Communications of the ACM articles from March 1999

Communications of the ACM archives from March 1999

News Track.(News Briefs)
March 1, 1999... SILICON VALLEY TOP 10 HOT JOBS Based on local and state labor reports and anecdotes from employers, career counselors, and recruiters, the NOVA Private Industry Council, Sunnyvale, Calif. (www.novapic.org), which surveys job growth in...

Finland: The Unknown Soldier on the IT Front.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... During the same week in August 1998 two Finns appeared on the covers of Fortune and Business Week. Linus Torvalds was acclaimed by Fortune as the master of network-based software development and the new role model for cyber-programmers. The...

Good News and Bad News on the Intellectual Property Front.(Government Activity)(Column)
March 1, 1999... For the past four years, my "Legally Speaking" columns have warned about overbroad and imbalanced proposals for digital copyright, database protection, and licensing of information legislation. Since I wrote my last column on these issues there...

ACM Fellows.(News Briefs)
March 1, 1999... The ACM Fellows Program was established by Council in 1993 to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM....

Usability Vs. the Web.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 1999... I was surprised to see Jakob Nielsen's conclusions about the state of Web usability and the need for UI standards (Jan. 1998, p. 65), and having just come to the opposite set of conclusions in my column "View Source: Lessons from the Web's...

Focus Groups, Theory or the Kid in the Garage?(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... A few years ago, a group of heavyweight thinkers attempted to invent interactive TV. There were product managers, human factors engineers, usability specialists, and designers of every conceivable variety--graphic designers, broadcast...

Multiagent Systems ON THE NET.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
March 1, 1999... OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, THE TERM "AGENTS" HAS BECOME popular, and consequently, much used and abused. Although several agent-based systems now exist on the network, most are essentially centralized on a single agent. However, the distributed,...

Agents with Power.(Sweden's Project ISES)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... The energy market is ripe for emergent IT tools that may simply transform the utilities sector. HE POSSIBILITY OF USING THE ELECTRIC GRID FOR BOTH power and information transmission creates new business opportunities for utilities. The...

NETWORKED AGENTS FOR Scientific Computing.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... How an ensemble of agents can conduct large-scale scientific simulations. THE CENTRAL ARGUMENT OF THIS ARTICLE IS THAT AGENT-BASED computing provides important advantages for scientific computing. We present our ideas in the context of a...

Multiagent Systems and DARPA.(Government Activity)
March 1, 1999... When the U.S. military faces a crisis, manpower and time are our most precious resources. Unfortunately, the software we employ during a crisis doesn't always make the best use of our people or support a timely response. The commercial office...

SOCIALWARE: MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS FOR SUPPORTING Network Communities.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Many of the social issues that live in real neighborhoods also reside on the Net. Now, with a little help from so, ware agents, people can be linked together to form a multitude of new colonies. AS THE INTERNET CONTINUES TO GROW, SOCIAL...

Simulations in Economics and Management.(the Synthetic Economy for Analysis and Simulation project)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Economics addresses this basic problem: There are n agents interacting with each other in m markets. We want to find out the equilibrium set of actions of each of the agents in each of the markets as well as the associated prices and...

AGENTS FOR PROCESS COHERENCE in Virtual Enterprises.(commitment-based multiagent systems)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... At first glance, autonomy is a mixed blessing. OPEN ENVIRONMENT SUCH AS THE INTERNET -- AND EVEN corporate intranets--enable a large number of interested parties to use and enhance vast quantities of information. These environments support...

Multiagent Data Collection in Lycos.(the Lycos Internet information retrieval service's use of spiders)(Company Operations)
March 1, 1999... Richard Green and Sangam Pant We proceed from a relatively weak notion of agency in cooperating software system components to describe the data collection activities of the Lycos Internet information retrieval services. The characteristics...

Building Cognitively Rich Agents.(the University of Birmingham's SIM_AGENT toolkit for prototyping multiagent systems)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... USING THE SIM_AGENT TOOLKIT Why your software agents will have emotions. SYNTHETIC AGENTS WITH VARYING DEGREES OF INTELLIGENCE AND autonomy are being designed in many research laboratories. The motivations include military training...

Agents in Tank Battle Simulations.(the SIM_AGENT toolkit is used to create a tank-battle simulation)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Networks of computers can be used to produce a digital virtual environment (DVE) where multiple participants can interact. This technology is extremely attractive to the military to provide training simulations. By the use of mock-up vehicles...

Agents in E-commerce.(the use of software agents in electronic commerce)(Technology Information)(Editorial)
March 1, 1999... Let systems of Web-based competitive self-interested agents do the negotiating, buying, and selling. ONE BIG LESSON ABOUT WEB-BASED E-COMMERCE IS already clear: Success comes to those who find ways to deliver to consumers orders of...

Agents That Buy and Sell.(software agents for electronic commerce)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Shoppers and sellers alike dispatch them into the digital bazaar to autonomously represent theft best interests. POPULAR SOFTWARE AGENTS WERE FIRST USED SEVERAL YEARS ago to filter information, match people with similar interests, and...

The best terms for all concerned.(automated task reallocation in a negotiation system for agent-based electronic commerce)(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Negotiation is a key component of e-commerce. In automated negotiation, computational agents find and prepare contracts on behalf of the real-world parties they represent. This automation saves human negotiation time, and computational agents...

Seven Good Reasons for Mobile Agents.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... Dispatch your agents; shut off your machine. Mobility is an orthogonal property of agents, that is, not all agents are mobile. An agent can just sit there and communicate with its environment through conventional means, such as remote...

Java-based Mobile Agents.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... To free your agents and yourself to get the best deals online, write them in Java. And hope everyone else does too. THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD-WIDE WEB HAVE BECOME worldwide tools for e-commerce. However, despite their seemingly unlimited...

Concordia.(Mitsubishi's mobile agent system)(Product Information)
March 1, 1999... This Java mobile agent technology offers security and persistence while maintaining a record of an agent's travels. The scale of applications now being considered for network environments requires security and reliability previously...

The Aglets Project.(Product Information)
March 1, 1999... These Java mobile agents move comfortably throughout the Internet. When the Java programming language became available in 1995, IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory decided to create a new system for mobile agents through a project called Aglets...

Staffing the Web with Interactive Characters.(Extempo Systems)(Company Business and Marketing)
March 1, 1999... Intelligent agents in the form of personable characters interact with and serve human customers. Like their human counterparts in the real world, interactive characters will soon play helpful roles, enabling customers of Web enterprises to...

AN XML FRAMEWORK FOR Agent-based E-commerce.(CommerceNet Consortium's )(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
March 1, 1999... Emerging standards for commercial document exchange promise open business-to-business e-commerce. COMMERCENET'S ECO SYSTEM INITIATIVE, LAUNCHED IN 1996, aims to transform the World-Wide Web into an agent-based infrastructure for Internet...

Share the Ontology in XML-based Trading Architectures.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... First bring semantic order to the world of XML. Howard Smith and Kevin Poulter Recent e-commerce application activity involving the extensible markup language (XML) has led to a proliferation of XML-based standards and markup language...

Viewpoints on Legacy Systems.(Technology Information)
March 1, 1999... The Y2K problem and business process re-engineering have raised awareness of legacy systems. Even so, there is little consensus about what a legacy system is. The wide variety of interpretations hampers discussion. For example, business people...

Bit-Rot Roulette.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... It's obvious that our modern society is becoming immensely dependent on stored digital information, a trend that will only increase. Aspects of our culture that have routinely been preserved in one or another analog form are making transitions...

ACM Chief Executive officer John White Discusses Plans for the Future.(John White, ACM Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer)(Industry Trend or Event)(Interview)
March 1, 1999... Effective January 1, 1999 John White was appointed ACM Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer. White succeeded Joseph DeBlasi, who served for nine years as the Association's Chief Executive Officer. Formerly, White was Manager of...

ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy.(News Briefs)
March 1, 1999... ACM will sponsor "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 1999: The Global Internet," April 6 -8, 1999 in Washington DC. The conference is the ninth annual CFP. The conference will explore a wide range of themes relating to the computers, privacy, and...

Why Start an ACM Professional, Special Interest, or Student Chapter?(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... ACM Professional, Special Interest, and Student Chapter participation provides members with special opportunities to combine professional dialogue and social interaction among peers within geographic areas. ACM Professional and Special Interest...

ACM Launches Student Quick Takes (SQT)!(new Communications of the ACM e-mail newsletter for students)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... ACM is proud to announce its newest student member benefit, ACM "Student Quick Takes" (SQT), a bi-monthly e-mail newsletter for student members. Mindful of student time constraints, ACM has designed SQT to ferret out opportunities, services,...

Call to ACM Students: Get Involved!(ACM electronic publication published by students)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... The success of Crossroads, ACM's electronic publication published solely by students, for students, depends on the involvement of students themselves. Crossroads is planning special issues in 1999 and needs student writers, artists, and...

ACM Recognizes Successful Chapter Activities.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... ACM wants to recognize Chapters that host the most interesting, innovative, successful, and educational activities -- as well as those that are fun! These include events such as meetings, conferences, job fairs, and exhibitions. As a means of...

ACM Congressional Briefing to be Held in Washington, DC on March 5th.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... In the afternoon of March 5th, 1999 ACM will sponsor a Congressional Briefing in Washington, DC. This event is part of ACM's long-term strategy to inform members of Congress about the technical dimensions of policy issues involving information...

1999 ACM Awards Ceremony to be Held in New York city on May 15th.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... Recipients of ACM's 1998 awards and new 1999 ACM Fellows will be honored at the 1999 ACM Awards Ceremony on May 15,1999 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Vinton Cerf, "father" of the Internet, will present the keynote speech and...

Internet Valley Inc. Congratulates ACM Crossroads on Web Site.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 1999... ACM Crossroads recently received kudos from Editor Louis Gray of Internet Valley Inc. (http://www.internetvalley.com) who congratulated the publication on the influence of its web site over the three-year period 1995-98. Since 1995 Internet...

ACM Offers Products and Services in New E-Store.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... At the beginning of February, ACM "opened" its first "e-store." The Association invites all members to drop by and see the many helpful features the e-store has to offer buyers and browsers. These include: * Sets of related products...

Print On-line.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Sounds like a contradiction? Not really. When members want information about ACM's products and services, sometimes there is just no substitute for printed material. Printed material makes sense for distributing information at a conference or...

Requests Re Quests.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... For the last three years the Association has been sponsoring "Quests," over-the-net contests specifically designed for ACM student members. The first contest was the Quest for Java, which was sponsored for the last three years by IBM. These...

ACM Executive Committee to Meet in Budapest.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... In the next of a series of ACM meetings that have taken place in Europe and the Asia Pacific over the past eight years, the ACM Executive Committee and senior staff will be hosting a meeting in Budapest in May, 1999. These meetings reflect...

ACM Egypt Chapter Sponsors Workshop.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... The one-year-old ACM Egypt Chapter held its first major event, a Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing, in February, 1999, in conjunction with the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications. The conference...

Arab and African Region Holds ACM Collegiate Programming Contest.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... The first ACM Regional Programming Contest for the Arab and African Region was held November 14-15, 1998 in Ifrane, Morocco, where it was covered by Moroccan television. The winning team, from Al-Akhawayan University in Ifrane (AUI), will...

FCRC'99 in Atlanta Offers Multiple Research Conference Opportunities.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... The Third Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC'99) will be held in Atlanta, GA from April 30th to May 6th, 1999. Held every three years beginning in 1993, FCRC provides the opportunity for previously existing specialized research...

ACM Creates SIG on Electronic Commerce.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... SIGecom, ACM's new Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce, was recently created to encourage research and advanced applications related to electronic commerce and to provide a venue for people to share new ideas and experience. In...

New ACM Press Book.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... In December, 1998 ACM Press Books released Mobility: Processes, Computers, and Agents by Dejan Milojicic, Frederick Douglas, and Richard Wheeler. The book is a collection of classic and current papers on research in mobile systems, mobile...

ACM Magazines Group Moves Ahead.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 1999... The ACM Magazines Group is slated to relaunch the ACM SIGART Bulletin as intelligence: New Visions of AI in Practice. The first issue of the restructured publication, the Spring, 1999 edition, is scheduled to debut on March 22. It will feature...

Computing Surveys Tutorial Contest Winner Announced.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Congratulations to Felix C. Gartner, winner of the 1998 Computing Surveys Student Tutorial Contest. Gartner's survey, entitled "Fundamentals of Fault Tolerant Distributed Computing in Asynchronous Environments," was one of several high-quality...