Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 17, 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 559 Date: October 17, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, October 17, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Octopus or Eagle Eyes? Outfitting a Robot for Its Mission" "Older IT Workers Becoming Hot Commodity" "Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom" "Anti-Spam List Wouldn't Fly, Experts Warn" "U. Researchers Revamp Credit Card" "State E-Business Gets a Boost" "U.S. Admits Convicted Man Is No Hacker" "Bad Grades for a Voting Machine Exam" "Cold War Encryption Laws Stand, But Not as Firmly" "NSF Awards $5.46 Million to UC Berkeley and USC to Build Testbed for Cyber War Games" "The Most Popular Operating System in the World" "WiMax Promises Breakthrough in Broadband Access" "IT Jobs Contracted From Far and Wide" "Leading Humanity Forward" "W3C XForms 1.0 Hailed as Standard" "Computer Evolution" "New Scheduling Method Raises Efficiency of Electronics Recycling" "Recognizing Excellence: ACM Calls for Award Nominations" "2003 R&D 100 Awards Celebrate High-Tech: Software" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Octopus or Eagle Eyes? Outfitting a Robot for Its Mission" A robot does not necessarily need a sophisticated imaging system in order to navigate, and some researchers are turning to unusual real-world examples to develop vision systems that emphasize practicality and simplicity rather than superior image quality. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item1 "Older IT Workers Becoming Hot Commodity" Older IT professionals with business skills have become a highly valued asset in the post-dotcom-bubble era, especially since many of the now-defunct businesses of that era failed because they lacked experienced personnel. A new report from Challenger, Gray ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item2 "Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom" Text-mining software is becoming more powerful and helping researchers, analysts, and companies find obscure conceptual links in large collections of material. University of Pennsylvania cancer researcher Michael N. Liebman, for example, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item3 "Anti-Spam List Wouldn't Fly, Experts Warn" Experts argue that fundamental distinctions between phone and email systems and the marketers who use them will be insurmountable barriers to the usability of a do-not-spam list, while even antispam advocates admit that such a measure would not ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item4 "U. Researchers Revamp Credit Card" Penn State University is in the process of obtaining a full patent on its new "smart card" technology. Unveiled in July at a European conference on object-oriented programming, the smart card technology allows users to program spending limits into ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item5 "State E-Business Gets a Boost" Armed with a two-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the newly created Wisconsin E-Business Institute will partner with state plastic companies to develop e-business strategies. The institute was established to complement the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item6 "U.S. Admits Convicted Man Is No Hacker" Federal prosecutors this week overturned the conviction of Bret McDanel, a former employee of Tornado Development who was tried and convicted as a criminal hacker for warning customers about a software bug that Tornado had failed to correct. The now-defunct ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item7 "Bad Grades for a Voting Machine Exam" Computer programmer Jeremiah Akin, a Peace and Freedom Party representative who witnessed a Sept. 9 logic-and-accuracy test of Sequoia Voting Systems' touchscreen voting machines in Riverside County, Calif., says the results did not make him breathe ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item8 "Cold War Encryption Laws Stand, But Not as Firmly" U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel dismissed a lawsuit filed by University of Illinois at Chicago math professor Daniel Bernstein against the federal government for allegedly trying to stifle his publication of a simple encryption program on the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item9 "NSF Awards $5.46 Million to UC Berkeley and USC to Build Testbed for Cyber War Games" Researchers seeking to bolster computer networks' cyber-defenses will soon start conducting assaults on a cybersecurity testbed that the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute will ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item10 "The Most Popular Operating System in the World" The world's most popular operating system is ITRON, a Japanese real-time OS kernel that can be customized for any small-scale embedded systems. ITRON, currently found in a score of electronic gadgets that includes CD players, mobile phones, and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item11 "WiMax Promises Breakthrough in Broadband Access" WiMax, or 802.16a, is a wireless networking standard that reportedly eases the provision of broadband access and can help reduce installation costs for broadband service providers. WiMax offers higher bandwidth and greater transmission range than ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item12 "IT Jobs Contracted From Far and Wide" There are two forms of IT offshoring--nearshoring and farshoring--that present advantages and disadvantages to North America: The United States appears to be hurting more because U.S. corporate IT operations are increasingly being ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item13 "Leading Humanity Forward" Reading University cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick--who gained notoriety by exploring "cyborg" technology through surgical implants in his own body--says the purpose of cybernetic research is twofold: To help disabled people better control ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item14 "W3C XForms 1.0 Hailed as Standard" XForms is touted as the successor to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), adding more functionality and flexibility to the Web. The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) official recommendation of XForms 1.0 as a standard is seen as a big step forward for the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item15 "Computer Evolution" Computing's next evolutionary step involves direct machine-to-machine communication and a melded network infrastructure that anticipates users' needs. Intel research director David Tennenhouse spoke at a recent MIT conference about ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item16 "New Scheduling Method Raises Efficiency of Electronics Recycling" Purdue University assistant professor of industrial engineering Julie Ann Stuart has developed a software solution for boosting the efficiency of electronic recycling operations by improving the management of incoming products from storage to breakdown. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item17 "Recognizing Excellence: ACM Calls for Award Nominations" ACM is calling for nominations for its 2003 awards recognizing outstanding technical and professional acheivements in computer science and information technology. These awards, most with cash prizes, offer a unique opportunity to bring ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item18 "2003 R&D 100 Awards Celebrate High-Tech: Software" Recipients of the 41st Annual R&D 100 Awards in the software category include NASA Glenn Research Center and ZIN Technologies' Microgravity Analysis Software System (MASS), which is employed in the Principal Investigator Microgravity Service Project to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1017f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.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