Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 18, 2002 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. ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM activities, member benefits, and industry issues, visit http://www.acm.org/membernet Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion magazine, Ubiquity, at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACM TechNews Volume 4, Number 412 Date: October 18, 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( ) HP is the premier source for computing services, products and solutions. Responding to customers' requirements for quality and reliability at aggressive prices, HP offers performance-packed products and comprehensive services. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Top Stories for Friday, October 18, 2002: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Tech Will Be Back, Past Slumps Suggest, as Innovators Revive It" "Town Hall Meeting on Cybersecurity" "Senate Approves Almost $1B for Cybersecurity Research" "Living In an Artificial World" "A Chip of Rubber, With Tiny Rivers Running Through It" "XML Spec Moves Ahead Despite Complaints" "Study Reveals Nanoscale Structure in Amorphous Material" "EU Debates Skills Shortage" "Chemists Brew Tiny Wires" "Lucent, Rogers Look for Nano for Innovation" "Laptops and Mobile Users: Everything Old is New Again" "MIT: Smart Tech Ideas Mean Biz" "Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory" "Clubs Foster Computer Skills for Young Girls" "Privacy Algorithms" "Wired For Success" "Maintaining the Internet" "Scaling Agile Methods" "The Great Liberator" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Tech Will Be Back, Past Slumps Suggest, as Innovators Revive It" The technology industry is likely to reinvigorate itself, even if it takes some time, and if history proves to be an accurate guide. Since the introduction of the first personal computer in 1975, the technology industry has experienced several periods of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item1 "Town Hall Meeting on Cybersecurity" The White House is soliciting feedback to its National Plan to Secure Cyberspace by holding a series of town hall-style conferences across the nation. One of them recently took place at MIT, where presidential cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item2 "Senate Approves Almost $1B for Cybersecurity Research" The U.S. Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved the Cyber Security Research and Development Act, which authorizes a five-year cybersecurity research budget of approximately $978 million. The bill would apportion funding to initiatives ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item3 "Living In an Artificial World" The chief subject at the annual PopTech conference is technology's effects on society and culture, as well as the reverse, notes conference co-founder Anthony Citrano. Roughly 400 CEOs, academic figures, entrepreneurs, and innovators will ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item4 "A Chip of Rubber, With Tiny Rivers Running Through It" The emerging technology of microfluidics involves circuits that feature rubberized channels instead of silicon pathways along which pressurized fluids, rather than electrons, flow; Dr. Stephen R. Quake of the California Institute of Technology ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item5 "XML Spec Moves Ahead Despite Complaints" XML version 1.1 was approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) this week despite accusations from critics that IBM has unfairly influenced the new XML specification to fit its own purposes, adding backward-compatibility for an IBM-specific ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item6 "Study Reveals Nanoscale Structure in Amorphous Material" Experiments indicating that the structure of amorphous materials may not be as disordered as previously thought, especially at the nanoscale level, could pave the way for new engineered materials with diverse industrial applications, according to University of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item7 "EU Debates Skills Shortage" Ministers, academics, IT sector representatives, and public sector organizations have gathered for a two-day eSkills summit this week to address a IT skills shortage among European Union member states and the threat it represents to their position in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item8 "Chemists Brew Tiny Wires" Self-assembling electronic components, or nanoelectronics, will supposedly revolutionize the industry by offering a cheap way to manufacture devices in mass quantities, but unfortunately, self-organizing materials are not very conductive. However, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item9 "Lucent, Rogers Look for Nano for Innovation" Lucent's nanotechnology research at its Bell Labs facilities will likely be spared from funding cuts, says Nanotechnology Research Director John A. Rogers, because the group is already applying ground-breaking research to Lucent products. He adds that much ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item10 "Laptops and Mobile Users: Everything Old Is New Again" Laptops may be bulkier and less power-efficient than PDAs, which continue to become more popular and sophisticated, yet they remain the most oft-used tool of mobile users. The size of laptop displays, for example, is optimal for tasks that require a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item11 "MIT: Smart Tech Ideas Mean Biz" This week marks the launch of MIT's new Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, which is designed to address what MIT professor Charles Cooney describes as "a gap between early-stage ideas and a point at which small companies and venture ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item12 "Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory" As today's computer scientists pioneer quantum computing, the landmark digital computing work of Claude E. Shannon still lingers. Shannon was the first, in 1948, to describe information passed over a variety of channels in mathematical terms, either ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item13 "Clubs Foster Computer Skills for Young Girls" Former lawyer Eileen Ellsworth decided to create a program to teach computer skills to middle-school girls after seeing national statistics on female students' lack of interest in technology. Also contributing to her decision was the fact that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item14 "Privacy Algorithms" Government control over the exploitation of personal information by business is a source of controversy, but a group of computer scientists has been trying to solve the problem of data privacy by developing software that maintains the secrecy of personal ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item15 "Wired For Success" The problem of maintaining the performance of computer chips as they shrink is one reason why scientists are investigating smaller-scale solutions such as carbon nanotubes, but difficulties in controlling their composition to yield precise ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item16 "Maintaining the Internet" When WorldCom's UUNet backbone experienced system software problems on Oct. 2, the effects on the Internet were widespread. Critics link the problems to poor network maintenance and the incident has intensified concerns that the federal government is ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item17 "Scaling Agile Methods" SMGlobal President Sanjay Murthi writes that he finds agile development methods to be very useful; he discovered that employing eXtreme programming (XP) in a large project encouraged more enthusiasm among staff and resulted in early problem ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item18 "The Great Liberator" Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig has become a leading figure of cyberlaw and the Internet copyright debate, thanks to his groundbreaking work through such books as "The Future of Ideas" and the Creative Commons project. He ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1018f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1016w.html -- To visit the TechNews home page, point your browser to: http://www.acm.org/technews/ -- To unsubscribe from the ACM TechNews Early Alert Service: Please send a separate email to listserv@listserv2.acm.org 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. -- To submit feedback about ACM TechNews, contact: technews@hq.acm.org -- 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@acm.org 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@acm.org ---- ACM TechNews is sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company.