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ACM TechNews - Friday, August 5, 2005



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ACM TechNews
August 5, 2005

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • Fancy Meets Function on Runway
  • Invention Intervention
  • Dear IT Graduate, Just One Word: Mainframes
  • Under Siege in Dulles By New-Generation Hackers
  • IT Jobs Call Stateside, But Who's Answering?
  • Lawmakers Push Pentagon Over Science, Tech Programs
  • Worms Could Dodge Net Traps
  • Students Work to Protect Passwords
  • Grid Meets P2P
  • Europe Follows Grokster's Lead
  • Google Now a Hacker's Tool
  • New 'Roadcasting' Concept Allows Music Sharing in and Between Cars
  • The College Library of Tomorrow
  • Optoelectronics to Increase the Broadband Flow
  • Open GL ES 2.0 Advances 3D Graphics Acceleration for Cellphones, Handhelds, PS3
  • Microsoft Tries to See Academe's Future
  • Digital 3-D at a Theater Near You
  • Calls to End U.S. Domination of the Internet
  • To Err Is Human: Teaching a GUI Good Manners

     

    Fancy Meets Function on Runway

    Wearable technologies from 35 exhibitors hailing from 10 countries were on display at the fourth annual SIGGRAPH Cyber Fashion Show this week. Sensor-equipped purses from Gauri Nanda of MIT were designed to communicate with skirts and scarves so that the wearer can be alerted to inclement ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Invention Intervention

    A cry for dramatic reform to the U.S. patent system is echoed by lawyers, lawmakers, inventors, and companies, but few can agree on what kind of remedy would address the system's many problems, which include an overwhelming backlog and dubious criteria for patentability. Rep. Lamar ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Dear IT Graduate, Just One Word: Mainframes

    The mainframe is enjoying a comeback of sorts with a resurgence in centralized IT functions among many organizations; also contributing is the need for companies to replace retiring mainframe experts and Chinese, Eastern European, and other international companies investing in mainframes ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Under Siege in Dulles By New-Generation Hackers

    VeriSign's Aristotle Balogh believes the hacker wars reached a critical milestone last year as hackers transformed from irritating nuisances into serious threats. An Aug. 2 report from IBM estimates that over 237 million security attacks occurred worldwide in the first six months of 2005, a 50 ...

    [read more]      to the top


    IT Jobs Call Stateside, But Who's Answering?

    University of Washington computer-science program director David Notkin, who recently joined the board of the Computer Research Association, suggests that IT jobs are more plentiful now than they were prior to the dot-com boom--at least for people with design and other higher-level ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Lawmakers Push Pentagon Over Science, Tech Programs

    The House and the Senate will hammer out a compromise on the Pentagon's fiscal 2006 authorization bill in September; both measures would provide more than President Bush sought for its science and technology programs. The House bill sets aside $892 million more for science and technology, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Worms Could Dodge Net Traps

    Concealed Internet sensors designed to spot malware before it becomes a threat could be thwarted by future computer worms if preventive action is not taken, according to two papers presented at the Usenix Security Symposium on Aug. 4. One paper authored by University of Wisconsin ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Students Work to Protect Passwords

    A new technique with the potential to increase the security of password authentication has been developed by Stanford computer science researchers, who created a free and open browser plug-in that helps shield passwords. Stanford student Nicholas Miyake, one of the researchers who developed the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Grid Meets P2P

    The San Diego Supercomputer Center's Karan Bhatia, SICS' Per Brand, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Karlo Berket, Microsoft's Alex Mallet, and Oracle's Sergio Mendiola have authored a new Global Grid Forum paper discussing how grid computing and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications can ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Europe Follows Grokster's Lead

    A directive supported by the European Commission calls for the criminalization of "attempting, aiding, or abetting and inciting" copyright infringement--a proposal that could, like the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in the case of MGM v. Grokster, make developers of file-sharing ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Google Now a Hacker's Tool

    Hackers are utilizing Google's massive database, with blame falling to Internet users who are unaware what Google makes available, according to Computer Sciences Corporation researcher Johnny Long. Recently, Long and other researchers were able to harness Google to find an unprotected Web ...

    [read more]      to the top


    New 'Roadcasting' Concept Allows Music Sharing in and Between Cars

    A team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a radio program called Roadcasting that enables users to share music with listeners from other cars up to 30 miles away; the software also learns a user's tastes and offers the capability to search for music of a particular ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The College Library of Tomorrow

    Schools such as MIT and Stanford University are embarking on projects to build digital libraries where access to knowledge is just a mouse click away. Many of these initiatives were jump-started by the U.S. government's plans to digitize 95 percent of its material this year, while Google's ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Optoelectronics to Increase the Broadband Flow

    LABELS is an IST-backed project that aims to optimize the capacity of existing fiber-optic cables in an effort to help address the growing demand for faster data transmission. LABELS is exploring ways to surmount logjams in the movement of data; the optical method the researchers are advancing ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Open GL ES 2.0 Advances 3D Graphics Acceleration for Cellphones, Handhelds, PS3

    The Khronos Group consortium announced OpenGL ES 2.0, a new iteration of the OpenGL desktop application programming interface (API), at the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference on Aug. 1. OpenGL ES, designed for use in cell phones, handhelds, and embedded systems, offers more flexibility than its ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Microsoft Tries to See Academe's Future

    In an interview at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said he expects higher education to change dramatically as a result of new technologies. He predicted the continued enhancement of tablet PCs and their eventual ascendance to the preeminent computer on ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Digital 3-D at a Theater Near You

    Many experts say that new 3D technologies could be the catalyst for the rollout of a digital cinema standard that promises to reduce film distribution costs and re-invigorate the experience of going to the movies, which translates into healthy profits for studios and theaters. Disney's ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Calls to End U.S. Domination of the Internet

    The U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) wants control of the Internet to pass from the U.S. Department of Commerce to an international coalition of governments, companies, and civilian entities. The Commerce Department holds the keys to the Internet through the Domain Name System's ...

    [read more]      to the top


    To Err Is Human: Teaching a GUI Good Manners

    User interface designer and author Niall Murphy insists that user errors must be considered in the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) if the end product is to provoke less frustration. He writes that reducing the number of error messages an interface produces requires the elimination of ...

    [read more]      to the top


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