ACM TechNews - Wednesday, December 10, 2003

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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 581
Date: December 10, 2003

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Top Stories for Wednesday, December 10, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Developers Take Linux Attacks to Heart"
"Intel to Release First 'Causal' Learning Algorithms"
"Massive Software Engineering Reform Is a Must"
"IEEE: Chinese Security Standard Could Fracture Wi-Fi"
"States Scrutinize E-Voting as Primaries Near"
"Yes, They Can! No, They Can't: Charges Fly in Nanobot Debate"
"One Small Step Made on the Long Road to Realizing Quantum Computers"
"Online Learning and the ROI of Training High-Tech Wizards"
"Researchers Report Progress Embedding Devices in Fabrics"
"A Potluck Party for XML"
"Hey, Santa, Just So You Know: Techies Are Up to No Good With
 'Smart Dust'"
"Transforming Non-Geeks Into Computer Whizzes"
"Yahoo Proposes New Internet Anti-Spam Structure"
"U.N. Control of Web Rejected"
"Computers That Read Your Mind"
"The New Internet"
"The Secret Is Out"
"Sentient Data Access Via a Diverse Society of Devices"

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

"Developers Take Linux Attacks to Heart"
Open-source software groups have been shaken by the string of
attacks on their host servers, including machines governing the
Linux kernel, the Debian Project, the Gentoo Linux Project, and
the GNU Project.  Previously, relatively few hacker attacks ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item1

"Intel to Release First 'Causal' Learning Algorithms"
Intel will release details of its probabilistic network library
(PNL) learning package at this week's Neural Information
Processing Systems (NIPS) conference.  The open-source PNL is
capable of merging separate data flows from real-time sensors ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item2

"Massive Software Engineering Reform Is a Must"
This month's National Cyber Security Summit brought together
federal government and major private sector software groups, and
resulted in the creation of a task force meant to improve
national software security.  The Security Across the Software ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item3

"IEEE: Chinese Security Standard Could Fracture Wi-Fi"
IEEE senior executive Paul Nikolich fired off a letter to Chinese
government officials Li Zhonghai and Wang Xudong last month
warning that China's deployment of the GB15629.11-2003 WLAN
standard threatens to fragment the market for wireless networking ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item4
"States Scrutinize E-Voting as Primaries Near"
With the presidential primaries on the horizon, some U.S. states
are taking second looks at electronic voting systems as concerns
about security and accuracy surface.  Much of the latest voter
backlash against e-voting systems, critics say, stems from ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item5

"Yes, They Can! No, They Can't: Charges Fly in Nanobot Debate"
Foresight Institute Chairman Dr. K. Eric Drexler and Nobel
laureate Dr. Richard E. Smalley of Rice University are waging a
long-standing feud in print about the possibility of creating
self-replicating "nanobots" that could construct almost anything. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item6

"One Small Step Made on the Long Road to Realizing Quantum Computers"
Japanese scientists at NEC and the Institute of Physical and
Chemical Research have successfully built a fundamental element
of a quantum computer--a "quantum gate" that could be a component
of the quantum equivalent of a computer chip.  NEC research ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item7

"Online Learning and the ROI of Training High-Tech Wizards"
Companies seeking to boost the skills of their IT employees and
individuals looking to advance their careers can choose from a
score of e-learning products and services, and ascertaining the
return-on-investment (ROI) of e-learning is critical in the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item8

"Researchers Report Progress Embedding Devices in Fabrics"
Researchers gathered at this week's International Electron
Devices Meeting detailed their work in the field of ambient
intelligence, with a particular emphasis on electronic textiles.
"Ambient intelligence is the vision that technology will become ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item9

"A Potluck Party for XML"
XML application interoperability will be the main theme of this
week's XML Conference and Expo 2003, which is hosting
demonstrations by BEA, Adobe, and others.  Major standards
organizations such as the Organization for the Advancement of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item10

"Hey, Santa, Just So You Know: Techies Are Up to No Good With
 'Smart Dust'"
Researchers at the Pentagon, UCLA, the University of
California-Berkeley, and elsewhere are developing smart dust,
minuscule devices or "motes" equipped with sensors, computer
chips, and radio transmitters that can be deployed into widely ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item11

"Transforming Non-Geeks Into Computer Whizzes"
Ellen Spertus, who runs an interdisciplinary computer science
graduate program at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., is
attempting to break myths about computer geeks in the hopes of
bringing more women--and other persons with non-technical ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item12

"Yahoo Proposes New Internet Anti-Spam Structure"
Yahoo! says its Domain Keys software, which may be launched next
year, will fight spam by changing the way the Internet requires a
sender's authentication, and the company adds that it will be
made freely available to developers of the Web's major ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item13

"U.N. Control of Web Rejected"
In preparatory talks for the upcoming World Summit on the
Information Society, the European Union, Canada, and Japan have
helped the United States turn back a bid by developing nations to
put the Internet under the control of the United Nations or its ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item14

"Computers That Read Your Mind"
Researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Computer
Architecture and Software Technology (FIRST) and the Benjamin
Franklin University Clinic are attempting to develop a
non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that allows users to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item15

"The New Internet"
Academic researchers are already testing out the new Internet on
the PlanetLab project that links 160 servers at 65 sites across
16 countries.  The researchers say PlanetLab acts as a testbed
for new Internet applications and expect that as the system ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item16

"The Secret Is Out"
Quantum communication has long been publicized as completely
hack-proof, but quantum hacking is an area of research that
engineers are exploring in parallel with the development of true
quantum networks--and they are uncovering possible exploits that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item17

"Sentient Data Access Via a Diverse Society of Devices"
University of Toronto researchers have developed a user model for
cooperative ubiquitous computing known as sentient data access,
in which wearable/mobile computers are used to relay referential
data to embedded computing environments at particular locations. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1210w.html#item18

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