ACM TechNews - Friday, November 14, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 571
Date: November 14, 2003

Top Stories for Friday, November 14, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Study: Tech Has Glass Ceiling"
"Net 'Outcry' Spurs Review of Patent"
"Europe's IT Skills Shortage Evaporates"
"Whatever Happened to Bluetooth?"
"Is That You, Son? Voice Authentication Trips Up the Experts"
"Tech Peddles Its Influence on Campus"
"Plastic Memory Could Replace Silicon"
"Wireless Networks Gain Spectrum"
"20-Year Science Map From Dept. of Energy"
"Standard for Securing Domain Name System Nears Finalization"
"Advances in Car Technology Bring High-Class Headaches"
"Academics Can Be Fun and Games"
"Image Processing Means You Can See Both the Wood and the Trees"
"Behavior-Monitoring Machines"
"Student Wins Award for Novel Web Idea"
"TIA Is Dead--Long Live TIA"
"The Mind of a Hacker"
"The Code Warriors"
"AI Loves Lucy"

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

"Study: Tech Has Glass Ceiling"
Despite the United States' vanguard position in the area of
technological advancement, there is still a dearth of female IT
leaders, according to a new study from the nonprofit Catalyst
research and advisory group.  The study is the result of five ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item1

"Net 'Outcry' Spurs Review of Patent"
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided Nov. 12 to re-assess
a Web browsing patent credited to the University of California at
San Francisco and Eolas Technologies CEO Michael D. Doyle in
response to what deputy commissioner for patent examination ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item2

"Europe's IT Skills Shortage Evaporates"
Bleak projections of IT staff shortages in the European Union
forecast in the late 1990s by International Data (IDC) and other
research firms have generally not come to pass.  More and more
European tech employees are being forced to seek local employment ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item3

"Whatever Happened to Bluetooth?"
Bluetooth is gaining momentum as its growing volume of shipped
products pushes prices down, but the technology is still too
complex for many users, say experts.  Bluetooth Special Interest
Group (SIG) executive director Mike McCamon says most of the 1 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item4

"Is That You, Son? Voice Authentication Trips Up the Experts"
Though computer-based speaker recognition has made significant
progress in the last few years, boosting its accuracy and
consistency is a tough challenge.  Speaker recognition expert
George Doddington observes that such factors as age, emotions, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item5

"Tech Peddles Its Influence on Campus"
The relationship between the tech industry and educational
universities is becoming so intricate that schools and
enterprises are openly collaborating on projects and even
curricula that further major companies' agendas, which critics ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item6

"Plastic Memory Could Replace Silicon"
Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard Labs researchers have
developed a new polymer-based memory technology that promises
greater storage capacity at lower cost than silicon chips.  The
memory, which consists of a certain amount of silicon, a flexible ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item7

"Wireless Networks Gain Spectrum"
In an attempt to spur the penetration of high-speed Internet
access in rural communities and other underserved regions, the
FCC yesterday reserved a section of airwaves for wireless
networks in the 5 GHz band of the radio spectrum, which has ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item8

"20-Year Science Map From Dept. of Energy"
The U.S. government plans to team up with U.S. computer vendors
to develop supercomputing capability specifically for science and
industrial applications.  In a new 48-page report, "Facilities
for the Future of Science: A 20-Year Outlook," the Department of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item9

"Standard for Securing Domain Name System Nears Finalization"
The IETF reportedly will soon implement DNS-Sec, a security
function that will authenticate information that passes through
the Internet for more easy identification of people who send
spam, worms, and viruses.  DNS-Sec uses a digital signature that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item10

"Advances in Car Technology Bring High-Class Headaches"
Auto technology is able to give drivers on-the-road directions,
monitor multiple aspects of vehicle performance, and avoid
serious injury in accidents, but the growing complexity of
value-added systems is also causing serious problems; ironically, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item11

"Academics Can Be Fun and Games"
The University of Southern California plans to launch a minor
degree program in gaming in late November 2004, in what is
reportedly a first for a major research university.  The minor,
which is nearing finalization, is an interdisciplinary course of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item12

"Image Processing Means You Can See Both the Wood and the Trees"
Mathematician Gemma Piella has reworked current wavelet
techniques to bring more detailed pictures to image processing.
Developed when she was a doctoral student in the Netherlands, the
new technique for processing images is able to produce a complete ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item13

"Behavior-Monitoring Machines"
Behaviometric software is designed to determine the behavioral
patterns of people and things and fine-tune the kinds of
behavior--normal and abnormal--to look for through observation.
The effectiveness of such software lies in developers' ability to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item14

"Student Wins Award for Novel Web Idea"
Shou-De Lin, a Taiwanese graduate student at the University of
Southern California, earned the award for best paper at the 2003
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Web
Intelligence Consortium International Conference last month with ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item15

"TIA Is Dead--Long Live TIA"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA)
Information Awareness Office and its controversial Terrorism
Information Awareness (TIA) program were defunded by
congressional decree in late September, but eight Information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item16

"The Mind of a Hacker"
The word "hacker" has acquired a bad reputation in light of the
harm inflicted on people and computer networks by worms and
viruses, identity theft, and digital extortion, while laws such
as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are driving what ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item17

"The Code Warriors"
Boosting homeland security--perhaps the overriding concern of the
21st Century--follows a two-pronged strategy of shoring up the
safety of both physical and information assets.  Security
incidents reported to the CERT Command Center totaled 114,855 ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item18

"AI Loves Lucy"
Cyberlife Research founder Steve Grand plans to create an
artificially intelligent machine that can think and learn through
experimentation with Lucy, an android version of an infant
orangutan he has developed.  Such a breakthrough, Grand hopes, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1114f.html#item19

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