Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the July 25, 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 524 Date: July 25, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, July 25, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say" "Report: Inadequate IT Contributed to 9/11 Intelligence Failure" "Touch Technology: Internet May Let Us 'Feel' the Stars" "Socially Intelligent Software: Agents Go Mainstream" "Don't Break Email to Save It" "Group Pushes UWB for Low-Power Networks" "P2P Hide-and-Seek" "Manufacturing Technique Offers Possibilities for Electronics Industry" "Symposium Extends Embedded Linux" "MRAM Promises "Instant-On" Computing--But When?" "Wheelchair Moves at the Speed of Thought" "Cracking Technique Highlights Password Concerns" "Australia's Government Will Ban Unsolicited Commercial Email Later This Year" "DNS Root System in Rapid Expansion" "In the Lecture Hall, a Geek Chorus" "MIT's Tablet Tech Gets a Look-See From Microsoft" "Canning Spam" "The New Geography of the IT Industry" "They Know Where You Are" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say" Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say software in Diebold Election Systems' voting machines could allow multiple fraudulent votes or let election workers rig the systems. Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute technical director Aviel D. Rubin has published the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item1 "Report: Inadequate IT Contributed to 9/11 Intelligence Failure" Lack of IT integration and official cooperation kept U.S. intelligence agencies from preventing the Sept. 11 hijacking plot, according to a joint inquiry by House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence. Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) both felt the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item2 "Touch Technology: Internet May Let Us 'Feel' the Stars" Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the State University of New York at Buffalo are developing and experimenting with network and sensor technologies designed to allow people to experience virtual tactile sensations. Adriane Hooke of the Jet ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item3 "Socially Intelligent Software: Agents Go Mainstream" Companies that wish to make customer service more efficient and effective are using software agents that interact with clients in order to identify and solve their problems faster, but the technology's applications are not restricted to consumer interfaces--the U.S. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item4 "Don't Break Email to Save It" Anti-spam solutions should leverage the existing constraints of spam operators rather than impose radical new changes in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) standard, writes Cloudmark chief scientist Vipul Ved Prakash. Spammers must ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item5 "Group Pushes UWB for Low-Power Networks" Consumer electronics firms and wireless networking companies are pushing for a special ZigBee, or 802.15.4 standard that would enable location applications with a new alternative physical layer (PHY). Applications would be able to locate a single tagged product ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item6 "P2P Hide-and-Seek" Copyright holders' determination to clamp down on digital file-swapping with threats of litigation is prompting swappersto seek out more private networks, while developers are devising new technology to avoid traffic bottlenecks and other problems plaguing older networks. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item7 "Manufacturing Technique Offers Possibilities for Electronics Industry" As transistor density in electronic circuits increases and the transistors themselves decrease in size, lithographic manufacturing becomes increasingly expensive. An alternative technique, molecular self-assembly, is cheap and methodical, but can lead ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item8 "Symposium Extends Embedded Linux" The potential for Linux to serve as an embedded operating system was the topic of discussion during a presentation at the 2003 Linux Symposium at Ottawa's Congress Center. Tim Riker, the senior Linux technologist for Texas Instruments, suggested that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item9 "MRAM Promises "Instant-On" Computing--But When?" Magnetic RAM (MRAM) technology is expected to become commercially available in the next two to three years, but industry experts are unsure about its exact uses or in which devices the technology will first appear. MRAM potentially combines the best http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item10 "Wheelchair Moves at the Speed of Thought" Researchers at Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Barcelona's Center for Biomedical Engineering Research have developed a noninvasive, electroencephalographic ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item11 "Cracking Technique Highlights Password Concerns" Recent studies show Microsoft's Windows password-encoding schemes allow cracker programs to identify alphanumeric passwords in less than 14 seconds, though experts say the finding is not the most imminent danger to password-only security. Previously, the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item12 "Australia's Government Will Ban Unsolicited Commercial Email Later This Year" The Australian government plans to introduce legislation this year to ban unsolicited commercial email in response to a National Office for the Information Economy report, which suggests a multilayered approach to preventing spam, says Richard Alston, minister for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item13 "DNS Root System in Rapid Expansion" The Internet Software Consortium is leading an effort to rapidly expand the Internet's domain name root server system. Currently, there are 13 server sites--comprising many servers--that manage all domain lookups, but the root server system is quickly being ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item14 "In the Lecture Hall, a Geek Chorus" Using Instant Messaging software, wireless laptops, and other communications technologies, attendees at conferences and other presentations are setting up back channels--sometimes with the conference organizers' authorization--to make useful ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item15 "MIT's Tablet Tech Gets a Look-See From Microsoft" MIT researchers are exploring ways to radically change the computer interface. The person who integrated typewriter functions with the computer made one of the worst mistakes in computer engineering, according to MIT computer science professor ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item16 "Canning Spam" The optimal strategy an organization can follow to effectively reduce the amount of junk email it receives combines sender ID-based and message content-based antispam solutions whose deployment models can also be integrated. DNS-based blacklists (DNSBLs) track ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item17 "The New Geography of the IT Industry" A geographical migration is occurring as the IT industry shifts from innovation to execution, and companies outsource IT operations to services in India, China, and elsewhere. Silicon Valley is in the midst of a downturn and has lost many tenants, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item18 "They Know Where You Are" New wireless, location-tracking technologies that can be embedded into practically everything are expected to emerge over the next few years, but there is concern that their benefits--greater convenience and safety, cheaper and more efficient inventory ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0725f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0723w.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 () Ask for a free CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combination Drive with the purchase of select NetVista or ThinkCentre A Series tower. 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