Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 10, 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 556 Date: October 10, 2003 Top Stories for Friday, October 10, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "Multinational Consensus Pegs Top 20 Net Vulnerabilities" "Snoop Software Gains Power and Raises Privacy Concerns" "E-Textiles, Robot 'Skin' Among Advances at IEDM" "Tech Execs Give Hint of Future" "Voters Skeptical of E-Voting Systems" "Quantum MP3 May Soon Be Reality" "Cloaking Device Made for Spammers" "'Worst is Over' for High-Tech Layoffs" "Superpowered PDAs Challenge the Laptop Platform" "Robotic Road Trip on a Military Mission" "Blind 'See With Sound'" "'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy" "Researchers Stretch DNA on Chip, Lay Track for Future Computers" "Analysis: Do We Need IPv6?" "This Headline Is (Half) False" "Anti-Spam Bills Losing Time" "Enjoy It While You Can" "Moving Toward Meltdown" "Wrap It Up" ******************* News Stories *********************** "Multinational Consensus Pegs Top 20 Net Vulnerabilities" A list of the 20 most commonly exploited Windows, Unix, and Linux security vulnerabilities was issued Oct. 8 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its British and Canadian equivalents, and the SANS Institute. SANS research director Alan Paller said ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item1 "Snoop Software Gains Power and Raises Privacy Concerns" At least a dozen small software companies offer snooping software, or snoopware, that can monitor the computer use of a target, sometimes remotely. Commercial spying software and that published on the Internet by hackers is growing in sophistication ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item2 "E-Textiles, Robot 'Skin' Among Advances at IEDM" Crystalline organic semiconductors and their potential technological applications will be the focus of the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in December, where papers presented there will address such topics as radio-frequency ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item3 "Tech Execs Give Hint of Future" Unresolved problems with spam, cybersecurity, and digital piracy were major topics of discussion at the Business Software Alliance's Global Tech Summit on Oct. 9, as were the near-future applications of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item4 "Voters Skeptical of E-Voting Systems" California voters in Alameda County took to the polls this week, and residents used touch-screen terminals to cast their votes in the recall election, but many said they lacked confidence in the systems and wondered whether their voted really would be counted. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item5 "Quantum MP3 May Soon Be Reality" A new paper by three French researchers focuses on the audio transmission of a quantum computer, and concludes that quantum computers can reliably identify and retrieve sound signals stored in quantum memory. The authors caution, however, that quantum ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item6 "Cloaking Device Made for Spammers" The growth of spam has nurtured an industry for hackers offering tools and services to thwart anti-spam measures and allow spammers to create Web sites that cannot be traced. A Polish group is promoting "invisible bulletproof hosting," a service ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item7 "'Worst is Over' for High-Tech Layoffs" The employment situation in the information technology industry is slowly getting better, according to industry observer Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm reports that from January through September layoffs in the IT industry were ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item8 "Superpowered PDAs Challenge the Laptop Platform" Technology experts say personal digital assistants (PDAs) will continue to cut into the laptop market, but will never be able to completely replace laptops because of those machines greater usability. TechKNOW-HOW President Anthony Perez says PDAs still ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item9 "Robotic Road Trip on a Military Mission" The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will award $1 million to the team that designs and builds a robotic vehicle that can successfully complete the Grand Challenge by driving itself across roughly 200 miles of desert terrain between Los ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item10 "Blind 'See With Sound'" A scientist in the Netherlands has developed a revolutionary system that allows the blind to get a glimpse of what is around via audio, helping users to trace out buildings, read graphs, and watch television. The vOICe (Oh I See) system consists of a ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item11 "'Subversive' Code Could Kill Off Software Piracy" The illegal copying of video games could be curbed through the use of Fade, a safeguard system that causes unauthorized copies of games to degrade over time. Fade takes advantage of error correction systems that allow computers to play scratched CDs or ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item12 "Researchers Stretch DNA on Chip, Lay Track for Future Computers" Purdue University researchers have developed a method to deposit and uncoil DNA strands on a silicon chip in order to more clearly read their encoded information, a breakthrough that may help pave the way for new computers with greater speed, energy efficiency, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item13 "Analysis: Do We Need IPv6?" The effort to promote adoption of IPv6 is based largely on the assumption that IPv4 will not have enough address space once devices that are IP-enabled and continuously operating become the norm, but some members of the Internet community such as ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item14 "This Headline Is (Half) False" Kostis Vezerides of the American College of Thessaloniki and Athanasios Kehagias of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki have authored a paper demonstrating that "fuzzy logic" can be used to solve nearly all cases involving paradoxes, such as the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item15 "Anti-Spam Bills Losing Time" Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) reported last week that anti-spam legislation has hit a roadblock in the Commerce Committee mere weeks before Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year. The congresswoman told attendees at the Computer & Communications ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item16 "Enjoy It While You Can" Digital security experts such as @Stake's Ollie Whitehouse warn that it is only a matter of time--16 to 18 months, by his estimation--before smart mobile phones are assaulted by worms and viruses. The same capabilities and technology that make smart ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item17 "Moving Toward Meltdown" Smaller, more compact blade servers may devour less space than traditional rack-mounted servers, but they generate more heat, which could lead to severe data center slowdowns, malfunctions, and failures if not managed properly. Complicating the problem ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item18 "Wrap It Up" Industry is frustrated that speech technology, whose benefits have been clearly and inarguably demonstrated, is taking so long to penetrate the enterprise because it is so difficult to deploy and fine-tune, but packaged applications that have the potential ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1010f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1008w.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