Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the September 24, 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 549 Date: September 24, 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 Wednesday, September 24, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Davis Signs Bill to Ban Online Spam" "New ISO Fees On the Horizon?" "Supercomputer Goes Online" "Tech Pros Get to Know Their Enemy" "Cyber Threat" "Putting Your Calls Into Context" "Will You Love Your PC More When It's 64?" "Is Life the Key to New Tech?" "UC Institute Helping Solve Society's Problems" "Berners-Lee Talks Up Semantic Web" "Britain's "Cyborg Scientist" Spreads Cyber-gospel" "Termites Inspire Paper Pusher" "UMass Students Take First Place in Computer Science Competition" "NASA, Information Technology and the Future of Collaboration" "MIT Everyware" "Computers Learn New ABCs" "Built-In Spam" "The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Davis Signs Bill to Ban Online Spam" California Gov. Gray Davis signed Sen. Kevin Murray's (D-Calif.) anti-spam legislation into law Sept. 23, thus criminalizing the sending of unsolicited commercial email to Californians and allowing state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, ISPs, and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item1 "New ISO Fees On the Horizon?" Information technology standards groups are worried about a fee proposal at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world's largest standards group governing some 13,000 standards worldwide. At stake are simple international standards ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item2 "Supercomputer Goes Online" The Virginia Tech supercomputing cluster, which consists of 1,100 Apple G5 machines housing 4.4 TB of memory, goes online Sept. 24, meeting its target of starting operations by Oct. 1. Terascale Computing Facility director Srinidhi Varadarajan, who believes ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item3 "Tech Pros Get to Know Their Enemy" The Intense School is where "white hat" or ethical hackers take a five-day crash course on hacking techniques in order to shore up their own networks against worms, viruses, and other cyberthreats. The need for better security among high-tech ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item4 "Cyber Threat" Computer attacks could very well become a part of the arsenal of terrorists, some security experts believe. The Northeast power blackout was the latest cause of concern that terrorist will turn to computers to target nuclear plants, 911 systems, train ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item5 "Putting Your Calls Into Context" Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Institute of Technology (CIT) have devised SenSay, a context-aware cell-phone technology that keeps track of sent emails, phone calls, and the user's location while employing sensors to analyze the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item6 "Will You Love Your PC More When It's 64?" The move to 64-bit PCs likely will be gradual, as software and PC architectures struggle to keep pace with rapidly advancing chip technology, but the performance advantages 64-bit chips offer is expected to attract new buyers. Intel argues that Advanced Micro ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item7 "Is Life the Key to New Tech?" Researchers are looking to DNA, the building blocks of life, for the basis of next-generation computing. Potentially, DNA computing would allow for trillions of calculations at once, according to University College London's Peter Bentley. Recent ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item8 "UC Institute Helping Solve Society's Problems" A collection of four University of California campuses won $100 million in special funding from the state of California three years ago to establish the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), and has since ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item9 "Berners-Lee Talks Up Semantic Web" Internet pioneer and World Wide Web Consortium director Tim Berners-Lee explained his vision of the Semantic Web to Britain's Royal Society on Sept. 22. The concept is to enable humans and machines to more fully use data by expanding that data's meaning ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item10 "Britain's "Cyborg Scientist" Spreads Cyber-gospel" British cyber-evangelist Kevin Warwick is on a government-funded tour around Asia to promote robotics education at all grade levels. Warwick recently enthralled a gathering of 300 students in Singapore with his collection of robots and video clips of his ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item11 "Termites Inspire Paper Pusher" Software and device engineers are looking to simple, but powerful systems found in nature for inspiration. Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Laboratories, and IBM Research are all pursuing "biomimetics." PARC scientists are trying to mimic the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item12 "UMass Students Take First Place in Computer Science Competition" A group of University of Massachusetts (UMass) computer science graduate students won first place in a data mining competition held by the ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery in Data and Data Mining (ACMSIGKDD). ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item13 "NASA, Information Technology and the Future of Collaboration" NASA's recent troubles have an important impact on its use of technology, even though criticism of NASA's shuttle program did not fault IT directly. The Apollo moon mission is said to have required less computing power than an average PC today, and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item14 "MIT Everyware" Starting in September, people with the appropriate Internet connection will be able to access material from 500 MIT courses through the university's OpenCourseWare program, with an additional 1,500 courses to be posted online over the next three ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item15 "Computers Learn New ABCs" Linguists at the University of California's Berkeley campus are working to encode almost 100 more scripts in the Unicode standard, which allows computers to render, process, and send textual data in specific languages. The project "is an effort to ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item16 "Built-In Spam" The Internet has become a beehive of commercial advertising with the rampant proliferation of spam, pop-ups, and promotional content, while normal software applications are an ad-free center of tranquility in comparison. However, applications have started ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item17 "The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot" K-Bot, the brainchild of University of Texas at Dallas grad student David Hanson, stands out from other high-profile robot projects because it strives for an unprecedented degree of realism: It is a mechanized head with realistic, flesh-toned ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0924w.html#item18 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0922m.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