Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 29, 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 564 Date: October 29, 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, October 29, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Stored Data Doubles in Three Years" "Group Lobbies for Domain Buyers' Privacy" "Xerox Claims Chip Innovation" "E-Vote Protest Gains Momentum" "Scottish Universities Plan Speckled Computing Net" "UB Researchers Hope to Find the Key to Tiny Electronics" "Linux and the Consumer Electronics Industry" "Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Ponders Differences Between Computers and Humans" "Full-Featured PC Fits in Pocket" "Queries Guide Web Crawlers" "As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge" "Hollywood to the Computer Industry: We Don't Need No Stinking Napsters!" "The Next Wave" "Patchy Years Ahead for Software Users" "The Decentralization Imperative" "'Net Security Gets Root-Level Boost" "The Future of Software Bugs" "No Need to Shut Down, Just Pull the Plug..." "Server Consolidation Using Performance Modeling" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Stored Data Doubles in Three Years" A study headed by professors Peter Lyman and Hal Varian of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley finds that the amount of new stored information has increased 100 percent in the past three years to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item1 "Group Lobbies for Domain Buyers' Privacy" The ACM joined a coalition of groups from around the world, including the American Library Association, the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Electronic Frontier Finland, the U.K. Foundation for Information Policy Research, in drafting a letter to ICANN ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item2 "Xerox Claims Chip Innovation" Xerox researchers have announced a simple, inexpensive method to print out microchips, a breakthrough that could allow the company to enter the lucrative electronic display market and clear the way for flexible screens and perhaps ubiquitous electronics. At ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item3 "E-Vote Protest Gains Momentum" When Diebold Election Systems demanded that a student at Swarthmore College take down controversial memos posted online on the grounds that they violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, fellow students launched a campaign of civil ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item4 "Scottish Universities Plan Speckled Computing Net" Developing a distributed asynchronous network of self-powered nodes about a cubic millimeter in size is the goal of five Scottish universities that received a $2.1 million grant from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council on Oct. 1 to get the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item5 "UB Researchers Hope to Find the Key to Tiny Electronics" University of Buffalo Electronics Packaging Lab researchers are doing critical work in the field of electronics, figuring out how to overcome the packaging bottleneck that prevents computer chips from becoming even more useful and powerful. Although chips ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item6 "Linux and the Consumer Electronics Industry" The CE Linux Forum (CELF), which currently consists of more than 75 companies, supports products for the consumer electronics industry based on the Linux open-source operating system. The forum is designed to be a place where member companies such as ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item7 "Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Ponders Differences Between Computers and Humans" Nils Nilsson, Kumagai Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, of Stanford University, maintains that fundamental distinctions will always exist between human beings and computers, but predicts that the divide between their intellectual and even creative ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item8 "Full-Featured PC Fits in Pocket" Antelope Technologies plans to debut a pocket-sized device that functions as both a fully-featured PC and a handheld computer in early November. The core unit, which Antelope touts as the first modular computer in the world, can slide into a docking station ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item9 "Queries Guide Web Crawlers" Contraco Consulting and Software, T-Online International, and Germany's Siegen University have collaborated on an algorithm that improves Internet search results by taking into account the specific objects of people's searches. Contraco partner Andreas ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item10 "As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge" A number of small companies are thriving in Silicon Valley, staffed with experienced hardware and software engineers that understand business plans are not as valuable as good technology. Tellme Networks' business is finally taking off after four years ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item11 "Hollywood to the Computer Industry: We Don't Need No Stinking Napsters!" Arguing that unchecked digital piracy will signal the end of free TV, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wants the government to require digital TV broadcasts to include broadcast flag encryption, thus requiring hardware makers to design ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item12 "The Next Wave" A desktop supercomputer is what aficionados claim the next stage of the Internet's evolution, the "grid," will be like, when vast computing resources will be available to anyone with a Web connection. "The notion here is that a grid of computers can ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item13 "Patchy Years Ahead for Software Users" Network administrators are finding most of their time taken up with deploying software patches to fix network vulnerabilities or upgrade features, and there appear to be few signs of relief on the horizon, despite announcements from patch vendors that they ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item14 "The Decentralization Imperative" MIT Sloan School of Management professor of information systems Thomas Malone says cheaper communications are transforming business organization. He says people overestimated how quickly technology would change business in the late 1990s and that the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item15 "'Net Security Gets Root-Level Boost" The domain name system (DNS) is stronger than ever, one year since the massive distributed denial-of-service attack that clogged traffic flowing between several root servers and the Internet. Operators of the 13 root servers have been deploying ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item16 "The Future of Software Bugs" The continuing threat of software bugs stems from a variety of factors, including software vendors and in-house development teams that rush testing and sacrifice quality so they can rapidly move products to market; academic computer science programs that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item17 "No Need to Shut Down, Just Pull the Plug..." Stanford University's Armando Fox believes that building computers to crash would make them much more reliable and robust tools. Fox, who heads the university's software infrastructure group, is working to design a system that allows people to shut ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item18 "Server Consolidation Using Performance Modeling" The most successful server consolidation projects are those in which performance is predicted before any changes are made, and this can be done through performance modeling. Performance modeling yields a deeply abstracted set of performance metrics to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1029w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1027m.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