Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the January 22, 2003 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 5, Number 448 Date: January 22, 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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, January 22, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Recording Firms Win Copyright Ruling" "As Linux Nips At Microsoft, Its Advocates Talk Numbers" "Profiling the Hackers" "Uh-Oh: Spam's Getting More Sophisticated" "In Software Industry, a Passage to India" "IBM Aims to Get Smart About AI" "Scientists Giddy About the Grid" "Job-Rich Silicon Valley Has Turned Fallow, Survey Finds" "High-Tech Voting Raises Questions" "Digital Defenses" "Where the Girls Aren't" "After the Copyright Smackdown: What Next?" "X11: Apple's Secret Formula" "Cell Phone, PDA Makers Work to Find Ideal Mix of Features" "Multimedia Programming Comes in New FLAVOR" "Reaching for the W-Band" "Security's Next Steps" "Hardware Hangover" "How You'll Pay" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Recording Firms Win Copyright Ruling" In a triumph for music labels, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates upheld the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) yesterday when he ruled that Verizon Communications had to disclose the name of a customer who had downloaded a large volume of songs ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item1 "As Linux Nips At Microsoft, Its Advocates Talk Numbers" The lineup of speakers at this year's Linux World conference in New York shows how the business community has embraced the open-source operating system, spawned by programmers devoted to a share-and-share-alike ideology. In previous years, open-source ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item2 "Profiling the Hackers" State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo researchers are working on a system that can profile network users in real time and catch cybercriminals in the act. These profiles are built by tracking each command a user executes at each computer terminal; ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item3 "Uh-Oh: Spam's Getting More Sophisticated" Spammers are employing increasingly complex methods to sneak commercial email solicitations past anti-spam measures, and POPFile author John Graham-Cumming detailed several such strategies at an MIT conference today. Some of the simpler ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item4 "In Software Industry, a Passage to India" Software programming is set to follow the pattern of the textile industry in the United States as the low-end, hands-on work of coding gets done overseas. But, just as with apparel manufacturers today, design, marketing, and retailing operations ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item5 "IBM Aims to Get Smart About AI" The demand for machines with a relative sense of autonomy is growing thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, the increasing numbers of computers people are using, and the burgeoning types of data the Net supports. To help meet this ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item6 "Scientists Giddy About the Grid" Scientists wanting to connect supercomputers together for collaborative research have been stymied by a lack of feasibility thanks to incompatible standards, but grid computing offers them new hope. "The assumption is that people will buy into this and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item7 "Job-Rich Silicon Valley Has Turned Fallow, Survey Finds" Jobs in Silicon Valley fell 9 percent between the first quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2002, estimates a report that Joint Venture Silicon Valley will publish on Monday; the 127,000 jobs lost in this period accounted for more than 50 percent of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item8 "High-Tech Voting Raises Questions" North America's transition to computer-based voting systems has raised a number of issues, including concerns about machine failure, flawed software, and code tampering. Rebecca Mercuri of Bryn Mawr College notes that the election officials who bought ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item9 "Digital Defenses" For a business' electronic defenses to continue to offer maximum network protection, adaptation is key. The challenge lies in keeping sensitive company information secure while still maintaining network openness in order to sustain commerce and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item10 "Where the Girls Aren't" Opinions are divided as to why computer programming is unpopular among girls: One camp subscribes to the theory that girls are socially conditioned to avoid computer science, while another reasons that they are naturally disinclined toward the field. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item11 "After the Copyright Smackdown: What Next?" Siva Vaidhyanathan of New York University writes that the Supreme Court's recent decision to extend the term of copyright by 20 years may be disheartening for advocates of copyright reform, but notes that their movement is gaining momentum, thanks to greater ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item12 "X11: Apple's Secret Formula" Apple Computer this month released a beta version of the Unix windowing environment X11, which allows Unix applications to run concurrently with those on the Mac OS X, and provides a more friendly Unix developing environment. Analysts say the Apple X11 ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item13 "Cell Phone, PDA Makers Work to Find Ideal Mix of Features" The global market for converged devices--devices that combine cell phone and handheld computer functionality--will boom from 4 million units sold in 2002 to around 59 million units in 2006, predicts International Data (IDC). However, equipment ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item14 "Multimedia Programming Comes in New FLAVOR" Formal language for audiovisual object representation (FLAVOR) is an open-source extension of C++ and Java that can be used to formally describe coded multimedia bitstreams, which are used to format data such as JPEG, GIF, and MPEG. "Most of the multimedia ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item15 "Reaching for the W-Band" The FCC is considering licensing the upper-millimeter wave band, or W-band, to enterprises as well as carriers. Industry advocates claim that this would boost bandwidth capabilities while lowering its cost, while others characterize the technology ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item16 "Security's Next Steps" New security tools are being developed to face new kinds of electronic threats. Security experts such as Raleigh Burns of Northern Kentucky's St. Elizabeth Medical Center expect future security products to have simpler features and smoother ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item17 "Hardware Hangover" With spending on corporate hardware falling off as a result of the economic recession and the maturation of the IT market, tech companies are focusing on software and services that help enterprises unify and boost the efficiency of existing systems. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item18 "How You'll Pay" Manufacturers are in a race to develop high-tech payment systems that offer superior security, versatility, and convenience. Smart cards, which come equipped with both microprocessors and memory chips, have become commonplace in Europe, but their ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0122w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Friday's issue (there was no issue on Monday {Martin Luther King, Jr. Day]), please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0117f.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.