New Voting Systems, Rules May Spell Trouble
Los Angeles Times (10/24/06) Alonso-Zaldivar, Ricardo
The 2006 elections were supposed to be the payoff for six years of work on
the nation's ability to vote electronically. As the November general
elections approach, doubts concerning voting machine and databases have not
been silenced. "The Nov. 7 election promises to bring more of what voters
have come to expect since the 2000 elections: a divided body politic, an
election system in flux, and the possibility--if not certainty--of problems
at polls nationwide," said a report released today by the nonpartisan
Election Reform Information Project, which was funded by the Pew Charitable
Trust. The report says that "machine failures, database delays and
foul-ups, inconsistent procedures, new rules and new equipment have some
predicting chaos at the polls at worst and widespread polling place snafus
at best." The Election Reform Information Group studied three key areas
that governments have targeted to improve the election process: voter
identification, voter databases, and electronic voting. The group's
director, Doug Chapin, says, "Not all states with problems will have close
elections, and not all states with close elections will have problems.
It's where the two come together that you have the potential for the kind
of back and forth we saw [in 2000]." A group of 10 experts wrote to
Congress in September pleading with lawmakers to adopt quality control
standards for e-voting. These measures include checking the e-voting total
against a statistically valid random sample of paper ballots verified by
voters at the polling place. "We see the election process in the United
States at grave risk," wrote the informal group of quality control
consultants. Deborah L. Markowitz, president of the National Association
on Secretaries of State, says the changes being suggested are "not [to]
dump the technology, they are saying fine-tune the technology." To read
ACM's report on "Statewide Databaes of Registered Voters," visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm/VRD
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Tech Giants Embrace Diversity
Investor's Business Daily (10/24/06) P. A5; Vallone, Julie
Microsoft is looking to attract women and minorities to the field of
technology, part of a trend that can be seen across the industry. Women in
2005 represented 15 percent of the bachelor's degrees in computer science
and engineering, down 17 percent from 2004, according to the Computer
Research Association. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that in
2005 seven percent of African-Americans and 5.3 percent of Latinos had
occupations in computers and math, and five percent of African-Americans
and 4.5 percent of Latinos had occupations in science. Males outnumber
females at Microsoft three to one, a statistic that is average for the
industry. Programs such as DigiGirlz, a yearly week-long summer technology
day camp for middle and high school girls, are working to close the gender
gap. Microsoft also holds a program based at its Redmond headquarters,
with outposts in other states. Beginning in 2000, the program has helped
at least 600 girls learn about career choices in technology from female and
minority employees at Microsoft. "It's a chance for them to learn about
the kinds of things they can do in an environment like this and connect
with the women doing the work," says Mylena Padolina, senior diversity
consultant for Microsoft. A group known as Women in Computing, at Indiana
University, which is sponsored by both Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems,
has invited minority computer science undergraduates from other colleges to
a conference called BringIT On, which aims to show participants how to
connect with K-12 students and interest them in technology. "We try to
dispel the media stereotype that computer science is just a bunch of
jargon-spouting video-game-playing white males," says Suzanne Menzel, a
senior lecturer at Indiana University's computer science department. The
Salmon Camp Research Team, coordinated by the Oregon Museum of Industry,
shows Native American high school students to collect and analyze field
data on an environmental project. For information on ACM's Committee on
Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Intelligent Sensors Watch for Impending Flood
New Scientist (10/23/06) Simonite, Tom
A UK river is being monitored using sensors that not only gather data, but
are capable of making decisions based on this data. Previous systems would
drown scientists in data, leaving them only a few frantic hours before
needing to make a decision concerning an impending flood or air pollution
incident. The "grid" of 13 intelligent sensors in the River Ribble, in
Yorkshire Dales, consists of 11 nodes measuring pressure from below the
waterline to determine depth, and the other two nodes to monitor the speed
of the river flow--one using ultrasound underwater, and the other using Web
cams to track objects and ripples moving along the surface. Each node is
smaller than a fist and powered by batteries and solar panels. A
chewing-gum sized processor executes the necessary calculations. The
sensors communicate with each other using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth antennas,
allowing them to collaborate for data collection and processing, creating a
larger community computer. This "grid" computing technique is used to
connect computers in different locations for distributed research projects.
When the river's behavior starts to change, the network runs models and
predicts what will happen next. If an impending flood is detected, a
detailed signal is issued. Danny Hughes, a computer and environmental
scientist at Lancaster University, UK, who is working on the project, says
the hope is that the grid will be able to send emergency information
directly to those in harm's way, using interactive billboards or text
messaging. Another "end goal would be that people living in areas that
flood can install these grids themselves. They are simply robust enough to
make that possible," says Hughes.
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SC06 Conference Volunteers Building Huge Network Into
Tampa Convention Center
Business Wire (10/24/06)
The SCinet team will be installing 10 10-Gbps network connections for the
SC2006 conference, creating a network in the Tampa Convention Center that
will be about 20,000 times more capable than the fastest residential
Internet service provided by cable and telephone companies. The project is
a huge team effort, explains Dennis Duke, a physics professor at Florida
State University and SCinet chair for the SC06 conference, which takes
place Nov. 11-17, 2006. Duke says the network is the result of the effort
of 140 volunteers and loaner equipment from "dozens" of companies. He
says, "We started...in October 2005 and have been working at it steadily
since then." Over 12 miles of fiber optics and cable wires were installed
in the convention center, including two network outlets in each meeting
room, a high bandwidth infrastructure serving all parts of the exhibit
areas, and wireless throughout. Attendees and exhibitors will be connected
to half a dozen key network sites throughout the country. As at every
Supercomputing conference, scientists and engineers will compete in the
Bandwidth Challenge, in attempt to make the most of the bandwidth provided
by SCinet. No group yet has been able to flood the network to its breaking
point, but ingenious applications have allowed record amounts of data to
move across the network. This year's contest will be called "Bridging the
Hero Gap"--bridging the gap between what networking "heroes" can achieve
and what the average researcher with access to high speed networks can
achieve. Although 10 Gbps links are more common than ever, achieving rates
close to 10 Gbps, or even 1 Gbps, across these networks is still out of
reach for most. Also a fixture of the conference, SCinet's Xnet (eXtreme
networks) division will introduce groundbreaking pre-commercial or
pre-competitive developmental networking technologies, protocols, and
experimental networking applications. For more information about SC06, or
to register, visit
http://www.sc-conference.org/
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Dr. Peslak and Marcy Stanton Pursue Success Model
Penn State Worthington Scranton (10/24/06)
A study conducted at Penn State set out to shed some light into the
reasons that some team members are more successful in a modern IT team, and
what components of such a team can ensure success. Dr. Alan Peslak,
assistant professor of IST at Penn State, has more than 25 years of
practical experience in manufacturing and service industries, and
understands that "the ability to function as an IST professional today
virtually mandates an understanding of how teams function, and, perhaps
most importantly, the ability to place oneself within a working IST team
and contribute in a positive way." Working with recent IST graduate Marcy
Stanton, the pair came up with a general research question: "Can an overall
team success model (TSM) be developed that includes the relationship
between demographic variables, team and personal process factors, emotions,
and overall team success?" "We were looking for factors that both enhanced
and served as obstacles to optimal IST team functions," says Peslak. The
pair set out to answer their question by examining performance, group
process analysis, emotional reactions of workers, individual psychology,
and even trust between members. The sample consisted of 55 students in 18
teams whose progress was measured at several stages of the semester-long
project. Factors leading to team success were found to be "emotion,
personal processes, and team processes. Within these parameters we were
able to quantify significance of individual factors and relationships
between many of them." The pair concluded that implications for their
model for success are clear: "the challenges for managing IST teams begins
with an understanding of group dynamics [and] extends to owning the
responsibility for self management."
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Some Va. Voting Machines Cut Off Names
Washington Post (10/24/06) P. B4; Smith, Leef
Hart InterCivic voting machines, used by three districts in Virginia, chop
off the end of candidate's names, as well as their entire party
affiliation, on the screen that shows a voter their selection for
verification. Election officials blame the mistake on an increase in font
size. Signs will be posted all over poll locations in these districts,
alerting voters to the flaw in the computer system, and assuring them that
their vote will be counted. The problem has existed since 2002 when the
machines were purchased, but Jean Jensen, secretary of Virginia State Board
of Election, has only been aware of the problem for a few days. She now
pledges to fix the problem before the 2007 elections. "You better believe
it," she says. "Even if I have to get on a plane to Houston and bring Hart
InterCivic people here myself, it'll be corrected." Hart InterCivic has
developed an upgrade for the firmware, but receiving state certification
will be time consuming, says Jensen. The glitch affects some candidates
more than others, based on name length, but James T. Hirsch, an independent
running for the house, says, "that situation is unacceptable. There's
enough voter confusion as it is." Tom Parkins, registrar for Alexandria,
one of the districts affected, explains, "This is not the kind of problem
that has either shaken our confidence in the system overall of that of the
vote. There have been far worse problems around the country." For more
information about ACM's e-voting activities, visit http//
www.acm.org/usacm
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Electronic Jeeves to Smooth Your Social
Interactions
IST Results (10/24/06)
Rather than computers being simply a "black box on the desk, and we have
to engage with them in a rigid way," an IST project called CHIL aims to
create machines that put human needs first. The inspiration is a butler,
who appears out of the background as needed, says the University of
Karlsruhe's Alexander Waibel, CHIL project coordinator. CHIL is meant to
be deployed in a meeting room, lecture hall, or classroom, and is still
currently in the final stages of development. "Collector" is a tool that
is context-aware, which could, for example, detect whether or not an
employee wishes to receive calls or not, or if they would only like to
receive calls from family members. The system, which uses cameras and
microphones, would learn the preferences of individual users and make
decisions accordingly. "Memory Jog" is designed to "jog the memory" of a
meeting participant who may, for example, forget the name of the person who
just spoke. The device would not only recall the name, but whisper it in
the user's ear using technology known as "targeted audio," which uses a
narrow band audio beam. This system is able to transmit a voice to a
single person's ear as they move about, remaining inaudible to everyone
else around. Another application, "Attention Cockpit," is intended for use
in meetings. Its modular interface allows entering and manipulation of
information by different participants. The system will provide a kind of
virtual table, on which items can be brought up or saved for later.
Finally, "Translation Goggles" provide real-time written translation of
speech imposed in a tiny heads-up display. At this point in development of
the CHIL project, applications are being tweaked to appear and disappear as
needed more accurately and seamlessly.
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Ear for Security
Sacramento Bee (CA) (10/23/06) Swett, Clint
Hao Chen, assistant professor of computer science at UC Davis, has
researched ways in which hackers can disrupt or tamper with cell phone
service. His research has shown that an Internet connection can be used to
send junk bits and bytes of data to many cell phones simultaneously, which
prevents the phones from going into standby mode, and thus drains the
battery about 20 times faster, and even worse, "there's no indication [to
the user] that something fishy is going on," says Chen. He claims that one
PC with a DSL connection could potentially attack 5,000 cell phones at
once. Other hacking techniques exist that could potentially affect greater
numbers. Beyond battery issues, which have been Chen's main concentration,
he believes the data networks used by business travelers to send email from
portable devices could be significantly slowed down or disabled. Last
year, Penn State researchers found that one cable modem is all that one
hacker needs to flood cell phones in a metropolitan area the size of
Manhattan with enough text messages to cause service to be denied to 70
percent of a carrier's customers. The cell phone industry is not ignorant
of these threats to their service. CTIA's Joe Farren says, "We have the
benefit of learning from the open Internet. Our filters and firewalls are
constantly being refined to address that is an evolving threat." He claims
that the type of attack simulated by Chen on just a few phones would not be
so easy when actually targeting tens of thousands of cell phones.
Anti-virus makers are also exploring the security needs brought on by the
increasing popularity of cell phone downloads using high-speed data
networks. Trend Micro's Todd Theimann says that although they "haven't
seen widespread damage yet...if you look at the growth of high-speed
networks and the wealth of technical knowledge out there, its bound to turn
virulent."
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Do Not Get Lost
Innovations Report (10/20/06)
Computer science researchers at the University of Granada have teamed up
with researchers at several other Spanish universities to develop a
computer application that is able to design generic itineraries for
tourists based on their preferences. SAMAP (Adaptive MultiAgent System of
context dependant Planning) is designed to cull the vast amount of tourism
information on the Internet and devise a visit plan after users have
determined their destination, the length of stay, how much money they have
to spend, how much walking they plan on doing, their favorite mode of
transportation, architectural or artistic preferences, favorite foods, and
more. "If somebody likes gothic art, the system will only offer him
monuments or museums according to such criterion depending on the money he
has at his disposal to travel and spend in the visit," says Luis Castillo,
a researcher at UGR. "And if these places are too far to go walking, they
can recommend him the most economical transport to arrive." SAMAP is
different from other systems in that it has the ability to learn and
features richer options. Users would be able to make changes to their
plans on the fly from a mobile device. The project, which also involves
researchers at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Barcelona, the
University Carlos III, UNED, and Technical College of Valencia, is testing
SAMAP on the city of Valencia.
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Canada Falls Short on IT Graduates
ITBusiness.ca (10/23/06) Lysecki, Sarah
Canada's Software Human Resource Council (SHRC) has found a significant
gap between the annual number of openings in the Canadian IT sector and the
number of computer science and computer engineering graduates from Canada's
universities each year. While total IT jobs are expected to jump from
35,000 each year to 89,000 for the next few years, only about 7,000
students are graduating each year. "We're trying to figure out where the
heck the rest of the people are going to come from," says SHRC President
Paul Swinwood. However, Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario,
says it has the highest number of applicants to its science programs since
2003, when high school was reduced from five years to four years, meaning
that number of students graduating was doubled that year. A new math
curriculum, requiring a course called geometry and discrete mathematics
that many avoided for fear of a bad grade, was found to be creating a
bottleneck. Universities changed their admissions requirements to accept
"a biology course or an earth science course," according to Dr. Stain
Boctor, dean of science, engineering, and architecture at Ryerson
University. There had been a 30 percent drop in qualified applicants to
science and engineering programs from 2001 and 2002 to 2004 and 2005, from
10,500 to 7,000, and though this has been corrected, more changes will be
made by the Ministry of Education by 2007. Unfortunately, the perception
remains in Canada that the IT sector is not a reliable source of employment
opportunities. "There is a psychological impact from that IT bubble
bursting in 2001," says Boctor. "We are far removed from that. There are
very lucrative jobs in IT and communication industry."
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Jump-Starting Quantum Error Correction With
Entanglement
Science (10/20/06) Vol. 314, No. 5798, P. 427; Gottesman, Daniel
Computers that use quantum bits, or qubits, to transfer information would
be faster and more secure than today's computers, but a large obstacle to
developing qubit computers is error-correction, as quantum information is
far more susceptible to errors than is traditional information. The three
properties that determine quality in error-correcting code are the rate at
which the code can transmit data, the error rate that can be tolerated, and
decoding time. The first two are directly related, the more noise in a
communication line, the slower the transmission of information. When
dealing with classical information, the Shannon capacity identifies the
optimal trade-off between the two properties, and can be achieved by an
error-correcting code chosen at random. The receiver needs to be able to
tell what kind of error occurred during transmission in order to fix it,
but this task is very difficult for a random code. Decoding time usually
consists mostly of time used identifying the error. Because of the
peculiarities of quantum information, no analog of Shannon's theorem exists
for it. A randomly chosen quantum error-correcting code has a good data
rate and error rate, but is not optimal, and takes a very long time to
decode, making a quantum code that satisfies all three properties difficult
to establish. Using entanglement, a quantum-mechanical phenomenon that
allows strong correlations between a pair of distant quantum systems, any
incompatibility in the encoding can be cancelled with an equivalent
incompatibility in the decoding. The result is that classical
error-correcting codes can be converted to quantum codes. Originally, the
entangled state must be free of noise, but a successful transmission
generates it, allowing further communication without cost to entanglement.
This process makes efficient quantum transmissions possible, and would be
very beneficial for a sender and receiver who communicate on a regular
basis.
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How to Overcome Female Resistance
What PC? (10/23/06) Bennett, Madeline
A recent Women in IT roundtable discussion focused on what can be done to
attract more women to the IT industry. Dawn Pollard, a project manager at
educational software and services firm RM, acknowledged that the IT
industry needs an image upgrade to help young girls understand that a
career in IT is about more than technical or programming skills.
Meanwhile, Anne Cantelo, who helped create the Computer Clubs for Girls at
E-Skills UK, noted that a study from Open University indicates that jobs
advertisements that are overly technical are a turnoff for women. "Adverts
shouldn't say, 'We need C+++,' but 'You need to create a system that will
help hospitals do this,'" said Cantelo, who added that for similar reasons,
women are not pursuing computer science studies. Compuware vice president
Amina West says women need to ask for more training so that they can take
advantage of career opportunities when they arise, and she added that women
attempting to reenter the workforce after raising children also need the
right training. More flexible work practices, such as the opportunity to
work from home, would be helpful, roundtable participants suggested. "IT
moves so rapidly that if you take a career break, it's hard to keep up,"
said Amanda Zuydervelt, founder of StyleBible.com. The participants were
also in support of mentoring programs in schools and the workplace.
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Tiny Electronic Chip, Interacting With the Brain,
Modifies Pathways for Controlling Movement
University of Washington News and Information (10/24/06) Gray, Leila
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing an electronic
chip that may help establish new nerve connections in the section of the
brain that controls motion. The most recent findings state that induced
brain changes in monkeys can last over a week. Rehabilitation of patients
with brain injuries, stroke, or paralysis, stand to benefit from this
technology, described in the study entitled "Long-Term Motor Cortex
Plasticity Induced by an Electronic Neural Implant." The inspiration for
the study comes from the theory that the brain's nerve signals can be
harnessed to create change in itself, just as these signals have been
redirected and used to control mechanical devices outside the body. A
self-contained device with a tiny computer chip, called a Neurochip,
"records the activity of motor cortex cells," explains Dr. Eberhard Fetz,
professor of physiology and biophysics. "It can convert this activity into
a stimulus that can be sent back to the brain, spinal cord, or muscle, and
thereby set up an artificial connection that operates continuously during
normal behavior. This recurrent brain-computer interface created an
artificial motor pathway that the brain may learn to use to compensate for
impaired pathways." When neighboring sites are connected in the motor
cortex, long-lasting changes occur, specifically, the motion evoked from
the recording site transformed to resemble those evoked from the
stimulation site. Synchronous activity generated by the brain-computer
interface in these sites may be the cause of this strengthening. The
effect of conditioning occurs only if the delay between recorded activity
and stimulation is brief enough. After a day of continuous conditioning
using the interface, conditioning will last for several days with the
circuit turned off.
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The Vanishing Computer -- 2026 A Vision for the Nation's
Future
The Australian (10/24/06) P. M12; Cuthbertson, Ian; Tellzen, Roland
Many experts say that increasingly transparent technology, ubiquitous
computing, will lead to all sorts of ingenious interfaces, possibly even
including the air itself, which is already filled with network and radio
signals. Trent Apted, PhD student at Sydney University, is developing a
table intended for meetings, which is able to project images such as photos
that can be passed around, enlarged, and written on. Mark Weiser, who ran
the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC for seven years (ending in
1997), was regarded as the father of ubiquitous computing. "The arcane
aura that surrounds personal computers is not just a 'user interface'
problem...the idea of a 'personal computer' itself is misplaced, and...is
only a transitional step toward achieving...[technology] that takes into
account the natural human environment and allows computers themselves to
vanish into the background," wrote Weiser in article for Scientific
American. He even imagined "'scrap computers' like scrap paper lying about
to be grabbed as needed." Futurist Michio Kaku expects ubiquitous
computing to be seen "coming of age" by 2010, and "by 2020, it will
dominate our lives." Looking as far ahead as 2050, Kaku sees "invisible,
networked computers which have the power of artificial intelligence,
reason, speech recognition, even common sense." He also predicts holograms
that will store data carried by optical computers, in which "light
beams...crisscross each other in an optical cube carrying information."
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Pentagon Urges 'Relevant' R&D
EE Times (10/20/06)No. 1446, P. 1; Leopold, George
The U.S. military will need contractors to concentrate more on relevant
technology that troops will be able to use while battling insurgents in
places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In the immediate future, high-risk
and high-payoff research will be less of a focus. For example, Defense
Department planners say a sensor system that would enable war fighters to
detect and destroy improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is the type of new
technology that is needed, and budget forecasters say the Pentagon plans to
spend more than $200 million on IED detection and training this year.
Fiscal 2006 was a record-setting year for spending on military R&D, but
technology spending has reached a plateau and is likely to fall in the
years to come, says Boeing's Cecil Black, who oversaw the DOD spending
forecast that the Government Electronics and Information Technology
Association (GEIA) released last week. The military has a budget of $435.6
billion for fiscal 2007, and much of the spending will go toward developing
missile defenses and a U.S. space force, in addition to "transformational
technologies" that connect commanders to troops in the streets. Aside from
IED and command and control technologies, DOD requirements include the
ability to detect threats early and counter them, and the comprehensive
network-centric warfare concept, in which sensors are able to turn patterns
in data into useful information and relay it to ground and space networks.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will receive around
$3 billion of the Pentagon's $13.3 billion science and technology budget
this year, and will focus on developing "robust, secure, self-forming
networks" and other net-centric capabilities for the battlefield.
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IT Policy Outlook
InformationWeek (10/23/06)No. 1111, P. 53; Greenemeier, Larry; Hoover, J.
Nicholas
The future of many telecommunication and IT issues is riding on the
outcome of the upcoming congressional elections, and among the areas where
IT policy will have a significant impact are communications, critical
infrastructure, jobs and education, data privacy, and innovation.
Businesses should keep a careful eye on telecom policy, as a change in
congressional leadership could mean the difference between the institution
or the dismissal of Internet neutrality legislation; both Congress and the
FCC have also been endorsing new broadband technologies. HCR Manor Care's
Tom Olzak says the government must take a lead role, in a non-autocratic
manner, in protecting the nation's critical infrastructure, which is about
85 percent controlled by businesses. A decline in U.S. students' science
and math literacy has prompted the introduction of legislation designed to
fortify the technical workforce and reform the H-1B visa program.
Legislative inaction on the issue of data privacy this year does not
indicate ignorance, but there are so many bills floating around that
Congress is understandably hesitant, when the volume of the proposals is
weighed against the intricacy of data security and the potential cost of
breach notification. One possible solution is a consistent series of
federal data privacy rules for businesses. Even if Congress experiences a
changing of the guard, its willingness to reform the U.S. patent system and
maintain U.S. leadership in high-tech innovation will remain consistent:
One of the provisions of patent system reform legislation introduced last
summer is the creation of a minitrial to ascertain the quality of a patent
when it is challenged.
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Interactive Storytelling
Dr. Dobb's Journal (10/06) Vol. 31, No. 10, P. 16; Swaine, Michael
Computer games and computer-based training could be shaken up by
interactive storytelling, which is Storytron creator Chris Cooper's vision.
Cooper found the games industry unenthusiastic when it came to moving away
from what he calls the "formulaic" product model and exploring more
"unconventional" games. He says the technical elements needed to make
interactive storytelling a reality began to come together about two years
ago, while finding a practical business model was the last big
breakthrough. Storytron system components include storyworlds, structures
in which scores of stories implicitly reside and that spawn stories via
interaction with players; storybuilders, artists who construct storyworlds
by using the Storyworld Authoring Tool (SWAT); the Storytron Engine; the
Storyteller consumer program; the Rehearsal testing feature; and the Diekto
language. Cooper says the stories the system produces distinguish
themselves from conventional stories by being plotless: They are rather
explorations of storyworlds by players. Cooper describes designing SWAT so
that nontechnical people could use it as "a murderously difficult problem,"
and one of SWAT's advantages is its support of point-and-click editing.
Other useful features of SWAT include color-coded datatypes and tolerance
of runtime errors. Cooper calls Storytron "a social interaction simulator"
that lends itself to corporate and military training.
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The Internet Is Sick...But We Can Make It Better
Popular Science (10/06) Vol. 269, No. 4, P. 82; Tynan, Dan
The Internet's vulnerability to cybercriminals requires an immune system,
and Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab is working on various remedies that
follow this paradigm. One solution seeks to address the widespread
distribution of identical software bugs because software lacks diversity.
The approach is based on biological systems' evolutionary response to
disease, with the goal being to develop software that is adaptable to
attack. CyLab even envisions the creation of software and operating
systems that randomly alter their functions or scramble the order of their
executed instructions. Another remedy being researched by CyLab seeks to
shore up corporate information databases against distributed denial of
service attacks through the use of survivable data storage systems. This
can be seen as a interim measure until self-healing networks are developed.
The ease of spoofing Internet Protocol addresses makes tracking down the
source of malware often next to impossible, but Carnegie Mellon electrical
and computer engineering professor Adrian Perrig says CyLab's Fast Internet
Traceback (FIT) technology can follow each data packet as it travels
throughout the Internet, "like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs." FIT's
practicality depends on upgrading at least one-third of the Internet's
approximately 100,000 routers, while proving a cybercriminal's culpability
requires an unshakeable identity verification scheme, which raises serious
privacy issues.
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A Conversation With David Brown
Queue (10/06) Vol. 4, No. 8, P. 14; Sproull, Bob
In an interview conducted by Sun Microsystems Fellow and Sun Labs director
Bob Sproull, Solaris expert on binary compatibility David Brown explains
the reasoning and methods that facilitate the evolution of the operating
system without disrupting existing applications. The most obvious
motivating force for developers is the customer, who does not want new
software to undermine applications already in place, according to Brown.
He cites a tension between new features and the stability of existing
features, which makes a cautious attitude toward the delivery of new
features critical. "In practice, it's hugely important that you have some
mechanical way of examining an application: To see what it's using--and to
decide whether that's OK or not," Brown notes. He says the methodology for
introducing change in a controlled manner has technological and
sociological facets, adding that there must be a fundamental dedication to
not breaking any existing applications. "Maintain strict upward
compatibility from one release to the next, and define the application
interfaces clearly so you don't allow any applications (or layered software
products) that use them to be broken in a later release of the system,"
Brown recommends. According to him, the need to maintain an interface's
stability increases as the interface is more broadly exposed and employed.
Among the lessons about system evolution Brown cites is recognition of the
fact that systems are built upon thousands of carefully evaluated
engineering decisions; he also stresses the need for a mindset among
developers that envisions innovation and stability as interdependent.
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