The maximum yearly number of H-1B visas issued to foreign workers so they can enter the United States to fill mostly high-tech jobs drops from 195,000 to 65,000 on Oct. 1. An Intel representative warns that the reversion will be inadequate to deal with a dramatic upsurge in demand for tech products and tech workers; however, the visa cut has generated little concern in Silicon Valley, where the number of issued H-1Bs has declined along with company revenues. The H-1B visa program has long been a source of contention for U.S. professionals and labor unions, who complain that employers use the visas to replace American workers with foreigners willing to work for less. There are also reports that these replacements are themselves being taken advantage of by being paid less than prevailing U.S. wages. The House and the Senate are considering legislation that seeks to further limit the H-1B program and impose restrictions on L-1s, visas that allow companies to send workers with "specialized" corporate knowledge to U.S.-based branches. One bill currently in the House would reduce the number of annually issued L-1s to 35,000 and eliminate blanket approval. Immigration lawyer Mitchell Wexler argues that the proposed limitations are unwise: "[Overseas] companies help the U.S. economy and create jobs," he claims. "If we make it too tough for foreign firms to set up shop in the U.S., they will go to Canada or Mexico and use them as launching pads for their North American operations."

The ACLU is taking the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to court over the constitutionality of subpoenas obtained through Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provisions. The ACLU, together with a Boston law firm, is representing a Boston college student whose identity was uncovered by a subpoena served to the student's ISP. Unlike other subpoenas, those obtained under DMCA law do not have to be approved by a judge, require notification, or follow charges of infringement. Although not defending the file-sharing of pirated music, the ACLU claims the DMCA subpoena powers are reckless and will inevitably lead to abuses, such as repressive governments finding the identity of dissidents, or stalkers finding the address of their targets. Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye attorney David Plotkin says his client should be provided with due process, specifically the ability to challenge a subpoena request. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, a Senate subcommittee will hear testimony from pro-DMCA hip-hop artist LL Cool J and from file-sharing supporting rapper Chuck D, who has previously argued for new business models utilizing file-sharing technology. The RIAA has also announced 63 new settlements with accused music pirates, and has dropped charges against a 66-year-old grandmother whose only computer is a Macintosh incapable of using peer-to-peer software in question. Meanwhile, P2P United, a group of peer-to-peer software firms including Morpheus and Grokster, on Monday issued a code of conduct that stipulates educating users on the dangers of illegal file-sharing. P2P United executive director Adam Eisgrau says, "It's long past time for the...recording industry to stop blaming--and suing--its customers to cover up the industry's own glaring failure to adapt yet again to a new technology."
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For information about ACM's DMCA activities, visit http://www.acm.org/usacm/Issues/DMCA.htm.

The UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will reflect growing unease among some governments over open-source software, and the business lobby response to earlier proposals. The WSIS is jointly run by the International Telecommunications Union and will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, in December. The WSIS Plan of Action drafted in August touted open-source software as particularly beneficial to governments while not mentioning proprietary software, while the new draft, finalized at the end of a series of meetings last week, gives equal weight to both software and offers more general descriptions of how governments should seek the best solutions according to their situation. The changes were made at the behest of U.S. and European Union delegates, along with business interests. Just last month, three Asian nations agreed to develop a completely new operating system that would be an alternative to Microsoft's Windows, despite that company's efforts to placate governments by exposing source code and other measures. China is also touting a locally developed Linux version as its preferred operating system. Besides open-source issues, the WSIS is also dealing with hot topic items such as closing the "digital divide," wireless spectrum access, Internet taxation, government-subsidized Internet access, IT security cooperation, and archival of government information. Another significant change made last week to the August Plan of Action was on spam-fighting measures--instead of the 100 or so words spelling out international cooperation fighting spam, the changes made in the preparatory meeting leave the spam provision with: "Take appropriate action on spam at national and international levels." Previously, the WSIS draft included details on user education, ISP coordination, and legal prosecution of spammers.
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The most recent source code for Apple Computer's Darwin open-source project, Darwin 6.7 and 6.8, was made available for download by Apple this week, while version 10.2.8 of the Mac OS X operating system was temporarily pulled due to user complaints that it disrupts Ethernet connectivity. Darwin serves as the heart of Mac OS X, and is rooted in FreeBSD 4.4; it can furnish services such as Apache Web server and sendmail capabilities thanks to the merger of BSD and Mach 3.0 technology. Eventually, Apple believes Darwin will emerge as the cornerstone of a standalone open-source operating system. Industry analyst Rob Enderle reports that Linux open-source software may be a greater headache for Apple and Sun Microsystems than for Microsoft, while Apple especially is smarting from lost rather than missed opportunities because of Linux's proliferation. Enderle adds that Apple has no clear open-source strategy mapped out, so the possibilities of the company working with Intel or Linux remain vague. He further says that Apple's open-source initiatives do not seem to have yielded any significant value to the company. Apple declared that Darwin's chief goal is to establish a user and developer community through the release of Mac OS X-enabled source code, and the company anticipates that others will employ Darwin to modify the operating system with other features and services that Apple may be devoting fewer resources to.
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Forthcoming PC products on display at the recent Computex exhibition in Tapei included novel hardware configurations, new notebooks from Acer, Athlon 64 motherboards, and minuscule components for handhelds and small computers. Intel exhibited a whimsical side with Pentium 4-based PCs resembling cows, books on a desk, and potted plants, among other things. Other Pentium 4-based products unveiled at Computex included Mitac International's E8181D widescreen PC, whose screen can be tilted back for optimal viewing, and Hush Technologies' Hush ATX, which features a less noisy cooling system that employs heat pipes rather than fans. Acer's Campbell Kan reported that his company will ship two new Centrino-based notebooks, the Aspire 2000 and TravelMate C300, before 2004; the Aspire 2000 boasts a 15.4-inch thin-film transistor display and allows users to watch DVDs under Windows XP or in a Linux-based instant-on format, while the C300 easily switches between notebook and tablet mode thanks to a 14.1-inch screen that can be rotated and folded back against the keyboard. Future Aspire desktops will come with Microsoft's Smart Display technology, allowing two users to access a single machine from a remote screen. Micro-Star International, Abit Computer, and other top manufacturers took the wraps off new motherboards that support AMD's new Athlon 64 processor: Abit's offering, based on the Via K8T800 chipset, has a Guru microcontroller that monitors hardware, manages overclocking, updates BIOS, and eases troubleshooting with a Black Box feature that records system data during hardware failures and transmits it as email to Abit's technical support group. Also spotlighted at Computex was a fingernail-sized Nvidia graphics chip for handhelds and cell phones, and Via's 0.6-inch x 0.6-inch Nano-BGA C3 processor, which promises to become the world's smallest PC processor when it ships by year's end.
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Richard Wheeldon of London's Birkbeck University reports that software he co-designed enables users to search through different types of data sources--text documents, the Web, local databases, etc.--simultaneously. He says the software, DbSurfer, allows people to sift through the contents of relational databases through free-text searches using an altered version of the trails technique common in hypertext systems. Information in relational databases is organized with tables consisting of columns or rows that define cells containing individual records; Wheeldon says that DbSurfer regards each row as a virtual Web page and constructs connections based on database settings. When a user enters a free-text query, the software's navigation engine scores each database row and bases trails on the best scores, while trails most relevant to the query are selected with a probabilistic best-first algorithm. Wheeldon says the technique employs standard keyword searches and is open to easy customization via the representation of data in extensible markup language (XML). He says the software has been used to search Java documents, the Web, Usenet newsgroups, and program code. "Theoretically, it could also be used in virtual environments or as a search application at the operating system level," Wheeldon adds. He admits that DbSurfer lacks adequate security for it to be used to access sensitive information, and has limited scalability, although there is a simple theoretical fix for the second problem. Wheeldon says the next phase of the system's development involves connecting the DbSurfer indexer to a Web robot, optimizing it for common databases, and upgrading the software so that the index and trail structure is accessible from inside the database interface.
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The emerging field of nanotechnology has massive potential, but overcoming the myriad legal and ethical barriers associated with nanotech will be a formidable challenge. Recent nanotech breakthroughs include atomic-scale switches, molecular motors, and protein detectors, and such innovations could lead to molecular-scale chips that run very small supercomputers, or microbe-sized robots that perform the same function as red blood cells. But some say the development of laws governing nanotech have fallen behind technological development--in fact, Mark Grossman of Becker & Poliakoff reports that such laws are practically absent. He notes that government and the private sector hardly ever consider legal ramifications of emerging technologies that they invest enormous sums in. "A lot of the contracting that needs to be done is infantile at best, and illegal at worst," Grossman contends. Legal issues that have a bearing on nanotech include whether atomic or molecular structure is patentable, whether nano devices that can change human cells or genes should be regulated, whether there should be legal strictures on the use of nanotech for security purposes, how the illegal duplication of atomic- or molecular-scale devices can be prevented, how to control and tax trade in machines invisible to the human eye, and what the safety, health, and product liability issues associated with nanotech are. The White House's 2004 budget raises National Nanotechnology Initiative funding 10 percent to $849 million, and the House of Representatives recently authorized a three-year, $2.36 billion allotment for federal nanotech research. Kansas City, Mo., attorney T.S. Twibell believes existing laws can accommodate nanotech without major alterations, but concedes that new laws may be necessary to deal with major nanotech advances.

Lawyers, technologists, policy proponents, and domain specialists will collaborate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative whose goal is to build an infrastructure that allows sensitive personal data to be mined by organizations while upholding individuals' privacy rights, according to principal investigator Dan Boneh of Stanford University. Yale University's Joan Feigenbaum observes that government and business want to access more information, while individuals desire the benefits of data collection and analysis but not the drawbacks, such as privacy infringement. "Use of transaction data and surveillance data need to be consistent with basic U.S. constitutional structure and with basic social and business norms," she explains. The project collaborators will meet professionally and convene in workshops twice a year, and also consult with students and postdoctoral researchers and work together on publications. Areas of concentration for researchers include the development of tools that can manage sensitive data in peer-to-peer networks, database policy enforcement methodology, and next-generation technology designed to deter identity theft, which Boneh characterizes as "the fastest growing crime in the U.S. and in the world." The NSF will allocate $12.5 million over five years to project participants Stanford, Yale, New York University, the University of New Mexico, and the Stevens Institute of Technology as part of the foundation's Information Technology Research program. Also affiliated with the project are the Secret Service, the Census Bureau, IBM, Microsoft, the Department of Health and Human Services, Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
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Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have created "behaviometric" technology in the form of software that can accurately identify computer users according to their unique typing styles. Technion Professors Ran El-Yaniv and Ron Meir supervised students in the Data Mining Lab of the Institute's Computer Science Faculty who produced a prototype of the system. "This software...utilizes statistics gathered while a person types freely, and learns the specific behavior patterns that accurately identify the typist," explains El-Yaniv. A user's individual typing signature can be ascertained by measuring the time between consecutive keystrokes. The Technion software allows the legal user to type freely, while current systems can only accurately determine users if both legal and unauthorized users type the same long sentence. The Technion system can tell users and potential intruders apart with about 90 percent accuracy from fairly short sentences, even after being trained on a relatively small number of keystroke sequences. This accuracy rate increases as the system continuously monitors users and adds further sequences to its repertoire. The group that developed the software will test how reliable the system is in situations where "noise" that could subtly disrupt or mask typing signatures--an injured finger, for instance--is introduced. The group presented its findings at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases on Sept. 25.
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Internet expert John Patrick recently spoke at Lehigh University, where he described how the Next Generation Internet is expected to be as ubiquitous and dependable as electricity or plumbing. Professor Roger Nagel noted that Patrick said the "Internet is like the highway and the World Wide Web is the content, the vehicles on that highway," Patrick also said the Internet of the future would be fast, universally accessible, smart, natural, and consistent, according to Nagel. Furthermore, the new Internet would feature such capabilities as voice recognition, language translation, and natural language, with XML as the new standard for Web pages. As a result, pages would be easier to find, combine, and work with. Patrick also stressed the importance of the next-generation Internet for businesses-- it will be the "primary way in which an organization can relate to all its constituencies," and the Internet will act as a hub for business "strategies." After working at IBM for 35 years, where he was vice-president of Internet Technology from 1995 to 2001, Patrick now serves numerous boards, including the Global Internet Project and Jupitermedia. He is also president of Attitude LLC and wrote a book entitled "Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It and Why Your Company Can't Survive Without It."
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A Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) project for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has yielded a system that can detect attempts to doctor digital video, a breakthrough that could help allow reliable digital video to be introduced as evidence in court cases. "Being able to present a certifiable digital recording in court in support of our investigative efforts will minimize court challenges over the admissibility of such evidence," states Dennis Jones of the Postal Inspection Service's Forensic & Technical Services Division. Lead project engineer Nick Beser says his team will build a working prototype of the Digital Video Authenticator that can be plugged into a commercial camcorder. The digital video captured by the camcorder is concurrently written to digital tape and fed into the authenticator, where it is split into individual frames with three digital signatures--for video, audio, and camcorder/DVA control data--for each frame at the camcorder frame rate. Distinct signatures for every frame are generated through public-key cryptography, and APL project manager Tom Duerr explains that "The keys, signature, and original data are mathematically related in such a way that if any one of the three is modified, the fact that a change took place will be revealed in the verification process." The system can detect added frames by their lack of a signature, and altered original frames by discontinuities between the signature and the new data. The signatures are created with a private key that is deleted once the recording is finished, while a public key is used for confirmation and accountability is added via a second set of keys that identify the postal inspector who made the recording and are incorporated into a token that the inspector uses to start taping; after the recording, the signatures and signed public key are moved to a removable repository and secured along with the original tape. The authenticator can trigger an alert even if a single bit of a 120,000-byte video frame is altered.
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IBM's seven-day "Innovation Days" event in September was a time for 3,000 company researchers worldwide to pause and reflect on their jobs in order to figure out how to keep scientists both creative and capable of producing short-term results on targeted initiatives. One group of scientists convened at IBM's Yorktown Heights, N.Y., research facility to flesh out a course for lab managers designed to help inventors maintain their creativity. Individual laboratories devised specific programs in which researchers engaged in group activities such as music, racing, or tai chi to reinvigorate themselves; outside speakers such as technology investor Esther Dyson, fragrance chemist John Wright, a NASA astrophysicist, and even a master chef offered Innovation Days participants words of advice on keeping researchers fresh and creative. The innovation landscape for technology firms has changed: Whereas companies used to encourage a freewheeling attitude toward new inventions, intense competition in the tech sector has placed the current emphasis on more immediate breakthroughs that yield viable products. IBM claims its effort to overhaul its labs has been particularly aggressive--for example, regular meetings and consultations with clients and IBM business units have become routine for company researchers, especially now that IBM has entered the tech consulting and services arena. The trade-off is a feeling among scientists that their freedom to innovate is being restricted, which is why Innovation Days was organized. Nor is IBM the only major tech company with a similar agenda--Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have strived to shore up inventors' spirits with such programs as "TechFest" and "TechCon."
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Experts say IT certification is important to job marketability, but in a down economy some certifications benefit job seekers more than others; Foote Partners President David Foote says project management and security are now two of the most popular certification areas. Many firms want people with the know-how to make a project implementation work, because they realize many IT failures are not the fault of technology, but people. Boston University Corporate Education Center curriculum director Charlie Orosz says about 10,000 students received the Project Management Professional certification offered by the Project Management Institute last year; the Computing Technology Industry Association offers a similar program called IT Project+. Security professionals, despite being on the bottom rung of the IT ladder in past years, are now commanding more respect, given the demand in that field. Foote's research shows management-level security training reaps the highest salary benefits, and he suggests programs such as the Certified Information Systems Security Professional and the Certified Information Systems Auditor. In a slow economy, generalists with vendor-neutral certifications will be able to find and hold their jobs more easily than those with specialized skills. Foote says vendor-specific certifications teach the "hows" of a technology, while vendor-neutral training gives IT professionals understanding of the "whys." Boston University's Orosz notes that even those with jobs should go back to learn new things at least every four years. In addition, some IT skills such as XML, rapid application development, extreme programming, wireless networking, and Web-based analytics do not have certifications available, but are important to businesses.
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To learn more about ACM's Professional Development Centre, visit http://pd.acm.org/.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has tried to remove himself from SCO Group's fight to demand royalties from Linux users on the grounds that open-source Linux software uses copyrighted SCO code, but says that he may be forced to take legal action as tension mounts. He argues that SCO is claiming kinship to Linux, "even though SCO has refused to undergo the technical equivalent of DNA testing, and even though my [and other people's] DNA is probably all over Linux." Torvalds notes that file-sharing is not a major issue for him, and by itself is not inherently negative, but he is worried that the concept of sharing is getting bad publicity by the recording industry's efforts to stamp out online music piracy. He also takes the Recording Industry Association of America to task for alleging that file-sharing is a serious threat to business, when he thinks a more logical reason for declining sales is unpopular products. Torvalds asserts that Silicon Valley is not "a hotbed of money-grubbing tech people" as is often thought, and explains that the people who have emigrated to the region have done so to access cutting-edge technology that is widely unavailable. In his opinion, the chief reason for the recent rash of virus and worm attacks is poor system design, and maintains that the best solution is to make system vendors and installers accountable for shoddy security. Torvalds refutes the image that has been built up of him as Bill Gates' nemesis, claiming that he has no interest in bashing Microsoft: His goal in developing and releasing Linux is purely technological, and considers Microsoft to be one of the least interesting firms from a technology point of view.
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Industry observers report that IT budget cuts extending over the past few years have dampened innovation, but this has allowed other types of innovation to come to the fore, according to experts such as Computerworld columnist Paul A. Strassmann. Some companies continue to boost their annual IT investments to maintain their competitiveness, though such increases are considerably more frugal than in previous years. Wal-Mart declared several months ago that its 100 leading suppliers have an early 2005 deadline to start tracking their shipping pallets with radio frequency identification tags, while car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler announced in November 2002 that it had begun to invest in Digital Factory, an ambitious project to automate the design of its assembly plants. Meanwhile, UPS has invested approximately $1 billion over the past six years to develop "smart labels" that will help customers more easily locate their packages, and has mapped out a five-year, $127 million investment to distribute the DIAD IV handheld terminal to tens of thousands of drivers. The DIAD IV will save drivers the hassle of manually entering a customer's address and related data and scanning package bar codes in order to get routing instructions. Many companies see the budget crunch as an opportunity to move away from investing in new technologies and concentrate on optimizing existing technologies. RadioShack recently completed the installation of a supply chain management system, while senior VP Mike Kowal says the company has hired a consultant to help shepherd further operational efficiencies through organizational and behavioral changes. Still, 70 percent of 106 IT professionals polled in an August Computerworld survey reported that their IT departments postponed or killed "especially innovative projects" in the past two years, primarily because of budget cuts.
"Unleashing UWB"
Electronic Business (09/03) Vol. 29, No. 12, P. 62; Arensman, Russ

Allied Business Intelligence expects ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to generate sales revenues in excess of $1 billion by 2008, but the chances of this happening would greatly improve if the industry can resolve the standardization issue. Most companies hoping to grab a piece of the UWB market favor one of two competing approaches: Frequency-hopping through the division of the 7.5 GHz band into sub-bands and the use of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) proposed by the Multi-band OFDM Alliance; and XtremeSpectrum and Motorola's dual-band approach, in which the 7.5 GHz band is split into two relatively wide bands so multiple users can share the same spectrum via code division multiple access. Frequency-hopping advocates claim that their approach cuts down interference and allows the sub-bands to be activated or deactivated in accordance with varying international spectrum rules, while dual-band proponents assert that their strategy supports higher data rates over longer distances. Chris Fisher of Xtreme argues that frequency-hopping possesses some "undesirable spectral characteristics" that could be problematic for licensed users in that spectrum, and called for the FCC to spell out how such systems should be evaluated. He notes that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers could allow both standards and let the market choose the optimal approach. Among the services and uses that UWB would support is the wireless transmission of high-quality digital content, medical imaging, auto safety and navigation, and PC networking. The technology dovetails with consumers who want to wirelessly link wall-mounted displays to DVD players and satellite and cable receivers, according to XtremeSpectrum CEO Martin Rofheart. It is hoped that UWB will help the electronics industry recover from shrinking sales growth, but the technology must gain worldwide acceptance as well as deploy unified technical standards first.
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The Sensor Web, which author Neil Gross describes as "an electronic skin" through which all earthly activities can be sensed and monitored, will revolutionize the collaborative, consistent, and consolidated collection, fusion, and dissemination of sensor data. Such a breakthrough would have significant ramifications for science, environmental surveillance, transportation, homeland security, public safety, disaster management, defense, and health services. A successful Sensor Web must boast five key characteristics: Interoperability, intelligence, dynamism, flexibility, and scalability. Interoperability is needed to link the heterogeneous sensors and sensor networks to the Web; intelligence is supplied by sensors that can communicate with each other; the dynamic quality is achieved through the development of mobile, "position aware" sensors that can be continuously tracked via wireless networks; flexibility comes from supporting and integrating devices that use deterministic, triggered, and on-demand data transmission; and scalability, in which sensors can be flexibly added or replaced, adds redundancy and fault tolerance. There are usually two general classes of sensors--in-situ devices that gauge properties in the immediate vicinity and remote sensors that measure properties from further away--but the distinction between the two is blurring as the Sensor Web concepts develop and sensors become smaller, cheaper, lighter, and more power-efficient. Other Sensor Web enabling technologies include wireless communication and ubiquitous computing technologies such as Bluetooth and 802.11a, which allow sensory data to be accessed and transmitted to end users cheaply, easily, and on time. The Sensor Web framework is composed of four layers: The sensor layer, the communications layer, the location layer, and the information layer; the first three layers, which comprise the physical architecture, can vary according to the properties of sensors, geographic coverage, network access, and domain applications. The Open GIS Consortium aims to make all classes of Web-resident sensors, equipment, and imaging devices Web-accessible and Web-controllable by developing a Web service comprised of SensorML, the Sensor Collection Service, and a sensor registry.
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