Software Design Research Adds New Perspective to
High-Tech Gender Gap
Associated Press (09/24/07) Mintz, Jessica
Laura Beckwith, a new computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University,
and her adviser, Margaret Burnett, believe that examining and altering
software programs may be the key to attracting more women to the computer
science industry. Beckwith and Burnett specialize in how people use
computers to solve problems. During their research they found that men are
more likely than women to use advanced software features, specifically
debugging features that help users find and correct errors. After
researching gender differences in problem solving and computer use,
Beckwith found that in most studies women have less confidence than men in
their computer skills, even women who study computer science. Beckwith
tested her theory by asking a group of men and women if they believed they
could find and fix errors in spreadsheets filled with formulas.
Participants were then asked to test formulas in two spreadsheets for any
bugs. The spreadsheets contained a debugging feature. The debugging
feature was used by men at all confidence levels, but only women who
believed they could successfully complete the task used it. Beckwith then
created two more options for the debugging tool, "seems right maybe" and
"seems wrong maybe," and eliminated the need to right click the mouse to
make the feature less intimidating. Tests with the new feature showed that
women were more willing to use the softer options on the software, and
occasionally used the debugging tool more than men. "We know from our
colleagues in psychology and sociology that there are gender differences
that can be very important to take into account in human-computer
interaction and software design," says Julie Jacko, a professor at the
Georgia Institute of Technology and president of ACM's Special Interest
Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). "Projects like this can help
us have a better impact, even at younger ages, where I believe
interventions need to happen."
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Where Have All the Techies Gone?
St. Petersburg Times (FL) (09/23/07) Bora, Madhusmita
Misconceptions about the availability of tech jobs are dampening the
desires of many potential hires for a career in IT. Computer Science
Teachers Association executive director Chris Stephenson sees a recent
plummet in IT enrollments that is far more precipitous than in previous
years, which she says is attributable to perceptions that the IT sector is
experiencing "a major ongoing downturn." On the other hand, AeA estimated
a 3 percent increase in American high-tech employment last year. "Experts
attribute the job growth to renewed interest among corporations toward
developing business applications now that companies are done pouring money
into post-Enron accounting compliance efforts," notes AeA's Matthew
Kazmierczak. "We are getting to the point where there's more job creation
than people to fill them." Employers are increasingly nervous about the
impending retirement of workers from the baby boomer generation. Co-ounder
of IBM's Services Sciences, Management, and Engineering IT Services
curriculum Paul Kontogiorgis says the next five to 12 years will witness
the departure of 70 million workers, and only 40 million fresh workers will
be coming in to fill the void. Increasing competitiveness in the
marketplace means smaller businesses in smaller markets will suffer the
most from the labor shortage, and hotspaces.net owner Fritz Eichelberger
points out that salaries for some IT positions have climbed $20,000 to
$30,000 annually. The looming shortage is also prompting companies to
bolster their hiring policies, and requiring prospective IT staff to
possess social skills and industry acumen in addition to technical
knowledge.
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Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented
Washington Post (09/22/07) P. A1; Nakashima, Ellen
The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen travelers since the
mid 1990s, but the amount of information gathered and how it is used has
changed drastically since 2002, according to former Department of Homeland
Security officials. The system is used to collect electronic records on
the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive, or take cruises,
including information on who they travel with, the personal items they
carry, and even the books they bring, according to documents obtained by
civil liberty advocates and statements from government officials. The
personal travel records are preserved for up to 15 years. A group of civil
rights activists requested copies of their own travel records, which
included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried, and
the phone number of one of the activist's sisters in Japan. Department of
Homeland Security officials, including DHS secretary Michael Chertoff,
insist that the collection of such information is vital to making
connections between possible terrorist suspects, and that the department
only gathers information related to possible criminal activities. "I
flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what
travelers are reading," says DHS spokesman Russ Knocke. "We are completely
uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be
reading." Knocke says that if the traveler's behavior or belongings lead
an inspection officer to believe there may be a possible violation of the
law, it is the officer's duty to further scrutinize the traveler and to
record the incident.
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Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free
New York Times (09/24/07) P. C1; Lohr, Steve
Although mass production of the One Laptop Per Child's XO Laptop computers
is set to begin next month, initial orders for the machine have been less
than expected. "I have to some degree underestimated the difference
between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,"
says Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. To boost slow
sales, the project will offer Americans and Canadians the opportunity to
buy two laptops for $399, with one of the laptops to be donated to the
project while the other is sent to the buyer, either to be donated to a
local school or kept for personal use. The XO Laptop was built to
withstand the harsh conditions in rural villages, and is also extremely
energy efficient, with power consumption at 10 percent or less than
conventional laptops. Some members of the project were concerned that
American children might test the XO Laptops and write bad reviews online,
further decreasing sales, but in a focus-group of American children between
seven and 11 years old, the children were quite positive. The subjects
liked the peer-to-peer functionality and the environmentally conscious
power consumption. Originally, the project expected an initial release of
about 3 million laptops, but Nigeria and Brazil have not met their expected
orders of 1 million each. Peru, however, will buy and distribute 250,000
laptops over the next year, Mexico and Uruguay have made strong
commitments, and Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops. Negroponte
hopes to collect an additional $40 million, which would allow the group to
distribute 100,000 laptops to 20 countries.
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Opening Up the Patent Process
Technology Review (09/24/07) Schrock, Andrew
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is currently participating in a
limited trial of the Peer-to-Patent project, a process that uses online
collaboration to create a community around each patent application in an
effort to encourage public discussion and speed up the patent approval
process. The USPTO reports that 173,771 patent applications were approved
in 2006, but the backlog of more than 800,000 applications means the new
submissions have an approval period of up to 52 months. The current patent
application system restricts the conversation to the applicant and the
examiner reviewing the application, but the Peer-to-Patent system creates a
new level of openness and transparency to the review process. Online
participants can upload relevant information, express their opinions on the
patent, and point out prior art, expediting the application process. "The
U.S. patent system is based on disclosure, and the earlier we can get our
examiners the best prior art in front of them to help make that
patentability determination, the better," says USPTO deputy commissioner
for patent operations Peggy Focarino. The limited trial of the
Peer-to-Patent system involves 250 patent applications. U.S. patent agent
and Peer-to-Patent participant Mark Nowotarski, president of Markets,
Patents & Alliances, says Peer-to-Patent is an improvement because it
creates immediate feedback on prior art, but it could improve the system
even more by allowing applicants to make changes based on newly-found prior
art.
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The IT Godfather Speaks: Q&A With Charles M.
Herzfeld
Computerworld (09/24/07) Anthes, Gary
Charles M. Herzfeld, who was named the fifth director of the Advanced
Research Projects Agency in 1961, which was later renamed Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, and also served as director of Defense Research &
Engineering from 1990 to 1991, says DARPA has lost the ability and drive to
invest in long-range, high-risk projects. "There certainly has been a
change, and it's not for the better," Herzfeld says. "But it may be
inevitable. I'm not sure one could start the old ARPA nowadays. It would
be illegal, perhaps. We now live under tight controls by many people who
don't understand much about substance." Referencing the $25 million
investment the FBI made in explosives and weapons of mass destruction
"computer kits," many of which were abandoned due to functionality
problems, Herzfeld says, "We are becoming incapable of handling a
technology challenge of any major magnitude. We are losing the ability to
do big, complicated things." Herzfeld says it is not a technological
failure, but that we are missing leadership that understands what it is
doing, and that the whole system is "off the rails." He also says the
process for research funding at the National Science Foundation is too
risk-averse, which is hurting the country's ability to research big
problems. "If the system does not fund thinking about big problems, you
think about small problems," he says.
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Folmer Believes a Virtual World Doesn't Have to Be a
Visual One
University of Nevada, Reno (09/19/07) Putnam, Sue
University of Nevada, Reno assistant professor of computer science and
engineering Eelke Folmer recently received a grant from the National
Science Foundation to research the accessibility of online games such as
Second Life. "We're working with a massive multiplayer online game that
can potentially offer opportunities for social interactions regardless of
disabilities," says Folmer, adding that his work is intended to help
cognitive and physically disabled people enjoy the socialization and the
fun of multiplayer games. "Our goal is to improve the quality of life for
millions of people with disabilities and gaming is a part of that," he
says. Folmer is building a prototype client that will enable basic
accessibility to online games for blind users. Initially, Folmer's
prototype will allow blind players to navigate an environment using voice
commands, and will later be enhanced to enable players to interact with
each other. Folmer's objective will be challenging as the client and the
server for Second Life have only recently been made available as open
source code and no one has tried to make an accessible client for the
environment. "We hope to raise the awareness of game developers so they
see that not only is there a market here for them, but that it is really
part of their obligation to make these games accessible," Folmer says. "In
the case of blind players, there is a lot we can do with audio cues so that
it's still fun to play."
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Internet Pipes Not Ready to Burst, Researcher Says
Network World (09/19/07) Brown, Bob
Internet traffic is growing at a rate of about 50 percent to 60 percent
worldwide, according to the Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINTS) Web
site. The University of Minnesota Web site shows that Internet traffic
growth has slowed from the mid-to-late 90s claims that traffic was doubling
ever year or even every 100 days. However, there still could be some
problems for the network because more people are using video and content
that is heavy on bandwidth, and the exabytes of data in databases and other
places could find their way onto the Internet. "The key issue is how
quickly [if at all] that data will move to the Internet," says Andrew
Odlyzko, principal investigator for the MINTS Web site and a professor of
mathematics at the university. The level of Internet traffic is important
to the debate over net neutrality and the issue of how careful service
providers need to be when doling out bandwidth. The current level of
growth may offset advances in technology, according to MINTS. "Thus
although service providers are pushing to throttle customer traffic, an
argument can be made that they should instead be encouraging more traffic
and new applications, to fill the growing capacity of transmission links,"
says the Web site.
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Apple Co-Founder Looks to Robotics and Artificial
Intelligence
eWeek (09/22/07) Vizard, Michael
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is excited about the potential impact of
artificial intelligence on the field of robotics. Speaking at an event
hosted by ConnectWise, Wozniak said the robotics field should make robots
that are easy enough for users to program for different functions, rather
than develop systems that can only handle preprogrammed tasks. "People
want things that are useful as opposed to things that do a lot of little
things that we call artificial intelligence," he contends. Wozniak also
said he is optimistic that photonics on a chip will deliver the processing
capability needed to usher in next-generation artificial intelligence
applications, as current processing architectures cannot stand too much
heat. When chips have a terabyte of memory, systems will not need disk
drives any longer, and Wozniak added that he cannot wait for the day when
displays are more malleable and ubiquitous. "What I'd personally like is a
display that would be the shape of the earth running Google Maps," he said.
Wozniak also said he likes what he sees of software-as-a-service, but
thinks local computing resources will always be in demand.
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Tripedal Robot Swings Itself Into Action
New Scientist (09/20/07) Simonite, Tom
Researchers in the United States have built an unusual robot that has
three legs and flips its body upside-down with each step. STriDER
(Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot) has a graceful and
acrobatic gait, and saves energy with each stride. The tripedal robot
shifts its weight on two of its legs to fall away from the third leg and to
take a step forward, then flips its body 180 degrees as the third leg
swings up between the other legs just in time to catch the ground and
resume a tripod stance. STriDER is able to change directions by using a
different leg for swinging. "This is how humans walk, we do not actively
control our knees, we just let them swing," says Dennis Hong, a researcher
at Virginia Tech who heads the project. Although the prototype is 1.8
meters tall, the latest version of STriDER is 0.9 meters, and Hong says the
robot could be used to place sensors in areas that are difficult to reach.
Dave Barnes, a specialist in locomotion for planetary rovers at Britain's
Aberystwyth University, describes the robot as a biped with a walking
stick, and says it has its advantages. "A tripod stance is very stable,
you can just lock the joints," he says.
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An Oracle Part Man, Part Machine
New York Times (09/23/07) P. WK 1; Johnson, George
Today's algorithms are highly advanced calculations, but they are still
calculations, which is why computers have difficulty with tasks that humans
can perform easily such as describing pictures or the contents of Web
sites. To compensate for these shortcomings, companies are tapping human
resources. Google's Image Labeler creates a game where contestants try to
list as many descriptive words as possible. Google itself uses a similar
system to collect data during searches, so the user is gathering
information from the network while the network gathers information from the
user. In the 1950s, British psychiatrist and cyberneticist William Ross
Ashby predicted something similar to this process when he wrote about
intelligence amplification, human thinking leveraged by machines, or
software running on both hardware and "wetware." And in "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence," Alan Turing predicted a time when it would be
difficult to determine the difference between the responses of humans and
computers. Wikipedia is another example of an amalgamation of humans and
machines, an active digital resource constantly being edited by humans,
which is then in turn edited by machines to ensure the human additions are
correct and from unbiased sources. Enough computing power could allow the
entire monitoring process to be semi-automated by automatically scanning
the database and marking suspicious edits for humans to inspect, bringing
the merger of humans and machines another step closer.
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Summit to Address Online Threats to Security
The Tartan (09/24/07) Kang, Eugene
Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab will host the second annual
Anti-Phishing Working Group e-crime Researchers' Summit on Oct. 4 and 5.
The summit will feature top e-crime research experts, including Cigital CTO
Gary McGraw, who will deliver a keynote address on security threats in
online multi-player games. "With hundreds of thousands of interacting
users," McGraw says, "today's online games are a bellwether of modern
software yet to come. The kinds of attack and defense technique I [will]
describe are tomorrow's security techniques." The summit will focus on
security threats created by massive multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPG) and phishing, but will also discuss the precautions needed to
prevent e-crime and how to determine the risk of a particular threat.
McGraw says that MMORPGs threaten not only the security of individual
players but the welfare of the entire online gaming community. Panelists
from the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society, Indiana
University, and People for the American Way will address the issue of
phishing, focusing on how phishing could potentially affect the 2008
elections and how to prevent phishing using both new and old techniques.
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A Global Climate of Change
HPC Wire (09/21/07) Vol. 16, No. 38, Lazou, Christopher
The National Center for Atmospheric Research's bi-annual Computing in
Atmospheric Sciences workshop on the application of high performance
computing to meteorology was attended by dozens of meteorologists and HPC
experts from large-scale computing centers in 11 countries. A central
theme of the workshop was the need to refine climate models so that the
potentially devastating effects of global warming can be addressed
realistically by mitigation strategies. Such efforts require computing
muscle for data assimilation, internal oscillation modeling, external
forces forecasting, and hurricane/climate feedback. The Community Climate
System Model (CCSM) will expand over the next several years to encompass
reactive troposphere chemistry, aerosol physics and microphysics,
biogeochemistry, ecosystem dynamics, and the impact of urbanization and
land use change. The range of earth system science that can be
investigated with CCSM and similarly complex climate models will expand
significantly as a consequence. The computing power necessities for
next-generation climate models cannot be fulfilled without substantial
advances in computer hardware, software, and storage, and the momentum
building with sustained teraflops computing performance is allowing
meteorologists to transition from climate to Earth System Modeling.
Supercomputer systems suffer from classic climate model problems, including
an imbalance between processor speed, memory bandwidth, and communication
bandwidth between processors; greater programming and optimization
difficulty; and a weak relationship between peak performance and
performance on actual working climate model programs. Some of the
presentations at the workshop focused on grid computing's prospects for
facilitating international collaboration between climate modeling
efforts.
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When the Numbers Crunch
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (09/21/07) Arthur, Charles
The collapse of U.K. mortgage lender Northern Rock is largely due to a
software-driven problem, not because the software did not work, but because
it could not determine how its decisions would affect people's behavior,
writes Charles Arthur. When the software said to make a loan, the bankers
did so without question. Although a certain number of sub-prime mortgages
are expected to collapse, it was impossible to predict how people would
react upon hearing how many loans failed, highlighting how easy it is to
forget that software drives much of today's money market. The problem with
financial software programs is that they cannot calculate the random
patterns of human behavior, such as people trying to buy a house lying
about their finances and people selling the house lying about the interest
rate. No amount of programming will be able to predict such behavior,
particularly when people hear that their mortgage lender is built on such
uncertain foundations. Statisticians do know a technique, known as the
Monte Carlo method, for working out what such random inputs will produce by
repeatedly running the calculation until it produces an answer that
explains what makes the simulation deviate so drastically. This method,
however, is a far cry from a program that can predict how humans will
behave.
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Coding and Computing Join Forces
Science (09/21/07) Vol. 317, No. 5845, P. 1691; Chazelle, Bernard
Coding and computing are being combined to improve error correction codes,
and the effects of these efforts will be felt across all kinds of
communication devices, writes Bernard Chazelle, a professor of computer
science at Princeton University. List decoding, for instance, is a
breakthrough that allows a message to be retrieved from its encoded version
even if all but 1 percent of its information has been garbled, and the work
that led to this milestone was pioneered by computational theorists.
"Thinking now of the encoded message as another problem's 'solution sheet,'
we conclude that even an algorithm so bad that it solves the new 'problem'
erroneously 99 percent of the time can be used to recover the message
correctly, and hence solve the original problem, all of the time," Chazelle
explains. "Conversely, a problem known to be hard on just a few inputs can
be transformed into one that is hard on nearly all of them." Such problems
are highly desirable for cryptographers because they can be utilized to
generate hard-to-decode encryption, Chazelle notes. He concludes that the
search for a practical solution that addresses private information
retrieval is far from over, and a key challenge on the horizon is figuring
out a way to convert the mathematics of local decryption into working
privacy tools.
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Countervailing Forces Propel Patent Reform
EE Times (09/17/07)No. 1493, P. 1; Merritt, Rick
Congress, the court system, and the patent office are all pushing patent
reform, often in different directions, and currently no one can be certain
what the end result will be. Critics of the recently passed House bill,
and the upcoming companion bill in the Senate, say that recent rulings from
the courts and the patent office make the legislation redundant and
unnecessary. Patent attorney and Licensing Executive Society President
Allen Baum says the idea of patent reform is finally moving ahead, but no
one is discussing its long-term impact and if the new changes will balance
the system too much to one side. Baum says the issues surrounding patent
reform are so complex that the LES has been unable to develop a unified
position. Banking and consulting firm Ocean Tomo CEO James Malackowski
argues that there has been almost no coordination in Washington on patent
reform, and recently called for a cabinet-level position on
intellectual-property policy and enforcement. United States Patent and
Trademark Office director Jon Dudas countered by saying the administration
has discussed patent reform with "scores of legislators," including
sponsors of the House and Senate bills and judges from a variety of
districts. The strongest opposition to the reform bills actually has come
from the administration, which released a statement the day the bill was
voted on in the House that says the administration disagrees with at least
seven elements in the bill, though it does support switching to a
first-to-file system.
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Election '08: Seeking a 'Tech President'
Business Week (09/19/07) Ricadela, Aaron
Presidential candidates are courting the tech sector, partly because
Silicon Valley has become a key fundraising source. "We want to make sure
the next President is a 'tech President'--that they understand how
innovation happens and have some concrete ideas about how to keep the tech
economy growing," says Google's Adam Kovacevich. Among the promises
candidates are making to the tech industry to capture funding and support
is a boost in the federal research and development budget, greater
importation of highly educated foreign workers into the United States, and
improvements to U.S. math and science education. Major tech companies have
a big stake in an increase in federal R&D funding, as they stand to gain
tremendously from new markets engendered by technology breakthroughs.
President Bush allocated $22 billion to the National Science Foundation,
$17 billion to the Energy Department's Office of Science, and $2.7 billion
to the National Institute of Standards & Technology from 2008 to 2010 with
his signing of the America Competes Act, but congressional appropriation of
the funding has yet to occur, so tech companies are proceeding with
caution. A curtailing of allegedly trivial, innovation-choking litigation
by patent holders through patent reform is also desirable by the tech
sector. Tech companies also want more foreign workers allowed in the
country to fill a void in the tech workforce. Meanwhile, Democrats highly
favor proposals to improve the state of math, science, engineering, and
computer science education in grades K through 12; Democrats Hillary
Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama want broader changes than simple
funding increases, with Clinton pledging to vastly raise the size and
number of NSF fellowships, and make diversity a required criterion for
federal education and research grants to encourage women and minorities to
pursue math, science, and engineering-related fields.
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