ACM TechNews - Wednesday, April 23, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 486
Date: April 23, 2003

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Top Stories for Wednesday, April 23, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam"
"Is Open Source Apple's Salvation?"
"Facing Up to the Threat From Cyber Terrorism"
"Report: College Grads Will Suffer From High-Tech Job Slowdown"
"Tech Forum Tackles Big Ideas"
"Machine-to-Machine Integration: The Next Big Thing?"
"Snaky Tape May Enliven Computer Interactions"
"Will Code for Food"
"Military Academies Face Off in Blunting Cyberattacks"
"Planning for the Next Cyberwar"
"Next Mac OS X Puts User at the Center"
"Artificial Intelligence Scopes Out Spam"
"The Web's Next Leap"
"September 11 Information Failures: A Semiotic Approach"
"Writing Software Right"
"Recycling Not Easy for PC Makers"
"The Grid: Computing Without Bounds"

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

"Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam"
Despite the push to eradicate unsolicited commercial email,
spammers still have the upper hand, and are battling automated
filters and other antispam measures using various methods,
ranging from as simple a method as rewording spam messages to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item1

"Is Open Source Apple's Salvation?"
Although Apple's OS X operating system is based on the
open-source Darwin OS from BSD, and the core of its Safari Web
browser is the KHTML rendering engine, this does not mean that
Apple is wholly embracing open source.  Only certain components ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item2

"Facing Up to the Threat From Cyber Terrorism"
Internet Security Systems CEO Tom Noonan says the United States'
unparalleled reliance on computer automation has not only made it
the most productive country in the world, but also the most
vulnerable to cyberattacks.  It is reasonable to assume that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item3

"Report: College Grads Will Suffer From High-Tech Job Slowdown"
Companies are devoting less money to technology investments, so
hiring large numbers of high-tech college graduates is less of a
priority, concludes a new Challenger, Gray & Christmas report.
"Because of major cost-cutting, companies are not updating their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item4

"Tech Forum Tackles Big Ideas"
Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, one of the organizers of this week's
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, describes the event as
"a three-day jam session for geeks," with its overarching theme
being the future of technology.  Attendees will be able to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item5

"Machine-to-Machine Integration: The Next Big Thing?"
The potential advantages of machine-to-machine integration for
conventional IT organizations include lower costs, better
responsiveness, improved efficiency, a tighter supply chain, and
even new business models, writes Forrester Research analyst Carl ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item6

"Snaky Tape May Enliven Computer Interactions"
A research team led by Ravin Balakrishnan of the University of
Toronto has developed "ShapeTape," a flexible tool that can be
used with specialized software to build computer-generated
shapes.  Calling ShapeTape a revolutionary form of computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item7

"Will Code for Food"
The current hiring atmosphere for technology professionals is
bleak, if Silicon Valley tech job fairs are any indication.
Whereas most attendees of such events were gainfully employed at
the height of the tech boom, today the majority are unemployed; ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item8

"Military Academies Face Off in Blunting Cyberattacks"
Computer experts in the top three U.S. military academies as well
as the Coast Guard and other agencies participated in the third
annual Cyber Defense Exercise last week in order to evaluate the
military's ability to wage "network-centric warfare" as well as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item9

"Planning for the Next Cyberwar"
The U.S. victory in Iraq validates the concept of network-centric
or digital warfare, which is poised to grow in scope and
sophistication in anticipation of future conflicts.  Part of the
Pentagon's $500 billion budget for 2004 will be allocated for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item10

"Next Mac OS X Puts User at the Center"
Apple is readying its new Mac OS X 10.3, or "Panther," expected
to ship in September; the system is reported to include many
personalization features Apple is calling User at the Center that
promise to be competitive with those in development at ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item11

"Artificial Intelligence Scopes Out Spam"
Spammers currently have the upper hand because they are
always probing email filtering solutions for vulnerabilities, but
artificial intelligence mail-filtering software that uses
natural-language processors could outpace their rate of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item12

"The Web's Next Leap"
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and leader of the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), believes the Semantic Web is the
next step in Web technology; he describes it as "webbing" the
traditional relational database so that companies' back-end ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item13

"September 11 Information Failures: A Semiotic Approach"
The useful exploitation of collected data will depend on the
integration of information-gathering systems and associative
applications, write Kevin C. Desouza of the University of
Illinois and Tobin Hensgen of Loyola University, who believe a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item14

"Writing Software Right"
Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and IBM are trying to retool
software engineering and eliminate "laissez-faire" attitudes
toward software design that can lead to potentially major bugs
slipping through the testing process, while also saving time, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item15

"Recycling Not Easy for PC Makers"
PC manufacturers have started to study product recycling
processes in detail, and are finding both pluses and minuses:  They
are learning how difficult it is to remove and dispose of certain
materials, such as mercury filaments in scanners, but they are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item16

"The Grid: Computing Without Bounds"
Grid computing is expected to "virtualize" general computational
services and make processing, storage, data, and software so
ubiquitous that computing will seem like just another utility.
An extension of the Internet, grid computing melds computer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0423w.html#item17

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