The Myth of High-Tech Outsourcing
Business Week (04/24/07) Holahan, Catherine
A new report from the American Electronics Association that shows the U.S.
technology industry added almost 150,000 jobs in 2006, the largest gain
since 2001, counters arguments that outsourcing is stealing the majority of
high-tech jobs in the United States and supports requests for higher caps
on workers visas. Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of IT staffing
firm Robert Half Technology, said there is plenty of demand for IT
employees. She notes that full-time IT positions take an average of 56
days to fill, and firms looking for IT managers have to wait about 87 days
to find an employee. Workers with experience in Web 2.0 applications,
particularly user-generated content, .Net, or AJAX are heavily sought
after, according to Spencer Lee. Meanwhile, unemployment for engineers,
computer programmers, software developers, and other IT professionals is at
its lowest rate in years, with less than 3 percent of computer system
designers and less than 2 percent of engineers out of work, according to
the AeA study. "There would have been a lot more than 147,000 jobs created
here, but our companies are having difficulty finding Americans with the
background," said AeA President William Archey. The percentage of college
freshman planning to major in computer science dropped 10 percent between
2000 and 2005. American universities and high schools are trying to
produce more IT professionals by encouraging more students to get involved
in math and science careers with programs that teach the practical
application of tech skills. Kforce's David Bair believes a technology
marketing campaign is needed. "We are going to have to make sure that we
have students coming into the space," Bair said. "We need to let people
know this is an unbelievable career opportunity for individuals."
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Paper-Trail Voting Gets Organized Opposition
USA Today (04/23/07) P. 2A; Wolf, Richard
State and local officials have created a campaign to stop Congress from
requiring a paper record of ballots cast on electronic voting machines,
arguing such a requirement could create more problems in the upcoming
elections. Groups representing secretaries of state, state legislators,
and county leaders are cooperating in an effort to stop legislation
scheduled for a House committee vote and Senate hearings. The legislation
would require all electronic voting machines used in the 2008 elections to
provide a paper record that gives voters proof of their vote that could be
used as the official ballot in a recount. The legislation was expected to
quickly move through the Democratic-controlled House, but committee action
has been stalled and election officials claim the bill's requirements
cannot be met in time for the presidential primaries in February. Election
reform advocates support the bill, saying a paper trail, post-election
audits, and other safeguards in the legislation cannot be postponed. Even
without new federal legislation, the majority of the nation's voting
machines will soon fail to meet the standards set by the federal Election
Assistance Commission, particularly in regards to the requirements for
assisting disabled voters. Most Republicans agree with election officials
that the legislation creates too many requirements with too short a time
frame to implement changes, but supporters of the legislation say
objections will not slow the bill down. "There needs to be a paper trail,"
said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. "If you can't have a paper trail, you
can't do a recount."
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Practical Holographic Video
Technology Review (04/24/07) Greene, Kate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new
holographic video system that is capable of running on available graphics
cards, such as those in high-end PCs and gaming consoles, instead of
specialized hardware, greatly reducing the size and cost of holographic
projectors. The researchers said the display will be inexpensive and small
enough to add to an entertainment center, and provide picture quality
similar to a standard analog television. In the new system, called Mark
III, software creates a collection of numbers describing the position of
all points on the surface of the image, and calculates how lasers need to
project light to create the proper diffraction pattern. Mark III also uses
a higher bandwidth acousto-optic modulator, commonly found in
telecommunications systems, to create a higher-resolution picture than
previous generations of holographic projectors were capable of. The Mark
III is only capable of projecting an image the size of a Rubik's cube in a
single color, but the MIT research team is already working on the next
generation of the system, which will be capable of projecting colored
images about the size of a desktop monitor. Aside from potential
entertainment value, holograph technology could be used to view medical
images such as MRIs and CT scans and complex, multidimensional data and
designs for new products such as furniture and cars.
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PCAST Approves Draft IT R&D Recommendations
Computing Research Association (04/24/07) Harsha, Peter
The President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) met
on April 24 to approve a set of recommendations for the federal Networking
and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program. While
reviewing the program, the committee concluded that unless the United
States took steps to improve long-term innovation, the country's position
as the dominant leader in the IT sector could be at risk. The committee,
composed of 35 leaders in both industry and academia appointed by the
President, approved recommendations for four general areas, including
redesigning networking and information technology education and training,
rebalancing the federal NITRD portfolio, re-prioritizing some NITRD topics,
and improving interagency planning and cooperation. PCAST co-chairman and
director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at UNC Dan Reed said
several independent areas need improvement for the United States to retain
its position as an IT leader. Current IT education and training standards
do not meet employer and student needs, and women and other
underrepresented groups in IT fields continue to constitute a declining
percentage of new IT graduates. In order to meet the growing demand for IT
professionals in the future, the committee recommends assessing the current
and future requirements for IT graduate and undergraduate education,
revising IT curricula, increasing fellowship opportunities, and easing the
visa process for students and research and development visitors and green
card processes for IT professionals. NITRD programs currently favor
low-risk, short-term, small-scale projects, and universities miss research
opportunities because disciplinary studies are emphasized over
inter-disciplinary research. The committee recommends creating balanced
programs that focus on innovation and long-term, multidisciplinary
projects, concluding that universities must rethink their structures,
including their merit and tenure systems, to better support and reward
multidisciplinary work.
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Spreadsheets Using Logic Instead of Math May
Revolutionize Data Management
Stanford Report (04/25/07) Young, Chelsea Anne
Stanford University computer scientists have developed a prototype of a
logical spreadsheet, a data management system that use logic instead of
math and allows for easier data manipulation, an idea that could
drastically change a variety of fields such as the military, hotel
management, and insurance sales. Associate professor of computer science
Michael Genesereth said there are many situations in which traditional
spreadsheets are insufficient. "Why not have a spreadsheet that looks just
like a regular spreadsheet except it has the ability to encode and use
logical formulas? That's what you can't do with Excel in any way today,"
Genesereth said. Logical spreadsheets could be used by the military for
troop deployment and training, and administrators at Stanford are already
using the technology to manage room schedules. One problem the technology
creates is how to preserve and rectify temporary inconsistencies, which is
when the system encounters two or more contradictory statements. The
solution the developers created is to have the system alert the user to the
problem and have the user choose a solution. Genesereth expects that
logical spreadsheets will eventually be used widely throughout the Web,
particularly as the primary format of online forms. Genesereth said, "This
technology could be very explosive when it finally does make its way into
practical use."
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Siggraph: Three's a Charm
Hollywood Reporter (04/24/07) Giardina, Carolyn
ACM Siggraph has announced the Best of Show, Jury Honors, and Award of
Excellence winners for the 2007 Computer Animation Festival at Siggraph
2007. Paul Debevec, Computer Animation Festival chair and associate
director of graphics research at USC's Institute for Create Technologies,
said the level of production was absolutely astonishing, adding this year
was the first time any high-definition films were submitted, citing an
example of dust particles in a beam of light as the level of detail
possible in the films. A field of 905 films was narrowed down to 134
selections for the Computer Animation Festival, which since 1999 has also
been a qualifying festival for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences' best animated short film category. A short film from Poland
titled "Ark," written by Grzegorz Jonkajtys and produced by Marcin
Kobylecki, was awarded best of show. Jury Honors was awarded to
"Dreammaker," directed by Leszek Plichta of the Institute of Animation,
Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction at Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg
in Germany. "En Tus Brazos," directed by Francois-Xavier Goby, Edouard
Jouret, and Matthieu Landour and produced at France's Supinfocom
Valenciennes, received an Award of Excellence. This is the second time
three entries have won an award. Jury member, director Randal Kleiser
said, "All three of the prizes awarded by the jury have one thing in
common: They prove how well computer graphics can convey a strong emotional
response with well-defined characters and outstanding artistry." Siggraph
2007 takes place Aug. 5-9 in San Diego. For more on SIGGRAPH, or to
register, visit
http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/
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Researchers Break Internet Speed Records
Associated Press (04/24/07) Jesdanun, Anick
The Internet2 consortium says that on Dec. 30, 2006, data was sent over
the Internet at 7.67 Gbps, which is a new speed record. The University of
Tokyo led the team, which then broke its record the following day by
modifying standard communications protocols to move data along the same
path from Tokyo to Chicago, Amsterdam, Seattle and back in 9.08 Gbps. The
speed record was accomplished using the newer IPv6 Internet addressing
system. Before the exploits of the Tokyo led research group, the old
record was 6.96 Gbps, which was achieved in November 2005. For IPv4, the
record of 8.8 Gbps was set last February. Plans to build a new network
with a 10-fold increase in capacity to 100 Gbps would enable a new speed
record exceeding 10 Gbps, and enable a high-quality version of "The Matrix"
to be sent in seconds.
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Answers Sought for U.S. Broadband Decline
PC Magazine (04/24/07) Albanesius, Chloe
At a Senate Commerce Committee meeting on April 24, technology experts
said the United States' decline in broadband standing is largely due to a
lack of innovation and poor handling of subsidy programs and data
collection by the government. The hearing was head one day after the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a study on
global broadband per-capita penetration, which saw the United States fall
from 12th to 15th place out of 30 countries. Some said the results are a
sign that the U.S. is falling behind its global counterparts, but others
said it was unfair to compare the U.S. to smaller more densely populated
countries such as England, where infrastructure expansion can serve more
people. A lack of government data complicates the broadband penetration
problem. "Current FCC data is not useful," said Criterion Economics
Chairman Jeffery Eisenach. "It doesn't tell us how many households or
businesses in that ZIP code have broadband availability. Nor does it tell
us anything about quality. " Chair of the Commerce Committee Sen. Daniel
Inouye, D-Hawaii, said he will soon introduce a bill to promote innovation
and improve the federal commitment to basic research on communications, and
is also working on legislation that will require the collection of
broadband data at the federal and state levels. Inouye said basic research
into technologies to solve national broadband problems are being ignored.
Qualcomm's vice president of technology Jack Wolf said, "The only research
that's being done in telecom now outside of universities has a very, very
short time frame for work research and it's being done mainly by equipment
managers." Adam Drobat of the Telecommunications Industry Association said
electrical engineering and computer science, the two fields fundamental to
telecom, are producing fewer and fewer American doctoral graduates, and
there needs to be more money allocated to research and education to attract
people to these fields.
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Robot Future Poses Hard Questions
BBC News (04/24/07)
Researchers speaking ahead of a public debate at London's Science Museum's
Data Centre, expressed concern about the use of autonomous decision-making
robots, and said discussions about future robots in society are largely
ill-informed. Autonomous robots are starting to play a larger role in
military applications, such as the robotic sentry guard between North and
South Korea armed with two cameras and a machine gun, but wider use of
robots creates questions about responsibility. University of West England
professor Alan Winfield asked, "If an autonomous robot kills someone, whose
fault is it?" Winfield said currently the responsibility lies with the
designer or operator of the robot, but as robots gain greater autonomy,
accountability is less defined. The question of robot's rights was raised
in a paper titled "Utopian Dream of Rise of the Machines?," predicting that
robots may one day demand the same rights as humans. University of Essex
professor Owen Holland called the paper, and such predictions, "poorly
informed, poorly supported by science and ... sensationalist." Professor
Winfield called concerns about robot rights a distraction, arguing the more
pressing and serious concern is the extent to which society is willing to
trust autonomous robots and be willing to be cared for by autonomous
robots. In some countries robots are already being used to take simple
measurements, like heart rates, from elderly patients. University of
Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey said it was easy to imagine a future where
elderly patients were placed in a large hospital to be cared for by
machines, and scenarios like this make it imperative to have an open and
public debate about the roles robots will play in the future. "In the same
way as we have an informed nuclear debate, we need to tell the public about
what is going on in robotics and ask them what they want," Sharkey said.
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Voting Machines a 'Catastrophe'--French Parties
Agence France Presse (04/23/07) Sailhan, Michel
Electronic voting has come under fire in France after widespread
complaints of delays and problems with e-voting machines during the second
round of the presidential election. The Socialists, the Communist Party,
and the Greens called casting votes electronically a "catastrophe" in a
statement, and nationalist Catholic candidate Philippe de Villiers referred
to e-voting equipment as a "cheating machine." France is using e-voting
machines for the first time, and about 1.5 million of the nation's 44.5
million voters used them during this stage of the election. Problems with
e-voting machines in Paris suburbs prompted Daniel Guerin, a member of the
Paris regional council, to lodge an official complaint with the
Constitutional Council. Some voters said the machines were difficult to
use, while others expressed concern about the secrecy of their ballot. An
analysis of the vote also shows that four out of every seven voters 65
years of age or older were unable to record their vote. Gabriel Michel, a
psychologist who was involved in trials, considers e-voting to be a huge
problem.
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Science: Researchers Hone Mind-Reading Robot
Columbian (WA) (04/23/07) Robinson, Erik
University of Washington researchers have developed a technique based on
electroencephalography (EEG) to directly control the movements of a
two-foot-tall robot using brain activity. The human controller wears a
swim cap-like head piece with 32 electrodes that measure brain waves and
trigger the robot to move. The robot walks on two legs, and is capable of
picking up an object selected by the controller and moving the object to
any location. The controller focuses on an object on a terminal screen
while each object is randomly highlighted. When the correct object is
highlighted, the controller's brain registers a recognition response, which
triggers the robot to pick up the object. Preliminary results show the
robot picks up the correct object 94 percent of the time. Associate
professor of computer science and engineering Rajesh Rao said this type of
control and robotic actions are a "primitive first step" toward developing
robots capable of more complicated tasks. Rao said the work could
eventually change the human experience by expanding the brain's reach
beyond the human body. This technology could lead to helping people with
debilitating diseases spell out letters and words by manipulating a
computer, or create enhanced prosthetics. Already, researchers are
developing high-end video games with this technology in mind. While brain
signal controls are currently limited to simple actions such as grabbing a
block, Rao said advancements in computer hardware could lead to the robot
being able to learn increasingly complicated autonomous tasks.
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It's the End of Your Data As You Know It
ZDNet UK (04/23/07) Broersma, Matthew
Organizations are trying to come up with a way to preserve digital data
long-term, a challenge complicated by the double bind of the data's
abbreviated physical lifespan and the rapidity in which media, file
formats, and software become obsolete. Meeting this challenge is
especially critical as information and data management are viewed as
increasingly essential to achieving profitability, and it is only now that
serious attempts to come up with a practical, large-scale solution to the
digital data preservation problem are moving forward. "This is happening
now partly because of the realization that the digital world is really upon
us now, in a big way," notes program manager of the British Library's
Digital Object Management scheme Richard Masters. "Until 2002 or 2003, a
lot of our digital material was digitized--you could always go back to the
original. Now we've reached a critical mass of material that exists only
in digital form." The continuous evolution of formats precludes the use of
standardization as a digital preservation tool, according to RAND
Corporation computer scientist Jeff Rothenberg, who adds that migrating
digital objects to current formats is not true preservation because
information is jettisoned with each migration; he is an advocate of
emulation, in which current technology simulates the hardware, operating
system, and applications so that documents can remain accessible in their
original state. Physical degradation or obsolescence of digital media is
also a major problem, forcing organizations to carry out a continual series
of migrations within a timeframe that is brief enough to prevent the media
from becoming unreadable or outdated before they are copied. The British
Library and the Library of Congress are just a few organizations that are
undertaking long-term digital preservation initiatives, while other
institutions are focusing on the development of standards and
infrastructure to buttress such programs.
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Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Indiana University (04/23/07)
Indiana University School of Informatics computer science graduate
students will use unmanned vehicles to test autonomous Global Positioning
System navigation on the Bloomington campus. As part of their final exam
for their Embedded and Real-Time Systems course, the students will
demonstrate the vehicle navigator, which they programmed and fitted with
GPS sensors. The vehicle navigator makes use of real-time information and
a pre-loaded list of waypoints for steering and speed. The IU computer
science faculty teamed up with technical staff members and Advanced
Networking Lab research scientist Danko Antolovic to develop and program
the vehicle. "This vehicle--a modified golf cart--provides a hands-on way
to learn what autonomous robotics is all about," says computer science
professor Steven D. Johnson. "Platforms such as this advance research
collaboration across the field of informatics, computer science, cognitive
science, and other disciplines."
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ICANN Is the USSR of the Internet--Karl Auerbach Speaks
Out
Register (UK) (04/24/07) Hansen, Burke
In a wide-ranging interview, former ICANN board member Karl Auerbach
explains that he views the Internet as a large distributed system that
ideally should be turned into a solid utility, as he outlines in his
presentation "From Barnstorming to Boeing--Transforming the Internet Into a
Lifeline Utility." Auerbach has harsh words for ICANN, expressing
amazement at how much the Internet governing body resembles the former
Soviet Union, especially in the way its bureaucratic red tape choked
innovation in the domain name space. Auerbach derisively refers to the
"infamous TLD beauty contest of 2000" which resulted in ICANN approving
such dubious domains as .pro and .coop while placing 40 of 47 applicants on
hold. To this day, ICANN has not yet accepted or denied those 40
applications but has kept their $2 million in application fees, Auerbach
says. Auerbach complains that none of the other ICANN board members would
listen to his suggestions, including his proposal for a DNS early-warning
system that would monitor the DNS for problems cheaply and effectively.
ICANN remains "a very closed organization" and is in fact not important to
the Internet, he says, adding that if ICANN disappeared the only parties
that would miss ICANN would be the trademark aggregation industry and
incumbent registries such as VeriSign. Auerbach claims that ICANN
basically gave away the .com, .net, and .org contracts to VeriSign. "It is
amazing how ICANN and NTIA transformed VeriSign's job to maintain .com,
.net, and .org into permanent ownership," he says. Auerbach also comments
on several other topics, including VeriSign's price increases, Whois
privacy, and Internet security.
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Weaving a Better Web
Network World (04/18/07) Gittlen, Sandra
When Vint Cerf proposed an interplanetary network that would extend the
Internet beyond Earth in 1999, many believed the idea to be far fetched,
but Cerf still believes in his idea. "By the end of this decade, we'll
have a two-planet internet in place. We'll have software on orbiters that
allow new protocols to make the Internet work across the solar system,"
Cerf said. In addition to this interplanetary network, Cerf has several
other predictions for the Internet. Cerf believes the Domain Name System
will be fortified, as it is currently vulnerable and there is no way to
authenticate the source of data. To create DNS Security, every domain name
server needs to digitally signal the entry so users can validate that it is
unmodified. Sweden has implement this security on its .se extension, and
ICANN hopes to have security standards deployed in a few years. Cerf's
second prediction is that operating-system writers and computer scientists
will be pressured to create more secure systems, as there is no
operating-system security currently. Cerf compares the current
broadband-connected, always-on society to leaving the keys in the ignition,
leaving the car open for anyone to take a joy ride in. Finally, Cerf
believes we will make better use of broadcast IP, using it as an efficient
way to send out software and operating-system updates.
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Perfect Clones, to the Last Computer-Generated
Wrinkle
New Scientist (04/21/07) Vol. 194, No. 2600, P. 24; Biever, Celeste
The entertainment industry is aggressively researching ways to create more
realistic digital clones, and among the efforts in this area is one led by
Hanspeter Pfister at Mitsubishi Research Laboratories and Markus Gross at
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Their method involves
camera-scanning people in a hemispherical cage to build a 3D digital double
that can be reproduced in a computer screen under any lighting conditions.
A methodology for aging the doubles and changing their skin tone is being
worked out using hundreds of facial scans, and it is hoped that these
duplicates will be able to replace flesh-and-blood performers in scenes
where danger or difficulty preclude in-person acting by combining
motion-capture scans of their real facial movements. A pair of 3D scanners
point inwards at the subject on opposite sides of the dome, and these
scanners are equipped with lights that project a 2D pattern onto the
person's face. The face's contours distort this pattern, and this
distortion is captured by the scanners for use in a 3D facial
reconstruction. The next step is the addition of "micro-geometry"--pores,
wrinkles, and other skin details--by capturing these elements with 16
high-resolution cameras and stitching them together; the digital face's
proper reflection of light is facilitated via the extraction of values for
color, reflectivity, and roughness of the skin using the camera images, and
then ray tracing is used to light the model as desired. Movement via
motion capture is enabled by marking the subject's face with 90 colored
dots at key points, which are tracked by vision software and replicated in
the clone. Pfister has also started to make harder-to-visualize wrinkles
more apparent through the use of motion-capture paint.
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The Machine's Got Rhythm
Science News (04/21/07) Vol. 171, No. 16, P. 248; Rehmeyer, Julie J.
New modes of musical expression may be opened up by efforts to teach
computers to transcribe musical recordings, and these initiatives are being
undertaken by researchers inspired by speech-recognition studies. Software
can reliably identify the notes of a single melodic line performed by an
isolated instrument by analyzing the wavelengths of the sound, but
identifying multiple notes played simultaneously is a tougher challenge.
In such situations, most systems fraction the sound into short segments and
seek a pattern that can be identified as a single note, and then extract
the note's primary frequency and associated overtones from the sound wave.
The software then repeats the process, finding other notes in the remaining
audio signals until the entire sound is covered. Columbia University
researcher Daniel Ellis has built a computer program that transcribes
polyphonic piano music using machine-learning methods, and his inspiration
was scientists' technique for identifying speech's underlying patterns by
collecting various samples and performing statistical analysis. Ellis says
the best-performing system will be one that combines machine learning with
extensive musical and acoustical knowledge. Although researchers'
computerized musical transcription efforts are ongoing, their work has
already yielded useful innovations. One advance is score-alignment
technology, whose potential applications include programs that can
automatically turn pages for musicians, display supertitles at an opera at
the precise moment, and correct off-key notes entering a microphone before
they are emitted by loudspeakers. Another area of research that uses such
programs is computerized accompaniment for musicians, which can be of
tremendous value in musical training.
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The Laptop Crusade
IEEE Spectrum (04/07) Vol. 44, No. 4, P. 28; Perry, Tekla S.; Zuckerman,
Ethan
MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte wants to make computing power
available to all the world's children by developing a ruggedized,
super-cheap laptop and distributing it to developing countries under the
aegis of his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Within the next year up
to 10 million laptops will be handed out to kids in Third World nations as
the first step toward OLPC's goal of distributing 100 million laptops to
developing-world schoolchildren. If all goes as planned, then economies of
scale will reduce the individual laptop's cost to $100, but beyond the
technical challenge of engineering a durable, superefficient device, there
is also the issue that teachers may be reluctant to embrace the laptop,
while fiscally-conscious governments may balk at having to purchase the
devices by diverting funds from other, perhaps more important programs.
Another concern is that government corruption could make the devices
unaffordable for most people. First-generation laptops developed for the
OLPC project boast an LED-illuminated screen mounted in front of the
motherboard, that can switch between a reflective black-and-gray mode and a
backlit color mode; a thick plastic shell; a rubberized gasket seal and
keyboard to prevent water and dust contamination; the ability to be powered
manually, by the electric grid, or by a 12-volt car battery; a camera and
microphone; Wi-Fi antennas; a processor that draws less than 2 watts of
power; 512 MB of flash memory; and alternate functionality as an e-book and
a game console. The model has eliminated the hard drive, the cooling fan,
and the display's fluorescent backlight. Another innovation the OLPC team
came up with was the Sugar user interface, which foregoes the traditional
desktop metaphor in favor of a domain of collaborators gathered around
icons that represent work in progress. A modified version of Red Hat Linux
was selected as the machine's operating system, so that the software can be
refined on a regular basis without incurring costs.
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