Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the October 15, 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 558 Date: October 15, 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 15, 2003: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "H-1B Visa Cuts Might Not Have Big Effect in U.S." "Casting a Wider, Deeper Net" "Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap" "The Future of Talking Computers" "The Web: Indispensable But Not Impervious" "Lawmakers Hammer on Spam" "Electronic Gadgets, Endlessly Seductive But Soon Discarded" "Breathing Life Into Messy Sketches" "All the President's Votes?" "Unfolding the Field of Computational Origami" "Computer Center Sets Trans-Atlantic Speed Record for Data Transfer" "Fighting to Preserve Old Programs" "To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?" "Technology to Make You Go 'Wow'" "Securing the Portals of Cyber Space" "Grids Extend Reach" "Ready When You Are" "Joy After Sun" "Promise and Peril of the 21st Century" ******************* News Stories *********************** "H-1B Visa Cuts Might Not Have Big Effect in U.S." Forrester Research's John McCarthy does not think the October reduction of the yearly H-1B visa cap from 195,000 to 65,000 will have a significant impact on offshore service companies in the short term, given the number of H-1Bs that have already been ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item1 "Casting a Wider, Deeper Net" At a recent MIT conference on emerging technologies, Intel research director David Tennenhouse described how two new networking technologies may revolutionize how people use the Internet. Intel is backing PlanetLab, an Internet overlay ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item2 "Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap" A $5.2 million Virginia Tech supercomputer comprised of 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s could earn the ranking of the second most powerful supercomputer in the world, if its final score on the Linpack Benchmark fulfills expectations. Preliminary numbers ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item3 "The Future of Talking Computers" Current speech technology systems are highly expensive and marked by limited usability because of a restricted vocabulary, but researchers are optimistic that the technology will make significant strides relatively soon. One such researcher is ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item4 "The Web: Indispensable But Not Impervious" Experts say the reliability and security of the Internet are interdependent. Gomez CTO Paul Leroux roughly equates the current state of Internet technology to the "third or fourth generation of telephones" today, and adds that reliability ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item5 "Lawmakers Hammer on Spam" The spam problem has inspired a raft of antispam proposals, but most of the half-dozen spam control bills currently making the rounds in Congress legitimize junk email, according to Spamcon Foundation executive director Andrew Barrett. "Frankly, they ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item6 "Electronic Gadgets, Endlessly Seductive But Soon Discarded" "Barely used" or "new in box" electronic products are becoming more commonplace in retail outlets as consumers learn that such gadgets do not make life easier or more fun, as many purport to do. "Part of the problem of the electronics industry is that ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item7 "Breathing Life Into Messy Sketches" MIT researchers expect to have a computer program capable of rendering rough sketches into smooth, contextually correct diagrams within three years, a breakthrough that promises to revolutionize design and the use of tablet PCs. "We have shown ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item8 "All the President's Votes?" The deployment of electronic voting systems in U.S. states is proceeding despite warnings and documented evidence that the systems are unreliable, buggy, and vulnerable to tampering. Worse still, these machines provide no printed audit trail and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item9 "Unfolding the Field of Computational Origami" Computational origami is being used as a tool to design better products and better works of art--and, it is ultimately hoped, better computers. The director of a German engineering firm recently used TreeMaker, a computational origami program created ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item10 "Computer Center Sets Trans-Atlantic Speed Record for Data Transfer" The University of Illinois at Chicago's National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) and Laboratory for Advanced Computing successfully transferred approximately 1.4 TB of astronomy data from Chicago to Amsterdam at 6.8 Gbps during an Oct. 10 demonstration. The ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item11 "Fighting to Preserve Old Programs" Brewster Kahle, founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive, is concerned that historians and students will lose vital cultural material if old software is not preserved, especially since the media it is stored on degrades rapidly without proper ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item12 "To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?" Kazaa inventors Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have again joined with the small team of Estonian programmers with whom they first created the infamous music-sharing software to take on the telecommunications industry; by routing phone calls over the same ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item13 "Technology to Make You Go 'Wow'" Design expert Don Norman of the Nielsen Norman Group believes that the "wow factor" is just as critical a component of technology design as functionality, a view advocated in his forthcoming book, "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item14 "Securing the Portals of Cyber Space" Information warfare expert Dorothy Denning addressed the vulnerability of technology during a speech at the Naval Academy Sept. 30. Denning, a professor in the department of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item15 "Grids Extend Reach" Grid computing applications are taking hold in more organizations as a relatively inexpensive alternative to supercomputers: Switzerland-based drug company Novartis, for example, has 2,700 PCs running grid computing software, and uses the otherwise ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item16 "Ready When You Are" Gigabit Ethernet is gaining in popularity despite doubts as to its usefulness now: Early adopters are deploying Gigabit Ethernet connections and backbones in preparation for the future, or selectively where there is need. Importantly, more than half ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item17 "Joy After Sun" Computer guru and Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy explains that he resigned as Sun's chief scientist out of a need to pursue new concepts, and says a lack of enthusiasm to go in new directions is the reason why Microsoft and other software ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item18 "Promise and Peril of the 21st Century" Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Rise of Intelligent Machines," writes that technological advancement has always yielded benefits and perils, and calls for the formulation of strategies to maximize the advantages of emerging technologies such as genetic ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1015w.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Monday's issue (no email issue was sent out on Monday [Columbus Day holiday observed]), please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/1013m.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