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Newsletter Section 4

Across the Pond

USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies

Java, Network OLE, CORBA, C++, and Patterns – the hottest technologies in software development – will be featured at the Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems taking place in Toronto on 17-21 June at the Marriott Eaton Centre.

Software development has traditionally been a slow and costly process, with developers forced to construct each component from scratch. OO technologies make software development quicker and more reliable by creating standardized, reusable components. This allows the powerful, strategic products demanded by end-users to come to market sooner at a lower cost.

At the conference, in-depth tutorials will be offered on Java, Java Applets and the AWT, Modelling and Design with Java, CORBA and CORBA Services, Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, OO Design Patterns, Network OLE and C++, the C++ Standard Template Library, Python, and more.

Top-notch refereed technical papers will examine C++, CORBA and Distributed Objects, Tools, OO Frameworks and Components, Patterns, and Distribution Languages. There will be an Advanced Topics Workshop covering Distributed Object Computing on the Internet held on Friday 21 June.

USENIX's conferences occupy a special niche among the elite of the advanced computing technical community who attend to find out the latest information, debate and discuss it. Much of the technology that has allowed the Internet to exist and grow exponentially was developed by USENIX members and announced at USENIX events.

For the complete program and registration materials, visit our Web site : http://www.usenix.org or contact the USENIX Conference office at 714.588.8649.

USENIX UNIX Security Symposium

Companies want to do business on the Internet, but are hesitating for one reason: security. Many companies moving ahead to expand their Internet business are turning to cryptography to meet the demands both that internal resources be protected and that customer information and transactions be safe and private.

Can Internet monetary transactions be made secure? What can cryptography do? Is it legal? What about other security methods? The 6TH USENIX UNIX Security Symposium, with its special focus on applications of cryptography, will provide answers to many of these urgent questions.

"In the last year, the world has really awakened to the Internet, sat up and looked around, and started to worry," says Greg

Rose, program chair. "Along with the growing awareness that security is important has come a realization that there are some problems that only cryptographic techniques will resolve."

The Symposium is offering day-long tutorials, refereed papers, panel presentations, invited talks, a vendor display, and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. Security issues and, more importantly, practical solutions, especially cryptographic solutions, will be debated, dissected, and discussed. New research on public key issues, electronic commerce, safe working areas, and secure communication will be examined in 21 peer-reviewed technical presentations. UniForum will provide panel discussions on Security and Privacy; Electronic Commerce, Cryptography Infrastructure, and Cryptography and the Law. There will also be sessions on the latest version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), Internet Firewalls, and the C2Net Privacy model. Tutorial topics include: Implementing Cryptography; World Wide Web and Internet Security; A Comparison of
UNIX Security Tools; and Security for Software Developers.

Three new features have been added to this year's Symposium. An informal display will allow vendors to demonstrate their security solutions. USENIX will provide a secure Internet connection in their on-site Terminal Room. Lastly, USENIX members will have the opportunity to sign up for the PGP Key Signing Service which allows messages to be exchanged across public networks while protecting privacy of the contents and guaranteeing the authenticity of the sender.

For the complete program and registration materials, visit our Web site: http://www.usenix.org ; send E-mail to: info@usenix.org (your message should contain the line "send security conference").

Internet use moving in new directions

“Everyone is still obsessed with the vision of the Internet as a mass market,” says Tim O'Reilly, president of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. “But whether you believe that the Internet has ten million users or thirty misses the point: the Internet has always been a 'network of networks' – an aggregation of many small groups into one larger whole.”

According to Conducting Business on the Internet, a new study from O'Reilly & Associates' Online Research Group, more businesses are using Intranets (internal, private web sites) than public Internet sites. Organizations such as Eastman Kodak and Harvard University depend on WebSite-based Intranets for internal communications among select groups of staff and/or clients. “In a way, the Web is the first technology that's starting to create even a touch of the 'paperless office' vision that was so prevalent in the seventies,” says O'Reilly. “Internet technology is so appropriate for the corporate Intranet. All the hype is stripped away, and you get down to the basics of what this technology excels at: connecting small groups of people with common interests.”

Similar to Intranet sites, business-to-business web sites allow different organizations with mutual needs or a common focus to access valuable information and data. Database-driven web sites allow users to access personalized information. Multi-homing sites come closest to realizing the “mass market” machine ideal. These are multiple sites cost-effectively housed on a single server, using WebSite. Dentists co-exist peacefully next to multi-national record companies and non-profit organizations; each has its own identity and presence.