ACM TechNews - Friday, October 3, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 553
Date: October 3, 2003

Top Stories for Friday, October 3, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"A Suspect Computer Program"
"Tough Issues Face Information Society Summit"
"Machines Learn to Mimic Speech"
"EU's Class of '04 Eyes Software Development"
"Researchers Create Super-Fast Quantum Computer Simulator"
"Plasma Screens and the Future of Display Technology"
"Now Hear This, Quickly"
"Academic Consortium Plans a $100-Million Optical-Research Network"
"Software Jungle Challenges Auto Engineers"
"Controversial Pentagon Program Scuttled, But Its Work Will Live On"
"E-Mail Is Broken"
"Don't Hold Your Breath for Online Voting"
"Virus Experts Debate Bug Names"
"Research Team Set to Revamp Internet"
"Study Points Out Costs of Computer Disposal"
"Developers Blaze Their Own Trail"
"Female IT Professionals Cope in a Male-Dominated Industry"
"Supercomputing Horizons"
"Leaping, Then Looking"

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

"A Suspect Computer Program"
Despite the application of the most advanced technology, experts
warn that would-be terrorists could likely foil the security
system protecting air travel in the United States.  Meanwhile,
tens of thousands of innocent passengers would be flagged by such ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item1

"Tough Issues Face Information Society Summit"
A number of highly contentious issues have upset preparations for
the World Summit on the Information Society's (WSIS) December
meeting, sponsored by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications
Union (ITU).  The main goal of the summit is to spread ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item2

"Machines Learn to Mimic Speech"
Attendees at this week's SpeechTek tradeshow said speech
technology companies have started to take a more realistic view
in realizing that voice technology has not yet reached the point
where computers can actually understand human speech.  "Now that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item3

"EU's Class of '04 Eyes Software Development"
Central and Eastern European countries are accelerating their
efforts to vie for the American and Western European software
development outsourcing market, which is currently dominated by
India.  Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Malta, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item4

"Researchers Create Super-Fast Quantum Computer Simulator"
Japanese researchers have devised a tool designed to boost the
speed at which classical computers can run quantum algorithms,
which engineers hope will aid the design of quantum-computer
hardware and software.  The researchers used a "quantum index ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item5

"Plasma Screens and the Future of Display Technology"
Plasma display panels (PDPs) may face more competition in the
next few years as new display technologies emerge.  One such
technology is Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays, which
promise cheapness, light weight, and efficiency because ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item6

"Now Hear This, Quickly"
New software and hardware are letting people vary the speed at
which they listen and watch audio and video recordings; the new
digital time compression technique cuts out tiny segments of
repetitive audio, such as portions of a vowel enunciation, so ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item7

"Academic Consortium Plans a $100-Million Optical-Research Network"
Academic institutions and university consortia have joined forces
to construct a $100 million national optical network that will
serve as the underpinning of what National Science Foundation
officials term a worldwide "cyberinfrastructure" to play a key ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item8

"Software Jungle Challenges Auto Engineers"
The Motor Vehicle Electronics conference this week clarified the
growing challenge facing automotive systems designers, who have
to manage increasing complexity without modularization and
standardization.  Auto electronics, now nearly synonymous with ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item9

"Controversial Pentagon Program Scuttled, But Its Work Will Live On"
A congressional appropriations conference committee may have
killed the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, a
Pentagon effort to root out suspected terrorist activity by
mining databases of Americans' transactional information, but ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item10

"E-Mail Is Broken"
Four computer scientists--Carnegie Mellon University's Dave
Farber, Brandenburg Consulting principal Dave Crocker (a former
student of Farber's), Electronic Frontier Foundation chairman of
the board Brad Templeton, and Nielsen Norman principal Jakob ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item11

"Don't Hold Your Breath for Online Voting"
The benefits of electronic voting--convenience, almost instant
results, and cost effectiveness--promise to eliminate hanging
chads and other problems that plague elections, as well as boost
voter turnout.  Accenture E-Democracy Services CEO Meg McLaughlin ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item12

"Virus Experts Debate Bug Names"
How to name computer viruses without generating confusion that
could hinder efforts to stop them was a point of debate at the
recent Virus Bulletin 2003 (VB2003) conference in Toronto.
However, Richard Ford of the Florida Institute of Technology ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item13

"Research Team Set to Revamp Internet"
Stanford University is one of eight institutions participating in
a National Science Foundation project to research an Internet
overhaul that supports emerging technologies and scales up to
increasing demand.  The project's researchers believe their work ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item14

"Study Points Out Costs of Computer Disposal"
A new report from research company Gartner shows that companies
can recoup 3 percent to 5 percent of the original price of old
computer equipment by selling the parts, but companies also
should expect to spend anywhere from $85 to $136 to dispose of an ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item15

"Developers Blaze Their Own Trail"
The 2003 InfoWorld Programming Survey of 804 programmers and
their managers concludes that Web applications dominate industry,
even though Microsoft and others insist that developers should
switch to fast desktop clients:  80 percent of respondents report ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item16

"Female IT Professionals Cope in a Male-Dominated Industry"
Female professionals account for 25.3 percent of America's IT
workforce of 3.6 million employees, according to the Information
Technology Association of America (ITAA), and women have found
competing in a male-dominated industry to be a formidable ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item17

"Supercomputing Horizons"
Vincent F. Scarafino, manager of numerically intensive computing
at Ford Motor, warns that the United States' supercomputing
effort is in danger of falling way behind Japan, and this could
lead to a serious lag in U.S. science and engineering unless the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item18

"Leaping, Then Looking"
Few executives are taking time to consider IT outsourcing's
potential ramifications--on worker morale, the American economy,
national security, and other areas--before moving software
development overseas in order to cut costs and remain ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1003f.html#item19

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