ACM TechNews - Monday, April 28, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 488
Date: April 28, 2003

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Top Stories for Monday, April 28, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal"
"As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise"
"In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws"
"Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight"
"Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?"
"IT: More About People Than Technology"
"E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan"
"Gadgets Go Back to Basics"
"Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation"
"So Many Countries, So Many Laws"
"Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones"
"Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman"
"Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United
 States"
"Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition"
"Scientists Test Wider Use of IP"
"Messaging Convergence"
"Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers"
"A Sensor Model Language"

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

"Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal"
The music and movie industries lost an important suit against
file-trading software firms Streamcast Networks and Grokster on
April 25, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled the
defendants were not liable for illegal use of their products.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item1

"As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise"
Glitches are becoming more commonplace as software becomes
embedded in more and more everyday appliances, but although most
bugs are merely an annoyance, some can lead to fatal errors:  A
1997 airplane disaster in Guam was partly attributed to a buggy ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item2

"In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws"
A plethora of privacy legislation awaits Congress when it
reconvenes next week, and Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation thinks Internet privacy issues will again become a
priority now that the war against Iraq is nearly over.  Sens. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item3

"Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight"
AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have overcome their rivalry to team up
in an anti-spam initiative that they hope will lay the foundation
for a wider industry endeavor.  "We're putting spammers on notice
that the industry will collaborate to drive the bad guys out of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item4

"Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?"
While Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and IBM continue with
fat-thread processors that handle huge amounts of work speedily,
Sun Microsystems is developing a four-processor chip for release
by 2005.  Each processor performs slowly compared to those from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item5

"IT: More About People Than Technology"
A study of IT at eight hospitals by University of Notre Dame
researchers Rajiv Kohli and Sarv Devaraj finds that analyzing
actual IT usage rather than technology investment is a better way
to determine IT's repercussions on organizational performance.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item6

"E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan"
A coalition of 28 online advertisers has developed "Project
Lumos," a plan that will hold companies in their industry more
accountable for the email that they send.  The Network
Advertising Initiative's Email Service Provider Coalition (NAI ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item7

"Gadgets Go Back to Basics"
Hewlett-Packard's U.K. research labs in Bristol will be the site
of an international conference May 6 to May 8 highlighting new
technologies and gadgets.  Today's researchers are urging
developers to create tools that are truly useful.  University ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item8

"Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation"
Dan Gillmor hopes that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's $98,000
grant to the Open Source Applications (OSA) Foundation's Chandler
Project in March portends a surge of philanthropic investments to
ensure the openness and universal availability of tomorrow's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item9

"So Many Countries, So Many Laws"
E-commerce was supposed to support border-free online trade, but
an international e-commerce architecture that shields the rights
of retailers or shoppers and deters digital piracy has not been
established, despite years of negotiations.  As a result, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item10

"Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones"
As Wi-Fi technology's popularity surges, companies are developing
ways to integrate Wi-Fi networks with Web-enabled cell phones and
wireless Internet devices.  The goal is to create devices that
take advantage of Wi-Fi's easy Internet access when users are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item11

"Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman"
At the Embedded Systems Conference held April 23 in San
Francisco, ARM Holdings Chairman Robin Saxby said the electronics
arena will be led by medical devices within 10 years.  He said
the devices will be handheld as well as implanted within bodies, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item12

"Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United
 States"
The "Sixth Status Report Under ICANN/US Government Memorandum of
Understanding," dated March 31, 2003, describes an ICANN that
functions like Brownian motion, writes ICANN board member Karl
Auerbach.  Brownian motion is a concept pertaining to the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item13

"Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition"
A forerunner to this summer's international RoboCup 2003 in Italy
will be next week's first American Open of robot soccer in
Pittsburgh, where autonomous machines designed by academic teams
will compete without human assistance.  The robots are programmed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item14

"Scientists Test Wider Use of IP"
NASA is pioneering mobile static IP connections that could be
used to connect devices both in space and on earth.  The first
demonstration of the Mobile IP protocol, developed together with
Cisco, was in November, when NASA researchers set up a system in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item15

"Messaging Convergence"
Industry players are rallying behind the open-source eXtensible
Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) messaging protocol in
answer to the SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging
Extensions (SIMPLE) protocol advocated by Microsoft and IBM.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item16

"Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers"
Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner writes that honeypots are
unique because they can be applied to multiple problems, unlike
most current security solutions; they can be deployed on a
variety of platforms and are available commercially, as free ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item17

"A Sensor Model Language"
The Open GIS Consortium (OGC), whose members include NASA, EPA,
and the National Imaging and Mapping Agency, is building and
testing a standard XML encoding framework that could facilitate
the remote discovery, access, and use of real-time or stored ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item18

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