists 
By Wilson P. Dizard III 

The federal government?s 12 terrorism watch lists, which are spread across nine agencies, should be consolidated into one comprehensive, unified database of individuals who are considered to be threats to the country, the General Accounting Office said. 

The Homeland Security Department has been working for months to consolidate the lists, and Secretary Tom Ridge said recently that the government is close to achieving a coordinated list. 

The congressional audit agency found that the lists ?were developed in response to individual agencies? unique missions, including their respective legal, cultural and systems environments.? 

According to GAO, the lists include ?overlapping but not identical sets of data, and different policies and procedures govern whether and how these lists are shared with others. As a general rule, this sharing is more likely to occur among federal agencies than between federal agencies and either state and local government agencies or private entities.? 

In its report, GAO said HSD has taken responsibility for merging the lists and for the border and transportation security blueprint. But, GAO said, ?We were not provided enough information to evaluate those efforts.? 

A department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. 

A spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman said the Connecticut Democrat considers the lack of list consolidation a major problem. 

Sen. Lieberman ?has long been a critic of the Bush administration?s inability to stem the historical rivalries between intelligence agencies that are highlighted by the GAO report,? the spokeswoman said. 

?Part of the way Sen. Lieberman thought those conflicts would be resolved would be to put the job of consolidating intelligence in the Homeland Security Department,? she said. ?But the administration did not agree and has put the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in the CIA, which is only going to restore and exacerbate the rivalries among the intelligence agencies.? 

Jim Flyzik, a former adviser to Ridge and now a partner in the consulting firm of Guerra, Kiviat and Flyzik, said, ?I know work on consolidating the lists is ongoing. There are a lot of organizational issues to work through. They are working to get agreements in place among the agencies for information sharingit is a fairly complex task.?
*******************************
Computerworld
Can spam be stopped?
By Grant Gross, IDG News Service
MAY 01, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Is there any way to stop the ever-increasing flood of spam? A group of e-mail experts variously suggested better technology, an overhaul of the way the Internet works and new laws -- but they couldn't agree on which approach would work best. 

The panelists at an ongoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) spam conference here couldn't even agree on the definition of spam, with some antispam advocates saying spam is all unsolicited bulk e-mail and some e-mail marketers arguing that spam should be defined more narrowly as unsolicited commercial e-mail that includes false subject lines or misleading e-mail headers. 

"There wouldn't be any solicited commercial e-mail if there wasn't some way to approach these people," protested Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, when other panelists suggested that spam was any unsolicited commercial e-mail. 

Wientzen's comment prompted an outbreak of murmurings from other panelists and audience members, but Laura Atkins, president of the antispam SpamCon Foundation, acknowledged that banning all unsolicited bulk e-mail may not be in line with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment right to free speech. " 'Unsolicited and bulk' may not be the best definition for a law," she said. 

The FTC spam hearing comes after a flurry of activity surrounding spam, from organizations and companies announcing spam research efforts to the introduction of two bills in Congress aimed at curbing the amount of spam. And a measure just signed into law in Virgina makes some spam activities a felony (see story). Estimates at the FTC hearing ranged from 40% to 75% of all e-mail traffic as being spam, and the FTC released a study Tuesday saying two-thirds of all spam contains false information. 

Clifton Royston, a systems architect at LavaNet Inc., said the small Hawaiian Internet service provider with about 12,000 customers paid close to $200,000 last year to fight spam. "That's reflected in everyone's Internet bill," Royston said. "A large part of what you're paying for Internet service is because of spam." 

On Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he planned to introduce a series of antispam bills, including a federal no-spam registry modeled after do-not-call telemarketing registries, criminal and civil penalties for spammers who don't comply and new antifraud measures (see story). Schumer's legislation, like a bill offered by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, would require commercial e-mail to be labeled as advertising, and he rejected criticisms that a no-spam registry would hamper free speech, saying that commercial speech isn't as protected as political speech under the First Amendment. 

"I am saying today that enough is enough," Schumer told the spam conference audience. "It's time to take back the Internet from spammers." 

Members of two morning panels yesterday suggested a number of solutions to the growing amount of spam in e-mail users' in-boxes, although several panelists admitted that their solutions may offer only temporary relief. Rob Courtney, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, cited a study released by his group in mid-March that suggested e-mail harvesting programs are fairly easy to fool by spelling out "at" and "dot" in e-mail addresses on Web sites, thus protecting them from some automated spamming activities. 

But Courtney acknowledged that spammers may eventually catch on. Others suggested a variety of more sophisticated measures, including dynamically generating e-mail addresses on Web pages in JavaScript. 

But William Waggoner, founder of AAW Marketing LLC in Las Vegas, protested that technology techniques like spam filtering are hurting legitimate e-mail marketers. When someone in the audience laughed at that comment, Waggoner fired back, "You think that's funny?" 

Waggoner, who collects e-mail addresses of people who sign up for free trips and products at Web sites, also disputed claims from other panelists that the problem with spam is that sending commercial e-mail is cheap. "If you guys saw my Internet bill every month, it would floor most people in this room," he said. "I don't know what this cheap is about." 

In addition to Schumer's proposed legislation, panelists discussed a bill reintroduced this month by Sens. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. Their bill, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), would allow fines of up to $10 per e-mail to senders of unsolicited e-mail who refuse to stop (see story). 

Wientzen said he supported the CAN-SPAM legislation because it would separate the good e-mail marketers from the bad ones. But marketer Thomas-Carlton Cowles, director of Empire Towers Corp., said technology needs to be the way to solve the problem. "I think we need to get on with it," Wientzen said in support of CAN-SPAM. "If we spend another year or two trying to come up with something which will answer all of the possibilities, let's face it, by the time the government figures out how to get a bill that deals with literally all the problems, the problems will be very different." 

A survey in April of 535 U.S. workers using e-mail, commissioned by e-mail filtering company SurfControl PLC, found that 86% would support legislation that outlaws commercial e-mail with fake headers or misleading subject lines, as the Burns-Wyden bill would do. 

But Christine Gregoire, attorney general for the state of Washington, questioned whether CAN-SPAM would preempt more stringent state antispam laws. She suggested that some of the defenses in the bill are weak, including not holding e-mailers responsible for opt-out notices if their in-boxes are full. "Sorry, my mail box is full with their spam, and that's not a defense," Gregoire said, prompting cheers from the audience of about 350 people. 

In the end, the only way to fix the growing spam problem may be a complete overhaul of the Internet, said Gilson Terriberry, president of the Direct Contact Marketing Group Inc. in Champaign, Ill. Terriberry's company is an e-mail list broker and conducts e-mail and paper mail marketing campaigns for other companies, but the "signal-to-noise" ratio in e-mail is becoming so weighted toward spam that most e-mail users are beginning to delete unrecognized e-mail en masse, he said. 

Direct e-mail campaigns have, in the past, "leveled the playing field for small businesses," Terriberry said. But he said sending out postcards may soon become a more cost-effective method of reaching customers because so many people are ignoring commercial e-mail. "I think that's too bad," he added. 

Terriberry, in an interview after his panel, suggested that some kind of basic change in the architecture of e-mail and e-mail servers is needed, with a less open Internet as the result. He predicted that this approach would take years, since e-mail servers are replaced only slowly. 

"The Internet is designed to be an open relay system," he said. "Everything since then has been designed to patch an open system."
*******************************
Washington Post
States Object to Spam Legislation 
By David McGuire
Wednesday, April 30, 2003; 6:20 PM 

It was just the first day of a Federal Trade Commission forum to address the growing problem of unsolicited bulk e-mail, or "spam," and already cracks began to appear in how best to eliminate the problem.

At the first panel of the three-day conference, Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire (D) announced that 44 states and the District of Columbia would not support two of the U.S. Congress's most vaunted plans to cut down on the proliferating spam plague.

In a letter sent to Congress, the attorneys general said that the CAN-SPAM Act and the Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act would weaken consumer protections in the 27 states that already have anti-spam laws on the books.

The states are concerned because both proposals would preempt state laws, even if those state laws are stronger, Gregoire said in an interview.

Some state laws, for example, allow people to sue spammers. Others require advertising e-mail to be labeled with a subject line beginning with "ADV," and that adult-oriented e-mail also be labeled. Those laws would vanish, the attorneys general said, if some of the legislation Congress is now considering becomes law.

Speaking at the conference, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned that failing to pass a federal anti-spam bill could lead to a "crazy-quilt" of state laws that would be difficult to enforce and navigate.

Sponsored by Wyden and Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), the CAN-SPAM bill could see its best chance of passing this year as public outcry over spam escalates. The bill would allow Internet users to opt out of receiving spam, and it would impose fines of up to $500,000 and a year in jail for marketers who violate consumers' wishes.

The Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act, which Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) plans to introduce on Thursday, would offer a bounty for people who "track down" spammers who do not clearly label their e-mails as advertisements.

CAN-SPAM could be useful to law enforcers in states without spam laws, but "would probably cause a net increase in spam" by weakening existing state rules, said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp., an anti-spam advocacy group. "Settling for a weak bill that stops stronger measures will just allow the problem to get a lot worse."

Direct Marketing Association (DMA) President Robert Wientzen, who supports CAN-SPAM, said that states are using the spam issue as a way to defend their legal sovereignty. "The Internet is not a place to make a states' rights argument." he said.

America Online, the nation's largest ISP, supports the CAN-SPAM bill, but would prefer a federal law that matches the strength of Virginia's anti-spam law, said spokesman Nicholas Graham.

AOL, which recently joined with Yahoo and Microsoft to announce a major crackdown on spam, blocks more than 2.3 billion spam messages every day in response to customer complaints, Graham said.

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) yesterday signed two bills into law that strengthen penalties against spamming. Virginia's law now is the strongest in the nation, considering it a felony when direct marketers falsify their return e-mail addresses and send out an advertisement more than 10,000 times in a 24-hour period.

Maryland prohibits e-mail marketers from falsifying information in the sender's address and subject lines of messages. Violators can be required to pay $500 to each recipient of the e-mail, as well as $500 to the owner of the falsified e-mail address. They also can be forced to pay $1,000 to the Internet service providers that had to handle the spam transmissions.

Washington, D.C., does not have a law against unsolicited bulk e-mail.
*******************************
Los Angeles Times
Music Industry Tries Fear as a Tactic to Stop Online Piracy
Record companies send out legal warnings and song decoys to discourage file sharers.
By Jon Healey
Times Staff Writer

April 30, 2003

Unable to sue file-sharing networks into submission, the music industry is stepping up its campaign to instill fear and frustration among the people who use them to copy songs for free.

The multifaceted effort tries to paint the global networks as seedy realms rife with unseemly and dangerous material  places where computer viruses, kiddie porn and legal woes lurk amid the temptations of free tunes.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America on Tuesday launched the latest element of the campaign, sending intimidating electronic warnings to users of the Kazaa and Grokster file-sharing networks.

The notes, which declare that unauthorized file-sharers "risk legal penalties," are sent via the two networks' instant message systems to anyone offering certain songs for others to copy. They aim to show users with fake names such as "bigfishmouth" and "calebsgirl" that they can be tracked as easily as a surveillance camera records shoplifters.

The not-so-subtle threat is that those who continue flouting the law will be hauled into court. Indeed, some in the music industry say it's time to start suing heavy users of the networks en masse.

As one high-ranking record executive put it, if parents got subpoenas or high school kids confronted the prospect of being viewed as pirates by college admissions personnel, "that begins to affect behavior."

The instant messages are just one of many efforts the entertainment industry has launched in the last few months to make file-sharing networks seem risky and unappealing to users and, in many cases, their parents. But the combination of electronic guerrilla tactics, threats and collaborative crackdowns faces long odds, given that tens of millions of consumers routinely use the networks to download whatever they want for free.

RIAA President Cary Sherman said the latest tactic had been in the works for months but gained urgency after a judge ruled Friday that Grokster's technology didn't violate copyright law.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson held that although network users committed piracy when they made unauthorized copies, the networks themselves weren't liable.

The major record companies and music publishers have been suing the companies that distribute file-sharing software since 1999, and they've won some important legal victories. But they haven't stopped the proliferation of file-sharing networks, the increase in their popularity or the prolonged slide in CD sales that they blame on Internet piracy.

"Everyone knew that this was a long-term problem, that litigation is not a business strategy, that we never intended to rely on litigation as a substitute for a business strategy," Sherman said.

Instead, the companies planned to use lawsuits, enforcement efforts and education "to get consumers to try and migrate to legitimate services."

Those services were extremely limited at first, but their technology and song catalogs have improved rapidly over the last year.

Demonstrating that progress, a slick new downloadable music system from Apple Computer Inc. sold more than 200,000 tracks in its first day, record industry sources said.

To bolster those fledgling ventures, the music industry is attacking the free file-sharing networks outside the courtroom on three fronts:

?  Piercing the veil of anonymity. The new instant-message campaign targets Kazaa and Grokster users who offer any one of several hundred popular songs for copying. The message they'll receive automatically  just once per day, Sherman said  declares that downloading or offering copies of songs without permission is illegal.

The purpose is just to educate users, and the RIAA doesn't plan to take any further action after sending 1 million to 2 million instant messages this week, he said.

What makes this effort different and potentially more effective than the industry's earlier campaigns, though, is that the warnings are going directly to the people whose behavior the industry is eager to change.

The lesson to users, said Michele Anthony, an executive vice president of Sony Music Entertainment, is "there are consequences of that activity, and they are not anonymous."

Lawsuits against individual users have been on hold while the federal courts resolve a battle between the RIAA and Verizon Communications Inc. At issue is how quickly Internet service providers must disclose the identity of alleged file-sharing pirates.

Kazaa and Grokster executives said they didn't object to legitimate and non-intrusive efforts to stop piracy on their networks. But Wayne Rosso, Grokster's president, said the effort was "nothing but a death rattle," adding that Grokster users can block the RIAA's warnings.

"Will it scare our users? I don't know. But I can tell you one thing: Our users are a lot smarter than the RIAA is," Rosso said. "They declared war on their own customers. All we have to do is stand back, and the customers will be heard."

On the other hand, some users are already nervous.

"I feel paranoid that the RIAA will find out and come after us," said a Los Angeles resident who asked that his name not be used. Going after college students in court "kind of works in terms of scaring me away."

?  Gumming up the works. In the weeks leading up to a major release, the record companies have been flooding the file-sharing networks with bogus copies of the songs on that record. Some of them download at an excruciatingly slow pace, making it all the more frustrating for users when they discover that they've been duped.

For example, files on Kazaa that appeared to be advance copies of songs from Madonna's latest album turned out to contain a message recorded by the pop diva: "What the [expletive] do you think you're doing?"

But such decoys lose their effectiveness, anti-piracy experts said, after a CD is released and real copies of the music appear online.

"All this stuff is meant more as a nuisance than a silver-bullet solution," said Randy Saaf, president of MediaDefender Inc., a Los Angeles-based anti-piracy firm. "It's the aggregate of all these tools together that's the music industry's best chance of reclaiming its lost market share."

The efforts may already be working on some consumers.

Noting the shortcomings on the file-sharing networks, Kyle Brinkman, a 32-year-old music fan from Santa Monica, said, "I think the new Apple service trumps Grokster. I'd pay a dollar to avoid the hassles."

?  Playing up the risks. The record companies have tried to make consumers nervous about connecting to file-sharing systems, and not just for fear of a piracy lawsuit.

They've played up the computer viruses on the networks  at least six have been distributed by Kazaa, Sherman claims  and the danger of inadvertently sharing personal documents and information.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the House Committee on Government Reform have started trumpeting the risks of file sharing, recently holding or scheduling hearings on child pornography, privacy and security on file-sharing networks.

The committee is doing as much as it can to "get the word out to parents about the amount of pornography that's easily available on these sites," spokesman David Marin said, including urging talk-radio hosts to take up the issue.

The music labels also have pressed colleges, universities and corporations to police their networks to avoid legal liability and reduce telecommunications costs. Those efforts have led Penn State University and the U.S. Naval Academy, among other institutions, to take well-publicized disciplinary actions against file sharers on campus.
*******************************
Information Week
The Homeland Security office says USVisit will be phased in later this year, recording fingerprints, iris patterns, and photos.
By Eric Chabrow 
 
It's known as USVisit, and by year's end it will use photos, fingerprints, and iris scans to create an electronic check-in and check-out system for foreign nationals entering the U.S. to work or study. 
"The basic idea is fairly straightforward," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in address Tuesday at the National Press Club, announcing the U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology System. "We want to keep terrorists out without compromising the welcoming mat." 

USVisit also will be a crucial law-enforcement tool to locate foreign visitors who overstay or violate terms of their visas, Ridge said. 

For the complete story, see:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=P4V0GZKXITDNAQSNDBCCKH0CJUMEYJVN?articleID=9400188
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 491
Date: May 5, 2003

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Top Stories for Monday, May 5, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy"
"High-Tech Hardships"
"Server Makers Tout InfiniBand Sequel"
"Finding Solution to Secret World of Spam"
"Intel to Release Machine Learning Libraries"
"International Backlash"
"New Century Will Develop Language Capabilities Critical to
 Nation's Security"
"Technology Now Being Tested Could Integrate Cellular and Wi-Fi
 Networks"
"Chairman Leads Surprisingly Vigilant FTC"
"Next-Generation Data Storage Gets Interesting"
"Intel Teaches Computers to Lip-Read"
"The Grammar of Sound"
"Technology Takes to the Road"
"The Congressional Corral"
"Wanted: More Wi-Fi Waves"
"The State of Embedded Speech"
"Six Technologies That Will Change the World"

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

"Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy"
The music industry is clandestinely developing a barrage of
technical weapons to use against online music pirates, including
programs that freeze users' computers, slow their Internet
connections, and perform seek-and-destroy searches on their hard ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item1

"High-Tech Hardships"
The H-1B program, which Congress expanded three years ago to
alleviate a shortage of high-tech workers due to the industry
boom, has come under fire since the tech implosion and massive
cost-cutting layoffs of domestic employees.  "The H-1B program ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item2

"Server Makers Tout InfiniBand Sequel"
Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is a slower, albeit cheaper,
alternative to the InfiniBand high-speed networking technology
that IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and others are developing
so that high-end database servers can be assembled from low-end ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item3

"Finding Solution to Secret World of Spam"
Tracking down senders of spam is a difficult proposition, given
that most bulk emailers transmit their messages under false names
and addresses to thwart authorities.  America Online, the Direct
Marketing Association, and others claim that some 150 to 200 spam ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item4

"Intel to Release Machine Learning Libraries"
Intel plans to release a series of Bayesian network software
libraries at the Neural Information Processing Systems 2003
conference on June 6.  It is hoped that the release will enable
software developers to incorporate improved machine learning ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item5

"International Backlash"
Changes may be in store for the way in which IT services and
back-end business processes are outsourced as advocates of IT
workers in the United States and Europe increase their pressure
on government officials to support the local job market.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item6

"New Century Will Develop Language Capabilities Critical to
 Nation's Security"
Human computer interaction and machine (computer) translation
will be among the focuses of research at the Center for Advanced
Study of Language (CASL), a new collaborative federal research
facility at the University of Maryland's new 130-acre research ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item7

"Technology Now Being Tested Could Integrate Cellular and Wi-Fi
 Networks"
Efforts are underway to develop technologies that merge cellular
and Wi-Fi networks; integrating the networks would enable users
to seamlessly take advantage of both Wi-Fi's small-area networks
and cellular's wide-area connectivity.  As demand for 2.5G ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item8

"Chairman Leads Surprisingly Vigilant FTC"
FTC Chairman Timothy Muris appears to be quelling many critics
who thought the vigilance of the commission, under his direction,
would take a back seat to business concerns, writes Dan Gillmor.
Muris' zealousness is demonstrated by the more proactive strategy ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item9

"Next-Generation Data Storage Gets Interesting"
Forthcoming and already available storage technologies boast
features that aim to embed intelligence in storage networks so
that companies can better comply with regulations and align data
management to business goals.  International Data (IDC) research ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item10

"Intel Teaches Computers to Lip-Read"
Intel's Audio Visual Speech Recognition software is an
open-source speech recognition program that uses face detection
algorithms from the company's OpenCV computer vision library to
read lips in an effort to improve the accuracy of speech ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item11

"The Grammar of Sound"
Fast-Talk Communications, a spinoff out of Georgia Tech, has
developed a new way to search audio files by parsing sound
instead of text.  While finding a term in audio files usually
means text transcription and tagging phrases or words, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item12

"Technology Takes to the Road"
Cars and driving are undergoing a metamorphosis thanks to
advanced technologies being incorporated into automotive systems,
including enhanced navigation, damage avoidance, and
entertainment.  Audi's drive-by-wire throttle improves engine ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item13

"The Congressional Corral"
Legislation not only threatens to restrict the way consumers use
technology, but the development of technology itself.  The music
and movie industries prompted legislation from Sen. Ernest
"Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.) last year that would have mandated ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item14

"Wanted: More Wi-Fi Waves"
Telecommunications analysts say Starbucks, McDonald's, Borders,
and many others are making Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) ubiquitous,
but they are concerned that a lack of spectrum availability will
stunt the growth of the emerging market.  The Precursor Group's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item15

"The State of Embedded Speech"
The importance of embedded speech technology, in which speech
recognition, text-to-voice (TTV), speaker identification, speaker
verification, and other tasks can be performed on a single
device, is growing thanks to the same computing power ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item16

"Six Technologies That Will Change the World"
Of six potentially revolutionary technologies, the most visionary
are products of academic research.  Cynthia Breazeal of MIT's
Robotic Life Group is developing sociable robots that could one
day perform tasks that rely on expressive ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0505m.html#item17


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