ACM Security Experts Urge Paper Trails for Electronic
Voting
Ascribe Newswire (09/28/06)
Ensuring that the U.S. election process is trustworthy is an important
function of voter verified paper trails, stated former ACM President
Barbara Simons at a congressional hearing reviewing security for electronic
voting systems. Simons, founder of ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee and
co-chair of ACM's study of statewide registered voter databases, testified
that all currently available e-voting systems carry risks, such as poor
design, lack of thorough testing, limited audit capabilities, and
inadequate software engineering. "Technology, if engineered and tested
carefully, and if deployed with safeguards against failure, can reduce
error rates, provide more accessibility, increase accountability, and
strengthen our voting system," she noted, adding that the inclusion of a
voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or voter verified paper ballot
(VVPB) will improve the security of voting systems and provide for routine
audits. Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten, a
member of ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee, urged that extra care must be
taken in securing voting systems throughout the election process, and
called for better certification for software updates to e-voting machines
and increased employment of independent security experts. Simons and
Felten concurred that the election and technical communities must
collaborate to develop trustworthy computerized voting and electronic
registration systems.
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Visas for Skilled Workers Still Frozen
Washington Post (09/28/06) P. A12; Kalita, S. Mitra
The bill that technology companies had been counting on to extend the
number of visas issued to foreign workers has stalled in Congress amid more
controversial provisions concerning border security and illegal
immigration. While a bill that would have doubled the number of visas
issued each year to skilled professional cleared the Senate in the spring,
proponents of the legislation have now resigned themselves to the hope that
Congress will take up the measure in a lame-duck session late in the year.
"It is incredibly difficult to pass major legislative reforms in any areas,
and they tried to bite off a lot," said Intel's Jenifer Verdery. "We've
made a strong case, and we're hoping to take that to the finish line...if
there is any policymaking left to do after the election." Major technology
companies and research institutions have long depended on the H-1B visa to
bring in foreign workers to fill in the gap left by the shortage of
qualified U.S. workers. The majority of the 65,000 H-1B visas that have
been issued each year were snatched up by workers from India and China, who
encounter the longest waits for obtaining green cards. Under the Senate
plan, the number of H-1B visas available each year would have increased to
115,000. Technology companies mounted a major push to increase the cap
this year, but there are some groups that oppose the expansion, arguing
that skilled foreign workers can hold down salaries, even though both
parties have traditionally supported the program. Immigration experts echo
the concern, claiming that the restrictions can be crippling to certain
sectors of the economy.
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Time to Achieve Many Big Steps for Women in
Science
San Francisco Chronicle (09/28/06) P. B7; Whitney, Telle
While women represent more than half of the U.S. workforce, they account
for just a scant 18 percent of all technical positions. Indeed, the
declining participation of both women and men in computer science and other
technology-related courses of study could have a grave impact on U.S.
competitiveness in space and innumerable other scientific endeavors, writes
Telle Whitney, president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute for Women in
Technology. The number of incoming students majoring in computer science,
for instance, dropped 60 percent from 2000 to 2004, according to a study
conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles. Image is a major
problem for the technical disciplines, as students increasingly view those
areas of study as the socially irrelevant province of 'geeks' who have no
reservations about spending a career toiling in isolation in front of a
computer screen. But in fact, technical fields hold tremendous potential
to alleviate problems such as poverty, illiteracy, and global warming.
This is the message trumpeted by former astronaut Sally Ride, who will give
the keynote address at the upcoming Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in
Computing, co-sponsored by ACM, where she will call for improved outreach
programs for girls, particularly minorities, to encourage participation in
the technical fields.
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IBM and the Association for Computing Machinery Kick Off
Worldwide College "Battle of the Brains"
Market Wire (09/26/06)
Students from around the world will begin competing for spots in ACM's
annual International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) from September
through December. More than 6,000 teams of three students from 84
countries will participate in the international regional competitions,
which will have the groups solve real-world computer programming problems
in five hours. The World Finals of the 31st ICPC, also known as the
"Battle of the Brains," is scheduled for March 2007. The ICPC has grown
substantially since IBM signed on as its sponsor in 1997. "The ICPC
attracts incredibly bright young men and women who will shape the future of
computing," says Dr. Bill Poucher, a professor at Baylor University who is
the executive director of the ICPC. "The partnership between ACM, IBM and
colleges and universities around the world has grown to be a force in
advancing education and innovation in computer science and engineering." A
team of students from Saratov State University in Russia emerged as the
world champion at last year's World Finals in San Antonio, Texas. For more
information about ICPC, visit
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/
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Innovation and Competitiveness: How'd We Do?
CRA Bulletin (09/27/06)
The lofty goals that President Bush outlined in the American
Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) in his State of the Union address in
January have been echoed by key congressional leaders, seemingly answering
the long-ignored pleas for help of the technology industry for the
government to help the U.S. technology industry compete with its foreign
rivals. The provisions that Bush spelled out include doubling federal
research funding over the next 10 years, treating research and development
as a tax credit, and bolstering secondary science and math education.
Despite tepid support early on from House Republicans, appropriations bills
to double the funding of research organizations such as the NSF, NIST, and
the Department of Energy's Office of Science over the next 10 years have
cleared the full House and Senate. The lone remaining stumbling block
concerns whether Congress will return to the appropriations bills following
the November elections if they are not passed beforehand. Should Congress
opt simply to pass a continuing resolution through Sept. 30, 2007, however,
spending would remain at the level of the previous fiscal year, erasing the
increases promised by the president and Congress. While such a move is
unlikely, it is certainly not being discounted by the technology community,
which instead is hoping for the passage of an omnibus package that rolls
all the appropriations bills into one comprehensive piece of legislation.
Meanwhile, several congressional proposals authorizing various provisions
of the ACI have encountered opposition from the White House, which claims
that the ACI programs need no additional authorizations. With the
post-election lame-duck session fast approaching, the chances of any of
those provisions passing up to the president are increasingly slight.
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New Demands Register With Patent Laws
Financial Times (09/29/06) P. 8; Tait, Nikki
Australian inventor Neal Macrossan continues a legal battle against the UK
Patent Office, which rejected his application to patent an electronic
document assembly system that would enable users to create new companies
via the Internet. Macrossan has obtained patents for his Incorporator
system in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. However,
the UK Patent Office insists that his invention is excluded under the
Patent Act because it does not use a new mental process and does not set
forth a new means of conducting business. The issue of exclusion is a
thorny matter in Europe, as the European Parliament was lobbied in recent
years by those who wanted all software to be patentable and those who
worried that such a move would hinder research and development but failed
to take sides. The Court of Appeal is expected to issue a ruling next
week. According to attorney Joel Smith of Herbert Smith, "The decision is
expected to signal the way ahead for software patenting." He says, "This
is the first time in a decade that the appeal court has looked at the
issues...The decision is expected to signal the way ahead for software
patenting."
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Analysis Finds Value of Research & Development Higher
than Thought
Investor's Business Daily (09/29/06) P. A4; Deagon, Brian
Preliminary findings by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and
National Science Foundation (NSF) indicate that R&D makes a greater
contribution to U.S. economic productivity and growth than is currently
estimated. The two agencies will be making a long-term effort to improve
its understanding of and ability to calculate R&D's impact on the
economy--something that "could be very valuable to the Federal Reserve
Board and could persuade them to pursue different monetary policies," said
Steve Landefeld, director of the BEA. Matthew Kazmierczak, vice president
for research and industry analysis at the AeA--formerly known as the
American Electronics Association--says the new analysis will be a boon to
the AeA as it seeks to lobby Congress to restore and make permanent its tax
credits on R&D investments. According to the BEA, there is no commonly
agreed upon output measure for R&D, which is treated as a business expense
and intangible asset rather than as an investment. By contrast, the BEA
and NSF are taking the view that R&D is an investment--something that would
enable economists to quantify its contribution to economic output more
clearly. The preliminary findings indicate that R&D's contribution to real
growth from 1995 through 2002 was 6.5 percent, compared to 4.5 percent from
1959 through 2002. The difficulty of measuring the effects of R&D
investments is a partial explanation for former Federal Reserve Chairman
Alan Greenspan's difficulty explaining the basis for the economic boom in
the 1990s; as part of the answer to this question became clear, the BEA in
1999 started incorporating the flow of investments made in software into
its GDP estimates.
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Study Shows Internet to Be Resilient Against Terror
Attacks
Ohio State Research News (09/28/06)
Ohio State professor Morton O'Kelly is co-author of a new study that
concludes that a serious attack on Internet network hubs in the U.S. would
not likely collapse the Internet, but may degrade its functioning. "There
are so many interconnections within the network that it would be difficult
to find enough targets, and the right targets, to do serious damage to
Internet reliability nationwide," says O'Kelly. Detailed results have been
published in the most recent issue of the Environment and Planning B
journal. The study used computer modeling to simulate an attack on major
Internet backbone facilities, and assumed not all facilities could be
attacked at once. Seattle and Boston have the most diverse number of hubs
supporting Internet traffic among cities, and therefore are most resilient,
the study concludes. The study, conduced with Ohio State graduate student
Hyun Kim and professor Changjoo Kim, was a follow-up to a 2003 study by
O'Kelly that assumed that selected city network nodes would be completely
knocked out by accidents or attacks. O'Kelly says that is not a likely
scenario since peering agreements between carriers makes it very difficult
to shut down an entire network node. O'Kelly says, "There is a rich web of
connections in these Internet nodes, and a hit on a single city node or
even several of them is not likely to wipe out Internet connectivity."
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Alliance Aims to Rethink Network Computing and
Communications
Rensselaer News (09/27/06)
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are pursuing research that
defense agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom hope will
improve wireless sensor networks in urban environments. Computer science
professor Boleslaw Szymanski will head a team that will study how complex
sensor data infrastructures manage audio, visual, radar, and chemical
sensors. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.K. Ministry of
Defense want to apply the findings to secure networks of sensors, with
hopes of giving coalition forces more flexibility on the battlefield. "We
are going to take what we already know about sensor network protocols and
infrastructure and think creatively about the future designs," says
Szymanski. "With information coming from these different sources, we need
to know how to make them collaborate to provide the best information while
minimizing the chance that they will be detected." Szymanski's team has
received $1.85 million to develop sensor network algorithms, which could
also have some civilian applications. The project is part of a larger $138
million initiative over 10 years to reevaluate network computing and
communication, involving a consortium that includes the University of
Southampton, CUNY, LogicaCMG, and IBM.
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Virtual Face-Ageing May Help Find Missing Persons
New Scientist (09/26/06) Simonite, Tom
Researchers at Kent University in the United Kingdom hope to improve upon
existing artificial aging software by creating a system that can produce
more detailed changes of how a person would look over time. Chris Solomon,
a forensic imaging specialist at Kent, is heading a team that has developed
software that automatically simulates the aging process, based on photos
that show how an individual's face has changed in the past, as well as
images that show the aging of family members and the general population.
"Most changes in people's faces are shared by the population as a whole,"
says Solomon. The system analyzes the location and size of each feature,
before converting a face into a set of numbers, and then compares the face
to others in its face database to determine the needed changes. To test
the accuracy of the program, the researchers have had older people provide
them with photos from their younger years, and then have used the software
to see how close its artificial rendering comes to an actual face. Results
have been positive, says Solomon, "although sometimes it doesn't age a face
as much as you would expect." His team will continue to work to improve
the software, which could be used to help find missing people.
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Intel Pushes for 80-Core CPU by 2010
VNUNet (09/27/06) Sanders, Tom
Intel's new wave of research aims to produce terra-scale chips to run the
next-generation mega data centers that will power hosted applications. At
last week's Intel Developer Forum, CEO Paul Otellini demonstrated a
prototype of the TerraFLOP processor, which features 80 cores and runs at
3.1 GHz, delivering more than one teraflop of combined performance. The
chip should make it to commercial production by 2010. "This kind of
performance for the first time gives us the capability to imagine things
like real-time video search or real-time speech translation from one
language to another," Otellini said. Online-content providers such as
Google and YouTube will likely require this level of processing power. By
2010, terra-scale servers will account for one quarter of all server sales
by 2010, Intel projects. "We are talking about a fundamental change in the
way that the whole computing infrastructure is built," said Intel CTO
Justin Rattner. "At the core of that infrastructure will be the future
data center, what we refer to as the mega data center." The TerraFLOP chip
is comparable to Sun Microsystems' Niagara processor and IBM's Cell
processor. Intel is now developing silicon-based laser technology to boost
interconnect speeds. Earlier this month, the company announced that its
researchers had made a breakthrough whereby they could create lasers
through conventional manufacturing processes. A cluster of 25 of those
lasers could deliver a terabyte of throughput, according to Rattner.
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A Pioneer of the Web Campaigns for Internet
'Neutrality'
New York Times (09/27/06) P. E6; Markoff, John
Earlier this year, Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee added his to the chorus of
voices advocating Net neutrality--the notion that Internet service
providers should not be permitted to give preferential treatment to certain
packets of data. He shared his thoughts on the subject in a recent
interview, claiming that in fact he had broached the subject (albeit not by
that name) in a book he wrote several years ago. Berners-Lee describes the
debate over Net neutrality as one of social consequence that transcends
mere technical concerns. "I think people who talk about
dismantling--threatening--Net neutrality don't appreciate how important it
has been for us to have an independent market for productivity and for
applications on the Internet," he said. Internet TV is one application
that Berners-Lee cites as a burgeoning market dependent upon neutral
delivery of data packets. By itself, packet inspection is not a threat to
Net neutrality, Berners-Lee says, noting that routers today must be capable
of greater functionality, so that they can inspect packets for threats such
as denial-of-service attacks without skewing transmission speed. Myriad
security threats notwithstanding, Berners-Lee claims that Internet users
should be able to connect with a certain quality of service, without having
to negotiate. Even if the United States were to lose its hegemony in the
Internet space, Berners-Lee is confident that the Net neutrality charge
would be taken up by other nations.
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High Pay, Plenty of Jobs, but Few Students: It Doesn't
Compute
Globe and Mail (CAN) (09/26/06) Van Kampen, Karen
Colleges and IT employers in Canada are working together in an effort to
attract more students to IT and computer science programs. The joint
effort comes at a time when enrollment in IT and computer science programs
has fallen 50 percent over the past five years, even as IT companies
continue to add jobs and offer attractive salaries. At a meeting at
Microsoft Canada's office last year, IT employers said they want technical
talent that is also able to communicate on an interpersonal basis, give
presentations, and work in teams, and colleges and universities have
responded by focusing more on providing students with soft skills. IT
companies also encouraged colleges to incorporate IT into other majors,
which would enable students from other departments to graduate with
technology skills. Meanwhile, colleges suggested that IT companies hire
more people after they graduate and help change the negative image of the
industry. Many parents and students remember the high-tech slump that
began in 2000, and the prevailing perception that the industry is for geeks
and men does not help. Women account for just 10 percent to 15 percent of
IT students.
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Ian Pearson, Futurologist: The ITWales Interview
ITWales.com (09/25/06) Earls, Sali
BT futurologist Ian Pearson says in an interview that he keeps track of
nascent technologies, "so as soon as we learn that somebody is doing some
research in a particular field, [my team starts] putting that together with
all the other bits of research that everyone else is doing, and try to
figure out what people might try to use that for once it becomes real
technology in a decade or so." He recommends the application of common
sense and business acumen to filter out the good technology from the bad.
Pearson's prediction in the BT Technology Timeline that androids will
comprise 10 percent of the population in the next 10 to 15 years is based
on the observation that several Japanese companies are manufacturing small
androids with the expectation that there are major markets for robot
companionship and domestic labor, and that these companies undoubtedly
researched the marketplace carefully in coming to this conclusion; he also
tempers his forecast with the statement that the androids that will be seen
in that time will not be as sophisticated as the human-looking robots
popularized in science fiction. Pearson says advances in neuroscience are
demystifying the brain's workings, and he projects that this, paired with
progress in machine software generation, will yield prototypes of computers
whose intelligence approximates that of human beings by 2015. The
futurologist notes that cybernetic technologies will raise concerns about
people's bodies being hacked, as well as issues that cybernetic
enhancements will give people unfair advantages over others. Pearson
believes AI advancements, the collective computing power of networked
devices, and the proliferation of cyberterrorists and other malefactors
with the connectivity and resources to attack us will make Internet
security and overall security nonexistent. An even worse possibility is
the use of smart bacteria to break security, and perhaps annihilate
humanity. Pearson expects social technology such as instant voice
messaging and phones that can track their owners and owners' friends'
whereabouts to be a hot area for future IT.
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Software Development Methodology Today
InformIT (09/22/06) Jayaswal, Bijay K.; Patton, Peter C.
Tapping the best practices of the past and the potential of more recent
programming technology can yield a Robust Software Development Model (RSDM)
that takes into account the need to tackle quality problems upstream, where
nearly all software bugs crop up, write Bijay K. Jayaswal and Peter C.
Patton. Software testing can uncover few potential problems because there
is a difference between the complexity of hardware and software, and
software lacks a manufacturing process. The challenges of generating
trustworthy software can be met by combining the iterative RSDM, Software
Design Optimization Engineering, and Object-Oriented Design Technology,
which are integrated together in the authors' proposed Design for
Trustworthy Software (DFTS). The Robust Software Development Process is
comprised of seven elements, including an enduring development process that
can supply interaction with users by recognizing their articulated and
unarticulated needs across the software life cycle; accommodation for
feedback and iteration between multiple development stages on an as-needed
basis; a mechanism supporting the optimization of design for reliability,
cost, and cycle times simultaneously in upstream stages; opportunity for
early return on investment provided by incremental development techniques;
step-wise development to construct an application as needed and to supply
sufficient documentation; support for risk analyses at various stages; and
the ability to accommodate object-oriented development. The authors'
proposed software development model mixes the cascade and iterative
development models that supports feedback at all levels. The model marries
the best practices and features from numerous development methodologies and
collectively accommodates a customer-oriented robust software technology
that fulfills all seven requirements of the Robust Software Development
Process.
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Computers That Read Your Mind
Economist Technology Quarterly (09/06) Vol. 380, No. 8496, P. 24
With all kinds of technologies vying for people's attention, researchers
are developing products designed to help users become more lucid and
focused by achieving a state of "augmented cognition" through the use of
sensors that can deduce a person's mental state. Such technology could
help people cope with information overload, a problem plaguing the U.S.
military; it comes as no surprise that the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) is a major investor in augmented cognition
research. One concept being pursued in this vein is a smart cockpit for
fighter aircraft, in which the pilot's brain activity is measured by a
helmet equipped with EEG sensors. When weighed against contextual
information, the system can determine if the pilot's level of concentration
is too delicate to be interrupted and filter out non-essential input to
reduce cognitive stress. There are also augmented cognition efforts that
target the workplace and other non-military venues. Microsoft Research
scientist and American Association for Artificial Intelligence President
Eric Horvitz says his lab is working on technology that filters data before
it reaches the user; the goal is to make people capable of absorbing more
information without being overloaded. Rather than analyzing brain
activity, the idea is for the system to get clues about the user's mental
state by studying other factors, such as keystrokes, the content the user
is viewing, the time of day, and the contents of a desktop calendar.
Augmented cognition's potential applications also include entertainment:
John Laird of the University of Michigan's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory believes such systems could prevent boredom and confusion among
video gamers, while Lancaster University's Alan Dix foresees
sensor-outfitted game consoles that can infer the player's level of
alertness.
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Building Effective Multivendor Autonomic Computing
Systems
IEEE Distributed Systems Online (09/06) Vol. 7, No. 9, Rana, Omer F.;
Kephart, Jeffrey O.
Panelists discussing the possibility of building effective multivendor
autonomic computing systems at the 3rd IEEE International Conference on
Autonomic Computing were asked the importance of such systems to
themselves, their organizations, and their research; the key technologies
needed to realize such systems; and the political, economic, or social
obstacles to using such systems in real-world scientific and business
applications and how such hindrances could be addressed. All panelists
were in agreement in terms of their emphasis on the business advantages of
autonomic system development, which include increasing the number of
servers maintained by one system administrator. IBM Research's Steve White
said the strongest motivation for using an autonomic system is addressing
the "complexity" of system component management, while another key goal to
facilitate broader autonomic computing system takeup is the management of
user expectations. The importance of autonomic computing standards was
recognized by all the panelists, while Julie McCann of Imperial College,
London, suggested the need for standardizing the types of probes needed for
monitoring, the kinds of events generated in the system, and actions
executed by the system. HP Labs' Kumar Goswani noted a number of reasons
why administrators may shy away from adopting autonomic systems, including
fear of job replacement by automation. In general, the panelists agreed
that to a limited extent autonomic systems are already in place, and wider
adoption requires a determination of autonomic computing's meaning to
customers and researchers as well as the incorporation of greater
trustworthiness in such systems. They also concluded that autonomic
computing systems must be interoperable and supportive of virtualization,
while key application scenarios that would facilitate wider adoption of
multivendor autonomic systems must be identified.
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