ACM TechNews - Friday, March 7, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 466
Date: March 7, 2003

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Top Stories for Friday, March 7, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Silicon Valley Reels Under Job Losses"
"Spectrum Allocation Draws Intense Debate"
"E-Mail Flaw Tests U.S. Safety Net"
"Analysis: Warnings About Cyber-Terrorism Are Overblown"
"Net Speed Record Smashed"
"Getting to Know All About You"
"White House Launches Technological Peace Corps"
"Disorder in the Court"
"Internet Vulnerabilities Caught in BIND"
"Who's Minding the E-Store?"
"Swimming With MIT's Virtual Fish"
"Andreessen: 'The Valley Is Going to Save the Valley'"
"Tech Firm Alliance, Not Group of Pols, Can Defeat Pirates"
"Toshiba Unveils Innovative Fuel Cell"
"Unjaded and Jubilant at TED"
"Tomorrow's 5G Cell Phone"
"Tag, You're It"
"The Man in the Middle"
"Look Ma, No Hands!"

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

"Silicon Valley Reels Under Job Losses"
Thousands of technology workers shaken out by the Silicon Valley
job implosion, now in its third year, are re-evaluating their
career prospects, while thousands more are hoping to re-enter the
tech market by beefing up their resume and interviewing skills.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item1

"Spectrum Allocation Draws Intense Debate"
Industry officials, academics, and policy makers hashed out ideas
on radio spectrum allocation at a recent Stanford University
conference.  Participants advocated auctioning off spectrum,
opening it for public use, leveraging new technology, and a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item2

"E-Mail Flaw Tests U.S. Safety Net"
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a recently
disclosed security hole in the Sendmail email transfer
application as an opportunity to test its cybersecurity early
warning system, according to the SANS Institute.  The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item3

"Analysis: Warnings About Cyber-Terrorism Are Overblown"
Computer security experts are increasingly skeptical about
terrorists or sympathizers hacking into sensitive computer
infrastructure and causing major catastrophe in the United
States.  Although there seems to be no shortage of such groups ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item4

"Net Speed Record Smashed"
Particle physicists at Stanford have tested the fastest-ever
Internet transmission, sending 6.7 gigabytes of data from
Sunnyvale, Calif., to Holland's Amsterdam in just one minute.
The 6,800-mile length was traversed at 923 megabits per second, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item5

"Getting to Know All About You"
Robotic design now involves not just mechanics, sensors, and
computers, but also a study of how humans and machines interact
with one another.  While previous generations of robots were
preprogrammed and designed physically for specific tasks, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item6

"White House Launches Technological Peace Corps"
The White House on Tuesday announced the creation of the Digital
Freedom Initiative, a three-year pilot program that will send
technology and financial industry volunteers from U.S. companies
to developing countries around the world in an effort to improve ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item7

"Disorder in the Court"
A U.S. District Court in California has created an exception to
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) that could
jeopardize online companies' immunity to actions taken by
individual users.  The CDA was written seven years ago, making ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item8

"Internet Vulnerabilities Caught in BIND"
The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) on Monday released BIND
9.2.2, a new version of the BIND domain name server.  ISC first
said on its Web site that the release is "a maintenance release,
containing fixes for a number of bugs in 9.2.0 but no new ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item9

"Who's Minding the E-Store?"
Federal government law enforcement agents often seize property
involved in alleged crimes whether the property is a drug
dealer's speedboat or a hacker's hot-rod desktop, and now
government agents also are seizing domain names under the same ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item10

"Swimming With MIT's Virtual Fish"
MIT students plan to line the floor and walls of the institute's
famous Infinite Corridor with screens displaying
computer-generated tuna and pike that can seemingly move in three
dimensions and respond to visitors' movements via sensor ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item11

"Andreessen: 'The Valley Is Going to Save the Valley'"
Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen has had less success with
subsequent ventures such as Web hosting company Loudcloud and
data-automation software firm Opsware, which trades now at $2 per
share.  Andreessen says the dot-com recession is affecting ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item12

"Tech Firm Alliance, Not Group of Pols, Can Defeat Pirates"
The Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) President Fred McClure
says the solution to digital piracy lies in industry
collaboration, not politically mandated technological solutions.
Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) last year introduced legislation ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item13

"Toshiba Unveils Innovative Fuel Cell"
Toshiba has created a prototype fuel cell designed for use in
mobile devices that delivers better performance than current
lithium-ion batteries.  By using the water by-product of the fuel
cell to dilute the methanol fuel, Toshiba engineers were able to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item14

"Unjaded and Jubilant at TED"
The Technology, Entertainment and Design conference (TED) is a
bellwether technology conference for the technology elite that
flourished in the 1990s and predicted the eventual adoption of
cell phones and PDAs before it happened, and focused on DNA ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item15

"Tomorrow's 5G Cell Phone"
Next-generation cell phones could be cognitive radios (CRs), a
term coined by Mitre computer scientist Joseph Mitola to mean
software radios that learn from users and act on their behalf.
Mitola says his vision is still about five to 10 years from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item16

"Tag, You're It"
Slowly but surely, enterprises are finding it easier and cheaper
to track and manage assets through radio frequency identification
(RFID) technology, in which products and other items are equipped
with electronic tags containing ID data that can be read ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item17

"The Man in the Middle"
In an interview with Roll Call, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said
the Bush administration could consider a short-term stimulus
package, increasing exports, free-trade agreements, and funding
more research and development as strategies for stimulating the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item18

"Look Ma, No Hands!"
The year 2003 will witness the market debut of
business-productivity telematics applications designed to enhance
in-car electronics.  Delphi Automotive Group is readying a
Bluetooth-based multimedia and off-board navigation system called ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0307f.html#item19


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