Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the April 28, 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 488 Date: April 28, 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 Monday, April 28, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal" "As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise" "In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws" "Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight" "Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?" "IT: More About People Than Technology" "E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan" "Gadgets Go Back to Basics" "Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation" "So Many Countries, So Many Laws" "Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones" "Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman" "Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United States" "Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition" "Scientists Test Wider Use of IP" "Messaging Convergence" "Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers" "A Sensor Model Language" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Judge: File-Swapping Tools Are Legal" The music and movie industries lost an important suit against file-trading software firms Streamcast Networks and Grokster on April 25, when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled the defendants were not liable for illegal use of their products. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item1 "As Software Bugs Multiply, Questions Arise" Glitches are becoming more commonplace as software becomes embedded in more and more everyday appliances, but although most bugs are merely an annoyance, some can lead to fatal errors: A 1997 airplane disaster in Guam was partly attributed to a buggy ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item2 "In the Hopper: New Privacy Laws" A plethora of privacy legislation awaits Congress when it reconvenes next week, and Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation thinks Internet privacy issues will again become a priority now that the war against Iraq is nearly over. Sens. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item3 "Three E-Mail Providers Join Spam Fight" AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have overcome their rivalry to team up in an anti-spam initiative that they hope will lay the foundation for a wider industry endeavor. "We're putting spammers on notice that the industry will collaborate to drive the bad guys out of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item4 "Thread Designs Divide Chip Makers: Should They Be Skinny or Fat?" While Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and IBM continue with fat-thread processors that handle huge amounts of work speedily, Sun Microsystems is developing a four-processor chip for release by 2005. Each processor performs slowly compared to those from ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item5 "IT: More About People Than Technology" A study of IT at eight hospitals by University of Notre Dame researchers Rajiv Kohli and Sarv Devaraj finds that analyzing actual IT usage rather than technology investment is a better way to determine IT's repercussions on organizational performance. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item6 "E-Mail Coalition Floats New Anti-Spam Plan" A coalition of 28 online advertisers has developed "Project Lumos," a plan that will hold companies in their industry more accountable for the email that they send. The Network Advertising Initiative's Email Service Provider Coalition (NAI ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item7 "Gadgets Go Back to Basics" Hewlett-Packard's U.K. research labs in Bristol will be the site of an international conference May 6 to May 8 highlighting new technologies and gadgets. Today's researchers are urging developers to create tools that are truly useful. University ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item8 "Grants Promoting Unfettered Innovation" Dan Gillmor hopes that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's $98,000 grant to the Open Source Applications (OSA) Foundation's Chandler Project in March portends a surge of philanthropic investments to ensure the openness and universal availability of tomorrow's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item9 "So Many Countries, So Many Laws" E-commerce was supposed to support border-free online trade, but an international e-commerce architecture that shields the rights of retailers or shoppers and deters digital piracy has not been established, despite years of negotiations. As a result, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item10 "Companies Work to Link Wi-Fi, Cellphones" As Wi-Fi technology's popularity surges, companies are developing ways to integrate Wi-Fi networks with Web-enabled cell phones and wireless Internet devices. The goal is to create devices that take advantage of Wi-Fi's easy Internet access when users are ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item11 "Medical Electronics Will Drive Next Decade, Says ARM Chairman" At the Embedded Systems Conference held April 23 in San Francisco, ARM Holdings Chairman Robin Saxby said the electronics arena will be led by medical devices within 10 years. He said the devices will be handheld as well as implanted within bodies, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item12 "Brownian Motion and ICANN's Latest Status Report to the United States" The "Sixth Status Report Under ICANN/US Government Memorandum of Understanding," dated March 31, 2003, describes an ICANN that functions like Brownian motion, writes ICANN board member Karl Auerbach. Brownian motion is a concept pertaining to the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item13 "Robot Soccer Promises Fierce Competition" A forerunner to this summer's international RoboCup 2003 in Italy will be next week's first American Open of robot soccer in Pittsburgh, where autonomous machines designed by academic teams will compete without human assistance. The robots are programmed ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item14 "Scientists Test Wider Use of IP" NASA is pioneering mobile static IP connections that could be used to connect devices both in space and on earth. The first demonstration of the Mobile IP protocol, developed together with Cisco, was in November, when NASA researchers set up a system in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item15 "Messaging Convergence" Industry players are rallying behind the open-source eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) messaging protocol in answer to the SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) protocol advocated by Microsoft and IBM. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item16 "Honeypots: Sticking It to Hackers" Honeynet Project founder Lance Spitzner writes that honeypots are unique because they can be applied to multiple problems, unlike most current security solutions; they can be deployed on a variety of platforms and are available commercially, as free ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item17 "A Sensor Model Language" The Open GIS Consortium (OGC), whose members include NASA, EPA, and the National Imaging and Mapping Agency, is building and testing a standard XML encoding framework that could facilitate the remote discovery, access, and use of real-time or stored ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0428m.html#item18 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Friday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0425f.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