Impact

New Congress' attitudes toward research yet to be tested

In a January issue of Inside Illinois, a newspaper for staff and faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Jim Barlow writes about future federal funding for research and the uncertainties of support. Given calls for a balanced U.S. budget, 84 new members of the 105th Congress whose attitudes toward research have yet to be tested, a more conservative Senate and projections of a 20 percent-plus decline in funding by 2002, university R&D, he wrote, is at a crossroads.

NEA responds to State of the Union address

Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association (NEA), voiced his organization's "enthusiastic support for the extraordinary agenda -- a truly 21st century agenda for children and education," in response to President Bill Clinton's State of the Union address last week.

"Teachers are no longer asking for higher standards, we're demanding them," Chase said. "We must have more rigorous curriculum, safe and well-ordered schools and quality teachers."

The NEA is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 2.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, college faculty, school administrators, educational support personnel, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

Web spoofing's no joke

Computer scientists at Princeton University warn of an Internet security attack that can endanger the privacy of Web users and the integrity of their data.

According to Edward Felten, Dirk Balfanz, Drew Dean and Dan Wallach, "Web spoofing" allows an attacker to create a "shadow copy" of the entire Web. Accesses to the shadow Web are funneled through the attacker's machine, allowing the attacker to monitor all the victim's activities, including any passwords or account numbers the victim enters. Essentially, the attacker observes and controls everything the victim does on the Web.

Felten may be reached by E-mail at felten@cs.princeton.edu. For more information about this Internet con game:

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/pub/spoofingDocumentWithLongUntypeableName.html

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