Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the May 21, 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 498 Date: May 21, 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, May 21, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Pentagon Details New Surveillance System" "Has Copyright Law Met Its Match?" "E-Mail's Backdoor Open to Spammers" "Leave Me Alone!" "The Crisis of Computing's Dying Breed" "A Spy Machine of Darpa's Dreams" "Congressional Caucus Targets Piracy" "New System Developed by Pentagon Identifies Walkers" "Viruses Learn How to IM" "Bugged Out" "Nanopits for Nanostorage" "GPS Data Could Stop Wireless Network Attacks" "State of the Art: Wasted Chip Power" "Ultra Wideband: Gaining Momentum" "Digital Solutions to Government Challenges" "W3C Readies New Tech Patent Policy" "Open Source Gets Secure" "Where Are Your New Ideas Coming From?" "Surveillance Nation--Part Two" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Pentagon Details New Surveillance System" The Pentagon released a comprehensive report about the proposed Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) program (previously known as Total Information Awareness) to legislators on Tuesday, but the details about the computer surveillance system--its projected ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item1 "Has Copyright Law Met Its Match?" Disabled consumers and their proponents complain that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) severely restricts their access to reading material because most available electronic books lock out text-to-speech software. Advocates such as the American ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item2 "Email's Backdoor Open to Spammers" Routing junk email through unwitting third parties, usually home and office Internet users, is the No. 1 distribution method spammers use, and ISPs such as America Online estimate that over 200,000 computers around the world have been exploited in this ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item3 "Leave Me Alone!" Brightmail estimates that spam will account for about 50 percent of all Internet mail sent this year, while Ferris Research reckons that dealing with junk email will cost American businesses $10 billion. Many businesses are hesitant to use ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item4 "The Crisis of Computing's Dying Breed" IT workers knowledgeable in mainframe operations are a dying breed, although the hardware they run has proven surprisingly resilient to extinction. IT pundits had predicted server systems would make the mainframe obsolete, but many companies are loath ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item5 "A Spy Machine of Darpa's Dreams" The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is sponsoring a new project that aims to record every movement, consumed media, transaction, and action in a person's life. The LifeLog project could be used as a computer training tool, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item6 "Congressional Caucus Targets Piracy" Florida Reps. Robert Wexler (D) and Tom Feeney (R), along with Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), are organizing the Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property Promotion and Piracy Prevention, which is likely to cause Congress to narrow its focus on ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item7 "New System Developed by Pentagon Identifies Walkers" One possible element of the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency's (DARPA) proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) U.S. citizen surveillance database could be "gait signatures" extracted by a device developed by Georgia Institute of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item8 "Viruses Learn How to IM" Computer viruses are adapting IM bot behavior to spread, as demonstrated by the recent Fizzer worm, which can receive hacker commands if it can link to the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) network and the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item9 "Bugged Out" Ellen Ullman, author of "Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents," drew upon real-life experience for her new novel "The Bug," a parable about a computer programmer confronted with a bug that thwarts all attempts to lock it down. The basis ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item10 "Nanopits for Nanostorage" Scientists are looking for alternative data storage media that offer greater density than magnetic systems, and separate European research efforts have yielded significant breakthroughs in nanoscale indentation. A team at the IBM Zurich Research ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item11 "GPS Data Could Stop Wireless Network Attacks" Carnegie Mellon University's Yi-Chin Hu and Adrian Perrig, along with Rice University's David Johnson, furnished a report presented at the 12th World Wide Web conference detailing a new wireless network security threat and a possible defense ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item12 "State of the Art: Wasted Chip Power" Despite the marketing hype coming from AMD and Intel, 64-bit computing is unlikely to make an immediate, dramatic impact on corporate IT operations. Even if companies adopt 64-bit computing platforms, much of the possible processing power will ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item13 "Ultra Wideband: Gaining Momentum" Supporters of ultra wideband (UWB) are predicting a surge in home networking products based on the technology thanks to the FCC's February 2002 ruling authorizing commercial, unlicensed UWB implementation. The agency supposedly approved the authorization ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item14 "Digital Solutions to Government Challenges" This year's National Conference on Digital Government Research (dr.o2003) on May 19-21 showcased an array of digital government projects. UrbanSim from University of Washington researchers simulates city growth so that policymakers in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item15 "W3C Readies New Tech Patent Policy" World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) director Tim Berners-Lee recently announced that a decision on the organization's technology patent policy--one that addresses patent claims that could be a hindrance to interoperable Web standards development--is ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item16 "Open Source Gets Secure" The government sector is pushing for official security credentials for open-source products. A coalition involving the Open Source Software Institute, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and other groups, is working to certify an encryption technology commonly ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item17 "Where Are Your New Ideas Coming From?" The closed innovation model, in which companies build central labs to research and develop technology and products that pay for continued R&D, is still valid for certain industries, but is no longer applicable for many more, writes Henry Chesbrough in his ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item18 "Surveillance Nation--Part Two" As the United States ramps up widescale surveillance initiatives with little grumbling from citizens, technologies are being developed that carry both the promise of better security and the threat of privacy invasion. But personal privacy may not ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0521w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0519m.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