Look, No Hands
BBC News (07/19/07) Symonds, Tom
This year's DARPA Urban Challenge, to be held in October, will draw
autonomous vehicle entries from more than 50 teams, with 30 expected to
start the race. The driverless cars will have to navigate, avoid other
cars, circumvent traffic jams, stop at intersections, follow road markings,
and yield when appropriate. The location of the final challenge, which
will include a 60-mile race through a mock urban environment, has not been
announced, but it is likely to be a U.S. military base. Currently the
favorite is the car built by Stanford University's team, who won the
160-mile autonomous car race in the Nevada desert last year. Mike
Montemerlo of the Stanford team believes the winning car will be the one
able to get itself out of traffic jams, a considerable task for a computer,
particularly because a significant amount of the traffic will also be
computer guided. So far the teams have found that teaching the cars not to
be too cautious has been the biggest challenge. The immediate object for
the U.S. government is to create safe, autonomous military vehicles, but
this research could also lead to autonomous cars for everyday purposes.
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Old Flaw Threatens Web 2.0
Dark Reading (07/12/07) Higgins, Kelly Jackson
A browser technology that is designed to prevent malicious servers from
hijacking HTTP sessions has a vulnerability that poses a threat to Internet
users and corporate intranets. The technology, called DNS pinning, is
vulnerable because it attempts to bind a single IP address to a single
domain name. However, this does not work because there are a number of
things that can run inside a browser that do their own DNS lookups,
including XML and Java plug-ins. This vulnerability can be exploited in a
number of ways. For instance, attackers can lure a victim to a malicious
Web site, which can be used to establish a VPN connection straight to the
victim's corporate network. There is currently no way to patch this
vulnerability. But organizations can still take several steps to address
this problem, including adding stronger authentication for internal,
Web-based sensitive content, using the same level of security testing and
"hardening" as for public Web applications, and using SSL for accessing
internal applications, according to a white paper written by NGS Software
principal security consultant Daffy Stuttered. Meanwhile, security
researchers are investigating how to mitigate the DNS pinning flaw. "There
is a lot more research to be done in this area," says WhiteHat Security
founder Jeremiah Grossman. "It's not going to stop anytime soon."
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Patent Law Overhaul Gets House Panel OK
CNet (07/18/07) Broache, Anne
A House of Representatives panel unanimously approved a controversial
patent reform bill on Wednesday that contains many changes that high-tech
firms argue are critical to correcting flaws in the U.S. patent system.
Supporters of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 believe it will help lower
litigation costs, eliminate bad patents, and restore balance to a system
that, they argue, favors the rights of patent holders. "Our objective in
passing this bill is to reform the patent system so that patents continue
to encourage innovation," said the bill's chief sponsor Rep. Howard Berman
(D-Calif.). "When it functions properly, the patent system should
encourage and enable inventors to push the boundaries of knowledge and
possibility." The bill changes the U.S patent system from a "first to
invent" to a "first to file" system, as it is with all foreign patent
systems, and also establishes a new framework for calculating damages in
patent suits to examine the value of a patent used in a product, as is
often the case with high-tech products, instead of the total value of the
product. A new, non-judicial body would be formed to mediate patent
disputes without resorting to time-consuming and costly litigation. Many
technology groups applauded the bill's passage, as they have been
advocating such changes for years, but the bill still faces some strong
opposition. Pharmaceutical makers, universities, venture capitalists, and
other patent-dependent manufacturers believe the bill weakens the rights of
patent holders and damages their business models. One group, the
Innovation Alliance, said the committee made "no real progress," and that
the bill will "significantly erode the patent protections that have driven
America's innovation leadership."
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Salary Premiums for Security Certifications Increasing,
Study Shows
Computerworld (07/09/07) Vijayan, Jaikumar
Recent statistics show that a professional security certification will
enable information technology security workers to earn higher salaries.
For example, a Foote Partners study released the first week of July
concludes that security professionals with security certifications earn up
to 15 percent more than their non-certified colleagues. And from October
to April, a group of 27 security certifications examined by the Foote study
grew in value by an average of 1.7 percent. Foote Partners CEO David Foote
says that demand for certified security professionals is growing following
a recent downturn. And the demand is being driven not by compliance and
government regulation, but by customers who are "demanding more security"
from companies. The fallout from major data breaches such as the TJX
breach has caused consternation among corporate executives, prompting many
executives to make additional commitments to security. A Department of
Defense mandate requiring certification from IT security professionals is
also increasing demand for certified security professionals, says Foote.
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Robotic Insect Takes Off for the First Time
Technology Review (07/19/07) Ross, Rachel
Harvard University researchers have created a life-size robotic fly that
could one day be used as spies or to detect harmful chemicals. The robotic
fly weighs only 60 grams, has a wingspan of three centimeters, and has its
movements modeled after those of a real fly. The U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency is funding the research on the robotic fly, which
still has a significant amount of work left to be done, in the hope that it
will lead to stealth surveillance robots. Recreating a fly's efficient
movements in a robot about the same size was difficult because existing
manufacturing processes do not make the sturdy, lightweight parts
necessary. The research team developed its own fabrication process, using
laser micro-machining to cut thin sheet of carbon fiber and polymers into
two-dimensional patters. After more than seven years of working and
improving parts, the robotic fly finally flew this spring. The robot still
needs significant work, as it is currently held on a tether that keeps it
moving in a straight, upward direction. The researchers are working on a
flight controller so the robot can fly as instructed. The fly is also
currently connected to a external power source, so an onboard power source
needs to be developed. Leader of the robotic fly project Robert Wood said
a scaled-down lithium-polymer batter would provide less than five minutes
of flight time. Tiny sensors and software routines need to be developed
and integrated as well so the fly can detect dangerous conditions and be
able to avoid flying into obstacles.
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The Basics of Code
Computerworld (07/16/07) Vol. 41, No. 29, P. 36; Anthes, Gary
The mainstays of 21st-century computing--stored-program architecture,
high-level programming languages, and portable code--were also worked out
within computing's first decade, but progress has been slow ever since.
"Perhaps the biggest disappointment in computer science has been the slow
development of software engineering," says Princeton University computer
science professor Bernard Chazelle. The development of object-oriented
programming languages is one notable advancement, allowing users to develop
software without programming languages, but Chazelle says "the pain of
producing code has not been eased." Chazelle says in the 1970s an
exploration of "automatic programming," which allowed the user to talk to
the computer to tell it what to do and the computer would program itself,
was promising, but it has since died out. "It's tempting to say it will
improve greatly soon, but then it's tempting to say that a cure for the
common cold will soon be found," he says.
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Professor Denning Tapped by NSF
Naval Postgraduate School (07/13/07) Honegger, Barbara
Naval Postgraduate School Department of Computer Science chairman Peter
Denning has been named one of two winners of the first ever National
Science Foundation Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Distinguished Education fellowships. As such, he will receive a two-year
$250,000 grant to improve the quality of computer science education in
undergraduate schools under the NSF's Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate
Computing Education program. "We need to inspire the best and the
brightest to go into computing," said CISE Assistant Director Jeannette
Wing in presenting the award. "The United States is the world leader in
computer science and engineering, but other nations are quickly catching up
as enrollment in traditional U.S. computer science programs is declining.
... These fellowships are part of a bold vision to challenge colleges,
universities, businesses and other stakeholders committed to advancing the
field of computing to transform undergraduate computer education on a
national scale." Also receiving a CISE fellowship was Owen Astrachan of
Duke University.
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New Technologies Enable More Moore
Electronic Design (07/19/07) Harris, Daniel
As semiconductors become increasingly harder to scale, the validity of
Moore's law may be in jeopardy. However, some researchers are using carbon
nanotubes (CNTs) to avoid such complications and may provide Moore's law
with a fighting chance. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute associate
professor of physics and electrical engineering James Jiam-Qiang LU
believes 3D wafer technology and the use of CNTs will help semiconductors
continue to advance in accordance with Moore's law, shrinking in size by
half while doubling processing power. The 3D wafer technology handles the
interconnect problem as the speed of an integrated circuit (IC) becomes a
function of the length of the interconnect. The concept is to use a base
layer of silicon and stack other wafers, various circuit elements, on top.
The layered wafers are then bonded using interconnects. Lu has also
researched ways of growing CNTs vertically, making a "forest" configuration
that could be used for 3D semiconductor interconnects and other structures.
Lu had to work past CNTs natural tendency to grow sparsely when configured
vertically, which leads to poor conductivity. Meanwhile, Stanford
University assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer
science Subhasish Mitra has built a NAND gate that is immune to the effects
of misshapen CNTs. Using a NAND gate and simulators Mitra and his
colleagues designed, the researchers developed an algorithm that creates
other types of circuit elements, regardless of misalignments. The CNTs
were put in a grid and if any tube appeared in an unwanted are of the grid,
it was cut away or rendered useless. The researchers could then build
algorithms that work for entire circuit functions.
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RIT Event Gives Visually Impaired Kids a Light in the
Darkness
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (NY) (07/18/07) Loudon, Bennett J.
Rochester Institute of Technology hosted 14 visually-impaired students in
grades seven through 11 for its Imagine IT workshop this week. Funded by a
$100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the program is
designed to give visually-impaired computer users a better sense of the
career opportunities that are available to them. Stephanie Ludi, an
assistant professor of software engineering at RIT who is blind, is behind
the program. Ludi, 35, has also developed software for visually-impaired
computer users, and she serves as a role model for the teenagers. The
youngsters spent Monday and Tuesday working in teams to program a robot,
assembled from a Lego kit, to travel through a small maze and stop. They
built a computer and created a video game on Wednesday and Thursday.
Julene Fitch, of Elkhart, Ind., attended the workshop with her son, Tommy
White, 14, and says she now knows that his desire to design computer games
is a realistic goal. "Computers and technology are the only things that's
motivated Tommy do to anything," she says.
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Turning Our Backs on Tech
Fortune (07/23/07) Vol. 156, No. 2, P. 68; Colvin, Geoff
Recent evidence suggests that America is on the brink of giving up on the
worldwide battle for infotech supremacy, writes Geoff Colvin. The United
States is lacking both quality technology leaders as well as student
interest in IT careers, Colvin says. "As a nation we need scientists and
engineers if we're going to be successful," says Microsoft Research chief
Rick Rashid. "All the new businesses are built around that." The Society
for Information Management (SIM) report, "Grooming the 2010 CIO," concluded
that U.S. companies have far fewer quality CIOs than is needed, possibly
less than half. Today's CIO needs strong business skills, relationship
abilities, and leadership skills, but most do not have those skills because
companies do not work on developing them in IT workers. A more significant
problem is that kids are not interested in entering IT. Only seven years
ago, undergraduate interest in computer science reached a 20-year high.
Since then, however, the dot-com bust has given students the idea that IT
is a volatile industry, and the image of IT workers has gone from hip,
dot-com billionaires to drones in cubicles writing code all day. The fear
of outsourcing also scares off potential computer science majors. To give
IT a better image SIM has been holding sessions at colleges and
universities across the nation with speakers from Microsoft and local
businesses. At Boston's Northeaster University, for example, speakers
included the IT chief for the Red Sox, and a senior IT executive from the
Patriots. The greatest concern is that this trend may continue. "There's
a danger that if you let some of these processes go on too long, they
become irreversible," Rashid says.
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Zombie Nets
National Journal (07/14/07) Vol. 39, No. 28, P. 46; Munro, Neil
Christopher Painter of the Justice Department notes that countries with
weak anti-cybercrime enforcement become hacker sanctuaries, which can
thwart the trackdown of these criminals by U.S. authorities, according to
former Pentagon principal assistant secretary of Defense for networks and
information integration Linton Wells. Networks of compromised "zombie"
computers, or "botnets," which can flood target systems with traffic, are
being constructed and improved by malefactors as revenue-generating tools,
say Painter and Arbor Networks' Jose Nazario. Profits can be realized by
using botnets to send spam or shut down competing companies' online sales,
while zombies can also be employed to gather information about computer
owners' finances and then fleece banks and credit card firms. Botnets have
also served as political weapons, most recently to shut down Estonian
government Web sites in protest of the country's decision to relocate a
World War II monument. But many of the people behind botnets are based in
countries outside of U.S. jurisdiction--countries with little or no
sanctions against cybercrime. Even miscreants in nations with strong
anti-cybercrime laws can avoid apprehension by routing their online
activities through systems in sanctuary states, say experts. "They assume
they're not going to get caught, and looking at the odds, they're right,"
notes Nazario. This situation is spurring U.S. officials to lobby foreign
governments to enforce computer security and comply with directives such as
the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, which offers model
computer-security ordinances.
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Bush Advisers Try to Fix Tech Policy
Chronicle of Higher Education (07/18/07) Fischman, Josh
The Bush administration will receive a report on the state of the national
technology policy in the next few weeks, but the question will be whether
the country is finally ready to solve its problems. The report from the
President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology does not point
out anything that has not been said in earlier reports, according to
council member Daniel A. Reed on his blog. The council reviewed the 14
federal agencies that provide $3.1 billion each year to support IT.
"Almost all academic computing is covered by this umbrella," Reed, vice
chancellor for information technology at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, added this week during the Microsoft Research Faculty
Summit in Redmond, Wash. However, the umbrella is leaky, and will soon be
surpassed by international competition, Reed said. The report recommends
some strategies for fixing the tech policy, including improving the visa
system to make it easier for foreign students to remain in the country to
find jobs, but the immigration reform effort recently faltered. Also,
there needs to be bigger and riskier IT research projects, and the focus
should be more on creating systems that interact with the physical world
and making the Internet more reliable.
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Computer Scientist Plans Bach Over Broadband
University of Manchester (07/19/07) Waddington, Alex
Barry Cheetham of the University of Manchester's School of Computer
Science is trying to combine his knowledge of communications, networks, and
digital signal processing with his love for choral singing by trying to
create Europe's first successful Internet choir. Cheetham is looking for
funding for the project that will unite amateur and semi-professional
singers across Europe for seamless and polished live performances. To make
such clean performances possible, Cheetham knows that he will have to
address the limitations of existing communications networks, as if there is
too much delay the "real time" experience will be ruined. The voices will
need to be processed and digitized quickly to create the high-quality sound
required, and the voices will also need to be accurately blended to give
the impression that all of the singers are in the same concert hall.
Discovering how a choir made up of people in different locations can be
controlled by a conductor, and how singers will be able to feel connected
to other performers are also challenges involved in the project. "The
geographical distances and the speed of electrical transmissions lead us to
believe the low delay needed may be achievable within Europe but not
further afield," Cheetham said. The type of super-fast, low delay
broadband network necessary for the project is currently being used for
some limited applications, and Cheetham hopes that his ambitious Virtual
Choir study will help advance Internet communications. "This project has
the potential to bring European people together and the possibility of
doing this electronically to form a choir is exciting and worthwhile,"
Cheetham said.
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Evacuation Program Gets Federal Funding
Minnesota Daily (07/18/07) Gulbrandson, Kelly
University of Minnesota professor Shashi Shekhar has received a grant from
the National Science Foundation to further his research on a project known
as Capacity Constrained Route Planner, a program to help manage the
evacuation of large crowds of people in the most efficient time. In 2005,
the Department of Homeland Security wanted all U.S. metropolitan areas to
be evacuation-ready. After partnering with the Minnesota Department of
Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security called on Shekhar.
After completing the Capacity Constrained Route Planner, evacuation time
improved by 30 percent, Shekhar said. "With an evacuation of 100,000
people, it would take two to six hours," Shekhar said, in a scenario
similar to a State Fair. Shekhar found that evacuation will go faster if
people walk for the first mile. "Walking makes the evacuation time faster
as the population increases," Shekhar said. Though the initial project was
completed in 2005, Shekhar will continue to work on the evacuation planner
to make it more accessible and easy to use for large companies, such as
banks and others in the private sector. In addition to the National
Science Foundation, Shekhar has applied for other grants from state
agencies, and has received a grant from the Department of Homeland
Security.
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Wanted: More IT Workers
eSchool News (07/17/07) Devaney, Laura
Business leaders are turning to schools to help meet their demand for IT
workers by countering perceptions that few IT jobs are available. Gene
Longo with Cisco Systems' Networking Academy program partially blames high
school reform and the No Child Left Behind education law for encouraging
the shortage of qualified IT professionals in the United States by
stressing core skills such as reading, math, and science, while leaving
students little room to consider IT courses or electives during their high
school education. Another contributing factor were mass tech layoffs
following the dot-com implosion and 9/11, but the Bureau of Labor
Statistics forecasts that opportunities for computer software engineers
will expand remarkably through 2014. According to Longo, there is a major
shortage of advanced-level IT people, which he traces to companies'
cessation of funds for employees to improve their skills through continuing
education when the IT industry plummeted after the dot-com bust. Notifying
educators and students about IT opportunities "can make a substantial
difference in programs available to prepare IT workers and, ultimately, in
the number of U.S. workers qualified to fill the positions," states
International Society for Technology in Education CEO Don Knezek, who adds
that internships, student clubs, and other creative efforts that focus on
IT careers can be beneficial. Many U.S. states are backing initiatives to
cultivate an IT workforce, an example being Kentucky's statewide
Prescription for Innovation effort to broadband-enable all of its 120
counties by year's end.
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What's a Girl to Do?
Government Technology (07/17/07) Massey, Liza Lowery
In some fields the gender gap has been shrinking, but four out of five
top-paying "male-dominated" jobs are IT related, and women account for only
9 percent to 24 percent of the work force in those professions, according
to CareerBuilder.com's Rachel Zupek. Zupek did note that IT project
managers, considered to be a top-paying job, are not dominated by either
gender, and the pay gap between men and women continues to shrink. Liza
Lowery Massey, who served for nearly 20 years as an IT executive in the
public sector and is currently an adjunct professor in the College of
Business for the Executive MBA program at the University of Nevada,
examines some myths about being a woman in a male-dominated field. The
first myth is that women have to work twice as hard as men to make half as
much progress. Massey writes that she did have to work hard, even twice as
hard as others sometimes, to rise to a leadership position. Another myth
is that for a woman to succeed in a male-dominated field, she needs to
behave like a man. Massey believes this myth to be false, and says that
successful people will observe and learn from others in the workplace
regardless of gender. One of the biggest things women need to work on,
according to Massey, is finding the balance between promoting one's self,
ensuring their good work is recognized, and bragging. Women cannot expect
to get noticed if they keep their head down, even if they do good work.
Massey advises women to act confidently, even if unsure of what to do or if
doing something for the first time. Also, always keep a sense of humor,
especially about yourself. Know your strengths and weakness so you can
capitalize on your strengths and hire others who are strong where you are
weak to fill in the gaps. Finally, do not be afraid to take risks.
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Hard Target
InformationWeek (07/16/07)No. 1146, P. 40; Greenemeier, Larry
InformationWeek's 10th annual Global Information Security survey indicates
that data theft is a growing concern reinforced by the complexity of
security technology, although the argument can be presented, given the
priority respondents still place on viruses, worms, spyware, malware, and
spam, that there is not sufficient concern about data theft. Experts such
as BT Counterpane's Bruce Schneier say security professionals are
concentrating on the threats they are most familiar with when they should
be focusing on emerging threats created to exploit the value of
intellectual property and customer data, although there are indications in
the survey that organizations are beginning to realize this. The chief
reasons U.S. respondents feel an elevated sense of vulnerability are the
growing sophistication of threats, more ways for corporate networks to be
assaulted, the increased volume of attacks, and a rise in attackers'
malicious intent; companies believe attackers' motivation is primarily to
steal their assets rather than crash their networks. Other signals of the
increased importance of data security include the fact that 43 percent of
survey respondents gauge the value of their security measures on their
ability to cut time spent on security-related issues, while 43 percent
consider how well customer records are safeguarded, and 33 percent rate the
measures according to lowered breach incidents. Both American and Chinese
respondents list exploits of known operating system and application
vulnerabilities as the leading attack strategies, but many more Chinese
than U.S. respondents report suffering such attacks. Thirty-seven percent
of respondents cite the creation and enhancement of user policy awareness
as the leading tactical security priority for American companies this year,
down from 42 percent last year. Fifty-one percent of the U.S. respondents
who say their companies watchdog employee activities monitor email, 40
percent monitor Web activity, and 35 percent monitor phone use; instant
messaging, the opening of email attachments, and the contents of outbound
email messages are assigned lower priority.
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