ACM TechNews - Wednesday, November 20, 2002

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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 425
Date: November 20, 2002

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Top Stories for Wednesday, November 20, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable"
"Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity"
"Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens"
"H-1B Program Gets More Heat"
"Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying"
"Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore"
"Faster Than Speed of Byte"
"For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics"
"Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer"
"A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls"
"Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World"
"Webs Within Web Boost Searches"
"Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales"
"MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show"
"New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity"
"Loosening Up the Airwaves"
"Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again"
"Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music"
"A Many-Handed God"

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

"Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable"
A panel of security experts at the Comdex trade show said that
the Internet's vulnerability to exploitation is a fact of life,
and everyone--businesses as well as home users--must pitch in to
make it more secure.  Counterpane Internet Security CTO and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item1

"Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity"
U.S. businesses increased productivity by about 2 percent each
year from 1995 to 2000, and one-third of that increase was
attributable to technology, according to consulting firm McKinsey
& Co.  The new report helps clarify what made technology more ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item2

"Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens"
Critics of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and
its provisions will be able to submit their opinions to the
Copyright Office either by mail or online until Dec. 18.  The
last time the department accepted DMCA-related comments in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item3

"H-1B Program Gets More Heat"
The H-1B visa program that American employers use to bring in
foreign labor to fill mostly IT-related jobs has attracted
criticism from both domestic and foreign employees.  Norman
Matloff of the University of California, Davis, argues that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item4

"Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying"
An earlier ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court declaring that domestic police agencies and spy agencies
must be separated in order to protect Americans' privacy was
overturned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item5

"Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore"
Almost 1 million IT jobs will be farmed out overseas over the
next 15 years, predicts a new report from Forrester Research,
which warns that such a development could threaten the positions
of base- to mid-level American programmers unless they acquire ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item6

"Faster Than Speed of Byte"
The NEC Earth Simulator in Japan is currently the world's fastest
computer, but IBM aims to recapture that title with a $267
million contract to build a pair of supercomputers for nuclear
weapons modeling and other research at Lawrence Livermore ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item7

"For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) last week revised several
documents detailing the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and
the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which relate to the Semantic
Web, a future version of the Internet envisioned to better ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item8

"Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer"
Computer science professor Bill Smart of Washington University in
St. Louis has created a robot that is programmed to move
throughout environments, taking candid photographs of people as a
way to integrate and demonstrate the applicability of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item9

"A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls"
Critics of computerized touch-screen voting machines, which saw
use in the recent congressional election, maintain that a paper
record is especially necessary to ensure that the votes cast are
accurate.  Bryn Mawr College computer science professor and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item10

"Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World"
A recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that the
Internet will evolve into a "global networked computing utility"
stemming from the intersection of grid computing, ubiquitous
computing, IP dial tone, and computing as a utility; these trends ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item11

"Webs Within Web Boost Searches"
Web researcher Filippo Menczer of the University of Iowa is
working to build a mathematical model that will provide more
comprehensive search engine results based on text similarity and
links between Web pages.  While current search engine techniques ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item12

"Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales"
Hyperthreading technology from Intel promises--and appears to
deliver--greater performance for processors.  The company picked
up the reins from the defunct Digital Equipment and developed the
ability to build CPUs with two sets of "registers" that would ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item13

"MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show"
MEMS developers and manufacturers spoke excitedly about the
prospects of their sector at the recent Electronica 2002 trade
show in Munich.  MEMS sensors for automobiles have started
hitting mass production, comprising one-eighth of the market for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item14

"New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity"
Researchers led by chemistry professor John Fourkas of Boston
College's Merkert Chemistry Center report in the December issue
of Nature Materials that they have discovered stable and cheap
fluorescent materials capable of storing 3D data at high ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item15

"Loosening Up the Airwaves"
The federal government is working to create new opportunities for
the wireless industry in America, hoping to spur investment and
make the market more competitive on the global scene.  The FCC
and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item16

"Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again"
Educators, politicians, parents, community activists, and
businesses must take a creative approach to bridging the "digital
divide" as the Bush administration seeks to cut key technology
programs and put more money toward anti-terrorism efforts, writes ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item17

"Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music"
The music industry's triumph over Napster, which record labels
shut down in an effort to protect their content from piracy and
boost flagging CD sales, was short-lived, since more open
peer-to-peer networks have proven to be harder to dislodge.  In ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item18

"A Many-Handed God"
Nanotechnology can be applied to many industries, but it is the
electronics industry that is attracting the most interest.
Although nanotech is already being used in disk drive heads and
magnetic media, for instance, research is proceeding apace into ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item19


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