Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the June 4, 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 503 Date: June 4, 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, June 4, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Telling of Terrorist-Tracking Tech Tools" "Overseas Tech Jobs Proliferate" "Honors Program Showcases IT's Role in Making a Better World" "Security Standards Could Bolster File-Sharing Networks" "Pentagon's Super Diary Project Could Put Powerful Software in Private Hands" "Imagine Machines That Can See" "Corporate Computing Tries to Find a New Path" "New Software Helps Teams Deal With Information Overload" "Pentagon Launches Internet Voting Effort for Overseas Americans" "Industrial Evolution" "Superhero Server Takes War on Hackers to Mythic Level" "In Future, Foot Soldier Will Be Plugged Into a Massive Network" "Clash Over Java Standard Heats Up" "Net Attack Overwhelms Computers With Complexity" "The Hidden Cost of Software" "The Next Ethernet" "Enclosing the Digital Commons" "Are You Ready for Social Software?" "Maximize Color and Contrast in Multimedia Images" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Telling of Terrorist-Tracking Tech Tools" The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently furnished Congress with a report on its Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, which has come under fire from critics as a tool that would be used to spy on innocent Americans and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item1 "Overseas Tech Jobs Proliferate" The attraction of transferring technology operations overseas where labor is cheaper, especially during a recession, is transforming Silicon Valley and eroding its role as a low-end software developer. Forrester reckons that 3.3 million ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item2 "Honors Program Showcases IT's Role in Making a Better World" Winners of Tuesday's Computerworld Honors awards stressed their dedication to improve people's lives through information technology. E Entertainment Television received an award in the Media, Arts, & Entertainment category for a digital asset ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item3 "Security Standards Could Bolster File-Sharing Networks" Harvard University researchers postulate that anti-copying safeguards suggested by the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), ostensibly to curb digital piracy, could actually make peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing programs stronger. The TCPA ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item4 "Pentagon's Super Diary Project Could Put Powerful Software in Private Hands" Pentagon documents state that the goal of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) LifeLog project is to develop software that deduces behavioral patterns from monitoring people's daily activities, and DARPA officials say the initiative ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item5 "Imagine Machines That Can See" Biomimetics researchers are designing robots programmed to operate the same way biological systems do, and a major biomimetics push involves the development and refinement of robot vision. Boston University's Active Perception Lab is working on ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item6 "Corporate Computing Tries to Find a New Path" The IT explosion and its promised transformation of business have been victims of their own hype, as demonstrated by today's unwieldy, overcomplicated corporate information systems. "It's almost as if the technology took over," observes IBM's Irving ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item7 "New Software Helps Teams Deal With Information Overload" Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork (CAST), a software program co-developed by John Yen of Penn State University's School of Information Sciences and Technology, is designed to improve teams' decision-making process and augment cooperation ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item8 "Pentagon Launches Internet Voting Effort for Overseas Americans" American civilians and military personnel living overseas will be able to vote electronically in the 2004 elections through the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), according to a Pentagon announcement on Monday. Voters will ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item9 "Industrial Evolution" The life sciences field is investing heavily in IT equipment and services in order to handle a flood of biosciences data as well as make the pharmaceutical development process more efficient. International Data (IDC) estimates that the biosciences ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item10 "Superhero Server Takes War on Hackers to Mythic Level" The Hydra server operating system is impervious to electronic attack by viruses or hackers, according to Bodacion Technologies. Former Motorola software engineers Eric Uner and Eric Hauk say Hydra is written completely from scratch and has several ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item11 "In Future, Foot Soldier Will Be Plugged Into a Massive Network" The "Scorpion ensemble" under development at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center is intended to increase mobility by reducing the amount of equipment troops must carry while boosting both safety and effectiveness in the field through numerous ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item12 "Clash Over Java Standard Heats Up" JBoss Group, a small firm whose open-source server software programming tools capitalize on the Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard, is being accused by Sun Microsystems of abusing the J2EE brand. Sun says the open-source, aspect-oriented JBoss ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item13 "Net Attack Overwhelms Computers With Complexity" Rice University researchers Scott Crosby and Dan Wallach have outlined a form of cyberattack that can put Web-connected computers out of commission by sending data packets that force the system to carry out highly complex hash functions that eat up ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item14 "The Hidden Cost of Software" Estimating software's total cost of ownership (TCO) to a company can be a challenging proposition, given the many factors involved, writes Tim Chou. Maintenance costs, which can often surpass the cost of software, also need to be gauged, studied, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item15 "The Next Ethernet" Even as Ethernet pioneers celebrate Ethernet's 30th anniversary, quiet talk is going on about the ambiguous future of the technology. Ethernet is now available at 10 Mbps, but past trends have indicated a tenfold increase every four years, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item16 "Enclosing the Digital Commons" Experts are worried that the Internet's development and benefits are endangered by people trying to enforce patents on widely used Web methods, such as hyperlinking and the GIF file algorithm. "There is a tension between the view that says that the Internet ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item17 "Are You Ready for Social Software?" A Working Model managing director Stowe Boyd predicts that social software will effect dramatic changes in businesses' marketing strategies and customer interplay, and transform internal and external communication and collaboration. Boyd assumes that the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item18 "Maximize Color and Contrast in Multimedia Images" The goal of color management is to develop methodologies that allow multiple digital devices to accurately reproduce colors. The International Color Consortium (ICC) founded 10 years ago by Eastman Kodak, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Silicon ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0604w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0602m.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