Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the June 23, 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 511 Date: June 23, 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, June 23, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Congress Finds Rare Unity in Spam, to a Point" "This Is Your Life--In Bits" "Tech Comes Out Swinging" "Building a Better Bug-Trap" "E-Mail Swindle Uses False Report About a Swindle" "High-Tech Workers Fight New Threat of Foreign Replacements" "McCain Promises Review of DMCA Subpoena Power" "Smart Bricks, or a Dumb Idea?" "Apple in 2008" "CERT, Adobe Address PDF Vulnerability" "A Survey of Next-Generation Storage System Architectures" "McCarthy Wins Major Award" "Movement Brings Computer Images to Life" "Researchers Take Initial Step Toward Much Faster Computing" "The Centrifuge Moves You" "Eight Questions for George Dyson" "Watching Him Watching You" "An Uncertain Future for the IT Workforce" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Congress Finds Rare Unity in Spam, to a Point" Congressional members, interest groups, and industry are largely agreed that legislation is required to stop the rising tide of spam, which is estimated to account for 40 percent of all email. Because the debate focuses on consumer and marketing tensions, it ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item1 "This Is Your Life--In Bits" Efforts are underway at Microsoft and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop tools that record and store all facets of an individual's experience to serve as electronic memory aids. DARPA's LifeLog project aims to build a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item2 "Tech Comes Out Swinging" The 100 leading technology firms are hoping to knock out their competition, reestablish industry credibility, and reinvigorate the U.S. economy through aggressive and risky investments, a strategy that has paid off in the past. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item3 "Building a Better Bug-Trap" The significance and pervasiveness of programming errors are growing as software becomes more deeply integrated and embedded within society, which in turn makes traditional bug-finding methods less effective. Software that can detect bugs early in ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item4 "E-Mail Swindle Uses False Report About a Swindle" An email message sent out on Wednesday, June 18, 2003, with the subject heading, "Fraud Alert," warned of a scam related to Best Buy's Web site, but the email actually was a scam itself. The unsolicited message was sent to as many as 1 million Internet ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item5 "High-Tech Workers Fight New Threat of Foreign Replacements" American high-tech workers are protesting the increased use of L-1 visas--which are less restrictive than H-1B visas--to replace them with cheap foreign labor, and are mobilizing to curb such practices. For example, unemployed IT worker Glenn R. Dawson ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item6 "McCain Promises Review of DMCA Subpoena Power" Verizon was recently forced by court order to reveal the identities of several subscribers suspected of online music piracy to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which leveraged a provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item7 "Smart Bricks, or a Dumb Idea?" There is a movement to develop "smart buildings" that can perform routine maintenance tasks automatically and monitor their structural integrity in real time. One innovation along these lines is a "smart brick" from researchers at the University of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item8 "Apple in 2008" To remain significant, Apple needs to continue leading the PC industry forward in other areas besides hardware, according to analysts. The company's marginal market share has always belied its influence on the industry, and Apple has been able to set the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item9 "CERT, Adobe Address PDF Vulnerability" The CERT Coordination Center verified that Portable Document Format (PDF) readers for the Unix and Linux platforms suffer from a security vulnerability on June 18, less than a week after this information was disclosed online by someone using the alias ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item10 "A Survey of Next-Generation Storage System Architectures" Storage architecture is just as important to consider as the storage devices themselves; so while storage devices are advancing rapidly, it is reasonable to expect improvements in storage architecture. As Harvard professor Clayton Christiansen ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item11 "McCarthy Wins Major Award" Philadelphia's Franklin Institute recognized Stanford University computer science professor John McCarthy for his pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence by awarding him the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science on ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item12 "Movement Brings Computer Images to Life" University of California-Davis graduate students Eric Lum and Aleksander Stompel collaborated with computer science professor Kwan-Liu Ma to develop kinetic visualization, a computer graphics technique in which the shape and structure of stationary objects ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item13 "Researchers Take Initial Step Toward Much Faster Computing" University of Chicago researchers have built genetically engineered fibers that could bind to gold nanoparticles to form tiny conducting wires, a breakthrough that could lead to super-fast optical computing. The fibers are fabricated from ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item14 "The Centrifuge Moves You" Computer technology is becoming more decentralized with wireless technology and is the process of its most profound transformation in nearly 25 years, writes economist and author Arnold Kling. The previous focus on the PC and document creation has given way ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item15 "Eight Questions for George Dyson" George Dyson, historian and director's visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), speaks about his keynote address at the upcoming O'Reilly Open Source Convention, where he will talk about the beginnings of digital computation in the early 1950s. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item16 "Watching Him Watching You" The Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness (formerly Total Information Awareness) project, or TIA, is supposed to help authorities track down terrorists by mining databases of commercial transactions, credit card bills, online news releases, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item17 "An Uncertain Future for the IT Workforce" Results of the InfoWorld 2003 Compensation Survey seem to mirror the findings of an Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) study released in May. InfoWorld found that only 15 percent of respondents foresee their companies increasing their ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0623m.html#item18 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Friday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0620f.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