Communications of the ACM articles from July 1998

Communications of the ACM archives from July 1998

Editorial pointers.(Editorial)
July 1, 1998... THIS issue features two special sections quite disparate in nature, yet so connected in business practicality. Together, they focus on shaping, designing, and protecting online documents. Separately, they explore new, yet distinctly different,...

Spent time.(News Track)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
July 1, 1998... Spent Time Percentage of Internet users who spend less time on the following activities TV watching 76% Renting movies/VCR 60% Sleep 45% Talking on the phone 45% Reading ...

Disorderly conduct.(News Track)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... People believed to be addicted to the Internet often suffer from a number of bumper crop disorders like manic-depression, and treating those other conditions might help control online addicts. A recent study conducted at the University of...

Space invaders revisited.(News Track)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... The music and fashion industries aren't the only ones cashing in on the "retro" craze. Some of the video game industry's 1970s and 1980s arcade classics--Frogger, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, and Pac-Man--are being re-released for the PC, reports...

Top 10 countries in IT spending ($U.S.).(News Track)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
July 1, 1998... Top 10 Countries in IT Spending ($U.S.) 1. U.S. $320 billion 2. Japan $107.52 billion 3. Germany $50.11 billion 4. France $38.84 billion 5. U.K. $38.76 billion ...

Everybody's surfin' now.(translation software)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... Arabic, the world's sixth major language with 186 million fluent, has always been difficult to read and reproduce electronically. Moreover, there's no simple way to search text or copy it into your files, and pages are often too large to print...

Transmitter's in the mail.(new product)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... An experimental postal tracking system is being tested in Houston, San Francisco, and Northern Virginia in which tiny radio transmitters are embedded in pieces of mail so postal managers can track specific items, reports the New York Times. I.D...

Setting records.(briefs)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... Network Solutions has reached and surpassed its 2 millionth domain name registration. In another announcement, Forrester Research predicts online transactions will push the U.S. market for electronic-commerce software from $121 million last...

Human teleportation, hardly.(new product)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... As hokey as it once seemed to watch the Star Trek crew getting beamed from the Starship Enterprise to another world, teleportation is currently under experimentation. Scientists in Austria and Rome managed to successfully teleport a photon--the...

Smart shooting.(Oxford Micro Devices Inc., new product)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... As the stories of accidental (or deliberate) shootings mount, gun makers are trying to produce a safer firearm. An electronic module, designed by Oxford Micro Devices in Shelton, Conn., which fits into the gun handle, captures the owner's...

Hacker boast.(effects of hacking)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... At a Senate Governmental Affairs meeting experts and hackers warned the Internet and other computer networks are extremely vulnerable. A Boston-based hackers club, LOpht, boasted it could bring down the entire Internet in just 30 minutes. The...

Nibble a day keeps the grass away.(News Track)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... A robot has been designed to cut lawns using infrared lights and a sonar system, reports USA Today. The 35-pound, rechargeable-battery-powered Lawn Nibbler, which is still in test stages by Mekatronix, Gainsville, Fla., uses a navigational...

The effects of street lights.(News Track)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... A trial run in Manchester, England, to test Internet access via electricity lines ran into an overlooked snag--streetlamps. It seems streetlamps using the same power supply as Net surfers are acting as aerials and broadcasting downloaded data...

Random factoids.(web service users)(Brief Article)
July 1, 1998... * Estimated number of Web users in the U.S.: 57,037,000 * Estimated number of Web pages, as of April, 1998, in millions: 320 * Percentage of U.S. government agencies rated as being in full compliance with the Electronic Freedom of...

Short-term and long-term remedies for runaway projects.(Practical Programmer)(Column)
July 1, 1998... "At last I've found the secret that guarantees success; to err, and err, and err again, but less, and less, and less."--Ogden Nash What do you do when a software project threatens to become a runaway, spiraling out of control? And then...

Consensus and the Web.(Sharing Standards)(Joint Technical Committee 1, World-Wide Web Consortium)(Column)
July 1, 1998... Since the last "Sharing Standards" column (Jan. 1998, pp. 11-15) was published, the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) has approved the Sun application to be a Publicly Available Specifications submitter. JTC1 is responsible for information...

Horses for courses.(Viewpoint)
July 1, 1998... Universities are scrambling to get into the distance-education business. They see the computer as vital to this enterprise, but it's not obvious why it's vital. We do know that, idealistically, they want to deliver courses via the Web. There...

Hindsight is not always 20/20.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1998... I THINK MANY OF THE RECENT crop of writers discussing the Y2K problem suffer from a medical syndrome that might be called, "20/20 Byte-Wise Hindsight." Like Hal Berghel ("Digital Village," Mar. 1998, p. 13), I thought of Goodman's "grue"...

Solutions to Unwanted Email.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1998... I READ ROBERT HALL'S ARTICLE "How to Avoid Unwanted Email," (Mar. 1998, p. 88) and look forward to the time when full solutions to this problem are available to users, destroying the junk email craze for good. In the meantime, I have found...

Questioning study data.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1998... I APPLAUD JOHN NOSEK'S ATFEMPT to run a controlled study in a difficult real-world setting but question some of his findings ("The Case for Collaborative Programming," Mar. 1998, p. 105). Nosek supports three claims: programmers working in...

Dualism as pervading principle.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 1998... A.C. SODAN WRITES IN "YIN AND Yang in Computer Science" (Apr. 1998, p. 103) that "There are indications that dualism is a basic principle pervading the whole universe at all levels." Our western science and programming skills have brought...

Digital watermarking: marking the valuable while probing the invisible.
July 1, 1998... Digital watermarking technology is making headway in several research areas as well as in commercial products, bringing a recent tide of publicity and controversy. But how can a technology that yields mostly invisible products protect digital...

Protecting digital media content: whose copyright is it, and who can use it--legally? Watermarks are beginning to help confirm copyrights, authentic ownership, fingerprints, and data integrity.
July 1, 1998... Thanks to the proliferation of the World-Wide Web, a huge amount of multimedia content-text, graphics, images, video, and audio--are available for browsing and downloading by millions of users worldwide over the network. As a result, security...

Technical trials and legal tribulations: we can identify and counter watermark attackers. But once in a court of law, even a digital watermark can be inadequate.
July 1, 1998... The technology of digital watermarking is just beginning to mature. But the notion of embedding indelible but imperceptible copyright or ownership information in multimedia data already has great commercial potential. Intellectual property...

Opportunities for watermarking standards: the three main emerging classes of applications still lack standard marks, standard ways of interacting with systems, benchmark tests--even a standard terminology.
July 1, 1998... Watermarking involves embedding data, often imperceptibly, into a media or multimedia object to enhance of protect its value. While the field is relatively new, many applications that could benefit from watermarking have already been proposed....

In business today and tomorrow: armies of would-be customers--and pirates--await commercial development of a foolproof of technology for real-world applications and legal evidence.
July 1, 1998... Information and knowledge play a decisive--if not paramount--role in business performance. The right information and content at the right time are keys to success and therefore have tremendous value for individuals, businesses, even the entire...

How watermarking adds value to digital content: a digital watermark isn't just a tag or label for protecting content but an opportunity to increase the value of the content itself.
July 1, 1998... Creators and owners of content need ways to protect their property rights in the increasingly digital world. And distributors and recipients of content need ways to fully utilize the rich potential of their digital assets. Traditional content...

Web information systems.
July 1, 1998... Three years ago, when two of us guest edited a special section on hypermedia design for this magazine [1], the Web was a relatively nascent field. At that time, our focus was on the general principles for designing hypermedia applications. ...

Electronic shopping: designing online stores with effective customer interfaces has a critical influence on traffic and sales.
July 1, 1998... The global electronic market will have a profound impact on commerce in the 21st Century. While current U.S. sales in cyberspace ($1 billion in 1993) are small in comparison to total U.S. retail sales ($1.7 trillion in 1995) [3], U.S....

WISs and electronic commerce.
July 1, 1998... Web information systems are revolutionizing commerce. For starters, the Web reduces to nearly nothing many marginal costs of doing business, such as communications and customer service. Startup companies such as Amazon.com and CDNow have...

Public access Web information systems: lessons from the Internet EDGAR project: improving the dissemination of government data helps keep the lines of communication open between corporations, governments, and the private sector.
July 1, 1998... Governments collect, generate, and disseminate vast amounts of information. In a market-driven, democratic society, this information is vital to enhance the trust of citizens in their government and institutions, and critical to individual and...

What is inside a link?
July 1, 1998... Web users generally rely on a link anchor's content of embedded URL to convey the purpose and target of a link (see Figure 1a). Many complain they often do not know where a link will take them. Considering what can be found inside a link could...

How should CIOs deal with Web-based auctions?
July 1, 1998... Exploiting the Internet for commercial benefit has become a key theme for Chief Information Officers at most organizations. Significant advantages are to be gained for both sellers and buyers. Savings are made by reducing transaction costs,...

Viewing WISs as database applications.
July 1, 1998... Although Web information is meant to be consumed by human beings, applications that process it automatically are both conceivable and desirable. Think, for example, of mediating applications that consolidate price and availability data from...

Metalevel links: more power to your links.
July 1, 1998... Much effort has been spent to improve the expressiveness of Web pages, such as the inclusion of 3D animation and streaming audio and video presentations. This is because the Web is primarily used as a globally accessible one-way medium for...

Document management and Web technologies: Alice marries the Mad Hatter: wedding the mature document management functionality (Alice) to chaotic, evolving Web technologies (the Mad Hatter) does not always come with a storybook ending.
July 1, 1998... The Hatter went on in a mournful tone "And ever since then, time won't do a thing that I ask! It's always six o'clock now." A bright idea carne into Alice's head. "Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?" she asked. "Yes,...

Superconnectivity.
July 1, 1998... Superconnectivity 1. The phenomenon of almost perfect transmission of communication and information throughout the human habitations of the universe, via computers. 2. The interconnections of all social and economic institutions as a result of...

Wis at Federal Express.
July 1, 1998... When the Federal Express Corporation invented the express package industry in 1973, it charted unexplored territory with every innovation it introduced. Aggressive competitors and customer demands continue to drive innovation, taking the...

Calendar of events.(Calendar)
July 1, 1998... ACM's calendar policy is to list open computer science meetings that are sponsored by ACM, sister societies, or other scientific, technical or educational tax-exempt organizations. Educational seminars, institutes, and courses are not included...

Laptops in Congress?
July 1, 1998... Certain U.S. senators have strongly resisted efforts to allow laptops on the Senate floor. Whereas a few senators and representatives have a good understanding of computer-communication technology, many do not. This month, we examine some of...