The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the Homeland Security Department, and the private sector have been collaborating since Aug. 14 to determine the cause of the recent power outage but have yet to uncover any evidence clearly indicating that cyberterrorists were involved. The FBI's Larry Mefford declared at a hearing of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security on Sept. 4 that no indications of external sabotage have been discovered, though the possibility that the outage may have been the result of internal tampering is also a point of concern. Meanwhile, Capitol Hill has queried both the government and the private sector on whether the blackout could have been hastened by a cybersecurity failure in one or more systems, especially considering that the outage took place when the Blaster worm epidemic was at its peak. Government and industry experts noticed that Blaster contributed to the blackout's effects because the worm was interfering with the communications networks responsible for power grid management, though the exact level of data flow disruption remains undetermined. International Transmission Chairman Joseph L. Welch testified before Congress that a failure in the power grid's underlying communications systems was responsible for the blackout. Without up-to-date reports on the information flowing across the network, "There is no way for control-area operators or security coordinators to take actions necessary to mitigate problems, especially those events in other systems which could affect our system," he said. North American Electric Reliability Council President Michael Gent told Congress that preliminary studies of systems logs extracted from utilities affected by the outage showed that the IT infrastructure was not recording events accurately in certain areas throughout the regional power grid.
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Individual peer-to-peer file-swappers are under the gun in court, as the recording industry prepares to file suit against hundreds of people who have both downloaded and made available copyrighted files. The new cases will push the boundaries of copyright law in terms of individual fair use. The music industry expects to stop illegal file-sharing by targeting some of the estimated 60 million U.S. residents who have used file-sharing services, since lawsuits against decentralized file-sharing networks Grokster and Morpheus failed earlier this year. American University copyright specialist Peter Jaszi says the new cases will make clear some issues with peer-to-peer file-sharing that have not yet been directly addressed by the courts. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sent out more than 1,000 subpoenas to ISPs, demanding the identities of users; the persons were tracked down on file-sharing networks by RIAA investigators who noted their user names and computer IP addresses. In case the computer owner is not the file-sharer, evidence implicating another household member who has been illegally trading files will be used to introduce that second person as a co-defendant, the RIAA said. Among the likely issues in the cases will be intent and fair use. The RIAA has sent out millions of instant messages to people illegally swapping files, claiming that even users who do not know about closing off uploads will be culpable under the law. MP3.com used the fair-use argument in its legal defense against Universal Music Group, since it sold only MP3 files to those who had already purchased the CD; the judge in that case found MP3.com did not qualify for fair-use defense under the four criteria stipulated by the Copyright Act. Santa Clara University copyright professor Tyler Ochoa says individual users could prove more difficult to Prosecute because they do not have overt commercial interest.
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The U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee and Judiciary Committee will conduct a joint hearing on a proposal to grant publishers of factual information protection from that data's unauthorized duplication, according to a Commerce Committee representative. Supporters claim the bill would shield database providers from people who freely distribute such databases online or sell cut-and-pasted versions, but critics charge that the measure would drastically restrict the amount of information available to the public; consumer advocates and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have announced plans to protest the bill in writing. Joe Rubin of the Chamber of Commerce argues that terms-of-service agreements with customers is all the copyright protection database providers need, but Keith Kupeferschmid of the Software and Information Industry Association says such contracts are inadequate. He adds that the proposed bill, if passed into law, could act as a cushion that encourages database providers to make more data freely available online. Those who break the law will be shut down and fined three times the damages incurred.
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The Winnow computer program developed by researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology can determine whether anonymous messages are written by men or women with over 80 percent accuracy, and such technology could be used to increase the effectiveness of textbooks, improve crime-solving techniques, or enhance commercial and workplace communications, among other things. Project leader Dr. Shlomo Argamon says the effort differs from other research initiatives into gender-specific communications in that it focuses on textual rather than oral exchanges. Winnow studied more than 600 documents in the British National Corpus, scanning for specific linguistic patterns, or "determiners," culled from analysis of documents known to be written by male or female authors. Determiners that Winnow relies on to categorize author gender include women's preference for pronouns, such as "I," "you," "she," "her," "their," "myself," "herself," and "yourself" and men's tendency to use pronouns like "it," "this," "that," "these," "those," and "they." The program was able to correctly identify author gender in 73 percent of the scientific documents it analyzed, indicating that sex-related differences are apparent even in highly technical texts. Argamon thinks that revelations about distinctive writing styles between men and women uncovered by Winnow could have a profound effect on education, paving the way for gender-specific textbooks, for example. His team is attempting to refine the method to establish the age, educational level, and ethnicity of anonymous authors, as well as their gender, a breakthrough that could help police identify writers of ransom notes. Meanwhile, Georgetown University linguistics professor Dr. Deborah Tannen believes Argamon's research could help bridge a sexual communications gap in the workplace.
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Although the economies of Eastern European countries have been characterized by turbulence since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Ned Cabot of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency says Eastern Europe may be experiencing faster growth than any other region because of its efforts to transition from state-owned monopolies to liberalization in order to be accepted into the European Union. The same desire for membership in the EU is spurring IT developments in Eastern Europe: Romania, for example, is considering a sophisticated smart card to satisfy the EU's national ID card prerequisite. There has been a heavy concentration on IT security in Eastern Europe, which is mainly attributed to the region's notoriety as a hotbed of political corruption. Notable developments in this area include Microsoft's acquisition of the GeCAD security firm in Romania and the award-winning BitDefender antivirus software from Romania's Softwin SRL, which recently drew media attention because it helped uncover details about the SoBig.F virus. The Central and Eastern Europe Business Information Center also lists Hungary as an important area of software innovation thanks to such products as ScanSoft's Recognita and Graphisoft's ArchiCAD line. Unsurprisingly, the wealthiest countries in Eastern Europe--Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic--are the region's IT leaders. Many Eastern European concerns hope to use the IT outsourcing trend in Western Europe to their advantage and follow a similar strategy. An anonymous representative of the U.S. Commerce Department reports that American firms consider Eastern European code-writing and technology to be of "much higher quality" than anywhere else.
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Ember CTO Robert Poor believes that slow and steady wireless networks, rather than the fast and smart networks supported by Such highly touted standards as Bluetooth and 802.11, may come out on top in certain situations. Such networks would consist of tiny computers or motes inexpensive enough to be widely deployed but can organize themselves to detect and relay data transmitted by radio. In these "mesh" networks, each mote or node acts as a relay station, while their low cost enables the nodes to be placed within approximately 100 feet of each other. High-speed intelligent networks require nodes to be in close proximity of a wired, costly hub. Zigbee is an emerging 20Kbps wireless standard backed by a consortium including Ember, Motorola, Samsung, Philips, and Honeywell; if approved, the standard would allow nodes produced by different companies to interoperate. Potential applications for low-cost, low-power wireless networks include thermostats on factory floors and residential buildings, improved irrigation systems, and minuscule sensors for battlefield operations. Slow, low-power data networks could comprise an $8 billion market in four years, according to the Wireless Data Research Group. However, although the technology offers many practical applications in the home-automation sector, Analysts, including Forrester's Charles Golvin, say the market for such products "is not even on the horizon," while other Technologies, such as Bluetooth Light, could also be used for low- power, low-speed data networks.
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A Taiwanese research group has developed advanced information storage technologies that work with MPEG-4 and MPEG-7. The Communication and Multimedia Laboratory at National Taiwan University (NTU), which includes more than 80 researchers, demonstrated the results of its research yesterday, noting it has been awarded several patents from both the U.S. and Taiwan. Group leader Wu Ja-ling says, "Our new technologies aim to create a coordinated framework integrating both the service provider and receiver." The group has developed software for making virtual sculptures, a scalable-coders application, and a program that cuts TV news pieces into smaller segments. The researchers say their work takes advantage of the fact that MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 offer superior performance over earlier versions of the international standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and allow users with only a digital picture of their query to retrieve in seconds all digital pictures of the target from a database of thousands of pictures. MPEG-4 also enables the integration of the production, distribution, and content-access paradigms of digital television, interactive graphics applications, and interactive multimedia.
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Multi-hop mesh networks, such as MIT's Roofnet, which consists of wireless nodes that can be either stationary or mobile, are much less expensive to set up than DSL or cable and can be used to surpass the "last mile" barrier and make broadband Internet access available to many more people. The initial deployment of Roofnet showed that the shortest-path routing strategy featured in many proposed mesh network routing schemes may not necessarily work; the MIT group behind Roofnet says that signal degradation increases the further the signal must travel between nodes, while such Factors as vehicular traffic, atmospheric conditions, and birds sitting on the antenna can change the link quality. Roofnet project coordinator Robert Morris determined that it made more sense to test and refine wireless routing protocols using a real network, real users, and real traffic. The protocols his team is evaluating try to find the optimal rather than the shortest path between nodes. Approximately once every second, each Roofnet node transmits a "hello" broadcast packet, which is recorded by all the other nodes that receive it; every 15 seconds, all nodes broadcast a list of the nodes they can reach, as well as the quality of the connection for each associated route. The MIT researchers learned through the construction of Roofnet that link transmission quality is asymmetrical, while the range of the 802.11b cards and antennas they employed is variable. Other mesh network researchers, including Microsoft Researcher's Victor Bahl say the Roofnet project is an important step in the debugging of wireless routing protocols. Morris says his group intends to eventually make the Roofnet routing software available as a freely downloadable open source program, though additional robustness must be embedded and issues over privacy and accessibility reconciled. Others working on similar systems include research groups at Rice, UCLA, Carnegie-Mellon, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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The first Accelerating Change Conference (ACC2003) is to be held Sept. 12-14 at Stanford University, gathering 24 futurists and prominent thinkers. Foresight Institute Chair K. Eric Drexler will speak about the long-term goals of nanotechnology and the research needed to achieve these goals quickly and safely. Foresight Institute President Christine Peterson will present her group's strategy for international nanotechnology development and policy. Other presenters include Nuance engineering senior vice president Matthew Lennig, who will talk about the present and future linguistic user interface, and Biomind CEO Ben Goertzel, whose presentation focuses on artificial general intelligence (AGI). Goertzel's vision details how AGI speeds other technological fields of development and will eventually lead to a technological singularity, or a point where machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Institute for Accelerating Change (IAC) President John Smart says ACC2003 is the first such gathering to confront the reality of accelerating change head-on, adding that the conference will not center on technology alone but its societal and economic effect as well. ACC2003 will also feature a new dinner format where participants seated at each table discuss questions relating to accelerating change and select a speaker to summarize their conclusions with the larger group. IAC vice president Tyler Emerson says the format blends small-group brainstorming with traditional presentation.
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Researchers in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering have created two robots that mimic the locomotion of snails, and the findings derived from their performance could clear the way for new forms of movement in future systems. RoboSnails I and II employ electronics contained in a rubberized "foot," propelling themselves on a thin layer of silicon oil that serves the same function as mucus in real snails. MIT graduate student and RoboSnail project participant Brian Chan observes that snails move around using three distinctive techniques: Some undulate their bodies from front to back, some undulate from back to front, and some "gallop." RoboSnails I and II employ front-to- back and back-to-front locomotion, respectively. RoboSnail principal investigator Anette Hosoi says preliminary results show that the fluid the robotic snails move over does not have to be non-Newtonian, as was previously believed. Hosoi notes that a snail couples mechanical simplicity with the ability to cover a wide spectrum of terrain. The snail's lack of exposed joints also allows a mechanical counterpart to be encased in rubber so it can travel in chemically hostile environments. The RoboSnail research is underwritten by MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the National Science Foundation.
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Workers spend an average of three hours a week dealing with computer-related problems, and over 70 percent of that time is wasted because they lack fundamental computing knowledge, estimates a recent Cap Gemini Ernst & Young report. In an effort to close this skills gap, such organizations as the European Computer Driving License Foundation (ECDLF) are offering basic computing skills training and accreditation. The ECDLF and its affiliates train people online via the International Computer Driving License project, which currently has more than 3 million participants in 100 countries; project representative Maureen O'Connell says the program is gaining momentum in the U.S. Sarah E. Talbot of IBM says the rollout of new technologies puts pressure on already skilled workers to become accredited even faster, adding that her company introduced a pair of new certification programs for database administrators (DBAs) designed to accelerate accreditation while halving the cost of earlier programs. Because many DBAs do not need To design proprietary systems or process code to do their jobs, prospective DBAs find it more practical to obtain certification instead of pursuing advanced computer science degrees. Nevertheless, there are those who say the Worldwide computer certification movement is detrimental. Superconnect VP Daniel Baker says, "People with all sorts of weird qualifications--according to Microsoft or Cisco or whomever--are generally less qualified than people with valid experience and personal drive to learn it on their own." Certification may Be especially attractive to employers in the current economy, who need assurance that new IT employees are able to pull their weight.
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Bob Frankston believes the Internet is at risk of returning to its primitive roots by re-establishing complex networks that tangle up infrastructure. Efforts to stop such developments only encourage people to interfere in the Internet even further, he believes. Rather, the Internet must be based on open connectivity for it to thrive, he asserts. One example of a successful open system is the browser, according to Frankston, which gives users on the peripheries the option to trust other systems or not. Prior to this, the set-up would usually regard the network as a continuation of the local system but with the ability to quickly link to "remote procedure calls," such as file system operations. Frankston warns that many entities today are again launching custom-built Internet applications rather than developing technologies that facilitate interoperation. For example, AOL's unsophisticated attempt to contain spam is leading to additional dilemmas, Frankston believes, as are other attempts to solve spam and billing problems at the network level. He believes users on the peripheries should rely on encryption to bypass interference and try to regain the freedoms they enjoyed before the existence of NATs and firewalls.
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Internet companies, including AOL Time Warner and Microsoft, are banking on mistyped addresses to improve their business revenue by directing users to their search engines, which then display advertisements for products and services. Meanwhile, VeriSign officials say they are developing a program to direct "trash traffic" to Internet sites of the company's choosing, but technology experts are concerned that the redirecting efforts of Internet companies could result in clogged pathways and other problems. If VeriSign is able to improve its program and get it up and running before those of other Internet companies, Microsoft and AOL could lose market share and revenue to VeriSign. Users who once received error messages about sites being unavailable or incorrect would be directed to search engines or other sites, but it is unclear how much money can actually be made by redirecting "trash traffic." Ireland-based Afilias, which operates the registry for .info, says between 10 percent and 12 percent of each day's look-ups that it handles in its master directory are for Internet addresses that do not exist online. NeuStar recently held a trial with the help of Paxfire, in which all trash traffic with the suffixes .biz and .us was sent to the LookSmart search engine--and Paxfire reports that other companies are interested in these types of services. One concern about the move to profit from trash traffic is the fact that registry operators are basically changing DNS servers to redirect traffic--an activity for which DNS servers are not structured, says Vinton Cerf, an engineer who helped create the Internet. He says the practice is dangerous and is "adamantly opposed to it."

Business analytics (BA) software focuses on future trends, not on summarizing and reporting historical data, as does business intelligence (BI) software. Both systems are linked to databases and allow analysis, and so have been confused in the marketplace; companies employing BA, however, should have been able to foresee the economic downturn three years ago. Data Warehouse Institute founder Herb Edelstein warns business managers from becoming too distracted by BI software that they ignore the special, predictive attributes of BA. SAS Institute analytical intelligence director Anne Milley explains that BI is more about canned information, while BA is about exploration and finding answers to new questions; BA tools allow analytical professionals to quickly investigate and follow up on highlighted trends, automatically generating new views based on user queries. The ability to generate many reports and bring the most relevant ones to the fore is what makes BA unique, says Kxen's Joerg Rathenberg. BA applications work best when operating in data-rich environments, such as CRM and ERP systems, and can help telecom marketing groups identify at-risk customers or pharmaceutical firms narrow drug discovery testing, for example. Because BA today is mainly for professionals with statistics experience, IT personnel do not need to be involved as heavily as with BI, where IT staff work with business executives to define report models; International Data's Henry Morris, who first coined the term "business analytics," says the next wave of such systems will be "policy hubs" uniting relevant BI and BA systems for more intelligent analysis.
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New location-aware technologies, such as smart cell phones, GPS chips, and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, promise many benefits, including more efficient inventory management, real-time driving directions, and more responsive emergency services; but there are concerns that such devices will also be used to infringe on people's privacy. A recent ACLU study warned that without strict regulation, these technologies "will allow corporations or the government to constantly monitor what individual Americans do every day." The safety advantages for wireless location technologies are undeniable, and the FCC has required all wireless carriers to set up systems that allow emergency dispatchers to pinpoint 911 calls to within a 50- to 150-meter radius by 2005. Wireless carriers also see commercial promise in location services, including Wherify, which allows parents to be kept apprised of their children's whereabouts through GPS bracelets. Carriers insist they will not trample on people's privacy. For one thing, the technical challenge of capturing the constantly fluctuating coordinates of 145 million U.S. wireless subscribers is overwhelming. Travis Larson of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) adds that customers who feel their privacy is threatened will stop using their cell phones. The network-based approach for tracking 911 calls, which utilizes signal towers, is much more difficult to regulate, according to privacy proponents; CTIA general counsel Michael Altschul notes that law enforcement officials face fewer legal restraints to access location data than they do for tapping phone conversations. RFID tags could support a lucrative industry, but their proliferation depends on a dramatic decline in cost and an overhaul of business infrastructure to accommodate them. Likewise, the technology is raising privacy concerns. However, location technology will not Mature until mapping and other myriad issues are resolved.
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The virus epidemics of the past summer should serve as a jolt for businesses, consumers, and the software industry to stop being complacent and take cybersecurity seriously. Combined with spam, viruses make routine computing a source of frustration for consumers, and experts fear even worse developments on the Horizon. Viruses and virus authors of increasing sophistication and malevolence raise the specter of a cyberspace-based disruption of the power grid, and the wipeout of vast data reserves. Experts and corporate technology buyers attribute buggy software to companies that emphasize quick product rollouts and special features rather than security. Institute for the Future director Paul Saffo contends that Microsoft--which accounts for 95 percent of the desktop market--needs to make a greater effort to beef up the security of its Windows operating system. Johns Hopkins University's Aviel Rubin argues that virus writers chiefly take advantage of Windows features designed to promote ease of use and application integration, and Counterpane Internet Security CTO Bruce Schneier says the only way to goad Microsoft into producing more secure software is to make software companies liable for the damage inflicted on customers by viruses. Another suggestion is to switch to an operating system that is less widespread--and therefore less of a potential target--than Windows. Law enforcement agencies cannot be trusted to bring viruses under control, because crafty virus writers are adept at hiding their identities. Security experts insist that major corporations must devise better procedures for regularly deploying the latest patches and anti-virus measures, while small businesses and home users need to be equally alert.
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According to the InformationWeek 2003 Global Information Security Survey, IT security threats and the measures used to combat them are pretty consistent worldwide, due to the spread of the Internet and global supply chains. Forty-five percent of companies worldwide suffered attacks from viruses, worms, and Trojan horse programs in the last 12 months, down from 66 percent two years ago: South American companies were the most frequent targets of these attacks, followed by Asia-Pacific, European, and North American businesses; Asia-Pacific and North American companies were subjected to a greater number of denial-of-service attacks than South American and European companies. Fifty-eight percent of the nearly 1,300 Web sites reporting break-ins in 2003 attributed them to hackers or terrorists, while the remaining 32 percent said they were victims of unauthorized users or employees. More South American and Asia-Pacific companies plan to raise security spending this year than businesses in other regions, and companies in all regions intend to beef up operating-system and application security. Meanwhile, 35 percent of survey respondents have made the integration of physical and IT security a strategic priority. Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in making companies and individuals adopt more aggressive IT security strategies by spreading awareness of the threat. Obstacles to regular patching include keeping up with the sheer number of threats that emerge and the patches that are released. Ken Tyminski of Prudential Financial Services recounts that security managers balked at the prospect of patching, which many view as an inconvenience that takes valuable time from more important projects.
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Virtual realities supported by rapidly advancing technologies are starting to impinge on people's real-world perceptions. The way human-technology interaction is reshaping human identity and society is of central interest to Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor in MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society. Turkle argues that people are not ready for the psychological changes being wrought by technology because the evocative power of such technology is undeniable, yet this power goes unacknowledged by many who regard technology as merely a tool. For example, machines physically modeled after humans come with a built-in psychological attachment that allows children to embed emotions and sentience within them; Turkle says even older people feel a certain sense of moral responsibility toward intelligent machines, especially when they have a hand in their creation. The MIT professor sees a growing appeal for interacting with machines that are nonjudgmental, even though computer programs are no nearer to true empathy and comprehension of human problems than they were four decades ago. Turkle regards the Internet and computers as very useful tools for self-reflection and advises against attaching an "addictive" stigma to them. She concludes that, "When contemplating a person's computer habits, it is more constructive to think of the Internet as a Rorschach than as a narcotic." Technology, Turkle finds, is changing how people perceive themselves. Robots that simulate emotions reduce the feelings people have toward emotions as the chief machine-human differentiator and force them to define themselves in biological terms; this comes with its own set of problems, what with technology being implanted in humans and fabricated from organic materials. Turkle is adamant that robots should not be programmed to say things that are impossible for them to truly mean, such as expressing love for a user, even in response to user declarations of same. The MIT professor contends that "We need to establish the boundaries at which our machines begin to have those competencies that allow them to tug at our emotions."

Nominations are open for the 12 major ACM awards, the eagerly awaited annual event that recognizes outstanding technical and professional achievements in computer science and information technology. This competitive process, administered by individual award committees, evaluates the top contenders. Winners are selected on the basis of specific criteria established for each award. The award winners are celebrated at a gala banquet.

These prestigious awards, most with cash prizes, offer a unique opportunity to bring broad recognition to peers, colleagues, mentors, professors and prot�g�s for their contributions in computer science and information technology.* They also represent important milestones for career development and promotional opportunities in the highly competitive information technology field. Submitting nominations for the major ACM awards, many named for the leading luminaries in the computing field, assures that the best and the brightest will be acknowledged for their singular contributions.
For more information on how to submit nominees, visit http://www.acm.org/awards/award_nominations.html.