Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the November 27, 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 428 Date: November 27, 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 27, 2002: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Loss of Major Hub Cities Could Cripple Internet, Study Suggests" "Court Finds Limits to California Jurisdiction in Cyberspace" "China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home" "TeraGrid Supercomputing Project Expands" "Volunteers Wanted for IT National Guard" "Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files" "Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill" "MIT Cooks Up Wired Kitchen Tools" "Tough Microbes Offer Clues to Self-Assembling Nano-Structures" "Free Software vs. Goliaths" "Free-software Gadfly Takes on Net Group" "San Diego Supercomputer Center Hits Data-Transfer Speed Milestone" "Way Back When" "Experts Mull 'Next Big Thing' in Computing" "Software Innovation Without End" "Throttled at Birth" "Global Positioning System: A High-Tech Success" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Loss of Major Hub Cities Could Cripple Internet, Study Suggests" The centralized "hub-and-spoke" model of the Internet's infrastructure makes it especially fragile in the event of a terrorist attack or other catastrophe that threatens to knock out major Internet nodes, according to an Ohio State University study ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item1 "Court Finds Limits to California Jurisdiction in Cyberspace" A Monday ruling from the California Supreme Court, in which the justices determined that merely posting content online does not give companies the right to sue out-of-state defendants for copyright infringement in California courts, is considered a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item2 "China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home" The Chinese government is ramping up efforts to win back its engineering and technology students who had gone to the United States to study but stayed to do business. Chinese consul general Wang Yunxiang in San Francisco says jobs for returning ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item3 "TeraGrid Supercomputing Project Expands" The National Science Foundation, which apportioned $53 million last year to fund the construction of the Distributed Terascale Facility (TeraGrid), has authorized an additional grant of $35 million to extend the facility to include different kinds of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item4 "Volunteers Wanted for IT National Guard" As part of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, the federal government will put out a call for volunteers to serve in the National Emergency Technology (NET) Guard, a taskforce of science and technology experts that will quickly mobilize to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item5 "Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files" In response to warnings from entertainment companies about students downloading copyrighted material off the Internet without authorization, as well as the cost of such activities' bandwidth demands, U.S. colleges are attempting to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item6 "Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill" Bush signed the Department of Homeland Security bill into law on Monday, thus authorizing the consolidation of 22 federal agencies into a single body tasked with protecting the nation's critical infrastructure. The law has civil liberties groups worried about ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item7 "MIT Cooks Up Wired Kitchen Tools" Since 1998, MIT's Media Lab has been the center of an effort to develop sophisticated electronic kitchen products, the foremost being the Minerva interactive countertop, which combines cameras, scales, and computers to assist chefs in food preparation. Using ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item8 "Tough Microbes Offer Clues to Self-Assembling Nano-Structures" NASA biologist Jonathan Trent has proposed that a hardy extremophile organism's resistance to high temperatures could be exploited to produce self-assembling arrays of tiny structures, which forms the basis of nanotechnology. The microbe in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item9 "Free Software vs. Goliaths" The nonprofit Free Software Foundation faces some formidable adversaries in its struggle to support the open-source software movement, including politicians, copyright holders, and commercial software companies. These organizations and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item10 "Free-software Gadfly Takes on Net Group" Open-source advocate and Linux pioneer Bruce Perens is working to change the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) policy of including proprietary code in its specifications. Because the IETF's current membership is against such a change, Perens is ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item11 "San Diego Supercomputer Center Hits Data-Transfer Speed Milestone" The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, achieved a data transfer speed of 828 Mbps when moving data from its tape drives to disk drives, demonstrating the type of massive storage capabilities needed for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item12 "Way Back When" Paul Marks is the inventor of the Wayback Machine, an access point for an online archive of roughly 2 billion Web pages that currently takes up more than 100 terabytes (TB). His Alexa Internet commercial Web site cataloging business is funding the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item13 "Experts Mull 'Next Big Thing' in Computing" Leaders of the IT industry discussed future computing trends in a Comdex panel entitled "The Next Big Thing." The panel focused on wireless, security, and display technology while presenting a vision of a world full of networks. In the future, content would ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item14 "Software Innovation Without End" Computer visionary and inventor Alan Kay, a Palo Alto Research Center principal whose many credits include the standard PC interface, the highly influential Smalltalk programming language, network client/servers, and the Ethernet, is joining ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item15 "Throttled at Birth" Matthew Williamson, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard laboratories in Bristol, England, has devised a way to slow the spread of a computer virus, and it appears to work. Williamson's "throttle" method limits the rate at which computers can connect to new ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item16 "Global Positioning System: A High-Tech Success" The Global Positioning System (GPS), which started out as a U.S. military project to improve navigational accuracy, has evolved into a tool that can be used by civilians as well, and has many potential applications. The system consists of 24 satellites ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item17 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1125m.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.