Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 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 555 Date: October 8, 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, October 8, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?" "Student Skirts CD's Piracy Guard" "European Group Seeks Progress in Software R&D" "Politics of Offshoring" "Oxford Tries to Work Out What IT All Means" "CMU Student Taps Brain's Game Skills" "Engineering Whiz James Gray" "Meet the PDA That Can Hold a Conversation" "You Can Hear Me Now: Software Brings Cellular Capacity to Rural Communities" "Intel Takes on Adaptive Wireless Tech" "Boldly Googling Into the Future" "Tech Out the Latest in Fashion" "What's Next in LCDs?" "Tiring of Royalties, China Seeks Compression Spec for Video" "A New Era of Living Data Is Coming" "Survivor Guide: Stephen Wolfram, Scientist and Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research" "Grid Computing Made Simple" "Emerging Technology: Wireless Goes Peer-to-Peer?" "The Future of the Book in a Digital Age" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?" Despite assurances from officials in Alameda County, Calif., that the Diebold touch-screen voting machines the county will use for the recall vote are adequately protected from fraud by usage policies and procedures, a recent training session for Alameda http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item1 "Student Skirts CD's Piracy Guard" Princeton University graduate student John Halderman published a paper on his Web site Oct. 6 in which he detailed a simple method for defeating anti-copying software embedded in a CD from BMG's Arista Records. The CD received a lot of press as the first to http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item2 "European Group Seeks Progress in Software R&D" An upcoming symposium held by the Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA) program will focus on the current progress of an eight-year embedded-software platform research and development initiative designed to keep European software http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item3 "Politics of Offshoring" With unemployment in Silicon Valley hanging around 9 percent and IT offshoring ramping up, politicians are readying their arguments: States such as New Jersey, North Carolina, and Michigan have already seen legislative proposals that would http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item4 "Oxford Tries to Work Out What IT All Means" The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) was established in 2001 as an independent center of excellence to study the societal implications of the Internet, with American academic William Dutton serving as its first director. Dutton says one of the http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item5 "CMU Student Taps Brain's Game Skills" Carnegie Mellon University computer science graduate student Luis von Ahn has designed an online game that seeks to ultimately enhance computer performance by tapping into the cognitive capacity of human brains. In von Ahn's ESP Game, participants go http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item6 "Engineering Whiz James Gray" Microsoft engineer and ACM Turing Award recipient James Gray has parlayed his fascination with mathematics and AI--which was nurtured when he was in high school, at a time when the field was relatively nascent--into a distinguished engineer. Gray played a key http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item7 "Meet the PDA That Can Hold a Conversation" University of New South Wales researchers Dr. Mohammed Waleed Kadous and Professor Claude Sammut have developed a prototype personal digital assistant (PDA) that features virtual agents--a male agent named Joshua and a female agent named Amanda--that can http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item8 "You Can Hear Me Now: Software Brings Cellular Capacity to Rural Communities" With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Vanu researchers have developed software that can significantly streamline the communications hardware of cellular towers and make the technology more affordable for rural areas. Thanks to http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item9 "Intel Takes on Adaptive Wireless Tech" Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger says most of the world will be using wireless technology by the end of the next decade. Intel plans to facilitate wireless connectivity with several innovative technologies and approaches, including adaptive radio technology http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item10 "Boldly Googling Into the Future" Google CTO Craig Silverstein forecasts that the full maturation of search technology--a "Star Trek"-style computer interface that processes vocal queries in any language and can infer the request's precise context, among other things--is approximately http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item11 "Tech Out the Latest in Fashion" Professor George Stylios of the Heriot-Watt University School of Textiles and Design in Scotland predicts that electronics will be an essential component of personal apparel in two or three decades, thanks to e-textile products under development today. http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item12 "What's Next in LCDs?" The Ceatec 2003 exhibition, taking place in Chiba, Japan, from Oct. 7 to Oct. 11, will showcase an array of liquid crystal display (LCD) technologies that fall into two general categories: Improved versions of existing displays that yield better picture http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item13 "Tiring of Royalties, China Seeks Compression Spec for Video" China continues to push for nationally developed intellectual property (IP) that will save its consumers and manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars if widely adopted: Perhaps the most mature national standard is a new video compression http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item14 "A New Era of Living Data Is Coming" Management consultant and commentator Thornton May writes that practically everything on Earth could be given an IP address within 10 years, according to research being carried out in tandem with UCLA's Managing the Information Resource Program. He http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item15 "Survivor Guide: Stephen Wolfram, Scientist and Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research" Computing guru Stephen Wolfram is promoting a new concept of how complex systems are built from simple programs. Wolfram, the author of the Mathematica computer program, recently explained his ideas to the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science, http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item16 "Grid Computing Made Simple" Grid computing allows companies and research teams to increase their processing power by tapping into networks of computers and other resources to perform computations. Grids will be unable to support ubiquitous parallel computing until developers boost http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item17 "Emerging Technology: Wireless Goes Peer-to-Peer?" The idealized form of wireless peer-to-peer (P2P) meshes connects network nodes (devices) via P2P radios, allowing every client to relay each others' traffic, cohering into a massive "overnet" that circumvents existing networks; ardent P2P mesh advocates http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item18 "The Future of the Book in a Digital Age" Printed books were expected to be phased out with the coming of the paperless office, but Heidelberg College literary professor and author David J. Staley points out that neither of these developments have come to pass, and observes that the production http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1006m.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