ACM TechNews - Friday, April 4, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 478
Date: April 4, 2003

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Top Stories for Friday, April 4, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"TIA Proponents Defend Domestic Spy Plan"
"That Championship Season, in Code"
"Feds Defend Plan to Secure Cyberspace"
"Fears About War, Economy Slow IT Hiring"
"Queen's Researchers Invent Computers That 'Pay Attention' to Users"
"Feinstein Introduces Privacy Act of 2003"
"Software Uses Pictures to Represent Info People Monitor"
"Online Phone Monitoring Sticky for FBI"
"Pizza Box or IMac? No, an IBox"
"Interview With the KDE and Gnome UI/Usability Developers"
"Robots Take Dangerous Jobs"
"Business Scene: Why Aren't More Women in Tech Fields?"
"Microsoft Research Finds Women Take a Wider View"
"Ultra-simple Desktop Device Slows Light to a Crawl at Room
 Temperature"
"SIP Fuels Communications Interplay"
"Nag-O-Matic"
"Gaining Ground"
"Mainframe Brain Drain Looms"
"The Net's Faltering Democracy"

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

"TIA Proponents Defend Domestic Spy Plan"
Critics and supporters of the Pentagon's Total Information
Awareness (TIA) project voiced their views during a debate at the
ACM's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference on Wednesday.
Manhattan Institute fellow and lawyer Heather MacDonald argued ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item1

"That Championship Season, in Code"
The Association of Computing Machinery's (ACM) International
Collegiate Programming Contest in Beverley Hills, Calif. last week
was swept by Eastern European schools.  The contest, now in
its 27th year, pits teams of university students against complex ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item2

"Feds Defend Plan to Secure Cyberspace"
Responding to criticism that President Bush's National Strategy
to Secure Cyberspace is hobbled by a lack of federal regulation
to enforce its recommendations, the White House's special advisor
for cybersecurity Howard Schmidt told attendees at the Secure ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item3

"Fears About War, Economy Slow IT Hiring"
The employment of IT professionals was impacted considerably by
concerns about a war with Iraq and economic doldrums in the
fourth quarter of 2002, according to a report co-authored by
online recruiting services provider Dice and the Information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item4

"Queen's Researchers Invent Computers That 'Pay Attention' to Users"
Scientists from the Human Media Lab (HML) at Queen's University
in Ontario have developed an Attentive User Interface (AUI)
designed to relieve users of the morass of messages they receive
on their electronic devices by evaluating the user's attention ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item5

"Feinstein Introduces Privacy Act of 2003"
A recent FTC report estimates that 43 percent of all registered
consumer complaints in 2002 involved identity theft, which
incurred $343 million in losses.  In an effort to curtail such
abuses, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has proposed The Privacy ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item6

"Software Uses Pictures to Represent Info People Monitor"
Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology puts personal
information updates on a separate networked display in a way that
does not distract the user, but provides a comprehensive and
eye-pleasing ambiance.  Associate professor of computing John ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item7

"Online Phone Monitoring Sticky for FBI"
The advent of Web-based telephony opens up a can of legal and
technical worms for the FBI, which is trying to establish that
such services must be surveillance-enabled under the 1994
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.  Surveillance ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item8

"Pizza Box or IMac? No, an IBox"
Apple Computer could soon have a competitor in the Macintosh
manufacturing business thanks to the efforts of John Fraser, a
21-year-old Minnesota engineer who has designed the iBox, a flat,
upgradeable Mac that will be sold for roughly one-third the cost ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item9

"Interview With the KDE and Gnome UI/Usability Developers"
It is hoped that the Unix desktop will be revolutionized when the
Gnome and KDE user interfaces (UIs) become interoperable; the
Gnome project's Havoc Pennington discussed usability issues with
Waldo Bastian and Aaron J. Seigo of the KDE project.  Seigo ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item10

"Robots Take Dangerous Jobs"
A highlight of Japan's Robodex 2003 event this week was robots
that can handle tasks too dangerous for humans and assist people
in everyday chores.  Examples of the former include machines from
the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Chiba University that are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item11

"Business Scene: Why Aren't More Women in Tech Fields?"
The technology job market is rife with opportunities, yet few
women are taking advantage of them.  This trend was the subject
of a panel hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council last week.
A scarcity of training was cited as a major hurdle, but personal ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item12

"Microsoft Research Finds Women Take a Wider View"
Microsoft Research has found that women can navigate virtual
environments 20 percent better when using optical flow cues built
into a program's user interface; such visual clues provide
continuous on-screen hints where things are located.  Because ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item13

"Ultra-simple Desktop Device Slows Light to a Crawl at Room
 Temperature"
University of Rochester researchers have created a device that
can successfully reduce the speed of light by a factor of 5.3
million, using technology that Givens Professor of Optics Robert
Boyd calls "ridiculously easy to implement."  Boyd and his ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item14

"SIP Fuels Communications Interplay"
Major IP-based communications players support Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) as a way to tie together instant messaging, voice,
and video.  Microsoft and IBM both back SIP in their respective
Greenwich and Lotus communications platforms.  Voice-and-data ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item15

"Nag-O-Matic"
Stanford University researcher B.J. Fogg, an experimental
psychologist, is leading the way in an emerging discipline he
calls captology--using technology to influence people.  He is
currently working on ways to get people to consume more water and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item16

"Gaining Ground"
Indian high-tech companies thriving as IT outsourcers plan to
fortify their position in order to maintain their market
supremacy in the face of growing competition from China, Russia,
Eastern Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.  Key to their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item17

"Mainframe Brain Drain Looms"
In an effort to staunch an expected hemorrhage of mainframe
expertise, the Association for Computer Operations Management
(AFCOM) plans to launch a Data Center Knowledge Initiative that
AFCOM's Brian Koma says should spur IT managers "to take some ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item18

"The Net's Faltering Democracy"
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
is a failed experiment in melding business efficiency and the
global will of Internet users, writes Simson Garfinkel.  Last
December, the ICANN board voted to abolish elections altogether ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0404f.html#item19


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