Software Piracy: A Growing Problem
For Science, Nanotech Poses Big Unknowns
An anti-nanotechnology movement is brewing, sparked by health and environmental fears that industry advocates claim are mostly fueled by popular fiction. The nanotech industry and the government are trying to understand why the public is so distrustful of nanotech through ...
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Technology and Worker Efficiency
Common wisdom dictates that technology is chiefly responsible for the American economy's productivity gains over the last few years. Current research indicates, however, that the productivity gains are not so much attributable to technology but its integration with organization capital, ...
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IETF Closes in on Linking Geographic Info, Presence
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is nearing the final stages for approval of a privacy standard for geography-aware presence technology. Instant messaging first introduced presence technology several years ago, and the concept has matured since then with nuanced status messages such as ...
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Vulnerable Servers Warned
The Federal Trade Commission has teamed up with government agencies from 26 countries to press owners of Internet servers to close any open relays or open proxies. As part of Operation Secure Your Server, the government agencies will email tens of thousands of server owners to check their ...
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Mood Ring Measured in Megahertz
Sandia National Laboratories' Mentor/PAL program uses off-the-shelf sensors and face-recognition software to provide an environment in which collaborators are kept apprised of their own--and each other's--moods and performance levels in order to optimize decision-making in high-risk ...
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Is the Superworm a Mere Myth?
Security experts such as Harvey Mudd College's Geoffrey Kuenning believe a superworm attack against the cyber-infrastructure of the United States is an inevitability, given the growing frequency and extent of worm and virus outbreaks in 2003. Kuenning cited last year's massive blackout as proof ...
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More Scary Tales Involving Big Holes in Web-Site Security
The market for Web application security is heating up due to several high-profile security flaws that have been discovered in corporate Web sites. These flaws open the door to incidents of industrial espionage and identity theft, as hackers can use the flaws to gain access to customer ...
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New Software Helps Lift "Fog of War"
The "fog" that often hinders military operations could be lifted with the help of a software system developed by University of Buffalo researchers that integrates and shares data collected by air and ground sensors to monitor and anticipate the movements of friendly and unfriendly forces, ...
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Memory Evolution: Survival of the Smallest
Flash memory cards are becoming more spacious, smaller in size, cheaper, and more numerous as their market grows rapidly; but the constitution of that market is expected to change over the coming years as the former frontrunner CompactFlash format falls behind the more technically flexible ...
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Flexible Display Screens Readied for Production
Flexible electronic displays are finally starting to edge toward mass production, starting with Royal Philips Electronics' rollable screen that could be fabricated at a rate of 1 million units a year by the end of 2005, according to Bas J.E. van Rens of Philips' Polymer Vision division. The ...
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Giving Robots a Human Face
Most robotics experts frown at the idea of building robots that closely resemble human beings, on the grounds that they will not be accepted because of the "Uncanny Valley" maxim, which posits that machines with increasingly human-like features will make people uncomfortable. This ...
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Nanotech's Big Challenge: Getting to Market
Julie Chen, director of the National Science Foundation's nanomanufacturing program, must shepherd nanotechnology projects out of the research and development phase and into the business sector. It is a heavy responsibility: Though many nanotech applications may not be ready for the ...
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The Future of U.S. Tech Employment
America needs to boost its federal research and development and create regional strategies for countering globalization, says National Innovation Initiative co-chairman Wayne Clough. Along with co-chairman and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, Clough is charged with formulating ways to keep the United ...
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Researchers on a Roll With Flexible Computers
Televisions and screens that can be rolled up instead of folded could become a reality thanks to a flexible organic light emitting device (FOLED) developed by University of Toronto engineers. Materials science professor Zheng-Hong Lu, with the assistance of post-doctoral fellow Sijin Han and ...
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Dancing the Quantum Dream
A quantum computer carries such promised capabilities as ultrafast database searches and a "virtual lab" where the behavior of materials can be predicted without actually fabricating them, but a practical quantum computer must be immune to decoherence, in which computations are undone ...
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Dealing With the Darker Side
Plans by Benetton and Wal-Mart to monitor inventory with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags were met with strong protest by privacy advocates worried that the technology could be abused by criminals and the government by keeping track of product purchases without consumers' ...
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Software Piracy: A Growing Problem
The Business Software Alliance estimates that the illegal copying and distribution of software in the United States added up to 105,000 lost jobs, $2 billion in lost revenue, $5.3 billion in lost salaries, and over $1.4 billion in lost tax revenue in 2002 alone; despite this and worries of ...
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