New Project Lets Real Users Gang Up on Software
Bugs
UW-Madison (06/05/06) Mattmiller, Brian
The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project, led by University of Wisconsin
computer science professor Ben Liblit, attempts to bring statistical
precision to the murky process of post-deployment software debugging. Due
to the mounting complexity of software and its numerous interactions with
hardware, networks, other software, and especially humans, it is impossible
to detect or anticipate every bug in a program, Liblit says. "That
behavior is so dynamic that it becomes useful to look at [software
programs] almost like they were some sort of organic system, whose complete
behavior is unknowable to you," Liblit said. "But there are behavior
trends you can observe in a statistically significant way." Liblit infuses
binary code with an instrumentation that generates a random sample of
thousands of software programs in use by real people, while ensuring that
privacy is safeguarded. The feedback reports are funneled into a database
where Liblit uses statistical modeling techniques to identify bugs that
occur with sufficient frequency to disrupt many users. Liblit then
prepares a bug report that he sends to the software engineers who can
actually fix the problem. ACM recognized Liblit's doctoral dissertation on
cooperative bug isolation as the best in the world last year among the
nominated engineering and computer science dissertations. IBM and
Microsoft have expressed interest in Liblit's research, which has already
been implemented by some strains of the open-source community. Liblit
believes that the real value of his system is its potential to dramatically
improve the currently ad hoc process of post-deployment software debugging.
Because companies race to bring their products to market, some software
applications are never subjected to thorough pre-deployment testing,
instead leaving end users and tech support personnel to deal with the
bugs.
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Fed Plan for Cybersecurity R&D Released
Government Computer News (06/02/06) Wait, Patience
In its first step toward developing a coordinated focus on basic
cybersecurity research, the government has released its Federal Plan for
Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development. The
plan identifies several trends that are likely to exacerbate the need for
new cybersecurity tools in the coming years, including the growing
complexity of IT networks and systems, the migration of telecommunications
infrastructure toward a unified architecture, and the increasing uptake of
wireless technology. The plan does not address policy or budget issues,
but instead makes 10 general policy recommendations. The plan suggests
that research funding should be allocated to projects that complement the
long-term projects being developed by the private sector. Research funding
should be used to develop innovative tools that defend against the most
pressing threats, according to the plan, which also recommends that
cybersecurity and information assurance research and development become an
independent agency and a higher budgetary priority. In addition to
increased coordination among agencies, the plan calls for funding to ensure
that developers make security a consideration from the outset, as well as
an examination of the security implications of such emerging technologies
as quantum and optical computing. The plan also calls for new analytical
tools to measure systems vulnerabilities. Under the plan, government and
industry would partner to develop a cybersecurity roadmap and remain in
communication about their respective projects. A broad collaboration among
government, the IT industry, the research community, and end users would
also work to develop, test, and implement a next-generation Internet with
improved security.
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Unpacking Pecking Orders to Get the Gist of Web
Gab
USC Viterbi School of Engineering (06/05/06) Mankin, Eric
Researchers at the University of Southern California's Information
Sciences Institute (ISI) have developed a system that can statistically
determine the contents of online conversations by identifying the dominant
parties. The system is among the first in the discipline of natural
language processing that accounts for the fact that online discussions are
structured interactions among many users. The researchers hope that the
technology could be used to automatically compile reports and meeting
summaries, as well as providing chat-room participants with a method for
statistically measuring their influence in the discussion. Culling
statements from text is simple, says ISI's Eduard Hovy. It is much more
difficult, however, for a machine to be able to understand the nuances of
human interaction, such as temporal sequencing, references to previous
comments, and contextual clues. Hovy's team used the Hypertext Induced
Topic Selection (HITS) algorithm to give Web pages a rank and
classification based on their relationships with each other. Substituting
connections between conversation participants for Web links, the
researchers used the algorithm to determine the best answer to the
questions discussed in a USC undergraduate computer science course. The
HITS application, which combines speech act analysis, lexical similarity,
and the trustworthiness of the poster, was correct in 221 out of 314
questions. The researchers first coded part of the data themselves, and
then trained the machine and gave it the same data, which it coded with
between 65 percent and 70 percent accuracy, though that figure is likely to
improve as the technology matures.
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Study: Don't Legislate DRM
IDG News Service (06/05/06) Kirk, Jeremy
A group of lawmakers has recommended against the British government
enacting legislation that would require the use of digital rights
management (DRM) technology. While the All Party Parliamentary Group
(APPIG) is unaware of any European initiative to mandate DRM, some
publishing groups favor such a law, which the lawmakers warn would restrict
access to digital resources. Book and music publishers vigorously support
the use of DRM to protect against piracy, while opponents say the
technology is overly restrictive for legitimate users and that it impedes
libraries' archiving efforts. The APPIG recommends that Ofcom, the U.K.
communication regulator, publish guidelines that warn companies about the
legal ramifications of installing intrusive DRM technologies in their
products. APPIG leader Derek Wyatt cited the recent incident when security
researchers discovered that Sony had installed copy-protection software
that contained spyware on some 15 million CDs. The APPIG report also calls
for a U.K. Department of Trade and Industry investigation into the effect
of DRM on market activity. Apple's iTunes, for instance, has different
pricing structures in the U.K., Europe, and the United States. Apple also
uses DRM technology to ensure that songs purchased at the iTunes store can
only be played on Apple's iPod. The heated debate over DRM boils down to
the point at which content owners are willing to abandon their rights for
the sake of opening resources to the public, according to Lynne Brindley,
chief executive of the British Library. The debate over DRM and copyright
issues has also drawn in Google, which is being sued in the United States
for its controversial Book Search project to scan the full text of books at
five U.S. libraries and one in England. Google claims that by offering
information on where to buy the books that it is actually creating book
sales.
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New Wireless Networking System Brings Eye Care to
Thousands
UC Berkeley News (06/06/06) Greensfelder, Liese
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Intel have
partnered with an Indian hospital to develop a low-cost wireless network
that enables eye doctors to examine patients in remote clinics through a
high-quality video conference. The project has been so successful that it
will be expanded from five to 50 remote clinics that are likely to see half
a million patients a year. Technology holds vast promise for developing
nations, but most efforts have been too costly or complicated to have a
practical impact in poor, rural areas, said Eric Brewer, professor of
computer science at Berkeley. "What we've done here is develop a simple,
inexpensive software and hardware system that can provide villages with a
high-bandwidth connection to computer networks in cities as far as 50 miles
away." Patients visiting one of the clinics meet first with a nurse
trained in eye care and then consult with a doctor via a Web camera for
about five minutes. The patient receives a hospital appointment if the
doctor determines that further examination or an operation is necessary.
The technology addresses the shortage of doctors in remote areas and
ensures that patients who visit one of the clinics will actually receive
treatment if they have to go to a hospital. The project is one of many
under the Intel-Berkeley TIER project, or Technology and Infrastructure for
Emerging Regions. Brewer and his team set out to create software that
would overcome the distance limitations of today's Wi-Fi connections. By
linking their software with directional antennas and routers, they have
been able to obtain speeds up to 6 Mbps at a distance up to 40 miles,
roughly 100 times farther than the reach of Wi-Fi. "If they can find a
partner with high-speed networking within 50 miles, this is a great
solution for communities around the world to get connected," Brewer
said.
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Study Finds Offshoring's Impact Overstated
eWeek (06/05/06) Rothberg, Deborah
Employment opportunities in the United States for high-end IT positions
continue to look good, according to American Sentinel University chief
economist Jeremy Leonard. Since 2002, employers have had the greatest
demand for network systems and data communication analysts, and jobs for
computer software engineers, computer and information scientists, and
computer systems analysts have grown considerably. For example, jobs for
software engineers fell 4 percent as the overall job market began to slow,
but openings have grown 25 percent in recent years. Leonard takes an
in-depth look at the IT employment picture since the last recession in his
study, "Offshoring of Information-Technology Jobs: Myths and Realities,"
and says most of the jobs that have been moved overseas were low-end
positions that were labor-intensive, easy to duplicate, or had little need
for face-to-face contact. Computer programming positions have taken the
biggest hit, followed by job losses involving database administration,
coding, and support. "Studies from consulting groups during the stagnant
job growth years of 2002 to 2004 stoked very pessimistic views of the
future for IT professionals," says Leonard in a statement. "Once the
current economic expansion took hold, however, we found that the 2000-02
job losses had little, if anything, to do with jobs moving overseas."
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Almaden Research Center Celebrates Two Decades of Whim,
Wonder
San Jose Mercury News (CA) (06/04/06) Quinn, Michelle
Long a haven for quirky, cutting-edge innovations in storage technology,
nanotechnology, and data management, IBM's Almaden Research Center in South
San Jose recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. "We create more
technology than anyone would know what to do with," said Mark Dean, the
center's director. Almaden, one of eight IBM research centers around the
world, has begun to explore services science, an emerging field devoted to
helping organizations deal with the proliferation of digital content and
improve workflow efficiencies. The center has also created the Healthcare
Information Infrastructure to examine how technology could help with the
management and sharing of medical records. The Almaden center is looking
to hire cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and business and computer
experts to supplement its research staff of roughly 400. With a total
staff of 600, Almaden is the second-largest research center in the United
States. Dean says the center competes with the likes of Google, Yahoo!,
and Microsoft for top talent in Silicon Valley. Inventors at the Almaden
center have received more than 500 patents in the past five years, during
which the center has partnered with Stanford University to create a
spintronics facility, created a prototype of a machine that condenses data
for applications in environments where space is short, and fashioned the
world's smallest functioning computer circuit by colliding molecules into
each other.
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Robotics Seen as Growth Area for Defense
Department
National Journal's Technology Daily (06/06/06) Davis, Michael
Panelists at a Heritage Foundation event warned that policy is falling
behind technology as the Defense Department continues to explore the field
of robotics. The Defense Department has been actively considering military
applications for robotics technology, but fundamental obstacles remain,
such as securing the necessary funding. "Mechanical engineering [for
robots] is much more difficult than we thought," resulting in a worldwide
gap in funding for robotics projects, said NASA's Vladimir Lumelsky. The
panelists called for increased investment in basic university research,
noting that robots could significantly improve U.S. troops' ability to
maneuver in the Middle East. Unmanned vehicles, such as the RQ-4A Global
Hawk, are one of DARPA's central initiatives. The Urban Challenge,
scheduled for Nov. 7, 2007, will draw teams from across the country whose
robotic vehicles will compete in a race that will take them through traffic
with only two commands: "start" and "stop." With an eye toward the Middle
East, the panelists hope the race will prove the viability of unmanned
vehicles in real-life settings. "The robotics technology that we have
available today can save lives," said John Leonard, professor of mechanical
and ocean engineering at MIT. Most research and funding in the field
remains focused on the commercial market, however, though that will change
if the Defense Department projects materialize.
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Made in the USA: The World Wide Web
ABC News (06/05/06) Yeransian, Leslie
ICANN has come under fire for its rejection of the .xxx domain and delays
in integrating IDNs into the domain naming system, with several critics
pointing a finger at the federal government and the perceived sway it has
with the organization. In the most recent round of domain name
applications, ICANN gave the go-ahead to .jobs, .mobi, .aero, and .travel,
while rejecting .xxx, .post, .mail, and about half of the proposed TLDs.
Many in the industry believe more domains are needed to simplify navigation
of the Web as it proliferates. There are now 18 TLDs approved by ICANN,
one of which is .travel, run by Tralliance Corp. "Google is the first to
admit it can only catalog 5 percent of the Internet," says Tralliance's Ron
Andruff. "It's the logical expansion of the Internet...Cataloging will
take you more efficiently and rapidly to the information you need."
Andruff says the U.S. government fears losing control of the Internet, a
trait particularly marked in delays in implementing IDNs. "That's more of
a political minefield," says Milton Mueller, partner of the Internet
Governance Project, noting that the addition of non-Roman characters would
give countries such as China and India a greater say in Internet
governance. But that's a good thing, says Mueller. "It adds a little more
diversity and a little more competition; it doesn't threaten anyone's
control of the Internet." ICANN's Memorandum of Understanding with the
federal government is up in September.
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Morton Kondracke: New 'Report Card' Shows Congress Must
Act on Science
Examiner.com (06/05/06) Kondracke, Morton
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) hopes the latest national report card on
science will convince his colleagues to quickly move President Bush's
competitiveness initiative through Congress. Results of the National
Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) were released last week, and the
performance of U.S. students in science remains troubling with no
improvement in scores among eighth-graders from 1995 to 2005 and a decline
for 12th-graders. The NAEP results "illustrate the urgency for Congress to
pass comprehensive competitiveness legislation this year," says Alexander.
However, the legislation has not been marked up in the Senate or the House,
and floor time has yet to be scheduled by the leaders of the chambers.
President Bush wants to offer more scholarships as a way of attracting
another 10,000 science teachers a year, and double the budget of the
National Science Foundation and other U.S. research programs. U.S.
competitiveness has become a concern, and while some interests want to turn
to foreign scientists and graduate students, others say more can be done to
attract U.S. children to the sciences. National Center for Women and
Information Technology CEO Lucy Sanders says women are shunning information
technology for other fields of science. "We've got to change its image
from 'geeky' to 'challenging,'" says Sanders.
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ELearning Is Music to Your Ears
University of Leicester (06/02/06)
Researchers in the United Kingdom continue to study the use of
"podcasting" as a potential tool for enhancing the learning experience of
students. E-learning experts at the University of Leicester say their
pilot program for downloading audio onto personal MP3 players shows that
students have embraced the idea of using podcasting to improve their
education experience. The researchers developed a podcast model consisting
of a current news item that is relevant to their course each week,
give-and-take on learning and collaborative team work during the week, and
a light-hearted segment such as a joke or rap, with each part lasting 10
minutes. The students listened between lectures, during commutes, and
while they performed other tasks, says Gilly Salmon, a professor of
e-learning at Leicester. Students added they were able to study at their
own pace, rewind whenever they wanted, and contact classmates while they
studied. They also lauded podcasting because it made learning informal and
prevented them from missing anything. Salmon now heads a 12-month project
called "IMPALA: Informal Mobile Podcasting and Learning Adaptation," which
includes researchers from the University of Gloucestershire and Kingston
University as participants, to focus more on using such technology to bring
learning resources to students.
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Supercomputers to Transform Science
University of Bristol News (06/06/06)
The University of Bristol has recently installed three supercomputers that
at peak capacity can perform more than 13 trillion calculations a second,
promising new advances in climate modeling, drug design, and other
cutting-edge research areas. "This initiative puts Bristol at the
forefront of high performance computing," said David May, professor of
computer science. "The HPC impact will be enormous--right across all
disciplines--turning data into knowledge." The largest of the computers is
anticipated to be one of the 100 fastest of its kind in the world. Thanks
to the HPC cluster, Bristol physicists will be among the first in the world
to evaluate data collected from the Large Hadron Collider once it becomes
operational, offering new insights into the origins of the universe and the
structure of space and time. Bristol professors believe that HPCs are a
critical piece of infrastructure that universities must have in place in
order to remain at the forefront of scientific research, as well as lending
credibility to scientists' sometimes questionable predictions in areas such
as climate modeling. Professor Paul Valdes, a Bristol climatologist, says,
"These HPCs will allow us to develop a new generation of numerical models
that have a much more sophisticated representation of the climate system."
Researchers will be able to access the computers throughout Bristol's
campus research network.
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MSpace Mobile: Exploring Support for Mobile Tasks
University of Southampton (ECS) (06/06/06) Wilson, Max L.; Russell,
Alistair; Smith, Daniel A.
The authors compare the mSpace Mobile and Google Local Web applications
interfaces' ability to support Web-based location discovery and planning
tasks on mobile devices while stationary and while traveling, as detailed
in the Proceedings of The 20th BCS HCI Group conference in cooperation with
ACM. Google Local's performance under both fixed and mobile conditions was
less than that of mSpace Mobile, leading to the theory that the latter is a
better performer because it transcends the current page model for
presenting network-based content, and thus enables new and more powerful
interfaces to be employed to support mobility. These findings point to
conditions that play important roles in the effective execution of planning
activities of mobile devices, especially when the user is mobile. Such
conditions include persistent displays of information, rapid data transfer,
less need for text entry, and less need for activities in which a target
must be acquired as well as held. The researchers outline a
non-paged-based paradigm in which persistent domain overviews are
foregrounded, and from which choices can be made via direct manipulation
methods. The authors recommend an exploratory user interface with a
multipaned, zoomable focus+context view in order to optimize screen space.
They posit from their study that the mSpace Mobile interface beats many
state-of-the-art Web applications that support similar planning tasks,
especially while on the move.
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Xerox Funds 10 Research Projects at Leading
Universities
Business Wire (06/07/06)
Xerox has awarded roughly $200,000 in grants to 10 academic research
projects in the United States, Canada, and Europe this spring. The awards
are part of the nearly $1 million that Xerox annually pledges to fund
research and the $13 million that it contributes each year to educational
and nonprofit initiatives. The 10 research projects include a project at
the University of California, Berkeley, that will examine the core
interactions between ink and printheads. Researchers at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, will attempt to develop new algorithms to
improve image quality and enable automated image processing. At the
University of Maryland, scientists will compare different life cycle models
for software development. A basic research endeavor at the University of
Massachusetts will explore colloid surface science and engineering. Purdue
University researchers will investigate the ways that a computer can
classify images to improve its speed and performance. A University of
Rochester project will examine the forces that influence consumer
purchasing decisions. In Canada, the University of Toronto will continue a
project studying how ink interacts with solid surfaces, and researchers at
the University of Windsor will attempt to create new electrically
conductive molecules for the next generation of electronics. At the
University of Bremen in Germany, scientists will explore new tools for
developing faster and cleaner software architectures. Finally, a project
at the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom will conduct research
on the practical work of leadership with particular emphasis on the use of
documents. "The full range of technology found in Xerox products is being
studied at universities as well as in our research labs, and this grants
program helps strengthen the bridges between our organizations and our
people, while advancing science at the same time," said Gregory Zack, who
chairs Xerox's University Affairs Committee.
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Projects in the Microsoft Research Labs
Computerworld (06/05/06) Anthes, Gary
At Microsoft Research (MSR), hundreds of projects are in the works at its
six laboratories. One, the Dense Array of Inexpensive Radios (DAIR)
project, is meant to aid in the management of corporate Wi-Fi networks.
The DAIR project attempts to use inexpensive USB-based wireless adaptors to
convert the spare processor and disk resources found in abundance at most
companies into sensors that monitor the performance of a corporate network
and provide troubleshooting support. The sensors relay information about
the network's behavior to an inference engine that evaluates it and sends
out alerts or other responses. A preliminary version of the system has
been deployed at MSR to scan for denial-of-service attacks and rogue
connections. In the future, DAIR could be used for site planning, load
balancing, and recovering from a wireless access point failure. The
makeshift sensors used in the DAIR system are more numerous than wireless
access points, and much less expensive than dedicated equipment such as
spectrum analyzers. Another MSR project is exploring mobile note-taking
using the microphone, camera, and GPS sensors commonly found in cell phones
to capture information on the fly. The Windows Mobile smart phone also
responds to voice commands telling it to remind the user to run an errand
or make a phone call. Microsoft researchers also conducted an
email-monitoring program at 42 companies and universities that found that
one in 140 emails they sent simply disappeared. These "silent losses" can
be attributed variously to disk crashes, botched server upgrades, unusually
aggressive spam filters, as well as simple performance overload, among
other factors. The SureMail system posts a tamperproof notification on the
Internet each time a message is sent, enabling email recipients to
periodically search for notifications of lost messages.
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Phishers Could Start Using the Personal Touch
New Scientist (05/27/06) Vol. 190, No. 2553, P. 30; Biever, Celeste
Researchers at Indiana University in Bloomington have discovered a new way
phishers can target unsuspecting Internet users. Researchers Markus
Jakobsson and colleagues found that hackers can take advantage of the way
Web sites communicate with browsers--to store the URLs of recently visited
Web pages--to determine which Web sites a computer user has visited. The
hacker could then use the information to send a phony email message from
the individual's bank, asking the person to provide their personal
information. The researchers say a phisher could spam thousands of
computer users with an enticing link that actually directs them to the
hacker's server, where they would receive a link to a unique URL, and when
they click through the history of their browser is queried. Browsers that
include a Web page of a bank could be redirected to another link on a
phishing site, to the URL of the e-commerce site, and the click through
would reveal the email address that is connected to a Web user. At the
World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh in late May, Jakobsson encouraged
banks and other online businesses to provide online customers with a secret
URL that phishers would not be able to identify. Jakobsson says banks
should stick the URLs of other banks on browsers that visit their Web
sites, as another way to confuse hackers about the surfing histories of
customers.
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Data Ports in a Storm
Chronicle of Higher Education (06/09/06) Vol. 52, No. 40, P. A14; Glenn,
David
Advocates for the principle of "network neutrality" contend that the
domination of broadband services by a small number of phone and cable
operators equals near-monopolization, and therefore the overseers of the
Internet gateways should adhere to a price scheme in which all content
providers and application developers pay the same rates. The argument goes
that the preservation of neutrality will encourage inventors to devise more
breakthrough online applications and Web sites, while conversely such
innovation would be choked off if broadband service providers practice
discrimination by setting arbitrary rates. The debate over the network
neutrality issue reached a flashpoint last summer with a Supreme Court
decision that defined cable broadband providers' offerings as "data
services" instead of "telecommunications services," thus theoretically
allowing providers to block their rivals' offerings and enter into special
agreements with content providers. This provoked a backlash that spurred
some members of Congress to propose legislation designed to ensure
neutrality. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and Columbia
University's Timothy Wu are united in their concern that a lack of net
neutrality will allow major broadband providers to turn the Internet into a
medium consisting of homogenous content that users passively consume
instead of actively create, and thus destroy the Net's openness. Opponents
counter that new technologies allowing households to access the Internet
wirelessly or through their electric lines will make broadband providers
more numerous and the market more competitive, leading to the
discouragement of price-gouging and anti-competitive behavior. An unwieldy
regulatory framework needed to enforce net neutrality is another argument
that skeptics frequently cite.
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Cybersecurity: A Job for Uncle Sam
CIO (06/01/06) Vol. 19, No. 16, P. 46; Scalet, Sarah D.
Orson Swindle, a Republican appointed by President Bill Clinton to head
the FTC in 1997, is an ardent free marketeer, though he admits that when it
comes to cybersecurity, some government oversight is necessary. Swindle
discussed his thoughts on data protection, disclosure, and security in a
recent interview. Though he admits that there is a very real danger,
Swindle argues that media reports often overstate the severity of data
breaches. A headline might declare that 40 million credit card numbers
have been compromised, though in reality a much smaller number, if any,
will actually be used fraudulently. Swindle is acutely aware of the
danger, however, and has counseled business leaders who claim there is
little return on the investment in security that there is no way to
calculate the intangible damage a highly publicized breach can do to a
company's reputation, to say nothing of the possibility of legal action.
Swindle believes companies should be required to notify their customers if
their information has been compromised, but timing remains a question. It
is unreasonable to ask companies to immediately notify every customer whose
information could fall into the wrong hands because of a missing laptop,
particularly when the laptop could simply be misplaced and turn up a few
days later. Swindle believes companies should be responsible for the
personal information they store just as banks are responsible for their
customers' money. As more states follow California's lead and adopt
mandatory notification laws, competing compliance requirements could
emerge, which is why Swindle advocates a national disclosure law. Being a
civil law enforcement agency, however, the FTC often has difficulty
enforcing existing laws, and must seek help from the Justice Department if
it intends to pursue a criminal case. Swindle praised the FTC for the $15
million fine against ChoicePoint, and issued a general call for current and
future politicians to make technology and security high-profile issues.
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Dependable Software By Design
Scientific American (06/06) Vol. 294, No. 6, P. 68; Jackson, Daniel
The reliability of software design will be evaluated and ensured by
powerful analysis tools such as Alloy, which blends a language that
simplifies complex software design modeling with an analysis engine that
looks deeply and automatically for conceptual and structural faults. Alloy
was produced by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory's Software Design Group. Alloy and similar tools use automated
reasoning that treats software design problems as huge puzzles to be
deciphered. Alloy adopts the principle of considering all possible
scenarios that model checking is based on, but rather than analyzing whole
scenarios in a piecemeal fashion, the tool searches for a
failure-generating scenario by filling in each state automatically, bit by
bit, in no specific order. A design-checking tool's usefulness lies in its
ability to find counterexamples that show how a system could fail to behave
as expected, thus signaling a design flaw. Alloy's analysis engine is
equipped with a SAT or satisfiability solver that allows it to run through
all possible scenarios in the search for counterexamples. To use Alloy, a
software engineer outlines an exact model of the system that clarifies its
mechanisms and specific behaviors, facts that constrain the proper
functioning of such components, and finally the constraints or assertions
that are expected to originate from the facts; by writing this out, design
limitations become straightforward and engineers are forced to carefully
consider the most optimal abstractions. Improving software reliability is
an increasingly critical issue, as computer software plays a greater and
greater role in daily life, while current software testing methods
frequently miss basic design flaws.
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