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ACM TechNews - Monday, March 7, 2005



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ACM TechNews
March 7, 2005

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • Vote for Change
  • The Bleeding Edge of Computing
  • EU Patent Law Could Impede Open Source
  • Laying Foundations for Component-Based Software Markets
  • Space Snakes and Scorpions
  • Sender Authentication Hops Off the Standards Track
  • Tracking PCs Anywhere on the Net
  • No Redress Route in Terror Screening Plan
  • AI Expert Calls for E-Defense for the UK
  • IPod 'Squeaks' Betray Software Secrets
  • Linux Security Rough Around the Edges, But Improving
  • Domain Owners Lose Privacy
  • The Semantic Aspects of E-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics for Grid and Service Oriented Systems
  • Q&A: Author of 'Dude, Did I Steal Your Job?' Sounds Off
  • Whatever Happened To...?
  • It's Raining Code! (Hallelujah?)
  • Caution: COTS Ahead
  • Is Realtime Real? Part 1
  • Web Metadata Standards: Observations and Prescriptions

     

    Vote for Change

    New federal rules for voting machines are on track to be enacted before the 2006 mid-term elections, while electronic voting machine companies are preparing products that will be certified under 2002 federal standards. However, whether e-voting systems will be more secure and reliable by the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Bleeding Edge of Computing

    Computing technology is expected to make radical leaps in the future, thanks to progress in many areas of research. Thad Starner with the Georgia Institute of Technology notes that artificial intelligence systems have begun to perceive the world much like humans do using cameras and ...

    [read more]      to the top


    EU Patent Law Could Impede Open Source

    Attorneys warn that the European Union's proposed directive on "computer-implemented inventions" legitimizes software patenting, which will enable patent holders to hinder the progress of smaller software companies and open-source developers. For any developer doing business in ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Laying Foundations for Component-Based Software Markets

    The European Commission is blazing the way for component-based software engineering with several Information Society Technologies projects that address technical, economic, and organizational aspects of commercialized component-based software development. The COMPONENT+ project uses built-in ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Space Snakes and Scorpions

    Scientists in NASA's Autonomy and Robotics group are working on improved intelligence and efficiency in new generations of robot vehicles for interplanetary exploration. Experimentation is proceeding on new software algorithms to enable vehicles to automate chores that are currently ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Sender Authentication Hops Off the Standards Track

    Reconciliation between Microsoft's Sender ID Framework (SIDF) and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) has been sidelined by technical disagreements between the two specifications, and Microsoft and the SPF community are for now taking diverging paths within the Internet Engineering Task Force's ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Tracking PCs Anywhere on the Net

    University of California Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno has published a paper indicating that he has devised techniques for fingerprinting computer hardware remotely, potentially allowing any physical device to be tracked wherever it is on the Internet, even without the device's cooperation. His ...

    [read more]      to the top


    No Redress Route in Terror Screening Plan

    The Homeland Security Department is creating a new office to handle terrorist screening programs, such as those that check domestic airline passengers, cargo shipments, port employees, and hazardous materials transport. The new Screening and Coordination Office is still more than a ...

    [read more]      to the top


    AI Expert Calls for E-Defense for the UK

    The United Kingdom needs to become more of an information power, says Nigel Shadbolt, professor of artificial intelligence at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Shadbolt, who believes the UK needs to focus more on e-defense, is scheduled to talk ...

    [read more]      to the top


    IPod 'Squeaks' Betray Software Secrets

    A 17-year-old computer science student from Germany has worked out the code that allows Apple's iPod music player to start up by listening to how the device generates "squeaks" when scrolling through the on-screen menu. Nils Schneider's impetus for tinkering with his Christmas present was to install ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Linux Security Rough Around the Edges, But Improving

    The National Security Agency's Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) provides greater security for the country's computer infrastructure, and although the technology has won the support of the Linux developer community, SELinux's complexity threatens its widespread adoption by government ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Domain Owners Lose Privacy

    Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) ordered domain registrars that sell .us domain names, including Network Solutions, eNom, and Go Daddy, to stop allowing registrants to hide their contact information via proxy services. ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Semantic Aspects of E-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics for Grid and Service Oriented Systems

    Applying semantics to learning content and services will allow the grid infrastructure to support large-scale collaboration of e-learning activities. The computers and people participating in e-learning activities should comprehend and communicate among themselves via a common ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Q&A: Author of 'Dude, Did I Steal Your Job?' Sounds Off

    Programmer N. Sivakumar says in an interview that the point of his book, "Dude, Did I Steal Your Job?," is to explain the economic benefits of H-1B visa holders hired to work in the United States, as well as address the perception that such professionals are taking jobs away from U.S. workers. ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Whatever Happened To...?

    Examples of highly hyped technologies that have not panned out or whose rollout is slower than anticipated include mobile broadband, whose spread has been impeded by huge 3G deployment costs; however, forthcoming deployments of High Speed Data Packet Access, EvDO, and Universal Mobile ...

    [read more]      to the top


    It's Raining Code! (Hallelujah?)

    CIOs are growing more interested in open-source development, and have adopted cooperative strategies to minimize the associated risks and expenses. One such initiative is the Avalanche Corporate Technology Cooperative, a collaborative development effort to identify mutually ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Caution: COTS Ahead

    The aerospace and defense fields are under more pressure to adopt commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and open source software for cost and flexibility reasons, but still find it difficult to formulate unbiased policy and keep up with standards efforts for COTS adoption. COTS software ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Is Realtime Real? Part 1

    Video game realism has taken a big step forward in the last year largely thanks to new graphic boards that facilitate more refined real-time rendering. The advances in gaming hardware and software were made possible by the advent of programmable hardware. Microsoft's High-Level Shading ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Web Metadata Standards: Observations and Prescriptions

    David Bodoff of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Mordechai Ben-Menachem of Ben-Gurion University, and Patrick C.K. Hung of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology examine the development efforts of Web metadata standards and prescribe solutions to various ...

    [read more]      to the top


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