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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 585
Date: December 19, 2003
Top Stories for Friday, December 19, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Sun Researchers: Computers Do Bad Math"
"Web Tools Don't Always Mesh With How People Work"
"Linux Gets Heart Transplant With 2.6.0"
"With an Urban Scooter, a Humanoid Robot Hits Its Stride"
"IBM Research Working Toward a Better In-Box"
"From Browser to Platform: Mozilla Rises"
"Cyber Threats Risk Net's Future"
"Profound Debate Roils Nanotechnology Field"
"The Data Center of the Future"
"Users Worry About 'Zero-Day' Attacks, Try to Secure Systems"
"Taming the Supercomputer"
"Making Something Out of Nothing"
"AI Think, Therefore I Am"
"The End of the Experiment"
"Feds Look at the Big Computer Picture"
"Instant Manufacturing"
"Programming Matter: A Possible Future"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Sun Researchers: Computers Do Bad Math"
Unexplained computer crashes--which have at times made the difference
between life and death--are sometimes attributable to bad math rather than
poor operating system design, according to Sun Microsystems CTO Greg
Papadopoulos. Sun has been granted $50 million from the Defense Advanced ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item1
"Web Tools Don't Always Mesh With How People Work"
There are numerous techniques Web users employ to recall the Web pages they
visit (sending emails to themselves or writing sticky notes, for example),
but most people do not avail themselves of such methods when they decide to
revisit pages, say University of Washington's William Jones and Harry Bruce ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item2
"Linux Gets Heart Transplant With 2.6.0"
A market dominated by Unix-enabled servers could be disrupted with the
introduction of Linux version 2.6.0, an updated kernel of the open-source
operating system that was released Dec. 17. In a note to the kernel
mailing list officially announcing the new kernel's release, Linux founder ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item3
"With an Urban Scooter, a Humanoid Robot Hits Its Stride"
Segway, the company that develops the Segway Human Transporter, modified
the two-wheeled, gyroscopically balanced vehicle for university projects
supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under
its Mobile Autonomous Robot Software initiative, whose goal is to create ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item4
"IBM Research Working Toward a Better In-Box"
IBM Research's Collaborative User Experience Team is trying to improve
email systems through its ReMail (Reinventing Email) project, which
recently revealed a prototype client boasting features that promise to
offer better email organization and management. "Part of the overload that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item5
"From Browser to Platform: Mozilla Rises"
Besides providing a steadily improving Web browser, the Mozilla technology
is quietly becoming an OS-independent applications platform, writes Nigel
McFarlane, who says Mozilla products continue to improve incrementally and
have won several awards and outstanding reviews this year. Mozilla is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item6
"Cyber Threats Risk Net's Future"
A major issue stressed at the recent U.N. summit in Geneva was how to
leverage information technology so that developing countries can
benefit--and key to this is embedding trustful cybersecurity within these
nations. But this goal is complicated by the fact that such countries are ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item7
"Profound Debate Roils Nanotechnology Field"
President Bush's approval of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and
Development Act on Dec. 3--which allocates $3.7 billion for National
Nanotechnology Initiative projects--has split the nanotech community into
two camps: Those supporting Foresight Institute founder Eric Drexler, who ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item8
"The Data Center of the Future"
Companies are looking to several emerging technologies to help them cope
with rising data center costs and low utilization rates: META Group
predicts data center budgets will grow by 70 percent over the next decade,
with software spending expected to more than double and storage and server ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item9
"Users Worry About 'Zero-Day' Attacks, Try to Secure Systems"
Companies are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility that
their systems will be attacked before software patches are made available.
At the InfoSec 2003 Conference in New York last week, information
technology managers indicated that so-called zero-day attacks have the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item10
"Taming the Supercomputer"
Supercomputing is the central driver behind scientific advances, plays an
important role in the economy, and is proving useful in national security
issues, says IBM systems vice president at the T.J. Watson Research Center,
Tilak Agerwala. IBM collaborates with a number of national and academic ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item11
"Making Something Out of Nothing"
A startup firm founded by a 29-year-old MIT graduate student has developed
a virtual interactive display that combines converted air particles and a
laser-tracking system in an interactive touch screen; the two-dimensional
computer images are shown floating in free space and can be manipulated ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item12
"AI Think, Therefore I Am"
Virtual agents--autonomous, self-directing computer programs that are
social and reactive--are being developed for numerous tasks ranging from
the simple to the highly sophisticated, but making them effective requires
a delicate balance between psychology and technology. A virtual agent is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item13
"The End of the Experiment"
A recent paper by John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center at
Harvard, critiques ICANN's effort in cultivating worldwide Internet
democracy. Palfrey explains how ICANN has experimented with different
types of governance of the domain name system involving recommendations ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item14
"Feds Look at the Big Computer Picture"
Federal policy makers are grappling with future supercomputer development
after receiving a wake-up call in the form of Japan's massive Earth
Simulator built by NEC. That system can process complex calculations
nearly three times faster than the second-fastest supercomputer, the ASCI Q ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item15
"Instant Manufacturing"
Direct manufacturing, in which products are custom-made from digital files,
can accelerate production schedules, reduce or do away with excess
inventory, and save hours of human labor while delivering products of
superior quality and precision. Such systems essentially print out digital ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item16
"Programming Matter: A Possible Future"
Science writer Wil McCarthy describes the early stages of the development
of programmable matter in the book, "Hacking Matter." Solid-state
physicists at IBM, Sun, MIT, and the Defense Department are exploring the
technology, which involves manipulating the electrons of an object to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1219f.html#item17
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