ACM TechNews - Monday, November 3, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 566
Date: November 3, 2003

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

"File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech"
"Web Patent Critics Spotlight Old Technology"
"A Better Ballot?"
"Internet Copyright Law Goes Into Effect"
"High-Tech Jobs Are Going Abroad! But That's Okay"
"Symposium to Highlight 'Ambient Intelligence'"
"A Matter of Milliseconds: Optical Mesh Networks Recover Rapidly"
"University of Florida Researcher: 'Reversible' Computers More
 Energy Efficient, Faster"
"Feeding the Need for News"
"Needed: A Beefier CAN-SPAM Bill"
"Who'll Develop Tech's 'Next Big Thing'?"
"Nine Eyes Help Robots to Navigate"
"Hardware Today: Standardization, Coming Soon to a Data Center
 Near You"
"Indian Language Computing Makes Impressive Strides"
"IP Address Shortage? What IP Address Shortage?"
"A Web of Rules"
"Mind-Reading Chip Close to Reality"
"IP Net Management Could Get Easier"
"Building Highly Secure, Reliable Grids"

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

"File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech"
Diebold Election Systems' recent allegations that college
students and other grass-roots proponents are violating copyright
statutes by posting on the Internet company documents related to
the security of their electronic voting machines--and advocates' ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item1

"Web Patent Critics Spotlight Old Technology"
Web technology companies and the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) are rushing to the aid of Microsoft, as the software
giant tries fights a critical patent claim that could have ramifications
for a wide variety of Internet-related software.  The '906 patent ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item2

"A Better Ballot?"
Computer scientists argue that costly electronic voting machines
being installed in U.S. states--ostensibly to avoid hanging chads
and other problems that plagued previous elections--will only
make the election process more problematic, because of their ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item3

"Internet Copyright Law Goes Into Effect"
A controversial Internet copyright law based on the EU Copyright
Directive has gone into effect in the United Kingdom on Oct. 31,
making Britain the sixth EU member state to ratify the
legislation after Austria, Germany, Denmark, Greece, and Italy.  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item4

"High-Tech Jobs Are Going Abroad! But That's Okay"
The economy is picking up along with corporate IT spending, but
the number of IT jobs remains mired at 20 percent below what the
number was in 2000, writes former Labor Secretary Robert B.
Reich.  Ostensibly, the culprit is not only the recent economic ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item5

"Symposium to Highlight 'Ambient Intelligence'"
The Netherlands will be the stage for the first European
Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (EUSAI), where some 160
European researchers are expected to discuss three major ambient
intelligence areas--ubiquitous computing, context awareness, and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item6

"A Matter of Milliseconds: Optical Mesh Networks Recover Rapidly"
University of Arkansas computer engineer Kazem Sohraby
demonstrated at the recent National Fiber Optics Engineers
Conference in Orlando, Fla., that mesh networks can boast the
same level of reliability as ring-shaped Synchronous Optical ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item7

"University of Florida Researcher: 'Reversible' Computers More
 Energy Efficient, Faster"
By re-capturing the energy used to conduct computer calculations,
University of Florida researcher Michael Frank says computer
chips can be made to run much cooler, hence faster and more
tightly packed together as well.  "Reversible computing" works ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item8

"Feeding the Need for News"
Rich Site Summary (RSS) technology is being lifted out of
obscurity by online aficionados and Web operators to keep Web
surfers apprised of new content added to specific Web sites.  At
the core of RSS is freely available software that enables Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item9

"Needed: A Beefier CAN-SPAM Bill"
The CAN-SPAM bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Oct. 23 could be
more effective at discouraging spammers if certain provisions are
added, writes Jane Black.  In its current form, CAN-SPAM only
permits federal agencies, state attorneys general, and ISPs to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item10

"Who'll Develop Tech's 'Next Big Thing'?"
The United States, Canada, and Western Europe are in jeopardy of
losing their monopoly on developing innovative technologies,
according to Cutter Consortium Fellow Ed Yourdon.  Yourdon is
calling on the federal government to find a way to boost the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item11

"Nine Eyes Help Robots to Navigate"
University of Maryland at College Park computer scientist Yiannis
Aloimonos and his colleague Cornelia Fermuller are set to
introduce new technology that will give robots "omni-directional"
vision.  The new device, which will be presented at a robotics ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item12

"Hardware Today: Standardization, Coming Soon to a Data Center
 Near You"
Computer Associates, EDS, Opsware, and over 20 other hardware
vendors have set up a consortium to support the development of
Data Center Markup Language (DCML), an XML-based programming
language that establishes communications between a data center's ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item13

"Indian Language Computing Makes Impressive Strides"
Indian Linux and several other major groups in India are working
to bring Indian languages to the free software world.  Nagarjuna
of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, Jitendra
Shah and colleagues in Mumbai, Tamil, the Government of India ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item14

"IP Address Shortage? What IP Address Shortage?"
As Internet Protocol version 6 IPv6 attracts more and more
attention and some continue to publicize worries that IPv4 is
rapidly running out of space, Richard Jimmerson of the American
Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) contends, "There is quite a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item15

"A Web of Rules"
Kendall Grant Clark writes that the vision of a sturdy, public
Semantic Web can only come to pass if the industrial, academic,
and hacker communities are engaged in informal, loosely-coupled
collaboration, but notes that hackerdom is, for the most part, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item16

"Mind-Reading Chip Close to Reality"
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) continues to invest heavily
in basic research, the fruit of which includes a computer chip
that can translate brain signals into machine-readable
instructions.  NTT chief researcher Keiichi Torimitsu is growing ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item17

"IP Net Management Could Get Easier"
The Internet Engineering Task Force is working on a new IP
network management standard that would allow more complete
traffic-flow data to be gathered at switches and routers, then
exported to a management console for analysis.  The more detailed ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item18

"Building Highly Secure, Reliable Grids"
Grid computing promises to supply computing power on demand like
any other utility, but needs better security and reliability in
order to succeed, writes United Devices' Sri Mandyam.
Computational grids are guessed to be at the same stage of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1103m.html#item19


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