Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the August 8, 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 530 Date: August 8, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, August 8, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Mapping Technology Speeds Help to Fire-Scarred Land" "Warning Lights Flash for Transport Planners" "Advocates Form Open-Source Trade Group" "Object Technology Conference Takes on Open Source Software" "XML: Extremely Critical or Exhaustingly Complex?" "Reasonable Computers" "Combing Through the Tech-Job Haystack" "How Robots Will Steal Your Job" "Smart Rooms" "CC Product Evaluation Picks Up Steam" "Israeli High Tech Targets U.S. Security Market" "Educators Turn to Games for Help" "Light on the Horizon" "Sharing the Code" "Future Results Not Guaranteed" "E-Cycling" "Is the Pen Mightier?" "Flash of Brilliance or Flash In the Pan?" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Mapping Technology Speeds Help to Fire-Scarred Land" Wildfires not only threaten forests, but can lead to soil erosion that results in flooding and water contamination. Evaluating the risk of erosion in order to protect property and water supplies is an arduous procedure that assessment teams only have a limited ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item1 "Warning Lights Flash for Transport Planners" The technology to build fully automated cars exists, but lawmakers have yet to set the safety standards and legislative foundation that will make such a vision a reality, while transport planners are wrestling with the impact self-driving ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item2 "Advocates Form Open-Source Trade Group" Although the Open Source And Industry Alliance (OSAIA) has not yet been officially inaugurated, its members are drumming up support for its mission, which is to promote the advantages of nonproprietary software and battle proprietary software makers' ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item3 "Object Technology Conference Takes on Open Source Software" The ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (ACM SIGPLAN) is addressing open-source software at its annual object technology conference on October 28 and 29 in Anaheim, CA. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig will define ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item4 "XML: Extremely Critical or Exhaustingly Complex?" Despite its tremendous popularity, XML deployment has become even more controversial with its proliferation, since there is no central authority governing XML standards. Gartner research director Charles Abrams says the XML meta-language is as ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item5 "Reasonable Computers" The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Perceptive Assistant that Learns (PAL) program is an initiative to develop cognitive computer systems that can automatically perform many of the routine tasks that decision-makers are ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item6 "Combing Through the Tech-Job Haystack" Challenger, Gray & Christmas lists technology as one of the few job sectors starting to show signs of recovery, but a surfeit of job candidates and a shift in employer attitudes requires job-seekers to revise their strategy. Herb Rozoff of Challenger ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item7 "How Robots Will Steal Your Job" Over 50 percent of Americans could be replaced by robot labor by the middle of the 21st century, according to futurist Marshall Brain in his essay, "Robotic Nation." Brain projects that machines will be handling about 5 million retail jobs by 2015, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item8 "Smart Rooms" Carnegie Mellon University's "Barn" is a prototype conference room capable of recording everything that happens during a meeting through an array of microphones, cameras, projectors, and other equipment. Faculty advisor Asim Smailagic says the Barn ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item9 "CC Product Evaluation Picks Up Steam" The Common Criteria accreditation for software and hardware is gaining support in the U.S. government and from vendors, who are beginning to place stress on the system by submitting more products for evaluation. The United States, along with 14 other ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item10 "Israeli High Tech Targets U.S. Security Market" Israel expects to parlay its defense expertise into more business opportunities in the United States: With the United States starting to focus more on guarding against terrorism, Israel's technology sector views the market as a potential source of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item11 "Educators Turn to Games for Help" Academics are hoping to employ the software that powers popular video games to enhance the learning experience and allow students to apply classroom lessons to simulated environments. The Digital Media Collaboratory at the University of Texas at Austin ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item12 "Light on the Horizon" Commercial, three-dimensional holographic data storage has long been an elusive dream of academic and industrial researchers, but a holographic memory is expected to hit the market in 2004. In theory, holographic methods could significantly expand data ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item13 "Sharing the Code" The success of the established open-source projects Linux and Apache and their frequent use in higher education has given rise to other open-source projects intended for colleges and universities' use. One example is uPortal, which can be used to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item14 "Future Results Not Guaranteed" To rely exclusively on computerized demand forecasting is a serious error, despite the continued endorsement of demand forecasting software by vendors and academics: The best strategy is to couple demand forecasts with human intelligence and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item15 "E-Cycling" Recycling lead-bearing cathode ray tubes (CRTs) is a difficult process whose most common solution causes air contamination, but researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed a fast, easy CRT disassembly method that eliminates ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item16 "Is the Pen Mightier?" Tablet PCs promise to boost worker productivity and support more flexible collaboration by capturing data and graphic information more efficiently, but there have been few major white-collar tablet PC implementations thus far, and many companies lack an ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item17 "Flash of Brilliance or Flash In the Pan?" Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena) and the University of California at Santa Barbara have a made a discovery that could potentially increase hard disk capacity by more than a thousandfold. According to the scientists, thin ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0808f.html#item18 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0806w.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 () IBM is Serving Up Savings. 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