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ACM TechNews - Friday, April 25, 2003



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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 487
Date: April 25, 2003

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Top Stories for Friday, April 25, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Linux Founder Opens Door to DRM"
"Firms Call for Open High-Speed Net"
"Baby DMCAs Punish Copy Crimes"
"To Print or Not to Print: California Studies Electronic Voting Security"
"The Eyes and Ears of War"
"The PATRIOT Software Bonanza"
"Giving PCs the Boot--Responsibly"
"Like a Swerving Commuter, a Selfish Router Slows Traffic"
"Where Spam Comes From"
"Nanocomputer Skips Clock"
"Microsoft Research Gives a Glimpse of the Future"
"Perspective: A Mosaic of New Opportunities"
"Wired by a Kindred Spirit, the Disabled Gain Control"
"Engineers Aim to Make Average Singers Sound Like Virtuosos"
"Critical Path"
"Will Ceiling Fall?"
"Wi-Fi Means Business"
"TeleLiving: When Virtual Meets Reality"
"The State of Desktop Speech"

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

"Linux Founder Opens Door to DRM"
Linux founder Linus Torvalds posted a message on the
"Linux-kernel" mailing list Thursday indicating that he sees no
prohibition against developers deploying digital rights
management (DRM) technology, even though some open-source ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item1

"Firms Call for Open High-Speed Net"
The Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators, whose members
include Walt Disney, Amazon.com, and Microsoft, want the FCC to
adopt guidelines that retain the Internet's basic open
architecture, without which innovation could suffer.  The FCC ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item2

"Baby DMCAs Punish Copy Crimes"
State lawmakers are proposing bills that limit digital copying
and impose penalties on violators, leading opponents to label
them super-DMCAs, after the controversial Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.  Van Stevenson of the Motion Picture Association ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item3

"To Print or Not to Print: California Studies Electronic Voting Security"
A special task force appointed by California Secretary of State
Kevin Shelley in February is studying the security and
dependability of touch-screen voting machines to see whether they
should provide a printed audit trail to ensure an accurate vote ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item4

"The Eyes and Ears of War"
In Iraq, U.S. military technological capabilities have far
surpassed any demonstrated in past wars:  The United States has
brought to bear on the battlefield a lethal menagerie of IT, much
of it developed in the commercial sector.  Pentagon Office of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item5

"The PATRIOT Software Bonanza"
Software vendors are rushing to help financial services firms,
universities, and others comply with the USA Patriot Act, which
requires, among other things, more robust anti-money laundering
efforts.  Other markets opened wider by the Patriot Act, as well ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item6

"Giving PCs the Boot--Responsibly"
The National Safety Council estimates that discarded computers in
the United States will total 315 million by 2004, yet only about
11 percent of computers are being recycled.  Manufacturers such
as Dell and Hewlett-Packard are developing and implementing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item7

"Like a Swerving Commuter, a Selfish Router Slows Traffic"
Cornell University researchers Tim Roughgarden and Eva Tardos
have formulated an analogy between Internet traffic and highway
traffic that equates motorists with routers:  Shortcuts in both
systems serve the selfish interests of individuals that result in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item8

"Where Spam Comes From"
Researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology conducted
a study to determine how exactly spammers get hold of email
addresses.  The project, which commenced last summer, involved
the establishment of 250 addresses that were posted on Web sites ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item9

"Nanocomputer Skips Clock"
Computing power could be ratcheted up tremendously through the
advent of nanocomputers that use molecule-sized components, and
researchers at Japan's Communications Research Laboratory (CRL)
have formulated a low-power, highly reconfigurable nanocomputer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item10

"Microsoft Research Gives a Glimpse of the Future"
Microsoft Research has 55 distinct research efforts underway,
including those involving machine interface design and software
development technologies.  Rick Rashid, who started the group in
1991, heads operations in Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item11

"Perspective: A Mosaic of New Opportunities"
Groove Networks CEO Ray Ozzie asserts that the potential of what
tech visionary Mark Anderson terms the "Global Computer"--a vast
network consisting of all worldwide transistors interconnected by
the Internet--has barely been tapped.  He writes that many people ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item12

"Wired by a Kindred Spirit, the Disabled Gain Control"
Farleigh Dickinson University computer scientist Eamon Doherty is
integrating computers and robotics into tools that can
significantly improve the everyday lives of severely disabled
people.  Routine tasks that healthy people take for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item13

"Engineers Aim to Make Average Singers Sound Like Virtuosos"
Mark J.T. Smith of Purdue University's School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering has teamed up with Georgia Institute of
Technology graduate student Matthew Lee to devise computer
algorithms for voice analysis and synthesis so that human singing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item14

"Critical Path"
Discouraged by layoffs, increasing outsourcing, and downturns,
both employed and unemployed IT professionals are losing faith in
the IT career path, and are advising the younger generation to
develop more marketable skills; this could lead to a scarcity of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item15

"Will Ceiling Fall?"
Tech workers are increasingly incensed over the perceived loss of
jobs to foreign companies and workers, and are pressing
politicians to lower the ceiling for H-1B visas issued each year.
A number of legislators have already responded, including Rep. F. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item16

"Wi-Fi Means Business"
Four years after its debut as a tool primarily for enthusiasts on
the network fringe, wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) has started to
penetrate the corporate sector.  Buoyed by its ability to provide
cheaper high-speed Internet connections, firms are embracing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item17

"TeleLiving: When Virtual Meets Reality"
New technological trends are bringing TeleLiving--conversational
human-machine interaction that facilitates a smoother, more
comfortable way to educate, shop, do one's job, and even
socialize--closer to reality.  High-speed broadband ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item18

"The State of Desktop Speech"
The growing sophistication of desktop speech recognition and
text-to-speech technologies will open up new markets and boost
economic returns for users.  Doctors and lawyers represent a
steady customer base for desktop dictation products, given their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.html#item19


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