ACM TechNews - Friday, December 5, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 579
Date: December 5, 2003

Top Stories for Friday, December 5, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Help Fix Cyber-Security or Else, U.S. Tells Industry"
"Symposium to Promote Voting Machine Clarity"
"IT Stymied in Terror War: Panel"
"Analysis: Nano Bill Promises Real Results"
"NSF Seeks Theoretical Limits of Computation"
"IT Careers That Will Bounce Back"
"Open-Source Practices May Help Improve Software Engineering"
"Linux Security Expert Defends Debian"
"Duke Researchers Will Reap Benefits From Cluster Farm"
"With Roadside Data, Better Forecast for Snow Removal"
"New Electronics Recycling Method Converts Gray to Green"
"Deadwood Finds an Eternal Electronic Life on the Web"
"North American ISPs Trial IPv6"
"ITU and ICANN Clash May Be Delayed"
"The Guts of a New Machine"
"New Weapons of Information Warfare"
"Bioinformatics Moves Into the Mainstream"
"The Superheroes of Technology"

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

"Help Fix Cyber-Security or Else, U.S. Tells Industry"
Tech companies were warned by top homeland security officials at
yesterday's National Cyber Security Summit that they will face
government regulation unless they make a major commitment to
improving the security of the U.S. cyberinfrastructure.  The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item1

"Symposium to Promote Voting Machine Clarity"
A Swarthmore College voting machine and electoral transparency
symposium on Saturday will bring together top-thinkers from
across the nation, according to organizer and Swarthmore student
Steven Bhardwaj.  The symposium comes after two Swarthmore ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item2

"IT Stymied in Terror War: Panel"
The Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the
Information Age second annual report on homeland defense
concludes that acrimonious debates about privacy and civil
liberties are preventing the U.S. government from fully ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item3

"Analysis: Nano Bill Promises Real Results"
President Bush's Dec. 3 approval of a four-year federal
commitment of $3.7 billion for the research and development of
nanotechnology is being heralded as a revolutionary development
by nanotech advocates.  "It makes nanotechnology the highest ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item4

"NSF Seeks Theoretical Limits of Computation"
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is launching a new effort
to discover the theoretical limits of computation and network
data transfer, and is seeking grant proposals for the $32 million
the agency has allocated for the work.  That money would be ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item5

"IT Careers That Will Bounce Back"
IT jobs that utilize vertical industry expertise or important
creative skills are going to grow in demand, according to
industry analysts who say that companies are focusing more on
value creation after years of paring back costs.  Though jobs ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item6

"Open-Source Practices May Help Improve Software Engineering"
Open-source software development has many advantages over
by-the-book corporate software development, according to
university researchers.  UC Irvine Institute for Software
Research senior research scientist Walt Scacchi says open-source ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item7

"Linux Security Expert Defends Debian"
Linux expert Jay Beale defended the response of Debian Project
leaders to a security breach that shut down three Debian servers
and stopped open development activities.  Debian is a Linux
operating system variant popular with Linux enthusiasts.  Most of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item8

"Duke Researchers Will Reap Benefits From Cluster Farm"
Duke University is building a cluster supercomputing farm that
will alleviate the administrative burdens of its researchers, as
well as provide extra computing resources when necessary.
Researchers at Duke commonly rely on computer clusters, which ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item9

"With Roadside Data, Better Forecast for Snow Removal"
The state of Iowa was sufficiently impressed with last winter's
trial run of the Winter Road Maintenance Decision Support System
to carry out a second round of tests this winter using an
upgraded version.  The software system integrates specialized ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item10

"New Electronics Recycling Method Converts Gray to Green"
Purdue University industrial engineering professor Julie Ann
Stuart has developed a software method to make electronic
recycling operations more efficient and profitable by refining
plant scheduling.  E-cycling efficiency will be critical as about ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item11

"Deadwood Finds an Eternal Electronic Life on the Web"
In spite of the Internet's power to present data quickly and
often, the World Wide Web is glutted with "deadwood"--sites
abandoned and highly outdated.  A recent study by Perseus
Development found that of the 3,634 surveyed Web sites and Web ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item12

"North American ISPs Trial IPv6"
U.S. ISPs are starting to test services that support IPv6, but it
may take until 2007 before U.S.-based multinationals are prepared
to deploy production IPv6 networks, say advocates of the
protocol.  IPv6 offers an enhanced 128-bit addressing scheme, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item13

"ITU and ICANN Clash May Be Delayed"
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is holding a
meeting next week at the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) in Geneva and is expected to form a consensus on Internet
governance, with international governments adopting a Declaration ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item14

"The Guts of a New Machine"
Since its market debut two years ago, Apple's iPod portable
digital music player has become the company's highest-volume
product, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs credits its ascendance to
iconic status to its seamless and simple design.  The iPod ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item15

"New Weapons of Information Warfare"
Self-aware computer attack programs will overwhelm and
out-maneuver current computer defenses in the near future, writes
information warfare expert Paul Strassmann.  The October 2003
issue of Communications of the ACM contains an article by robot  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item16

"Bioinformatics Moves Into the Mainstream"
The enormous amount of data being generated by bioinformatics
projects such as gene mapping and proteomics research is driving
a shift away from project-specific software and toward more
commercially available products.  "Researchers need smart ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item17

"The Superheroes of Technology"
Supercomputers are employed to carry out enormous calculative
operations for diverse fields such as weather forecasting, genome
decoding, nuclear blast modeling, and astrophysics, and their
movement toward a clustered architecture is being driven by the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1205f.html#item18

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