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The battle of man versus machine will have to be staged again. The final game of a series of chess matches between grandmaster Garry Kasparov and computer Deep Junior fizzled into a draw Friday, giving each side one win and four ties. Kasparov had hoped to avenge his embarrassing 1997 loss to IBM’s Deep Blue, a six-game series that could not be repeated after Blue’s makers sent it into “retirement.” Kasparov has campaigned since then for a rematch. Although playing a different machine this time, Kasparov seemed to have learned from his earlier mistakes. Computer chess programs punish severely for human error, so Kasparov said that he played a semi-defensive game to force draws instead of playing aggressively. No matter the outcome, Kasparov earned a six-figure payday, as did Deep Junior’s Israeli programmers. In October, a German program called Deep Fritz tied current world chess champ Vladimir Kramnik in an eight-game series. Kasparov’s final Deep Junior matchup lasted three hours and 56 moves. The entire series was broadcast live on the internet.
Court rules it's OK to trade votes online
A web site where voters agreed to swap presidential election votes for Ralph Nader and Al Gore should not have been threatened with prosecution, a U.S. appeals court decided Thursday. The discussion forum Votexchange2000.com was set up two weeks before the 2000 presidential election in which President Bush beat Gore and Nader. The site allowed voters to swap their votes for maximum effect, ensuring (theoretically) a Gore victory and federal financing eligibility for the Green Party. A Nader supporter in a closely-contested state could agree to vote for Gore in exchange for a Gore supporter in an overwhelmingly pro-Bush state voting for Nader. According to the court, that’s acceptable logic. What the court found unacceptable was California Secretary of State Bill Jones’ cease-and-desist letter to a founder of a separate but similar site. Votexchange 2000 founder Alan Porter shuttered his site, but sued Jones, saying he had violated the First Amendment. The court found that “First Amendment chill is present here,” and ordered a lower court to reconsider an earlier ruling against Porter.
BC student indicted for keystroke recording
In what’s believed to be the first case of its kind, a grand jury indicted former Boston College student Douglas Boudreau Thursday for electronic espionage. Boudreau is accused of installing keystroke-recording software on more than 100 computers across campus, as well as hacking into databases storing staff, student and faculty personal information. It’s believed to be the first time anyone has been prosecuted for illegal installation of a keystroke recording device, which creates a log of what a user types and can be used to track passwords. The government has used similar technology in the past to collect information about criminals. The Massachusetts attorney general alleges that Boudreau began intercepting information in April 2002, and used the knowledge to boost his stored-value card accounts at the campus dining hall and bookstore. Boudreau was suspended last fall after the bookstore noticed suspicious activity on his card. BC officials say that the senior computer science student never used the information he stole from others inappropriately, and recommend probation and community service in the case.
Report: Rich media eating up at-work bandwidth
Employee internet management software producer Websense warns that an increase in rich media ads has sent workplace bandwidth levels skyrocketing. The company reports that in the past year, more than 10,000 online ad servers and banners have appeared, a jump of 30 percent versus 2001. A recent DoubleClick survey found that during the fourth quarter alone, rich media accounted for 25 percent of all ads served, and Jupiter predicts that by 2007, rich media will make up 22 percent of online ad spending. While that may be good news to a struggling industry, the impact on workplaces could be serious. By viewing ads with streaming audio, video or DHTML, workers can suck up bandwidth and hobble network connections company-wide. Studies have found that Americans are more likely to buy online at work rather than at home, so the extremely effective rich media ads will likely continue to proliferate during the daytime hours.
February 10, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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