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ACM TechNews Alert for Monday, April 19, 2004



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ACM TechNews
April 19, 2004

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Welcome to the April 19, 2004 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this service, please see below.

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • Supercomputer Hacks Highlight Ed Security Challenge
  • Weighing the Results of PC Recycling
  • Segway Battlefield Applications Explored
  • FTC to Look Closer at 'Spyware'
  • Making Software Customisation a Commodity
  • Could Open Source Elections Close Out Hanging Chads?
  • New Web Protocol May Leave DSL in the Dust
  • Testing Times for Women in IT
  • Making the World Safe for Free Software
  • Internet Governance Debate Heats Up
  • A Voting Revolution in India?
  • Testing 101: AWOL on the College Campus
  • The Makings of a Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer
  • Happy Memories
  • Spam to Go
  • Paint the Light Fantastic
  • The Sensor Web: A Distributed, Wireless Monitoring System

     

    Supercomputer Hacks Highlight Ed Security Challenge

    Under pressure from government regulations, increased user demands, Internet-borne attacks, and even legal threats from the private sector, universities are turning to advanced security technologies such as intrusion prevention systems. Universities have historically tried to ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Weighing the Results of PC Recycling

    Next month Dell plans to publicly disclose its goal to boost the amount of hardware it recycles by 50 percent by weight of materials collected, which could spur more PC recycling as well as set up a common recycling metric for the computer industry in general. Another benefit of such a plan would ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Segway Battlefield Applications Explored

    The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has sent at least 15 modified Segway Human Transporters to researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, NASA, the Neurosciences Institute, and elsewhere with the goal of developing them into thinking, reasoning ...

    [read more]      to the top


    FTC to Look Closer at 'Spyware'

    Privacy advocates are in a furor over "spyware" and "adware" that is often installed on Windows PCs in many popular programs--free music and file-sharing programs, for example--users download off the Internet, sometimes without the user's awareness. The FTC will investigate the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Making Software Customisation a Commodity

    A new open-source software development platform allows organizations to more effectively manage variants of open-source applications. Whereas version management software allows companies to keep track of and manage different versions of a vendor product, they do not adequately address the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Could Open Source Elections Close Out Hanging Chads?

    Electronic voting systems based on open-source software are a better alternative to those using closed-source proprietary software, according to many computer experts. A local government in Ontario recently used a Linux-based system in its elections that was developed by the local firm ...

    [read more]      to the top


    New Web Protocol May Leave DSL in the Dust

    North Carolina State University computer science researchers boast that current high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) connections are positively "lethargic" compared to Internet connections using binary increase congestion transmission control protocol (BIC-TCP). NCSU's Jon Pishney ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Testing Times for Women in IT

    Information technology testing has become an increasingly attractive area of the IT profession for women. Five years ago, females accounted for just five percent of IT testers, but today they represent more than one-third. Now, according to Vizuri, a risk management and recruitment company, if ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Making the World Safe for Free Software

    Daniel Egger, a partner at the venture capital firm Eno River Capital, wants to establish the legality of Linux so that his startup firm Open Source Risk Management can begin to offer insurance protection for users of the open source operating system. Egger's efforts are a response to the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Internet Governance Debate Heats Up

    The process by which the Internet will be governed in the future has become a hot topic, generating plenty of debate in political and industry circles alike. Some countries are arguing that governments should play a bigger role in overseeing operational aspects of the Internet such as the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    A Voting Revolution in India?

    India expects to stop election fraud, cut costs, accelerate the electoral process, and boost voter turnout from 60 percent to 70 percent by deploying $200 electronic voting machines that are simple and easy to use. Voters use a keyboard to enter their choice by pushing a button next to the name ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Testing 101: AWOL on the College Campus

    Few college and university computer science curricula include testing for quality, which is a vital ingredient in software development, according to industry experts. Go Pro Management President Robin Goldsmith maintains that college curricula overemphasize people and project management, leaving ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Makings of a Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer

    The Flashmob1 supercomputing project at the University of San Francisco drew hundreds of computer enthusiasts together in an attempt to build one of the world's fastest computers in just one day. While the goal to break into the Top 500 supercomputing list was not met, the participants did ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Happy Memories

    Motorola has given other electronic manufacturers prototypes of a chip to evaluate that could one day start a PC instantly, power batteries all day, never lose data, and operate at high speed. The magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) chip is the same technology Motorola demonstrated last ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Spam to Go

    Spam is invading text messaging, with the volume of spam text messages originating in North America outstripping legitimate messages last year, according to messaging firm Wireless Services. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, and California have all passed laws to try to stem the tide, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Paint the Light Fantastic

    Animating organic objects--clouds, trees, hair, fire, skin, and the like--in a computer is a tough challenge, since even an untrained eye can usually see through the artifice, often in a single glance. The two key components of computer modeling are the object's shape and the way light ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Sensor Web: A Distributed, Wireless Monitoring System

    The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Sensor Web Project was designed as an instrument made up of multiple sensor platforms or pods that share information among themselves and perform as a single unit for the purposes of environmental monitoring and/or control. A Sensor Web pod is comprised ...

    [read more]      to the top


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