CCC@FCRC
Computing Community Consortium (05/10/07)
The 2007 Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC) in San Diego in
June will feature a quintet of discussions by the Computing Community
Consortium (CCC) on areas of long-term computing research. UC Berkeley's
Christos Papadimitriou's talk, "The Algorithmic Lens: How the Sciences are
Being Transformed by the Computational Perspective," will focus on how
computational research is facilitating a metamorphosis in the physical,
mathematical, social, and life sciences, an example being how quantum
computation has been very helpful in drawing new insights about basic
quantum physics principles. "Data-Intensive Super Computing: Taking
Google-Style Computing Beyond Web Search," by Carnegie Mellon University's
Randal Bryant, will detail how major breakthroughs in science, business,
health care, and information access could be facilitated by the
"Data-Intensive Super Computer" systems created by Web search engines to
mine massive volumes of data from a wide array of sources, and emphasize
the importance of getting the academic research community involved. UC
Berkeley's Scott Shenker's "We Dream of GENI: Exploring Radical Network
Designs" will talk about the Global Environment for Network Innovations
(GENI) proposal for constructing a facility to support large-scale network
implementations designed to address various Internet problems, such as
security, manageability, and reliability. "Future of Computer Architecture
'07" from independent consultant Bob Colwell will discuss the end of the
single-core general-purpose processor era and the multilayered challenge
computer architecture faces to find a worthy successor to CMOS that
supports the software's direct comprehension of the system architecture.
CCC Chairman Ed Lazowska of the University of Washington will wrap up the
FCRC with "Computer Science: Past, Present and Future," which will offer
examples of opportunities for computer science research that could emerge
over the next 10 years. For more on FCRC, and to register, visit
http://www.acm.org/fcrc/
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House Panel Approves E-Voting Paper Trails
CNet (05/09/07) Broache, Anne
The House Administration Committee approved an amended version of the
Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act on May 8, with a
six-to-three vote along party lines. The bill, chiefly sponsored by Rep.
Rush Holt (D-N.Y.) and backed by 212 members of Congress, would require all
U.S. voting systems to produce or use verifiable paper ballots in time for
the next presidential election, as well as require several new security
obligations such as a general ban on any wireless technology in the
machines and on connecting devices used to record or tabulate ballots to
the Internet. All voting precincts nationwide would have to conform to the
new requirements in time for the general federal election in November 2008.
The bill provides an extra $1 billion, more than triple the original
amount proposed, to distribute to states during the 2007 fiscal year to
help them update their systems. The Republicans who voted against the bill
said they were told that the requirements were unrealistic and impossible
to reach by 2008. The bill will also require states to conduct random,
hand-counted audits of select percentages of the voter-verified paper
ballots cast in a race, except when a candidate is uncontested or receives
80 percent or more of the vote count. "We've never had that in elections,
even before voting machines came in," said Barbara Simons, former ACM
president and chairwoman of its e-voting study group. "This is a really
enormous change, and just from a security perspective, it makes a big
difference." For more information, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Scholarships to Attend Tapia Conference Being
Accepted
HPC Wire (05/11/07)
Faculty and students have until June 11, 2007, to apply for scholarships
to attend the 2007 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing
Conference. Named after the Rice University mathematician and professor,
the scholarships were established to help boost the conference attendance
of people from groups underrepresented in computer science, mathematics,
computational sciences, and engineering. The scholarships are awarded on
need, and cover travel, hotel accommodations, meals, and conference
registration. "In addition to featuring presentations by some of the
leading names in fields related to computing, the Tapia conferences are
characterized by their collegial and supportive atmosphere," says Pamela
Williams of Sandia National Laboratories, who is co-chair of Tapia 2007
Scholarships. "Tapia conferences are often the first professional meetings
many of our students attend and these scholarships help ensure that those
who could benefit most from such a conference but may not be able to afford
it will still have an opportunity to participate." Organized by the
Coalition to Diversify Computing, the conference is scheduled for Oct.
14-17 in Orlando. ACM is a co-sponsor of this year's gathering, which has
a theme of "Passion in Computing--Diversity in Innovation."
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At USC, Developing Game Coders
CNet (05/11/07) Terdiman, Daniel
The University of Southern California is one of the few universities in
the country able to offer students an opportunity to exclusively study the
field of making video games, partially because of the school's various
other programs of study that overlap into game development, such as the
School of Cinematic Arts, the Anneberg School for Communication, the
Institute for Creative Technologies, and the Roski School of Fine Arts.
While the USC Games Institute has yet to be approved, students are already
attracted to the school because of the program, and industry professionals
are already scouting potential talent. While the program focuses on
teaching students programming skills and the game development process,
graduates will be able to do more than just make video games. "The idea of
the games program is not to create game programmers," said Gerard Medioni,
the chairman of the school's computer science department and co-director of
the new institute. "It is to create very good programmers who have the
ability to specialize. So in five years, if they decide video games is not
what they want to do, they have the abilities of a full computer
scientist." Medioni said since introducing two new computer science
degrees, one in games and one in business, the engineering school has seen
its enrollment double. The excitement surrounding the video game program
is largely due to USC's top-ranked film and engineering schools, according
to Medioni, both of which support a substantial amount of game-related
studies and offer students interested in studying video games access to a
combination of highly related interactive and computer science programs
that no other university in the country can offer.
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Association for Computing Machinery Applauds Committee
Vote on E-Voting Reform Legislation
AScribe Newswire (05/09/07)
The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 addresses
much of the concern that the computing industry has for electronic voting,
according to Barbara Simons, a member of ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee
(USACM). She says passage of H.R. 811 by the Committee on House
Administration is needed if the e-voting system is to be reformed. The
voting process needs to be protected against security risks, software bugs,
and equipment failure, says the computing community. Introduced by Rep.
Rush Holt (D-N.J.), the bill offers specific rules for paper records,
manual audits, improving transparency, and testing and certifying e-voting
systems. "The approved legislation acknowledges the standards set by USACM
to protect the accuracy and impartiality of the electoral process," says
Simons, chair of USACM's voting subcommittee. The bill now goes before the
full House for vote. For more information, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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CSE Department Making Strides to Attract Women
The Daily (University of Washington) (05/07/07) Hunko, Celia
University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) faculty
and students acknowledge a lack of women in the CSE department. Ed
Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in the CSE department, says
women represent about only 20 percent of CSE students. Anna Cavender, a
third-year CSE doctoral student believes the unequal population is largely
due to misconceptions about the field. "There is a real lack of
understanding in the general public as to what computer science is," she
says. Lazowska says the problem generally starts at the high school level,
and that the lack of women hurts the computer science field terribly. "The
most important issue is we are producing systems for everyone to use, and
if they are all built by the same people, they will all be directed toward
the same people," he says. The key to helping people thrive is to make
them feel less isolated and letting them know that they can succeed,
Lazowska says. Recruitment efforts at the University of Washington focus
on examining a person as a whole and the potential that person has to
become a leader. The Computing Research Association praised the university
for its efforts at recruiting and keeping women in the department in its
report, "Recruitment and Retention of Women Graduate Students in Computer
Science and Engineering," but noted that "What is needed is an effort by
all departments to increase the total number of women in computing-related
graduate programs nationally."
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New Research Centre Where Robots Will Rule
Press Association (UK) (05/09/07) Graham, Ian
The University of Ulster recently opened the new Intelligent Systems
Research Centre at its Magee campus in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The
center is intended to become a leading force in research in the fields of
robotics, artificial intelligence, and intelligent systems. The university
has launched an international search to attract the world's leading talent
in the fields to Northern Ireland. The center's director, professor Martin
McGinnity, said part of the research will focus on developing robotic
systems that are more intelligent and have a better understanding of their
surroundings and what is happening around them. "Sophisticated robots are
currently available but lack the ability to adapt to changing circumstances
or interact intelligently with humans," McGinnity said. "We will be
focusing not simply on robot-human interaction, but robot-robot
co-operation and collaboration as well." Bio-inspired computational
systems, designed to create more intelligent machines, will also be a focus
of the center, along with brain-computer interfacing for the health care
sector to help the disabled. McGinnity said work is already underway
examining how EEG signals in the brain can be interpreted by computers and
used to manipulate everyday objects, creating new communication channels
for the disabled. Finally, the center will work on ambient intelligence,
extracting intelligence from wireless sensors, a technology that could be
used to aid the increasingly large elderly population in western Europe.
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Hackers, Experts to Probe E-Voting
Inside Bay Area (CA) (05/10/07) Hoffman, Ian
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Wednesday announced that the
state will thoroughly review its electronic voting systems with the help of
computer scientists, hackers, and technology policy analysts from the
University of California and several other universities and private firms.
Experts say it will be the toughest and most thorough review of voting
systems in the nation. Three teams will be assembled by two computer
security experts from UC Berkeley and UC Davis. One team will look for
vulnerabilities in the software of the eight primary voting systems used in
the state, another will attempt to attack the voting hardware, and the
third will explore the systems' documentation. A fourth team, led by
Campbell-based electrical engineer and computer scientist Noel Runyon, will
analyze the accessibility of every voting machine according to the latest
federal standards and test the machines' accessibility for a range of
disabled voters. Election officials have complained that they should be
more involved in the program, and only one of the eight voting machine
companies, Sequoia Voting Systems, has offered their full cooperation. No
other vendors have submitted machines for testing yet, and only a few have
signed agreements to do so, according to local election officials. Bowen
said that she may withdraw approval of any machines that are not provided
for testing or that fail the test so badly that their deficiencies are
determined to be unfixable. "There has never been as comprehensive a
review of voting systems as is contemplated here, and you just could not
assemble a better team of people to do it," said Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory computer scientist David Jefferson, a voting-system
expert who is not involved in the review.
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Robots Are the New PCs
Daily Aztec (San Diego State University) (05/09/07) Moses, Maureen
Bill Gates has suggested that, similar to how the past three decades led
to the rise of the personal computer, the next 30 years may bring the rise
of the personal robot. However, until recently, mathematical problems
stalled the advancement of robot technology before researchers realized the
problems they were encountering could not be solved with standard math
tools. "Some of the problems are so complex that if you want to use
regular mathematical tools, they might take a million years on a fast
computer to get a solution," said San Diego State computer science
professor Mahmoud Tarokh, who has spent the last 20 years developing robots
and robotic technology. "Therefore, those approaches are not useful." To
solve these problems, researchers started looking at other complex systems
that use different variables to create possible outcomes, such as
biological systems. One solution that has developed is genetic algorithms,
which examines how genetics are coded naturally and create programs that
behave in a similar fashion. Tarokh, who has been doing research on
genetic algorithms, helped NASA develop a genetic algorithm that allowed
the Mars rover to navigate rocky terrain by breaking the problem into
several pieces. Another project in development for NASA at San Diego State
University is the Person Follower, a small box-like robot that is designed
to carry tools and a camera while following an astronaut. The Person
Follower uses fuzzy logic to track and follow a person, and the small robot
is even capable of commenting on changes in the environment or when another
person steps between it and its target. These life-like robots are already
being developed for use in security situations, and the eventual goal is to
have these robots operate in cooperative teams so they can be sent into a
building or a location to secure an area.
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Shredded East German Files Reassembled
Associated Press (05/09/07) Rising, David
Germany has invested $8.53 million in a pilot project to reassemble
millions of files that the East German Stasi secret police shredded as the
Berlin Wall fell in 1989. About 16,250 sacks containing 45 million pieces
of shredded documents were found and confiscated within a year, but efforts
to reassemble the documents have resulted in the reconstruction of the
contents of only 323 sacks over the past 12 years. The Frauenhofer
Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology believes the use of
new computer technology will be much more effective, estimating it would
take 600 to 800 years for a team of 30 people to put all the documents back
together by hand. Using the Berlin institute's algorithm, German
researchers will attempt to reassemble the documents of 400 sacks in two
years. A successful pilot could clear the way for a larger initiative of
putting together the contents in all of the remaining bags in four to five
years. The algorithms were used to decipher the lists of Nazi
concentration camp victims 15 years ago. The researchers will scan both
sides of each individual strip of shredded file, then feed the data into a
computer, which will use color recognition, texture analysis, shape and
pattern recognition, machine and handwriting analysis, and recognition of
forged official stamps to interpret them.
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Tagging Tokyo's Streets With No Name
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (05/10/07) Fitzpatrick, Michael
An experiment in ubiquitous computing is being undertaken in Tokyo to
address the problems inherent in a bustling metropolis that has no street
names. "Just as we built up roads, the next step in civilization is to
build a total information network that will form part of the fabric of
things around us," says Tokyo University professor Ken Sakamura, who is
leading the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project to provide an interactive
landscape that aids people in their everyday dealings. The Japanese
government is investing in the project, whose potential advantages include
better guidance for the visually impaired, interactive guidance for
tourists, and navigation around hostile areas for foreign journalists and
salarymen. The system enables total user control through a combination of
electronically tagged objects--never people--and handheld communication
devices that are read/write only and thus do not expose private
information. Given the system's massive infrastructure construction and
maintenance costs, the participation of commerce in the enterprise is
vital, according to Sakamura. A pilot project revealed technical and
security challenges, including cross-interference from outlawed radio
transmitters and problems with the prototype reader; Sakamura says the
mobile phone will eventually assume the role of reader, via the employment
of a remote server. He envisions a world in which microcomputers that
provide people with location-specific information are embedded in all
physical objects. "They will operate in a concerted manner, processing,
exchanging information with each other within the ubiquitous computing
architecture," he explains.
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Is that Painting Real? Ask a Mathematician.
Christian Science Monitor (05/10/07) Svoboda, Elizabeth
For nearly 20 years, ongoing debate over the authenticity of a supposed
Vincent Van Gogh painting has divided art dealers and historians. "Still
Life: Vase With Fifteen Sunflowers," bought for $39.9 million in 1987 by
Japanese insurance tycoon Yasuo Goto, is believed by some to be an
authentic piece, while others say the brushstrokes differ from other Van
Gogh paintings. Now, computer scientist Richard Johnson of Cornell
University is coordinating an international project to define Van Gogh's
unique style using mathematical terms, with the intention of creating an
objective system to authenticate Van Gogh's work. Johnson has recruited
engineers, art students, and curators to join him at the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam to discuss what they believe differentiates a real Van Gogh
painting from forgeries. By analyze a database of 101 paintings by Van
Gogh and his known imitators, a set of key elements that define Van Gogh's
"visual signature" can be distilled into numbers, allowing art experts to
compare how closely a disputed painting's visual signature matches the
baseline "signature" defined by the database. Statistical formulas such as
Johnson's, known as "stylometry," are not limited to authenticating
paintings, as scientists are also using such formulas to determine the
authorship of letters, literary texts, and even musical compositions. In
stylometric analysis the work in question is divided into components, which
can be words, high and low toned colors, or different visual frequencies.
Then, each component is subjected to statistical tests that measure how
they compare to components of known authentic work by the same artists.
While historian and academics acknowledge stylometry's validity, the
sometimes express an aversion to it.
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Big Guns Jump on Open-Source Bandwagon for New Web
Apps
Wired News (05/11/07) Calore, Michael
Some of the biggest companies in software development are starting to
follow the open-source practice of making their code available to the
public. At the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco, Sun Microsystems
announced it will open-source its JavaFX Script programming language later
this year. Adobe also released open-source programming tools for its Flash
technology, and Microsoft released code for Silverlight, Microsoft's answer
to Flash. "Microsoft is in a new era," said Nat Torkington, co-chair of
the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. "Microsoft exists by making users
happy. And sometimes ... you can make Microsoft users happy by giving them
a technology that wasn't invented at Microsoft." The three giants are in a
race to create rich internet applications that can run on any platform,
from PCs to mobile phones. The winner will be whichever company can
attract the most developers to write successful applications for its
platform. Software's biggest companies recognize that Web developers feel
more comfortable in the open-source arena and are now willing to follow an
open source model when necessary. Most Web application developers welcome
the open-source approach to proprietary software development, but also
acknowledge that this practice is actually pulling the open-source
community closer to the proprietary software industry.
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The End User: Search for Tomorrow
International Herald Tribune (05/09/07) Shannon, Victoria
European research into state-of-the-art search engine technology is
gathering momentum as a consortium of public and private organizations,
funded by the European Union, is currently testing a multimedia search
engine that searches for audio and video files by using mathematics
designed to search for similar digitized "signatures," instead of running a
conventional word search. The project, called Chorus, is lead by Nozha
Boujemaa, director of research at the French computer science institute
Inria. Boujemaa has spent years researching the science of multimedia, but
the recent popularity of video-sharing sites like YouTube has given her
research, including pattern recognition and image analysis, a new sense of
urgency. The problem is that the current method of labeling, or "tagging,"
each video or audio file with a text description is labor-intensive and
subjective. With the massive volume of video files being added to the
Internet every day, manual labor will not be able to keep up. To keep
track of new content, scientists are trying to create a computerized method
to search, compare, and display images by using formulas that measure
shape, color, and other qualities. Boujemaa said the purpose of Chorus is
not to compete with Google, but rather to coordinate various independent
research projects throughout Europe. Companies involved include Siemens of
Germany, Philips of the Netherlands, Thomson of France, Fast Search &
Transfer of Norway, various Dutch, German, and Swedish research
organizations, as well as the U.S.'s Yahoo and Motorola. Boujemaa said
Google has not gotten involved, as they are likely developing their own
multimedia search technology.
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CIOs Become Teachers, Shape New IT Talent
SearchCIO.com (05/03/07) McGuillicuddy, Shamus
CIOs should stop complaining about the lack of quality job candidates and
instead go back to school to teach and create the candidates they want,
experts say. "While CIOs like to complain about the quality of candidates
they've been getting, they're not actually involved in shaping the
candidates," said Forrester Research analyst Samuel Bright. Enrollment in
computer science programs is down, as much as 70 percent in recent years
according to some reports, and colleges and universities are having a
difficult time adapting their curricula to match the industry. Bright said
computer science programs have trouble keeping up with the needs of IT
organizations because they are too focused on programming, and a
significant number of the tools they teach students are obsolete by the
time the students graduate. Bright said schools need to teach students how
to operate multi-platform environments along with key business skills IT
organizations are looking for, such as project management and negotiation.
A Forrester research survey of 281 IT decision makers found that most IT
leaders do very little to reach out to local universities. Job fairs were
the most common type of interaction between schools and IT organizations.
The second most common type of interaction between schools and IT
organizations was service on an advisory board. Lecturing in the
classroom, sponsoring scholarships, serving on curriculum review
committees, and donations of technology were all relatively rare. While
CIOs may have too many restraints on their time, they can still help
colleges and universities by sending employees to talk about IT and dispel
IT myths, such as the belief that graduates will be stuck programming for
the rest of their lives, for example, Bright says.
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The Age of the Supercomputer
BusinessWeek (05/07/07) Turek, Dave
Supercomputing, which was once primarily reserved for academia and
government research, is quickly becoming widespread in the business world
as supercomputers begin to handle a growing list of commercial
applications, writes IBM's David Turek, a member of the U.S. Council on
Competitiveness High Performance Computing Advisory Committee. In 1997,
only 161 of the 500 fastest computers were used by businesses, but today
nearly half of the 500 fastest computers, 246 systems, are used in
commercial enterprises. The expansion of supercomputing in business is
being driven by two essential economic forces--the growing expense of
building and testing physical prototype designs, a cost that can be cut
through supercomputer simulations; and the rapidly decreasing cost of
modeling and testing on a supercomputer. In 1997, the price of processing
1 million operations per second was about $50, but now 1 million operations
per second costs only 10 cents, and supercomputer power increases and
prices fall about 40 percent every year. The fastest supercomputer in the
world in 1997, a multimillion dollar capital expenditure, is now a $200,000
starter kit. Supercomputing is now being used for simulations that would
have at one time been considered a waste of computing power. For example,
Procter & Gamble uses supercomputers to alter the design of Pringles potato
chips so they can move through the production line more efficiently, make
diapers more eco-friendly and absorbent, and make soap suds more foamy.
Supercomputers will become increasingly important to large companies, and
as prices continue to fall, even small companies, particularly those that
are a part of a big-company supply chain, will be able to utilize the power
of supercomputing.
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Open Source Goals Outlined in Report
Application Development Trends (05/07/07) Mackie, Kate
The Open Source Think Tank report is the result of a March gathering of
representatives from more than 100 software companies and their discussions
on the state of open-source software. The group noted a growing similarity
in methods between open-source and proprietary software development and
predicted a convergence of the two methods in which the best practices of
each field is adopted by the other. Proprietary vendors have already
adopted several features from open-source development, including a more
collaborative software development process, frequent updates and bug
patches, and free trial software. Companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and
Adobe are contributing technologies and products as open-source and
developing open-source communities. Open-source software developers are
also adopting proprietary practices, such as seeking profit from the sale
of licenses, providing support and professional services, and even offering
indemnification to company executives that deploy open-source software.
The report says the hybrid approach will incorporate the positive aspects
of both development methods while eliminating the weaker aspects, such as
open-source's monetization problems and slower proprietary development
cycles. The Think Tank participants agreed on a few goals for open source,
including eliminating confusing licensing terms and establishing an
OSI-approved open source license.
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Leader in Computing
Frontline (India) (05/18/07) Vol. 24, No. 9, Parthasarathy, Anand
In an interview, Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
director-general S. Ramakrishnan, who has helmed the institution for the
past four years, puts its past accomplishments into perspective and looks
ahead. He says the center's progress in its absorption of the Center for
Electronic Design and Technology, the National Center for Software
Technology, and all the divisions of the Electronics Research and
Development Center has been "slow but steady," representing one of the
prime challenges of his career. "By defining a common approach or
methodology on how we would build the concept of a premier R&D lab [from
research to deployment or delivery] and identifying opportunities for
linkages across the disciplines, we are working on a medium- to long-term
plan," Ramakrishnan states. He comments that C-DAC's perception of its
competences is dual: One view focuses on the provision of "enabling
technologies" and the implementation of "end-to-end solutions" in fields
that include high performance computing, grid computing, professional
electronics, and cybersecurity; the other view stresses the use of
end-to-end solutions to satisfy the requirements of specific domains
(science and engineering, health, e-governance, education, industry, etc.).
Ramakrishnan assures that C-DAC is working to become more market-savvy.
He says the first 20 years of C-DAC's existence involved the cultivation of
significant R&D in India under trying conditions, while the next 20 years
will emphasize the adoption of "a new paradigm--to be not a follower, but a
leader with a new way of looking at oneself, one's role as an R&D lab ...
and reaching out to the market with suitable twin-track business and
innovation models."
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