Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the November 20, 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 425 Date: November 20, 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 Wednesday, November 20, 2002: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable" "Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity" "Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens" "H-1B Program Gets More Heat" "Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying" "Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore" "Faster Than Speed of Byte" "For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics" "Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer" "A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls" "Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World" "Webs Within Web Boost Searches" "Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales" "MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show" "New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity" "Loosening Up the Airwaves" "Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again" "Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music" "A Many-Handed God" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Comdex: Panel Says to Accept the Net is Vulnerable" A panel of security experts at the Comdex trade show said that the Internet's vulnerability to exploitation is a fact of life, and everyone--businesses as well as home users--must pitch in to make it more secure. Counterpane Internet Security CTO and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item1 "Study Details Technology's Role in Boosting Productivity" U.S. businesses increased productivity by about 2 percent each year from 1995 to 2000, and one-third of that increase was attributable to technology, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The new report helps clarify what made technology more ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item2 "Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens" Critics of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its provisions will be able to submit their opinions to the Copyright Office either by mail or online until Dec. 18. The last time the department accepted DMCA-related comments in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item3 "H-1B Program Gets More Heat" The H-1B visa program that American employers use to bring in foreign labor to fill mostly IT-related jobs has attracted criticism from both domestic and foreign employees. Norman Matloff of the University of California, Davis, argues that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item4 "Secret U.S. Court OKs Electronic Spying" An earlier ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court declaring that domestic police agencies and spy agencies must be separated in order to protect Americans' privacy was overturned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item5 "Nearly 1 Million IT Jobs Moving Offshore" Almost 1 million IT jobs will be farmed out overseas over the next 15 years, predicts a new report from Forrester Research, which warns that such a development could threaten the positions of base- to mid-level American programmers unless they acquire ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item6 "Faster Than Speed of Byte" The NEC Earth Simulator in Japan is currently the world's fastest computer, but IBM aims to recapture that title with a $267 million contract to build a pair of supercomputers for nuclear weapons modeling and other research at Lawrence Livermore ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item7 "For W3C, It's a Question of Semantics" The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) last week revised several documents detailing the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which relate to the Semantic Web, a future version of the Internet envisioned to better ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item8 "Say 'Cheese' for the Robot Photographer" Computer science professor Bill Smart of Washington University in St. Louis has created a robot that is programmed to move throughout environments, taking candid photographs of people as a way to integrate and demonstrate the applicability of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item9 "A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls" Critics of computerized touch-screen voting machines, which saw use in the recent congressional election, maintain that a paper record is especially necessary to ensure that the votes cast are accurate. Bryn Mawr College computer science professor and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item10 "Internet, Grid to Forge Brave New Computing World" A recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that the Internet will evolve into a "global networked computing utility" stemming from the intersection of grid computing, ubiquitous computing, IP dial tone, and computing as a utility; these trends ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item11 "Webs Within Web Boost Searches" Web researcher Filippo Menczer of the University of Iowa is working to build a mathematical model that will provide more comprehensive search engine results based on text similarity and links between Web pages. While current search engine techniques ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item12 "Intel's 'Hyperthreading' Not Enough to Sew Up PC Sales" Hyperthreading technology from Intel promises--and appears to deliver--greater performance for processors. The company picked up the reins from the defunct Digital Equipment and developed the ability to build CPUs with two sets of "registers" that would ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item13 "MEMS Really Is the Word at Munich Electronics Trade Show" MEMS developers and manufacturers spoke excitedly about the prospects of their sector at the recent Electronica 2002 trade show in Munich. MEMS sensors for automobiles have started hitting mass production, comprising one-eighth of the market for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item14 "New Way to Dramatically Increase Data Storage Capacity" Researchers led by chemistry professor John Fourkas of Boston College's Merkert Chemistry Center report in the December issue of Nature Materials that they have discovered stable and cheap fluorescent materials capable of storing 3D data at high ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item15 "Loosening Up the Airwaves" The federal government is working to create new opportunities for the wireless industry in America, hoping to spur investment and make the market more competitive on the global scene. The FCC and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item16 "Think the 'Digital Divide' Is Closing? Think Again" Educators, politicians, parents, community activists, and businesses must take a creative approach to bridging the "digital divide" as the Bush administration seeks to cut key technology programs and put more money toward anti-terrorism efforts, writes ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item17 "Digital Entertainment Post-Napster: Music" The music industry's triumph over Napster, which record labels shut down in an effort to protect their content from piracy and boost flagging CD sales, was short-lived, since more open peer-to-peer networks have proven to be harder to dislodge. In ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item18 "A Many-Handed God" Nanotechnology can be applied to many industries, but it is the electronics industry that is attracting the most interest. Although nanotech is already being used in disk drive heads and magnetic media, for instance, research is proceeding apace into ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1120w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1118m.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.