Dr. Dobb's Journal May 1997
The line between book and software marketing is rapidly blurring. For instance, one book being marketed as software is Stephen Wolfram's 1400-page The Mathematica Book, which comes bundled with Mathematica 3.0. Similarly, there's also a lot of software being marketed in bookstores. In addition to the many Java and Linux books that include copious software, Dale Nilsson and Peter Jakab's book Visual Age for C++ includes fully functional versions of IBM's Visual Age C++ development system for both Windows and OS/2. With much of the software industry moving towards subscription approaches (MSDN and Metrowerks CodeWarrior being notable examples), you might soon find development software at the magazine rack, right beside DDJ.
--Tim Kientzle
Absolute Software (Vancouver, BC) has released a Windows version of its computer security product "CompuTrace." The low-level program runs undetected on a PC. Whenever the computer is hooked up to a phone line (to fax, e-mail, or access the Internet), CompuTrace periodically (and silently) calls in to a monitoring center. If a computer is reported stolen, the monitoring center initiates a trace the next time the missing computer calls in -- even if Caller ID is blocked or the call comes from an unlisted number. The software retails for $29.95 with an annual monitoring fee of $60. It runs on 486 (or greater) PCs with modems. For more information, visit the CompuTrace web site at http:// www.computrace.com/.
-- Deirdre Blake
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently shut down a company called Electronic Forms Management, as well as its web sites (http://www.beavisbutthead.com/, http://www.sexygirls.com/, and http://www.1adult.com/), for alleged high-tech fraud. Consumers visiting the web sites were promised they could view "adult" images for free and were instructed to download a viewer called david.exe or david7.exe. Once the "viewer" was installed on a user's system, it would disable the modem speaker, disconnect from the user's local ISP, reconnect to a phone number in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, and run up international phone charges of over $2 per minute -- all unbeknownst to the user. Additionally, the connection would not disconnect until the user turned off the computer or modem. According to the FTC, many of the consumer complaints generated by the scam have come from parents with "Internet-savvy children."
-- Deirdre Blake
To encourage the development of algorithms that can extract underlying structure from masses of data and correctly make more sense from less data, the Computer Science Department of the University of New Mexico has organized a machine-learning competition that's open to all comers. In a series of nine problems, the "Abbadingo One: DFA Learning Competition" challenges contestants to find the structure of a regular language (a very restricted but common class of formal languages) based on a set of training samples classified by a randomly generated deterministic finite automaton -- and demonstrate competence by classifying a set of test strings with over 99 percent accuracy. All nine problems are identical in form, differing only in the amount of data available and the size of the target. Organized by Kevin J. Lang of the NEC Research Institute and Barak A. Pearlmutter of the University of New Mexico, the competition is jointly sponsored by the Machine Learning Journal, the Santa Fe Institute, the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and the University of New Mexico. The competition is open until November 15, 1997. A prize of at least $1024 will be awarded to whoever solves the hardest previously unsolved problem. For more information, see http://abbadingo.cs.unm.edu/.
-- Jonathan Erickson
The German television program "PlusMinus" and iX magazine report that altering ActiveX security to manipulate online banking software is relatively easy. At its annual meeting, Chaos Computer Club members used Visual Basic to write ActiveX components that launch Quicken commands and control operations via SendKeys. Consequently, the German Chaos Computer Club recommends switching off ActiveX functions in Microsoft's Explorer until security bugs are fixed. For more information, see http://www.heise.de.
In a separate Internet Explorer security lapse, students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute discovered a flaw that allows web-site administrators to control programs on someone else's computer. Microsoft has since plugged the hole.
-- Jonathan Erickson
Linus Torvalds, the architect of the Linux operating system, has forsaken the snow of his native Finland for the sun of Silicon Valley. Upon completing his master's degree at the University of Helsinki, Torvalds, a recipient of the 1995 DDJ Excellence in Programming Award, accepted a part-time position at Transmeta, a start-up chip-design company. He will continue to oversee Linux, however.
-- Monica Berg
Oracle will include Identix's TouchNet II fingerprint-recognition technology in upcoming releases of its software. The system includes a palm-size device that compares users' fingerprints to those stored in a database. Identix claims the device can detect the "real" finger by tracking blood flow, blood pressure, and other signals. The device is currently used by military and welfare offices.
-- Amy Wu
A California web-page design company has filed suit against the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (INAN), the organization that assigns numerical Internet Protocol addresses. The suit charges the INAN reneged on a promise giving permission to register Internet addresses ending in ".web." However, as Stuart Levi, attorney for the International Ad Hoc Committee, pointed out, proposals for new domain-name naming conventions hadn't been written when the promise was allegedly made, so there were no guidelines for how anyone could request authorization for suffixes other than .com, .net, .org, .edu, .mil, and .gov. The Ad Hoc Committee has since proposed seven more suffixes: .store, .info, .nom, .firm, .web, .arts, and .rec. Considering the current state of the web, .sleaze might also be considered.
-- Jonathan Erickson