ACM TechNews - Friday, November 7, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 568
Date: November 7, 2003

Top Stories for Friday, November 7, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"W3C Criticizes Antirobot Tests"
"Could Antivirus Apps Become Law?"
"Despite Lack of Chads, Touch-Screen Voting Systems Drawing Fire"
"New Measure of Success Cited for Statistical Prediction"
"Virginia Tech to Offer Supercomputer in a Box"
"Tech Prepares for Worldwide Contest"
"The Many Shapes of Tomorrow's PC"
"Computer Glasses Can Boost Memory"
"Passphrase Flaw Exposed in WPA Wireless Security"
"Study: Salary Gloom Ahead for IT Workers"
"A World of Opportunity for Tech"
"Making the U.S. Safe for Spam"
"Lab Rat: Swapping Gets Legit"
"Experts Debating Future of IT Careers"
"Indiana University's Advanced Visualization Lab Develops,
 Licenses, Deploys 'John-e-Box' Stereo Display Systems"
"Face-off: Should the U.S. Govt. Do More to Keep IT Jobs for
 Citizens?"
"Developing IT Skills 'To Go'"
"Open Source Everywhere"

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

"W3C Criticizes Antirobot Tests"
Visual verification tests employed at popular Web sites such as
VeriSign's Network Solutions, CNet's News.com, and Yahoo! and
Microsoft's free email services are designed to thwart software
robots trying to register accounts and amass data for spamming ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item1

"Could Antivirus Apps Become Law?"
Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) suggested at a Nov. 6 congressional
committee hearing that the nation's critical infrastructure could
be bolstered by a federal mandate for all U.S. computer users to
deploy antivirus software on their PCs.  His proposal was sharply ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item2

"Despite Lack of Chads, Touch-Screen Voting Systems Drawing Fire"
California's decision on Nov. 4 to postpone the certification of
an upgrade to software used in Diebold's touch-screen voting
machines is seen as a triumph for academic researchers, computer
scientists, and grass-roots activists who claim the systems are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item3

"New Measure of Success Cited for Statistical Prediction"
University of California-San Diego researchers have found new
insights into the well-known Good-Turing estimator used to decode
German encryption during World War II.  Variations of the
estimator created by I.J. Good and Alan Turing is used in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item4

"Virginia Tech to Offer Supercomputer in a Box"
Virginia Tech is expected to release its groundbreaking
off-the-shelf supercomputer architecture as a "supercomputer kit"
once licensing and patenting issues are addressed, according to a
school representative.  With the assistance of 165 faculty ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item5

"Tech Prepares for Worldwide Contest"
The Association of Computing Machinery's International Collegiate
Programming Contest takes place Saturday at Radford University,
where programming teams will compete against each other in one of
30 regional competitions worldwide.  Teams of three programmers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item6

"The Many Shapes of Tomorrow's PC"
PCs have shrunk in size and grown in power, but their
architecture and design methodology is relatively unchanged, as
is their chief uses of word processing, graphic presentation, and
spreadsheets.  However, PC manufacturers will likely approach ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item7

"Computer Glasses Can Boost Memory"
Memory glasses are spectacles outfitted with computer screens to
serve as memory recall aids, and MIT researcher Rich DeVaul says
a commercial product based on this concept could emerge within a
few years.  "Just about anyone could benefit from this system, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item8

"Passphrase Flaw Exposed in WPA Wireless Security"
Bob Moskowitz of TruSecure's ICSA Labs has written an online
paper describing security flaws that could permit hackers to
breach the WiFi Protected Access (WPA) wireless cryptography
protocol through dictionary attacks, and he urges WPA users to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item9

"Study: Salary Gloom Ahead for IT Workers"
Overall starting pay in the IT sector is set to fall an average
of 1.6 percent next year, but that certain in-demand areas such
as IT security and systems audit would experience gains,
concludes a new report from IT staffing firm Robert Half ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item10

"A World of Opportunity for Tech"
Information technology use and its global importance will be the
theme of the United Nations World Summit on the Information
Society in December, and David Kirkpatrick writes that all tech
companies should support the conference and send executives to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item11

"Making the U.S. Safe for Spam"
Despite the media buzz surrounding the Senate's recently passed
Can Spam Act, the spam situation in the United States is unlikely
to improve any time soon.  The bill, which is expected to reach
the House floor soon, allows legitimate commercial spam as long ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item12

"Lab Rat: Swapping Gets Legit"
The much-maligned peer-to-peer (P2P) methodology may finally gain
legitimacy with corporations employing it to facilitate the
exchange of data across distributed networks as researchers
throughout the United States attempt to boost the security of P2P ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item13

"Experts Debating Future of IT Careers"
Richard Ellis of Ellis Research Services is one of a group of
experts arguing that the offshoring of entry- and mid-level
technology jobs has led to a permanent reduction in demand for IT
professionals in the United States.  He adds that although the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item14

"Indiana University's Advanced Visualization Lab Develops,
 Licenses, Deploys 'John-e-Box' Stereo Display Systems"
Recent innovations in off-the-shelf equipment including digital
projectors, PC processors and graphics cards, and open source
software tools are incorporated into the John-e-Box, a portable ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item15

"Face-off: Should the U.S. Govt. Do More to Keep IT Jobs for
 Citizens?"
Matthew Biggs of the International Federation of Professional &
Technical Engineers reports that globalization is eroding the
dominance of U.S. high-tech industries and destabilizing the
security of high-tech and IT companies and their employees.   ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item16

"Developing IT Skills 'To Go'"
November will see the launch of the National Information
Technology Apprenticeship System (NITAS), which seeks to build
skills and credentials in at least seven IT tracks, and six NITAS
pilot programs administered by the Computing Technology Industry ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item17

"Open Source Everywhere"
Open source is growing very popular among scientists and
innovators because it allows challenging problems to be addressed
with democratic principles, and its long-term promise is more
efficient and accelerated innovation across many fields.  One of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1107f.html#item18

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