The Short Life, Public Execution, and (Secret) Resurrection of Total Information Awareness
Copyright Office Pitches Anti-P2P Bill
A new draft of the Induce Act dated Sept. 2 purports to outlaw peer-to-peer networks used for file-swapping without jeopardizing products such as MP3 players and portable hard drives that might "induce" people to commit digital piracy. The Copyright Office insists that this new version of the ...
[read more] to the top
Spammers Using Sender Authentication Too, Study Says
The anti-spam effectiveness of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) email sender authentication standard as well as a successor standard, Sender ID, has been called into question by the results of a CipherTrust survey, according to CipherTrust CTO Paul Judge. The poll indicates that out of ...
[read more] to the top
Tech Initiatives Aim to Go Global
Bringing information technology to the world's underdeveloped areas is the goal of numerous collaborations between academic and industrial researchers involving the design of new, inexpensive communications and computing devices. Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) 50x15 initiative aims to link half ...
[read more] to the top
Virtual Humans Proposed as Space Travelers
Computer animation expert Peter Plantec says virtual humans are a needed accompaniment for any long-term space travel because they will filter information for real human astronauts. Any encounter humans have with alien visitors will likely be with their virtual surrogates, since sending ...
[read more] to the top
Ultrawideband Takes on Wi-Fi
Ultrawideband (UWB) is an attractive technology that offers unique benefits over other contenders for wireless home networking, but its ongoing standards battle could give it enough pause that a new Wi-Fi version pulls ahead. IEEE UWB representatives have been fighting over the 802.15.3a ...
[read more] to the top
Gearing Up for Digital-Era Preservation
The importance of digitally preserving Europe's cultural and scientific heritage will be highlighted at an October workshop in Bern, Switzerland, hosted by the IST program's Erpanet project. Underlying Erpanet is the acknowledgment that Europe must commit more time, financial resources, and ...
[read more] to the top
Scientists Set Internet2 Speed Record
A new land-speed record for the Internet2 academic network was set by researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on Sept. 2 when 859 GB of data was successfully routed between Geneva and Pasadena at a distance of roughly ...
[read more] to the top
Birth of the Bluetooth Bots
Researchers are finding the low-power Bluetooth wireless communications technology to be an excellent enabler for small, inexpensive robots that could serve as proof-of-concept demonstrations for collective machine intelligence and "self-deploying" sensor networks. Scientists at the Swiss ...
[read more] to the top
Dynamic Lighting System Colors 3-D Environments
The Expressive Lighting Engine (ELE) is a dynamic, automatic lighting system that can enhance the video game experience for users as well as accelerate game development. ELE is the brainchild of Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology assistant professor Seif El-Nasr, who ...
[read more] to the top
Domestic Bliss Through Mechanical Marvels?
Robot technology has arrived at a watershed moment in which it has started to migrate from industrial and military settings into the home. Experts expect demand for domestic robots that function as caregivers, assistants, and companions to explode as baby boomers approach their autumn years and ...
[read more] to the top
Code Name: Geekfun
It is typical of the tech industry that products which boast whimsical, cool-sounding code names in their development phase are marketed under less colorful, humdrum brands. Most other industries, by contrast, use mundane appellations for products in development only to roll them out commercially ...
[read more] to the top
Paper or Mouse-Click? What's on Computers Is Easier to Find, Study Shows
Participants in a survey from the University of Washington's Information School indicated that managing and retrieving paper-based information is more troublesome than computerized information. Over 50 percent of the 219 respondents reported that they lost track of a paper document at least once ...
[read more] to the top
Cooking Up a Digital Future
Concocting futuristic kitchen technologies is the goal of MIT's Counter Intelligence Research initiative, whose areas of focus include smart appliances and more durable equipment. Concepts being researched include devices such as a sensor-studded plastic container that is aware of its ...
[read more] to the top
Five Photons Linked
A team of international researchers has entangled five photons in a quantum computing setup that would be able to check for errors and transmit information through a distributed network. Quantum computers would require more stringent error-checking schemes than are used in traditional ...
[read more] to the top
Bringing Down Communication Barriers for the Hard of Hearing
The IST program-funded Synface project coordinated by KTH in Sweden seeks to enhance telephone communications for people with hearing difficulties using software that produces a computer-generated face whose lips move in sync with the caller's speech. The software can be installed on a garden ...
[read more] to the top
When E-Mail Points the Way Down the Rabbit Hole
Spam is a runaway technology phenomenon that focuses on better understanding human interests, according to academics and spam experts. Spam and technologies to counter it develop quickly, but are not developing in the traditional economic sense where the aim is to gain market share; ...
[read more] to the top
Fund Cyber Infrastructure
An Aug. 12 memo from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy indicates that supercomputing and cyber infrastructure will be the most pressing concerns for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program in fiscal ...
[read more] to the top
A Better Distorted View
Readable cartogram maps based on population data can be generated rapidly on a computer using mathematics employed to describe diffusion, according to University of Michigan physicists Mark E.J. Newman and Michael T. Gastner, who detail their approach in the May 18 edition of Proceedings of ...
[read more] to the top
The Short Life, Public Execution, and (Secret) Resurrection of Total Information Awareness
The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, touted as an initiative to detect terrorist activity by mining public and private transactional databases, raised fears of citizen surveillance that led to its termination by Congress, though ...
[read more] to the top
To submit feedback about ACM TechNews, contact:
technews@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from the ACM TechNews Early Alert Service:
Please send a separate email to listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with the line
signoff technews
in the body of your message.
Please note that replying directly to this message does not
automatically unsubscribe you from the TechNews list.
ACM may have a different email address on file for you,
so if you're unable to "unsubscribe" yourself, please direct
your request to: technews-request@xxxxxxx
We will remove your name from the TechNews list on
your behalf.
For help with technical problems, including problems with
leaving the list, please write to:
technews-request@xxxxxxx
to the top
© Copyright 2004 Information, Inc.
