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ACM TechNews - Wednesday, October 8, 2003
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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 555
Date: October 8, 2003
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Top Stories for Wednesday, October 8, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?"
"Student Skirts CD's Piracy Guard"
"European Group Seeks Progress in Software R&D"
"Politics of Offshoring"
"Oxford Tries to Work Out What IT All Means"
"CMU Student Taps Brain's Game Skills"
"Engineering Whiz James Gray"
"Meet the PDA That Can Hold a Conversation"
"You Can Hear Me Now: Software Brings Cellular Capacity to Rural
Communities"
"Intel Takes on Adaptive Wireless Tech"
"Boldly Googling Into the Future"
"Tech Out the Latest in Fashion"
"What's Next in LCDs?"
"Tiring of Royalties, China Seeks Compression Spec for Video"
"A New Era of Living Data Is Coming"
"Survivor Guide: Stephen Wolfram, Scientist and Founder and CEO
of Wolfram Research"
"Grid Computing Made Simple"
"Emerging Technology: Wireless Goes Peer-to-Peer?"
"The Future of the Book in a Digital Age"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?"
Despite assurances from officials in Alameda County, Calif., that
the Diebold touch-screen voting machines the county will use for
the recall vote are adequately protected from fraud by usage
policies and procedures, a recent training session for Alameda
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item1
"Student Skirts CD's Piracy Guard"
Princeton University graduate student John Halderman published a
paper on his Web site Oct. 6 in which he detailed a simple method
for defeating anti-copying software embedded in a CD from BMG's
Arista Records. The CD received a lot of press as the first to
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item2
"European Group Seeks Progress in Software R&D"
An upcoming symposium held by the Information Technology for
European Advancement (ITEA) program will focus on the current
progress of an eight-year embedded-software platform research and
development initiative designed to keep European software
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item3
"Politics of Offshoring"
With unemployment in Silicon Valley hanging around 9 percent and
IT offshoring ramping up, politicians are readying their
arguments: States such as New Jersey, North Carolina, and
Michigan have already seen legislative proposals that would
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item4
"Oxford Tries to Work Out What IT All Means"
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) was established in 2001 as an
independent center of excellence to study the societal
implications of the Internet, with American academic William
Dutton serving as its first director. Dutton says one of the
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item5
"CMU Student Taps Brain's Game Skills"
Carnegie Mellon University computer science graduate student Luis
von Ahn has designed an online game that seeks to ultimately
enhance computer performance by tapping into the cognitive
capacity of human brains. In von Ahn's ESP Game, participants go
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item6
"Engineering Whiz James Gray"
Microsoft engineer and ACM Turing Award recipient James Gray
has parlayed his fascination with mathematics and AI--which was
nurtured when he was in high school, at a time when the field was
relatively nascent--into a distinguished engineer. Gray played a key
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item7
"Meet the PDA That Can Hold a Conversation"
University of New South Wales researchers Dr. Mohammed Waleed
Kadous and Professor Claude Sammut have developed a prototype
personal digital assistant (PDA) that features virtual agents--a
male agent named Joshua and a female agent named Amanda--that can
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item8
"You Can Hear Me Now: Software Brings Cellular Capacity to Rural
Communities"
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Vanu
researchers have developed software that can significantly
streamline the communications hardware of cellular towers and
make the technology more affordable for rural areas. Thanks to
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item9
"Intel Takes on Adaptive Wireless Tech"
Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger says most of the world will be using
wireless technology by the end of the next decade. Intel plans
to facilitate wireless connectivity with several innovative
technologies and approaches, including adaptive radio technology
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item10
"Boldly Googling Into the Future"
Google CTO Craig Silverstein forecasts that the full maturation
of search technology--a "Star Trek"-style computer interface that
processes vocal queries in any language and can infer the
request's precise context, among other things--is approximately
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item11
"Tech Out the Latest in Fashion"
Professor George Stylios of the Heriot-Watt University School of
Textiles and Design in Scotland predicts that electronics will be
an essential component of personal apparel in two or three
decades, thanks to e-textile products under development today.
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item12
"What's Next in LCDs?"
The Ceatec 2003 exhibition, taking place in Chiba, Japan, from
Oct. 7 to Oct. 11, will showcase an array of liquid crystal
display (LCD) technologies that fall into two general categories:
Improved versions of existing displays that yield better picture
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item13
"Tiring of Royalties, China Seeks Compression Spec for Video"
China continues to push for nationally developed intellectual
property (IP) that will save its consumers and manufacturers
hundreds of millions of dollars if widely adopted: Perhaps the
most mature national standard is a new video compression
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item14
"A New Era of Living Data Is Coming"
Management consultant and commentator Thornton May writes that
practically everything on Earth could be given an IP address
within 10 years, according to research being carried out in
tandem with UCLA's Managing the Information Resource Program. He
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item15
"Survivor Guide: Stephen Wolfram, Scientist and Founder and CEO
of Wolfram Research"
Computing guru Stephen Wolfram is promoting a new concept of how
complex systems are built from simple programs. Wolfram, the
author of the Mathematica computer program, recently explained
his ideas to the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science,
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item16
"Grid Computing Made Simple"
Grid computing allows companies and research teams to increase
their processing power by tapping into networks of computers and
other resources to perform computations. Grids will be unable to
support ubiquitous parallel computing until developers boost
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item17
"Emerging Technology: Wireless Goes Peer-to-Peer?"
The idealized form of wireless peer-to-peer (P2P) meshes connects
network nodes (devices) via P2P radios, allowing every client to
relay each others' traffic, cohering into a massive "overnet"
that circumvents existing networks; ardent P2P mesh advocates
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item18
"The Future of the Book in a Digital Age"
Printed books were expected to be phased out with the coming of
the paperless office, but Heidelberg College literary professor
and author David J. Staley points out that neither of these
developments have come to pass, and observes that the production
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item19
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