Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the May 2, 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 490 Date: May 2, 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - POWERFUL SYSTEMS, POWERFUL SAVINGS IBM offers ACM members discounts on hundreds of products for the home and office including desktops, notebooks, servers, monitors, software, hardware and accessories. Also, ask about additional promotional offers! Call 1-800-426-7235 ext. 3559 to save 10% everyday on purchases. Please visit our Web site at http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/ACM TURN UP THE VOLUME ON IBM AND SAVE The more you buy, the more you save. Ask about Volume Discounts when you buy multiple select IBM ThinkPadR notebooks and NetVistaTM desktops*. Call 1-800-426-7235 ext. 3559 today. Hurry! Free Palm Zire Handheld! Keep your life in balance. Get organized while increasing your mobility! Buy any IBM NetVista(tm) desktop or IBM ThinkPadR notebook and ask for a Palm(tm) Zire(tm) at no additional cost ($99.99 Value). Or upgrade to the Palm Tungsten(tm) T and SAVE $100. Offer ends 5/19/03 or while supplies last.** Visit http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/acm or call 800-426-7235, ext. 3559 OR Free ThinkPad Carrying Case and free Travel Surge Protector! Travel with style and security. What could be more perfect for the traveling professional? Ask for a FREE ThinkPadR Leather Carrying Case and a Free Travel Surge Protector with retractable phone cord with the purchase of any ThinkPad Notebook. Offer ends 5/19/03.** Visit http://www.ibm.com/businesscenter/acm or call 800-426-7235, ext. 3559 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Top Stories for Friday, May 2, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "What's Spam By Any Other Name?" "Web-Based Attacks Could Create Chaos in the Physical World" "Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial" "FCRC Draws Researchers from a Host of Disciplines" "Off the Hype Meter" "Robot Science Puts On a Friendly Face" "Scientists Examine IT's 'Human Factor'" "Artificial Intellect Really Thinking?" "Seashell Offers Digital Memories" "Scientists Study Quantum Computing Feasibility" "The Great IT Complexity Challenge" "Harvard Event Showcases Russia as Outsourcing Site" "A Misnomer Taken to the 'Extreme'" "Data Security Measures Failing to Match Legal Expectations" "Group Offers Help for Women in the Tech Sector" "Big Brother: Is He Watching You?" "Exporting IT Jobs" "Bright New World" "Get Real" "Personalizing Web Sites With Mixed-Initiative Interaction" ******************* News Stories *********************** "What's Spam By Any Other Name?" The first day of the FTC's three-day spam conference in Washington was marked by disagreement among email experts over what actually constitutes spam: Anti-spam advocates and certain companies defined all unsolicited bulk email as spam, while some ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item1 "Web-Based Attacks Could Create Chaos in the Physical World" Internet security researchers presented a paper at a recent ACM Workshop on Privacy in an Electronic Society detailing how criminals or terrorists with a minimum of computer skills and resources could disrupt real-world operations by swamping ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item2 "Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial" Amazon, NetFlix, and other online retail services rely on automated recommender systems to anticipate customer purchases based on past choices; however, a February report from Forrester Research found that just 7.4 percent of online consumers often ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item3 "FCRC Draws Researchers from a Host of Disciplines" Attendees of the Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC) in June will find a wide assortment of affiliated research fields under one roof. The annual conference, to be held June 7-14 in San Diego, Calif., will assemble meetings, workshops, and tutorials ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item4 "Off the Hype Meter" The technology industry hype machine is running on overdrive even though the products currently available leave a lot to be desired, writes Jon Oltsik, who compares the promised benefits of "hot" technologies with their actual performance. He notes that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item5 "Robot Science Puts On a Friendly Face" Academic and corporate research labs worldwide are engineering robots designed to increase human comfort levels by taking on mundane tasks as well as carry out more sophisticated operations. Carnegie Mellon University, through partnerships with other ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item6 "Scientists Examine IT's 'Human Factor'" Researchers working on the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Management of Knowledge-Intensive Dynamic Systems (MKIDS) program are leveraging information technology to determine how social networks among persons and groups shape the organizational ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item7 "Artificial Intellect Really Thinking?" A computer can be labeled as artificially intelligent, but the intelligence--if indeed that is what it is--actually resides in the program, writes Fred Reed. However, he points out that such programs, once deconstructed, consist of incremental steps that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item8 "Seashell Offers Digital Memories" BTexact has developed a methodology in which physical mementos can be scanned into a computer and connected to related digital content--emails, photos, video, Web sites, text messages, etc. This content can be accessed by placing the memento--a child's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item9 "Scientists Study Quantum Computing Feasibility" Supercomputers with billions of times the speed and computing power of current models could become a reality thanks to a multidisciplinary quantum computing research effort at the University of California, Berkeley. "What would take millions of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item10 "The Great IT Complexity Challenge" Autonomic computing promises to clear up complexity in company IT operations, freeing people from mundane maintenance tasks and handing those functions over to computers themselves. Major IT vendors are latching on to autonomic computing not only as a way ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item11 "Harvard Event Showcases Russia as Outsourcing Site" The second annual Russian IT Seasons event held this week at Harvard University is an opportunity for Russian firms to highlight the advantages of outsourcing software research and development to their country, including lower wages and a large ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item12 "A Misnomer Taken to the 'Extreme'" Extreme programming is a methodology that ensures the best results when programming teams are faced with ambiguous and shifting project expectations. Despite its name, extreme programming actually incorporates all the most conservative ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item13 "Data Security Measures Failing to Match Legal Expectations" Increased governmental regulations concerning companies' computer security and data privacy policies have heightened firms' legal exposure, according to experts. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item14 "Group Offers Help for Women in the Tech Sector" The Association for Women in Computing (AWC) is a professional group created to give women a leg up in the technology sector. The organization currently consists of 2,000 members and about 20 active chapters throughout 13 U.S. states and the District of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item15 "Big Brother: Is He Watching You?" Legislators and privacy supporters are critical of the government's efforts to clamp down on terrorism using the latest technologies to gather, analyze, and share surveillance data on Americans; they fear that such measures will create an Orwellian ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item16 "Exporting IT Jobs" The number of U.S. companies hiring cheap offshore labor for routine IT operations is increasing as a result of their need to reduce IT costs and balance out desired, salaried employees and workers they can temporarily hire on an as-needed basis. CIOs ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item17 "Bright New World" Optical applications are being rethought thanks to the advent of plasmonics, which has the potential to revolutionize nanotechnology. Experiments by Thomas Ebbesen and Peter Wolf of NEC Research Institute established that light directed on a metal ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item18 "Get Real" The chief value of instant messaging and other forms of real-time communication (RTC) services is presence, and this is fundamentally changing business communication, writes A Working Model managing director Stowe Boyd. To take advantage of this ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item19 "Personalizing Web Sites With Mixed-Initiative Interaction" Saverio Perugini and Naren Ramakrishnan of Virginia Polytechnic Institute believe that a truly personalized Web site will personalize the user's interaction, and a mixed-initiative architecture where the user can control the interaction is the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0502f.html#item20 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0430w.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 personal computers and software Purchase discounted IBM personal computers, servers, and hundreds of additional products and services as an ACM member. *Discount is available directly from IBM on selected products. 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