'Exotic' Programming Tools Go Mainstream
eWeek (02/06/06) Coffee, Peter
New releases of such programming tools as LISP, PROLOG, and others have
brought what were previously considered exotic applications out of
obscurity and closer to mainstream Web-facing technologies. A recent test
of Franz's Allegro Common LISP 8.0 far exceeded the performance speeds of
previous versions, with its source editor, debugger, and other coding
devices rivaling the most advanced Java applications. With its rigidly
consistent syntax and incremental compilation, Allegro CL offers
regular-expression parsing that is Perl-compatible, database interface
drivers, and XML parsing. AllegroCache is the gem of version 8.0, however,
offering freestanding and client/server transactional database
applications. Developers are also harnessing the practical capabilities of
neural nets, PROLOG, and genetic algorithms, the previous versions of which
had been the untenable province of artificial intelligence hype. Aimed at
creating extensible and adaptive frameworks, these applications are rapidly
compiling imperfect solutions that are nevertheless of practical use in
today's environment. Researchers are currently using PROLOG for
speech-recognition applications, such as the implementation of its SICStus
Prolog in the Clarissa speech-recognition program that helps facilitate
communication among crew members of the International Space Station. The
Regulus spoken-dialog processor, which includes SICStus Prolog, brings the
swift application of statistics to speech recognition, says Manny Rayner of
NASA's Ames Research Center. "You can develop a command grammar fairly
quickly, without having to collect a huge amount of data," he said.
Science Applications International's Larry Deschaine has used the
technology to glean meaning from data sets, rather than the spoken word,
running code on a Web page in milliseconds that would have taken weeks on a
remote server.
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Torvalds Says DRM Isn't Necessarily Bad
CNet (02/03/06) Shankland, Stephen
Linus Torvalds recently issued a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list
contending that the restrictions on digital rights management (DRM)
proposed in the update to the GPL threaten to compromise security.
"Digital signatures and cryptography aren't just 'bad DRM.' They very much
are 'good security' too," Torvalds wrote. The Free Software Foundation has
explicitly repudiated the use of DRM in tandem with GPL software in the
draft update, though Torvalds maintains that DRM is useful for signing
software with secret keys, or for enabling computers to run only versions
of software that are demonstrably authorized. Torvalds has already
announced that Linux will continue to operate under the existing version of
the GPL, in a move that is seen as a slight to the Free Software
Foundation. Although the DRM provision is intended to stop the practice of
companies such as TiVo implementing only authorized versions of Linux,
Torvalds believes that the market should dictate the behavior of hardware
companies, rather than software developers, noting that if programmers
object to the proprietary provisions of a hardware company, they can shop
elsewhere. Torvalds claims the proposed GPLv3 oversteps its bounds in the
name of a crusading ideology, whereas GPLv2 simply offered a level playing
field where all source code is equally accessible. As far as the content
of movies is concerned, Torvalds suggests that people use an open license
from an organization such as Creative Commons, which would eventually
render DRM encryption obsolete if enough content was licensed in that
fashion.
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Swedes Go High-Tech to Crack Stradivari Code
Washington Post (02/06/06) P. A6; Gugliotta, Guy
For the almost 270 years since the death of the great violin-maker Antonio
Stradivari, craftsmen have toiled endlessly and without success to
replicate the essence of his unique creations, of which roughly 650
survive. A team of Swedish scientists has jumped into the effort to
duplicate the Stradivarius, proposing to create a computer model of the
violin and adjust it until the timbre is perfect match, rather than trying
to replicate the original part by part. While measuring the geometry,
vibration, and frequency of the violin is relatively easy, according to Mid
Sweden University's Mats Tinnsten, it is more difficult to duplicate the
properties of wood, which are inherently unique. Shaving and sculpting the
wood is an intricate process, one which Stradivari conducted by ear, and
which Tinnsten and his team have been using a computer to perfect.
"Violin-makers reduce the thickness of the wood with a knife, and do it in
different places until they are satisfied," said Tinnsten. "We use the
same method, but in the computer. We take an electronic blank and carve
it." The Swedish team's approach is to craft two tops, using the first as
a test to calibrate the parameters, which are then loaded back into the
computer to produce a schematic for a second top. Tinnsten has yet to try
out his two-top method, though his research met with a warm response when
presented at the International Congress on Sound and Vibration, and he
hopes to apply the technique to duplicating a real Stradivarius. While
violins that outplay Stradivari's creations exist, he was an acknowledged
master of consistency, producing world-class violins through a prescribed
formula that no one has been able to define. Some have suggested that the
wood that he used was the product of unique climatic conditions, while
others point to the wood's absence of organic materials, which could mean
that replicating the original would require a special treating process,
confounding the efforts of Tinnsten's computer simulations.
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Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court
New York Times (02/04/06) P. A1; Hansell, Saul
The Justice Department's recent request to four major Internet
companies--America Online, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google--for data about
their users' search queries has drawn attention to the issue of Internet
privacy. Although America Online, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have complied with
the request, Google has refused it. The case does not involve information
that can be linked to individuals, but it has cast new light on what
privacy, if any, Internet users can expect for the data trail they leave
online. In many cases, the answer is clouded by ambiguities in the law
that governs electronic communications such as telephone calls and email.
Under the 1996 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a court order is
generally required for investigators to read email, although the law is
inconsistent on this, treating unopened items differently from opened ones.
However, the law is unclear about what standard is required to force
Internet companies to turn over search information to criminal
investigators or civil litigants. "The big story is the privacy law that
protects your email does not protect your Google search terms," said Orin
Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a
former lawyer in the computer crime section of the Justice Department.
Other lawyers contend that the law that provides protection for email
content, or even the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable
searches, could be applied to data about Web searching, although the issue
has not been tested in court.
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Vision Through Sound
Toronto Star (02/05/06) Steed, Judy
A veteran of Xerox's storied PARC team and a recently named senior
researcher on Microsoft's international research team, Bill Buxton is
focusing his efforts on improving the computer's user interface in an
attempt to humanize technology. Buxton came to technology through his love
of music and his study of the scientific properties of sound. Buxton saw
his first computer in 1969, which he describes as being as large as 10
refrigerators; the National Research Council (NRC) scientists who developed
and maintained it were devoted to understanding human-computer interaction
in the belief that computers would one day be significant. While the NRC
system remains obscure, Buxton credits it with providing the origins of
Alias Systems, Sheridan College, and the rest of Canada's leading computer
animation industry. Joining the University of Toronto's computer science
department with dubious qualifications, Buxton went on to raise $250,000 to
fund his "Structured Sound Synthesis Project," which led to the development
of one of the earliest digital synthesizers. Drawing on his experience at
PARC, Buxton thinks as much about assimilating his ideas into a company's
culture and transforming that culture as he does about the ideas
themselves. "It's not what you know, it's how you adapt to changing
circumstances," Buxton said. "A company that can't adapt is not
intelligent and will eventually fail." After a stint at Alias where his
research helped the company's 3-D animation software net a 2003 Oscar,
Buxton was drawn to Microsoft for the interdisciplinary research
environment that is the first in history to boast talent that exceeds the
PARC brain trust. Buxton is now working on ways to tweak Microsoft's user
interface that will be amenable to consumers.
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IT Employees Recapturing Power of 1990s
TechNewsWorld (02/04/06) Koprowski, Gene
After six straight quarters of hiring increases, the expanding IT economy
is beginning to reclaim some of the strength it exhibited in the 1990s,
putting power back in the hands of employees. Drawing on data collected
from more than 1,400 CIOs, Robert Half Technology estimates a 12 percent
hiring increase in the first quarter of this year, with the most
precipitous growth coming in the Mountain states. The most sought after
skill set remains Microsoft administration, followed by wireless network
management and SQL server management. Among technology specialties, 22
percent of CIOs reported the greatest demand for networking, 13 percent
identified help desk/end-user support, while 11 percent named applications
development. These factors combine to create a rosy picture for job
seekers, said Robert Half's Katherine Spencer Lee. "Competition among
employers for the most highly skilled candidates means a more favorable
employment market for job seekers," where many applicants are receiving
multiple offers, prompting managers to expedite the hiring process. The
survey found that 23 percent of the CIOs intend to increase their staff,
while just 2 percent expect reductions. In addition, the rising costs of
outsourcing are undermining its popularity, as companies are figuring out
how to leverage more productivity out of their in-house employees,
accompanied by the realization that, far from being the time waster that
they were originally considered, online tools can actually increase
productivity, as workers can conduct their personal business without having
to step out of the office.
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The Future of Speech
PC Magazine (01/27/06) Peterson, Robyn
In a recent interview, IBM researchers David Nahamoo and Roberto Sicconi
discussed their speech recognition technology, capable of understanding the
subtleties of the English language, translating in real time, and producing
subtitles for television broadcasts. Nahamoo notes that speech-recognition
technology is still in its early stages, and that machines must be exposed
to a greater variety of speech, such as different contexts, applications,
and vocabularies to produce better models. He hopes that IBM's Superhuman
Speech Recognition program will be able to match a human's ability
transcribe conversation in five years, though an actual understanding of
the meaning of language is well beyond the transcription stage. Speech
recognition technology will enable cross-linguistic communication for basic
conversations, such as asking directions or ordering a meal in a
restaurant, far sooner than it will see application in a business setting.
Speech recognition programs also have difficulty conveying inflections and
conversational concepts, such as sarcasm and humor. Consumer expectations
of speech recognition technology also far outpace its ability, as machines
often miss words and, by Sicconi's estimation, converse on the level of a 1
or 2-year-old child. In noisy environments audio information is not always
sufficient for speech recognition devices, so the researchers supplement
their devices with the ability to detect visual information, such as
recognizing when a speaker opens his mouth, though that capability only
exists in prototypes right now. Human lip readers only have accuracy rates
between 30 percent and 40 percent, so the likelihood of an all-visual
speech recognition device is remote. As with many other of IBM's research
initiatives, Nahamoo and Sicconi are developing the speech recognition
technology with open-source standards.
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Making Friends and Influencing People Made Easier by
Talking Semantics
IST Results (02/03/06)
The IST-funded VIKEF project is working on a Semantic Web-based
architecture and software development environment to help participants at
trade fairs and scientific conferences pick and choose whom to socialize
with, and help organizers better synchronize their events to the latest
market and research trends. "By creating a software environment in which
ontologies [the meanings and relationships among terms and concepts in a
domain] can be applied semi-automatically to information, searching for and
obtaining the information you are looking for becomes easier and more
precise," says project coordinator Ruben Riestra. "Prior to a trade fair,
potential participants would be able to browse the catalog of exhibitors
semantically to find people, organizations, and products that are of
interest to them without having to trawl through mountains of information."
The application of semantics gives the system explicit rather than
implicit information, facilitating more intelligent results, Riestra
explains. The VIKEF partners are concurrently pursuing the use of semantic
technologies for e-learning and the augmentation of information sharing
between different actors in the automotive industry.
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Leading Scientists Help Guide New Nationwide Networking
Infrastructure
PRNewswire (02/01/06)
National LambdaRail (NLR) has formed the NLR Science Research Council
(NSRC) to focus on making the consortium's resources available to a wider
range of researchers. NLR chief scientist David J. Farber, a professor at
Carnegie Mellon University, will chair the NSRC. Other members of the NSRC
include Charlie Catlett of the Argonne National Laboratory, James Cordes of
Cornell University, Kelvin Drogemeier of the University of Oklahoma, Mark
Ellisman of the University of California at San Diego, Harvey Newman of the
California Institute of Technology, Ed Seidel of Louisiana State
University, and Larry Smarr of the California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology. "Providing active
scientists an integral role in NLR will help ensure it remains responsive
to the needs of researchers across a wide range of scientific disciplines,"
says Smarr, who is also a professor in the Jacobs School's Department of
Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California at San
Diego. The universities and private companies behind NLR are working to
provide an optical, Ethernet, and IP networking infrastructure across the
country. The Extensible Terascale Facility and OptIPuter projects
supported by the National Science Foundation, the UltraScience project of
the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Hybrid Optical Packet Infrastructure
(HOPI) project of Internet2 are all using the optical networking
capabilities of the NLR infrastructure.
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Millions Required for RFID Research
RFID Journal (02/03/06) Roberti, Mark
The RFID Academic Convocation drew 100 top-end users and academics
involved in RFID last week. The participants learned about RFID
collaboration opportunities around the globe, established fundamental
research areas that would meet industry RFID requirements, and laid out a
plan for market opportunities and technologies. "Those of us in the
industry came away with a better understanding of the research being done
around the world, and I think the researchers came away with a better
understanding of the needs of the various industries represented at the
event," says Ted Ng, director of emerging technology at McKesson. Network
protocol standards, specialized tags for airplane and auto parts,
applications for micro- and nano-manufacturing technologies, and new bio
and material sciences development in packaging were identified as research
areas that need funding. Over the next five years, more than $100 million
could be needed for such research areas, according to Stephen Miles, a
researcher at the MIT Auto-ID Labs and chair of the RFID Academic
Convocation conference committee. An "Internet of Things" could result
from such research efforts, says John Williams, director of the MIT Auto-ID
Labs, host of the gathering. "The Internet of Things to make billions of
physical objects visible over the Web will require a secure and scalable
infrastructure that is more challenging to build than the original
Internet," he says.
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Those Cables Behind the Television May Become
Obsolete
New York Times (02/06/06) P. C2; Markoff, John
A group of IBM researchers this week is expected to report that they have
used standard chip-making materials to create a high-speed wireless
technology that could possibly eliminate bulky cables that now connect
electronic devices in the living room. Previously, high-frequency wireless
technology has relied on exotic semiconductor materials such as gallium
arsenide that are expensive and hard to miniaturize. The new technology
would be perfect for moving HDTV video signals around the home wirelessly
in the unlicensed 60 GHz portion of the radio frequency spectrum, according
to researchers. This is called the "millimeter wave band," and it is
capable of carrying more data than other portions of the spectrum. The
high-frequency portion of the radio spectrum usually does not penetrate
walls, so it may be more acceptable to Hollywood and the cable and DSL
telecommunications industry, which have been worried about the risks of
piracy posed by some wireless technologies, says Envisioneering consultant
Richard Doherty. IBM researchers say although millimeter wave technology
would have a short range in the home, it could have significant
applications as an inexpensive alternative in point-to-point communications
systems that are popular as data links on corporate campuses.
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The Human Code
University of Texas at Austin (01/30/06) Green, Tim
Kazushige Goto of the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced
Computing Center is successfully boosting the speed and efficiency of
supercomputers with his handwritten code, which can often outclass complex
programs. "I write down the code on the paper and try to find the best way
for the specific architecture," he explains. Goto's techniques optimize
the way in which the supercomputers' chips carry out certain groups of
calculations or math kernels: The researcher rigorously programs the chips
to schedule the given calculations in the most efficient order, and then
reconfigures the order in which basic linear algebra subroutines (BLAS) are
performed to increase their efficiency. Goto's GotoBLAS software is
usually an improvement on BLAS software provided by the companies that
design and build the supercomputers, and he builds his software into a
mobile BLAS library that scientific programmers can employ to speed up
their applications. Researchers can use GotoBLAS without altering their
own applications and lower the overall execution cycle. Goto's code is
used to benchmark the performance of four of the world's 11 fastest
supercomputers. Linpack performance can be boosted by several percent with
Goto's BLAS. Performance in certain scientific applications can be raised
by up to 50 percent.
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When Music and Technology Merge
The Ring--University of Victoria (02/06) Lironi, Maria
The University of Victoria sees its relatively new joint program in
computer science and music as an opportunity to draw students to technology
who might have some fears about pursuing computer-intensive studies.
Launched in September 2004, the program is only the second of its kind in
Canada. The combined major introduces students to the fundamentals of
computer science and music, but eliminates private lessons in voice or an
instrument. Students take courses in music, science, computers, recording
techniques, acoustics of music, audio signal processing, and music
information retrieval, and also take a computer music seminar. "Today,
pretty much the whole process of recording, distributing, and producing
music is done through computers," says Dr. George Tzanetakis, a computer
science professor who teaches music information retrieval, which involves
analyzing music collections in digital format. Computer technology is also
used to present live music performances. UVic also offers electrical
engineering students a computer music option, and both programs have
attracted 43 students, including Ben Rancourt, a computer science major who
switched to the joint program, even though he will spend two more years
working towards his degree. "But if you have a very strong interest in
technology and music, this is definitely worth taking," says Rancourt.
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College Receives Training Grant for Cybersecurity
Maryland Gazette (02/01/06) Sedam, Sean R.
Montgomery College is set to form a partnership with other area community
colleges, universities, high schools, and the Metropolitan Washington
Council of Governments to develop and operate a regional cybersecurity
center called the CyberWATCH (Cybersecurity: Washington Area Technician and
Consortium Headquarters) project. The project will be funded by a $3
million grant from the National Science Foundation over a period of four
years. "There is a demand in this area for skilled cybersecurity
technicians who can protect our nation�s information against intrusion,"
says CyberWATCH director David Hall. One of the center's goals will be to
address the shortage of cybersecurity technicians and training programs in
the area. Montgomery College will build and maintain a remote information
technology security lab, create a program in cybersecurity training, and
develop internships for students and training and externships for faculty.
The consortium, which will allow students from specific schools to log on
to the lab and learn router, switch, firewall, workstation and server
security, includes the University of Maryland, College Park, George Mason
University, and George Washington University, among others.
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Esther Dyson's Perspective
IT Manager's Journal (02/03/06) Amis, Rod
One of the more encouraging trends in IT today is that more users are
rejecting the choices being offered to them and are taking control, says
Esther Dyson, former interim chairperson of ICANN. Users are refusing to
be positioned as only a segment to be marketed to, and are being more
selective about products and services. As a result, the software industry,
for example, has responded by offering more intuitive interfaces, and
enterprises are providing more user-oriented features and functions such as
blogs, Dyson says. On the issue of collaborating with businesses in
Eastern Europe and Russia, Dyson, who remains active in IT development
around the world, says CIOs must keep in mind that they are dealing with
other cultures in which people may not embrace our "in your face" style.
"They are more suspicious of authority, frankly, and often don't have the
habit of doing or starting things on their own," says Dyson, currently
editor of Release 1.0 and organizer of the PC Forum conference. She says
open source software has not caught on in the region, given the "price,"
adding that the open source community will need to offer training similar
to the initiatives set up by companies such as Microsoft and Oracle
locally. Dyson's focus for the future is to aid the industry in the
development of a more friendly, human, and manageable infrastructure.
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Morphing the Mainframe
Computerworld (01/30/06) P. 29; Mitchell, Robert L.
The mainframe's future may be one of absorption into the distributed
computing sector or its emergence as a distinct platform, and critical to
the latter outcome is big iron's successful incorporation of technologies
such as Fibre Channel, Unix, InfiniBand, and Java. The mainframe still
dominates complex environment applications, but distributed Unix- and
Windows-based systems are chipping away at the mainframe installed base's
low end, while the war for the midrange application domain is raging.
Mainframe hardware and software costs must become more competitive and more
agile software architectures must be successfully implemented on mainframe
systems at scale if big iron is to survive, and this requires the adoption
of industry-standard technologies. Unisys general manager Chander Khanna
says the mainframe's hardware platform is losing relevance. "It's more of
what's in the operating environment and what's in the middleware," he
notes. The mergence of mainframes and additional open architectures
entails a heavy reliance on virtualization technology, according to 451
Group analyst John Abbott. Proprietary mainframe operating systems are
advantageous in that they provide a trustworthy key management platform,
along with "efficiency, isolation, the address spaces, the encryption,
and...an efficient clustering model," reports IBM fellow Guru Rao. He adds
that the ultimate fate of more than four decades' and over $1 trillion
worth of legacy mainframe code is the most formidable challenge.
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Automated Capture of Thumbnails and Thumbshots for Use by
Metadata Aggregation Services
D-Lib Magazine (01/06) Vol. 12, No. 1,Foulonneau, Muriel; Habing, Thomas
G.; Cole, Timothy W.
A project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) seeks
to make heterogeneous resources available on the UIUC CIC metadata portal
more understandable through the embedding of thumbnails and thumbshots of
image and Web page resources in the context of the Open Archives Initiative
(OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. UIUC supplements thumbnails
provided by partner data suppliers with a process that automatically
generates thumbnails and thumbshots from the Web pages resources referred
to by the metadata records. The CIC metadata portal collects metadata
describing over 500,000 primarily digital resources from 11 Midwestern
universities, and renders the metadata searchable; each participating
university has deployed at least one OAI data provider, and links or
references to thumbnails were originally absent from the metadata. UIUC
deployed distributed thumbnail and remotely captured thumbnail processes
with Thumbgrabber, an open-source application developed for
thumbnail/thumbshot aggregation and maintenance. Thumbgrabber can generate
thumbnails based on the largest image found, the portion of the Web page
that can be displayed in a window of the size specified, or the first image
or Web page portion that fulfills the dimensional requirements. The
challenge is to make Thumbgrabber accommodate the various technologies and
potential instabilities of the Web environment in order to dependently
produce consistent image surrogates from URLs for both images and Web pages
as pointed to by aggregated metadata records. The thumbnails exist as an
external document held in a distinct location, and the need to synchronize
information in metadata records, the resources they refer to, and the
thumbnails/thumbshots presents the conundrum of the best way to
interconnect these elements and asynchronously support updates.
Collaboration between data and service providers is critical to the
deployment of thumbnails and thumbshots in the context of metadata
harvesting.
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Make Your Development Process More Transparent
Software Test & Performance (01/06) Vol. 3, No. 1, P. 26; Ragan, Tracy
Everyone from developers to quality assurance managers to business
managers can understand the software development process irrespective of
their IT expertise through the Eclipse Foundation's Application Lifecycle
Framework (ALF) project, writes Catalyst Systems CEO Tracy Ragan. The
project will facilitate communications between tools that support the
application life cycle process via SOAP transactions through a unified
communications framework, allowing tools to exchange information that
testers ought to obtain in anticipation of release delivery, such as the
requirements initiating the new release of the software; the features added
to the release and the person who requested them; the person who approved
the release to production; and the impact of the changes to the application
in general. A common vocabulary between application life cycle tools, as
well as "service flows," will be defined by the Eclipse ALF project,
instilling a degree of transparency in the software development process.
The end result will be tools that can share critical data no matter who
their vendor is, according to Ragan. No single team will employ all of the
project's tools independently; all teams will use the tools to share
information. The Eclipse ALF project will help companies comply with new
IT governance regulations. "As application life cycle tools become more
integrated with ALF, you will be able to gather information that will help
you determine the quality of the software even before you execute the first
test case," Ragan concludes.
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