Dr. Dobb's Journal April 2001
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) has released a benchmark for testing Internet mail servers. The SPECmail2001 benchmark was developed by mail-server vendors and research organizations to enable performance evaluations for systems supporting the Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SPECmail2001 models the stress placed on a mail-server system from an ISP's consumer users. It simulates e-mail users' actions such as sending mail, checking for new mail, and retrieving messages. The system profiles the typical mix of message sizes, connectivity bandwidth, origins of received and sent mail, and other factors that are critical to performance. Further details are available at http://www.spec.org/osg/mail2001/docs/FAQ.html.
Weixiong Zhang, a professor of computer science at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed an asymmetric algorithm for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). In collaboration with David S. Johnson, an expert in computational complexity at AT&T, Zhang has applied his algorithm to a variety of difficult TSPs.
The routes of payphone coin collectors is a problem of particular interest to AT&T. Zhang and Johnson tested the algorithm on four different routes with up to 3000 payphones on a route. In each case, the Zhang algorithm came up with the fastest and most efficient coin collecting route, when compared to the results of six other tested TSP algorithms. Some of the other TSPs to which the algorithm has been applied include computing the fastest route through the stations of an automobile body painting facility, and determining the most efficient movement of a hard disk drive head. Zhang presented his algorithm at the recently held Third Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments. See http://www.research.att .com/~alb/ALENEX01/ and http:/www.cs .wustl.edu/ for more information.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a letter with the U.S. Department of Commerce, complaining that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may be threatening free speech on the Internet with its recent approval of seven generic top-level domain names (gTLDs). The ACLU is concerned that the approval process was arbitrary and did not allow for public comment and has called for a public hearing before any final decision is made.
The letter, signed by representatives of the ACLU, the ACM, Computing Professionals for Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center states, "It is not simply a matter of whether a protest group can register Verizonsucks.com, but whether there will be room for McDonalds Farm of Scotland as well as McDonalds Hamburgers." Basically, the ACLU is arguing for a much broader inclusion of domain names that would allow, for example, a domain name like "McDonalds.Farm."
The letter states further, "By severely limiting the domain space and by making decisions based on criteria which appear to go well beyond technical issues, it can be reasonably argued that ICANN and/or the Department of Commerce is making content and viewpoint based decisions regarding the value of new gTLDs. In its current form, this decision making process would appear to violate basic Constitutional precepts." The full text of the letter is available at http://www.aclu.org/ congress/l011601a.html.
After a legal battle that lasted more than three years, Microsoft has agreed to pay Sun Microsystems $20 million and to terminate its license to use Java in its products. The settlement ends the legal dispute in which Sun accused Microsoft of copyright infringement and breach of contract, charging that Microsoft had illegally added extensions to Java to make a proprietary "Windows-only" version of the language. In the settlement, Microsoft admitted no wrongdoing and can continue distributing an older Sun-compatible version of Java for seven years (JDK 1.1.4). Of course, the two companies had quite different spins on the agreement. Microsoft's press release claimed that "the license agreement and the settlement agreement confirm Microsoft's freedom to independently develop technology that competes with Sun's technology." Sun's press release stated that "the settlement reached today will protect the future integrity of the Java platform."
A project called Oceanstore, sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) will let users store personal data on a worldwide data storage system housed on the Internet. Data is encrypted and copies are stored in fragments on far-flung parts of the Internet, thus making the system virtually immune to power outages (a feature of interest to Californians) and denial of service attacks. The level of security is aimed at making users feel comfortable storing highly personal documents such as tax returns, for example. To track the billions of bits of data that will be stored in Oceanstore, the system uses a globally unique identification (GUID) tag for each stored document. The GUID is required to reassemble the document once it has been stored on Oceanstore.
One of the objectives of Oceanstore is to enable ubiquitous computing, letting users access their data with mobile devices. The project leader is Professor John Kubiatowicz, a member of CITRIS. For more information, see http://oceanstore .cs.berkeley.edu/.
Julie Ann Stuart, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University, has developed a model to help recyclers process more efficiently the millions of computers and other electronic trash disposed of every year. Roughly 50 million personal computers become obsolete every year, according to the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center, with laptops the fastest growing segment of electronic junk. Computers and other electronic components contain highly toxic materials such as lead and mercury, making it crucial to recycle electronic garbage rather than dumping it in landfills. But these components also contain valuable metals that can be reprocessed. "Our model allows us to find the pricing threshold for reprocessing," according to Stuart. "So, if the price of copper fluctuates, it helps us find how low the value could be to justify reprocessing." The model is detailed in a research paper that appeared in the October 2000 issue of IEEE Transactions on Electronics Packaging Manufacturing (http://www.ieee.org/).