Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the March 12, 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 468 Date: March 12, 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, March 12, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Lofgren Bill Backs Digital Copying for Personal Use" "Appeal of Instant Messaging Extends Into the Workplace" "Lawmaker Recycles E-Waste Bill" "Five Reasons to Hope" "Canada Wrestles With E-Waste Fix" "Wireless Takes Center Stage at IT Industry's Leading Extravaganza" "How Politics Will Reshape IT" "A Patch for IT Security Strategy" "Chips Losing Some Antipiracy Support" "Indian Programmers Still Dream of Jobs in the U.S." "Argentina Makes Its Software Play" "Australian Top Pick for Global Internet Body" "Nanocomputing: Simple Optoelectronic Devices Based on Electroluminescent Silver Nanoclusters Perform Logic Operations" "Nano-Diamonds Sparkle One Photon at a Time" "Tech's Love-Hate Relationship with the DMCA" "Untapped Networks" "Untethering the Enterprise" "A Slow Death for Viruses" "Great X-pectations" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Lofgren Bill Backs Digital Copying for Personal Use" Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on Monday reintroduced the Balance Act, a bill that would allow consumers to make digital copies of books, music, and movies for personal use. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says legislation such as Lofgren's is needed ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item1 "Appeal of Instant Messaging Extends Into the Workplace" Forrester Research proclaims that instant messaging is surging even faster than email did when it was first introduced, and is starting to gain on both email and the cell phone as a favorite workplace communications medium. The abundance of freely ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item2 "Lawmaker Recycles E-Waste Bill" Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) on March 6 introduced a bill calling for a national e-waste recycling infrastructure. The EPA estimates that 2 million tons of electronic products are discarded each year in the United States, while California's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item3 "Five Reasons to Hope" New technologies promise a brighter future for Silicon Valley, where experts say a convergence of innovation will lead to a revolution similar to the advent of the PC or commercial Internet. Already, 750 Silicon Valley life sciences firms and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item4 "Canada Wrestles With E-Waste Fix" E-waste recycling laws are nonexistent in Canada, but the nonprofit Electronics Product Stewardship (EPS) Canada initiative, which has the support of 16 multinational computer and electronics companies, plans to remedy the situation by ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item5 "Wireless Takes Center Stage at IT Industry's Leading Extravaganza" Wireless technology will be the highlight of the annual CeBIT trade show in Germany for the third consecutive year. Spurring the broader focus in wireless is growing interest in WLANs and mobile devices throughout the corporate sector, as well as the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item6 "How Politics Will Reshape IT" The maturation of the IT industry and the growing effect it has on other areas of society and economy mean the government will play a more active role in the future. Legislation and political discussion between countries will focus on five fronts: Industry ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item7 "A Patch for IT Security Strategy" Dr. Peter Tippett of TruSecure praises the original draft of the White House's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace for providing a solid foundation for government, businesses, and individuals to make a proactive effort to shore up the country's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item8 "Chips Losing Some Antipiracy Support" Chipmakers' plans to build anti-piracy controls into hardware, known as "hard coding," have been laid aside due to confusion in the marketplace and the public policy arena. Instead, consumer electronics companies are going with a second-best alternative in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item9 "Indian Programmers Still Dream of Jobs in the U.S." Many Indian software programmers are waiting for the global economy to bounce back so they can pursue their dreams of working in the United States. India churns out 350,000 engineering graduates yearly, many of whom want to go the United States for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item10 "Argentina Makes Its Software Play" Cheaper labor, a reputation for creativity, and a domestic recession are positioning Argentina to become a major software development provider to outside markets. The Chamber of Software and Computing Services Companies (CESSI) estimates that sales of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item11 "Australian Top Pick for Global Internet Body" Former Australian government official Paul Twomey is the top candidate to succeed Stuart Lynn as ICANN's president, say anonymous insiders; the ICANN board has reportedly given its search committee approval to negotiate a contract with Twomey. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item12 "Nanocomputing: Simple Optoelectronic Devices Based on Electroluminescent Silver Nanoclusters Perform Logic Operations" Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have demonstrated quantum devices based on batches of individual electroluminescent silver nanoclusters that can perform sophisticated logic operations and could provide the building ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item13 "Nano-Diamonds Sparkle One Photon at a Time" French scientists led by physicist Philippe Grangier of the Laboratoire Charles Fabry de L'Institut d'Optique are using nanoscale diamond crystals as a single-photon source, a breakthrough that could help bring quantum computing and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item14 "Tech's Love-Hate Relationship with the DMCA" Intel and Hewlett-Packard appear to be both friends and foes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits the copying of copyrighted digital content, ostensibly to curtail piracy. Both companies are members of the Business Software ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item15 "Untapped Networks" Businesses and computer engineers should learn from the complex, adaptive human networks everyone takes for granted, argues Columbia University sociologist Duncan Watts. Watts is working on analytical frameworks for such human networks that can be ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item16 "Untethering the Enterprise" Wireless communication that allows professionals to access information on the go is key to the untethered enterprise, and the proliferation of such an environment is moving forward thanks to the steady deployment of WLAN technology. The Yankee Group's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item17 "A Slow Death for Viruses" Matt Williamson of Hewlett-Packard's Biologically Inspired Complex Adaptive Systems group is one of several researchers developing a virus throttling software filter that limits the propagation of computer viruses in much the same way that the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item18 "Great X-pectations" Forrester Research principal analyst Carl Howe has criticized the Internet for its relatively slow user interactions, and cited the X-Internet concept as gaining speed in a report he furnished a year ago. The X-Internet, which Howe claims can "eliminate the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0312w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0310m.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.