ACM TechNews - Friday, October 10, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 556
Date: October 10, 2003

Top Stories for Friday, October 10, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Multinational Consensus Pegs Top 20 Net Vulnerabilities"
"Snoop Software Gains Power and Raises Privacy Concerns"
"E-Textiles, Robot 'Skin' Among Advances at IEDM"
"Tech Execs Give Hint of Future"
"Voters Skeptical of E-Voting Systems"
"Quantum MP3 May Soon Be Reality"
"Cloaking Device Made for Spammers"
"'Worst is Over' for High-Tech Layoffs"
"Superpowered PDAs Challenge the Laptop Platform"
"Robotic Road Trip on a Military Mission"
"Blind 'See With Sound'"
"'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy"
"Researchers Stretch DNA on Chip, Lay Track for Future Computers"
"Analysis: Do We Need IPv6?"
"This Headline Is (Half) False"
"Anti-Spam Bills Losing Time"
"Enjoy It While You Can"
"Moving Toward Meltdown"
"Wrap It Up"

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

"Multinational Consensus Pegs Top 20 Net Vulnerabilities"
A list of the 20 most commonly exploited Windows, Unix, and Linux
security vulnerabilities was issued Oct. 8 by the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), its British and Canadian equivalents,
and the SANS Institute.  SANS research director Alan Paller said ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item1

"Snoop Software Gains Power and Raises Privacy Concerns"
At least a dozen small software companies offer snooping
software, or snoopware, that can monitor the computer use of a
target, sometimes remotely.  Commercial spying software and that
published on the Internet by hackers is growing in sophistication ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item2

"E-Textiles, Robot 'Skin' Among Advances at IEDM"
Crystalline organic semiconductors and their potential
technological applications will be the focus of the International
Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in December, where papers
presented there will address such topics as radio-frequency ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item3

"Tech Execs Give Hint of Future"
Unresolved problems with spam, cybersecurity, and digital piracy
were major topics of discussion at the Business Software
Alliance's Global Tech Summit on Oct. 9, as were the near-future
applications of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item4

"Voters Skeptical of E-Voting Systems"
California voters in Alameda County took to the polls this week,
and residents used touch-screen terminals to cast their votes in
the recall election, but many said they lacked confidence in the
systems and wondered whether their voted really would be counted. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item5

"Quantum MP3 May Soon Be Reality"
A new paper by three French researchers focuses on the audio
transmission of a quantum computer, and concludes that quantum
computers can reliably identify and retrieve sound signals stored
in quantum memory.  The authors caution, however, that quantum ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item6

"Cloaking Device Made for Spammers"
The growth of spam has nurtured an industry for hackers offering
tools and services to thwart anti-spam measures and allow
spammers to create Web sites that cannot be traced.  A Polish
group is promoting "invisible bulletproof hosting," a service ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item7

"'Worst is Over' for High-Tech Layoffs"
The employment situation in the information technology industry
is slowly getting better, according to industry observer
Challenger, Gray & Christmas.  The outplacement firm reports that
from January through September layoffs in the IT industry were ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item8

"Superpowered PDAs Challenge the Laptop Platform"
Technology experts say personal digital assistants (PDAs) will
continue to cut into the laptop market, but will never be able to
completely replace laptops because of those machines greater
usability.  TechKNOW-HOW President Anthony Perez says PDAs still ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item9

"Robotic Road Trip on a Military Mission"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will
award $1 million to the team that designs and builds a robotic vehicle
that can successfully complete the Grand Challenge by driving
itself across roughly 200 miles of desert terrain between Los ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item10

"Blind 'See With Sound'"
A scientist in the Netherlands has developed a revolutionary
system that allows the blind to get a glimpse of what is around
via audio, helping users to trace out buildings, read graphs, and
watch television.  The vOICe (Oh I See) system consists of a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item11

"'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy"
The illegal copying of video games could be curbed through the
use of Fade, a safeguard system that causes unauthorized copies
of games to degrade over time.  Fade takes advantage of error
correction systems that allow computers to play scratched CDs or ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item12

"Researchers Stretch DNA on Chip, Lay Track for Future Computers"
Purdue University researchers have developed a method to deposit
and uncoil DNA strands on a silicon chip in order to more clearly
read their encoded information, a breakthrough that may help pave
the way for new computers with greater speed, energy efficiency, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item13

"Analysis: Do We Need IPv6?"
The effort to promote adoption of IPv6 is based largely on the
assumption that IPv4 will not have enough address space once
devices that are IP-enabled and continuously operating become the
norm, but some members of the Internet community such as ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item14

"This Headline Is (Half) False"
Kostis Vezerides of the American College of Thessaloniki and
Athanasios Kehagias of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
have authored a paper demonstrating that "fuzzy logic" can be
used to solve nearly all cases involving paradoxes, such as the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item15

"Anti-Spam Bills Losing Time"
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) reported last week that anti-spam
legislation has hit a roadblock in the Commerce Committee mere
weeks before Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year.  The
congresswoman told attendees at the Computer & Communications ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item16

"Enjoy It While You Can"
Digital security experts such as @Stake's Ollie Whitehouse warn
that it is only a matter of time--16 to 18 months, by his
estimation--before smart mobile phones are assaulted by worms and
viruses.  The same capabilities and technology that make smart ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item17

"Moving Toward Meltdown"
Smaller, more compact blade servers may devour less space than
traditional rack-mounted servers, but they generate more heat,
which could lead to severe data center slowdowns, malfunctions,
and failures if not managed properly.  Complicating the problem ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item18

"Wrap It Up"
Industry is frustrated that speech technology, whose benefits
have been clearly and inarguably demonstrated, is taking so long
to penetrate the enterprise because it is so difficult to deploy
and fine-tune, but packaged applications that have the potential ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item19

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