Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the June 27, 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 513 Date: June 27, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, June 27, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Michigan Senate Passes Anti-Spam Bill" "The Next-Generation Net Is on the Way" "2 PC Makers Given Credit and Blame in Recycling" "Inventor Looks to DNS's Past, Future" "A Look Inside Apple's New Push for Speed" "Bill Seeks to Loosen Copyright Law's Grip" "Hacker How-To Good Summer Reading" "Group Shakes SALT on Scalable Vector Graphics" "Girls Less Confident on Computers: Study" "New Finding Has Implications For Scientists Designing New Mobile Audio Interfaces" "Mystery Net Traffic Linked to Attack Tools" "Openness Makes Software Better Sooner" "W3C Issues Key Web Services Standard" "Wires Make Wireless Strain Gauge" "Power Play" "Uncrossed Wires" "What's On the Technology Horizon? Six Perspectives--Part 1" "The Translation Challenge" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Michigan Senate Passes Anti-Spam Bill" The Michigan state Senate on June 24 unanimously approved an anti-spam bill that would set up a do-not-spam registry and impose heavy fines on violators. In addition, the Michigan bill would establish a "parental block" that allows parents and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item1 "The Next-Generation Net Is on the Way" The Internet is expected to gradually shift from the current Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to version 6 (IPv6), a standard that will offer more reliable security and more dexterous data-handling for operations such as videoconferences, real-time multiplayer online games, and battlefield actions. In ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item2 "2 PC Makers Given Credit and Blame in Recycling" Leading U.S. PC manufacturers Hewlett-Packard and Dell Computer received praise and scorn, respectively, for their recycling programs in a report prepared by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Computer Take Back Campaign. HP was lauded for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item3 "Inventor Looks to DNS's Past, Future" Domain Name System (DNS) inventor Paul Mockapetris is surprised the basic DNS framework is still in place 20-plus years after he ran the first successful test, but says the system is handling increasing demands fairly well. Additions have made DNS relevant ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item4 "A Look Inside Apple's New Push for Speed" The major focus for the PC world this year appears to be speed and communication, as demonstrated by Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs' recent announcement of his company's Power Mac G5 as "the fastest personal computer in the world." Although critics have ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item5 "Bill Seeks to Loosen Copyright Law's Grip" The Public Domain Enhancement Act introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and John Doolittle (R-Calif.) on June 25 requires copyright owners to pay $1 to renew their copyrights 50 years after the material's first publication; failure to comply means ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item6 "Hacker How-To Good Summer Reading" The book, "Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box," mixes fictional scenarios with real-world technology and hacking methods, and having high-profile hackers such as Mark Burnett, Tim Mullen, and Ken Pfeil among the book's authors further raises ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item7 "Group Shakes SALT on Scalable Vector Graphics" The SALT Forum has released code for integrating SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) and the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) protocol from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The new profile further enhances the capabilities of SALT 1.0, especially ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item8 "Girls Less Confident on Computers: Study" Canadian high school girls are not as confident as boys when it comes to working on computers and the Internet; nor do they use them as often as boys, according to a Statistics Canada study co-authored by Dalhousie University's Victor Thiessen and Acadia ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item9 "New Finding Has Implications For Scientists Designing New Mobile Audio Interfaces" People who carry on conversations with text-to-speech (TTS) computer systems modify their speech patterns so they are more in keeping with the computer's mode of discourse, a technique known as speech convergence, concludes a new study led by Sharon Oviatt ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item10 "Mystery Net Traffic Linked to Attack Tools" Rogue Internet packets exactly 55,808 bits long that have been circulating around the Web since mid-May have been linked to one of three different computer attack tools: Stumbler, 55808 Trojan-Variant A, or sdbot. Although computer security experts say ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item11 "Openness Makes Software Better Sooner" Damien Challet and Yann Le Du of the University of Oxford report that open-source software can be debugged faster than closed-source software. Sharing software openly allows glitches to be detected and rectified sooner. The researchers have ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item12 "W3C Issues Key Web Services Standard" The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) this week announced its approval of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) version 1.2 as a formal standard, allowing business IT workers and commercial software developers to use the specification without worrying ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item13 "Wires Make Wireless Strain Gauge" Japanese researchers have created simple embedded sensors that accurately measure a building's structural integrity as it is subjected to different forces. The sensors can be measured using wireless technology and are embedded in construction materials ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item14 "Power Play" The U.S. supercomputing push over the last 10 years has emphasized building PC clusters out of off-the-shelf parts to minimize costs, but experts argue that the efficiency and programmability limitations of such commoditized systems are a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item15 "Uncrossed Wires" The inability to determine what an individual is saying when other chatter is taking place, as well as having discussions become a series of long and drawn-out formal dialogues, are weaknesses of teleconferencing. However, a solution based on ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item16 "What's On the Technology Horizon? Six Perspectives--Part 1" EDventure Holdings Chairman Esther Dyson, Shepard Communications Group President Steven Shepard, and Toshiba Telecommunications Systems' Mike Durance--all panelists on the advisory board for Deloitte & Touche's TMT Trends publication--offer their thoughts ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item17 "The Translation Challenge" First envisioned in the 1950s, software that translates text from one language into another is now a market expected to grow to $13 billion by 2007. Translation software is used to translate text for ads, corporate records, and Internet content for people ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0627f.html#item18 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0625w.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 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Site Sponsored by IBM () Get more. 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