Communications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM
News Track
An ongoing experiment that may change the nature of air traffic control is being studied by the Federal Aviation Administration. The $25 million experiment, funded in partnership by government and the airlines, uses a radical new approach to the way pilots relay information to ground controllers: incorporating GPS with a technology that identifies the precise location and identity of other planes, their speed, direction, altitude, their rate of climb and descent, and even their planned route. Using automated dependent surveillance (ADS), a plane automatically radios its position; the receiving station, often a satellite, sends the data. The addition of another layer to the technologybroadcast (B)would also allow planes to send information directly to other aircraft. ADS-B has an effective range of 140 miles compared to the 14-mile range the FAA's current anticollision system. Bill Blackmer, the director for safety and technology at the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said ADS-B is very useful but not a "miracle cure." Humans on the ground, not the pilots of competing airlines in the sky, still have to decide who goes first, he said. With a little more work, experts say, pilots will be able to see fuel trucks, tractors and other equipment, even people. The airlines hope the system will be ready for wide use next year.
More Cell Phone Fed Monitoring
The federal government announced new technological standards for cellular phones that will broadly expand the ability of law-enforcement agents to monitor conversations. Agents can already monitor cell phone calls after obtaining a search warrant. But under the new FCC rules, they will also be able to determine the general location of a cell phone user by identifying which cellular antenna the phone company used to transmit the call under surveillance. Other new rules: permitting agents to identify all callers on a conference call (whether cellular or conventional), and enabling agents to determine whether suspects are making use of such features as call forwarding and call waiting. Industry executives said that while the new rules went beyond what is authorized by law, they would comply with them. The ruling is a setback for civil liberties groups and privacy advocates. But senior officials at the Justice Department applauded them, saying they would be a powerful new tool for combating crime. Some of the rules will take effect in June 2000; others in September 2001.
Olympic Money Pit
Organizers for the 2002 Olympics are considering various Internet strategies to assist in financing an alleged $185 million shortfall for the scandal-torn, cash-poor 2002 Winter Games, to be held in Salt Lake City, reports USA Today. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee is considering a series of Internet-related actions. Some ideas being bandied about: auctioning the rights for sponsoring the Games' Internet presence, including online ticket sales and auctions, merchandising, partnerships, and donations.
Crypto Relativity
Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativitythe discovery that signals cannot go faster than lighthas been used to devise a new type of crypto code. British mathematician Adrian Kent has applied the theory to cryptography, allowing users of his new encryption scheme to make a prediction with a guaranteed date stamp that only they can reveal. For example, someone could use the code to predict something and unveil the message after the event with proof that it was made before it happened. "In the last 15 years ... quantum physics has important applications in code-making, but this is the first serious application of Einstein's relativity theory. It solves what was up to now thought an impossible problem," Kent said.
Stocking the Fridge with a Click
Want online grocery shopping? One example is Webvan.com, the largest of these online upstarts, now serving the Bay area. Webvan relies on an enormous computerized shopping machine that is the first of its kind, set in a 330,000-square-foot warehouse criss-crossed with more than four miles of conveyer belts. Invented by Louis Borders (founder of Borders Books), the robotic system fills a plastic bin with the order and places it on a loading dock, where it is put on a truck, driven to a transfer point, then loaded onto a smaller van and delivered to the customer. Although packed carefullymilk cold, ice cream still frozenthe delivery arrives a day after the order is placed. Quite a wait when you're hungry.
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