Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the July 7, 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 516 Date: July 7, 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, July 7, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Hackers Limit Disruption to Small Internet Sites" "Government Prying, the Good Kind" "PC Manufacturers Feel Pressure to Recycle" "Committees Are Useful and Very Efficient--Well, in the Tech World" "Who's Watching You Surf?" "Just Between You and Me..." "Blogs in the Workplace" "Spam-Bot Tests Flunk the Blind" "Study Reveals Net's Parts" "Web Privacy Services Complicate Feds' Job" "White-Collar Sweatshops" "Fight Spam With the DNS, Not the CIA" "With a Nudge or Vibration, Game Reality Reverberates" "Linux Creator an Open Source" "Reaching Through the Net to Touch" "New Web Tool to Improve Multimedia Surfing" "Wi-Fi: Security for the Masses" "Another Digit, Another Deadline" "Rethinking PKI" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Hackers Limit Disruption to Small Internet Sites" Hundreds of small Web sites around the world were damaged in a coordinated hacker attack Sunday, just as some security experts had warned last week. However, damage from the attacks was mitigated by a faction of hackers who attempted to prevent the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item1 "Government Prying, the Good Kind" One argument goes that as the government feels entitled to monitor the affairs of American citizens, so too are Americans entitled to keep tabs on government activities; this reasoning is illustrated by Government Information Awareness (GIA), a Web site ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item2 "PC Manufacturers Feel Pressure to Recycle" With California's legislature considering passage of a law that would require computer manufacturers to take responsibility for recycling half of all their equipment by 2005 and 90 percent by the end of the decade, Hewlett-Packard and other PC makers are ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item3 "Committees Are Useful and Very Efficient--Well, in the Tech World" Committees in general have acquired a bad reputation, but this negative image should not extend to the technology sector, where many advances--including the new Serial ATA PC disk-drive connection system--are the result of committee standards-setting, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item4 "Who's Watching You Surf?" Certain privacy advocates are concerned that the Department of Justice is keeping its exact figures on how many telephone and email wiretaps it is carrying out a secret under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), while ACLU ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item5 "Just Between You and Me..." Quantum cryptography projects in Europe have set the technology for commercial release in less than three years. Quantum theory provides a long-sought way to securely transmit the one-time key-stream first devised by U.S. Army cryptologist Joseph ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item6 "Blogs in the Workplace" There is growing interest among businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies to use Web logs (blogs) rather than email for internal communications. Community Connect director of operations Nicholas Tang uses blogs to coordinate ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item7 "Spam-Bot Tests Flunk the Blind" Yahoo!, Microsoft, VeriSign, and other major ISPs are using a technique designed to block software bots' attempts to sign up for online email accounts that spammers can employ to distribute bulk commercial email, as well as harvest the Internet addresses ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item8 "Study Reveals Net's Parts" Researchers have discovered that the Internet's elementary structure is modular, and determined by the number of nodes (sites) that connect to a given node. The team, based at Denmark's Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Norway's ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item9 "Web Privacy Services Complicate Feds' Job" Increased government surveillance has spurred public interest in online privacy services such as Anonymizer and Germany-based Steganos, two of the most popular such services. CNET Networks reports downloads for privacy services applications from its ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item10 "White-Collar Sweatshops" Laid-off U.S. high-tech workers are disheartened by employers bringing in foreign workers on H-1B visas and outsourcing IT operations to overseas labor; not only are more critical white-collar positions such as programming and software ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item11 "Fight Spam With the DNS, Not the CIA" Shenick Software Systems software engineer John Fitzgibbon puts forward a proposal to close a loophole in the Domain Name System (DNS) so that only outbound mail servers with legitimate DNS MX records can send email, a strategy that may help hobble the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item12 "With a Nudge or Vibration, Game Reality Reverberates" The science of haptics, pioneered by the military and later the automotive and medical sectors to develop technologies that give users the ability to "feel" remote or virtual objects through an electronic interface, is finding its way into the entertainment ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item13 "Linux Creator an Open Source" Linux creator Linus Torvalds says in an interview with Mercury News that he believes the SCO suit against IBM is not valid and that should be apparent given the transparency of open-source development. The basis of the suit, according to Torvalds, is ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item14 "Reaching Through the Net to Touch" University at Buffalo researchers recently disclosed that they have created a haptic system that allows one person to feel the tactile sensations experienced by another over the Internet. A team led by UB Virtual Reality Lab director Thenkurussi Kesavadas ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item15 "New Web Tool to Improve Multimedia Surfing" Annodex software developed by Australia-based CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences purports to facilitate more interactive Web surfing by making multimedia files directly accessible and searchable. The software, which enables any section within a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item16 "Wi-Fi: Security for the Masses" The strong business value and convenience of having a Wi-Fi connection is undercut by the ineffectiveness of Wi-Fi's Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, which leaves Wi-Fi connections vulnerable to any hackers in close enough proximity to an access ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item17 "Another Digit, Another Deadline" U.S. retailers are facing a deadline reminiscent of Y2K in terms of the work required, though the consequences for missing the deadline will not cause systems to crash. The Sunrise 2005 deadline was issued by the Uniform Code Council (UCC) in 1997 and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item18 "Rethinking PKI" Stephen Wilson of SecureNet contends that digital certificates, as part of a public key infrastructure (PKI), are better suited as application-specific "electronic business cards" rather than the one-size-fits-all electronic passports they were originally ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0707m.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0702w.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