Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the August 29, 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 539 Date: August 29, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, August 29, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Fight Against Viruses May Move to Servers" "Software Patent Protest Moves From Street to Internet" "Data Mining Proponents Mull Commercial Apps" "Off to College to Major in...Video Games?" "No Consensus on Voting Machines" "Cyborgs Unite!" "Quantum Leap Tests Network Warfare" "Software Self-Defense" "Strike Up the Band: An Electronic Accompanist Jumps In" "Software Speeds Modeling" "What's in Your Technology Survival Kit?" "Dumb Software For Dumb People" "Lab Soups Up Linux Supercomputer" "Upgrade and Archive: The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction" "Decoding Terror" "Gap Analysis" "The Power of IT" "Teachable Robots" "Saving Private E-mail" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Fight Against Viruses May Move to Servers" Many security experts contend that desktop anti-virus software and firewalls may soon not be enough to thwart increasingly crafty and sophisticated computer viruses, and they expect the server to become the new front line of defense. "[Virus writers] ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item1 "Software Patent Protest Moves From Street to Internet" A Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FIFF) protest expected to take place on Aug. 27 will involve demonstrations in the streets of Brussels and the shuttering of over 600 Web sites that advocate the FIFF's opposition to a proposed European ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item2 "Data Mining Proponents Mull Commercial Apps" Data mining technologies have harbored a bad reputation bred out of fears that such tools would be used for intrusive Orwellian surveillance, but private-sector researchers are working to change that perception by touting data mining's potential value ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item3 "Off to College to Major in...Video Games?" Praise and scorn is being heaped upon the incorporation of video games into the curricula of universities such as MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology, which use creative terms such as "digital arts" or "interactive media" to describe the field of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item4 "No Consensus on Voting Machines" Opinion was divided among approximately 6,000 California citizens responding to a July public inquiry from Secretary of State Kevin Shelley about whether electronic voting machines should be equipped to print out a paper trail. Political activists and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item5 "Cyborgs Unite!" University of Toronto electrical engineering professor and cyborg rights activist Steve Mann continues to probe the societal impact of cyborg technologies and is presently preparing a pair of events featuring music controlled by participants' brain waves. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item6 "Quantum Leap Tests Network Warfare" Quantum Leap is the code name for an Aug. 27 Defense Department test of network-centric warfare operations involving the rapid distribution of intelligence among warfighters. A dozen horizontal fusion concepts and technologies planned for 2004 will ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item7 "Software Self-Defense" Computer security experts say that users are the weakest link in the defense against computer viruses and worms, and that automated security updates and PC scanning are needed to fill the gap. The SoBig virus, which has infected over 100,000 PCs since ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item8 "Strike Up the Band: An Electronic Accompanist Jumps In" The Continuator is a prototype software program developed by Francois Pachet of Sony's Computer Science Laboratory that can act as an electronic accompanist capable of riffing with a musician with virtually no discernible pauses. The program, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item9 "Software Speeds Modeling" University researchers in Europe and America have collaborated to create new architectural modeling software that automates complex design tasks for individual buildings and even entire cityscapes. The software uses shape grammars to allow fluid manipulation of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item10 "What's in Your Technology Survival Kit?" The University at Buffalo provides students with Tech Tools, a CD that contains all of the software they will need in the course of their studies. Faculty and staff also receive Tech Tools, while those who own past editions can access updates and downloads at ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item11 "Dumb Software For Dumb People" Experts argue that computer viruses, particularly those that have wrought mischief in the last month, throw into sharp relief Microsoft's flawed software development model, which focuses on adding needless complexity to systems, integrating applications ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item12 "Lab Soups Up Linux Supercomputer" The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has announced its ownership of the world's fastest Linux supercomputer, a 2,000-chip Intel Itanium 2 system built at a cost of $24.5 million. The 3,000-square-foot supercomputer, which will be used ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item13 "Upgrade and Archive: The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction" Unlike printed documents and microfilm records, electronic records cannot be preserved without the maintenance of all the distributed data and metadata, explains Andrew Lawrence of Eastman Kodak's commercial imaging group. Paper and microfilm ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item14 "Decoding Terror" The National Security Agency (NSA) has been struggling to keep up with encryption and scrambling technology since the end of the Cold War. The improvement of code-maker technology requires code-breakers to race even further technologically, since ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item15 "Gap Analysis" Approximately 50 percent of the federal government's IT workforce, as well as a significant portion of state government IT professionals, will reach retirement age in a few years, which has sparked both negative and positive outlooks on how this ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item16 "The Power of IT" Ohio-based FirstEnergy and other power companies are undertaking IT projects that aim to close information gaps about electric grid problems that led to the recent U.S. blackout in the hopes of avoiding a recurrence. FirstEnergy, which may be the massive ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item17 "Teachable Robots" Juyang Weng of Michigan State University has sought to imbue robots with "real-time, online, on the fly" learning capabilities. One of his creations, SAIL (Self-Organizing Autonomous Incremental Learner), is designed to exhibit curiosity ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item18 "Saving Private E-mail" Winning the war against spam requires eliminating--or at least dramatically reducing--the likelihood of false positives, which no automatic filtering or blacklisting technique currently in use is able to do. However, some programmers are hoping that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0829f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0827w.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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