H.P. to Report an Advance in Adaptable Circuitry
New York Times (01/16/07) P. C2; Markoff, John
Hewlett-Packard researchers have created flexible electronic circuits that
could be used to upgrade the circuitry of computer-based consumer devices
by the end of the decade. Their findings could be the best display to date
of the potential commercialization of molecular computing. For more than
10 years the industry has explored nanocomputing to find a way to build
wires that are no more than several molecules wide and switches made of
single atoms, but the challenge of moving signals between molecular
computing devices and today's devices still remains. Using the work of two
Stony Brook University researchers who theorized a method for overlaying a
mesh of molecular-scale wires over a conventional chip circuit to transfer
data between the two, the HP researchers designed a hybrid consisting of
transistors made from traditional photolithography along with a mesh of
nanowire-connected switches. "We've demonstrated a credible means for
shrinking circuit density without shrinking transistors," said Stan
Williams, director of quantum science research at HP Labs. The researchers
expect to have a functional chip prototype by the end of the year. They
are focusing on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) chips, which are
commonly used to build prototypes that can later be manufactured less
expensively. These chips use many transistors that can be reconfigured to
create countless arrays of circuits. If the work is successful, the FPGA
chips produced will be one-eighth to one-tenth the size of today's chips,
consume far less power, and could be used in mass-produced consumer
products or used to upgrade previously purchased products.
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Torvalds: 'Hot Air' in Debates on GPL, Content
Control
CNet (01/16/07) Kotadia, Munir
Linux creator Linus Torvalds does not think that the battle between
General Public License (GPL) and Digital rights managements (DRM) will
cause any harm to innovation, despite the arguments and hurt feelings.
"People have strong opinions," says Torvalds, who discounts any
expectations of a messy conflict between DRM and GPLv3 advocates. However,
he does have his preferences. He says, "One reason I really dislike DRM is
that it is technologically an inferior solution to not doing DRM. It
actually makes it harder for people to do what they want to do. It makes
it harder to do things that you really should be able to do." Despite his
opinion, he claims that "I am a big believer in letting people do what they
want," but his own beliefs do " put [him] at odds with other people in the
technical area who have an agenda that they want to drive." He calls the
release of GPLv3 a "watershed" event, since GPLv2 has been used in the
open-source, free-software environment since 1991. Torvalds says he is not
concerned with which technology or development methodology is superior,
since he is confident that "good technology" will prevail. He claims to
use open source because "it is fun. That is the most basic thing. I also
happen to believe that it is the best way to, eventually, get the best end
result. Part of that is the 'eventually.' At any particular point in
time, it may not always be the best thing right then."
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EU Study Says Open Source Could Increase
Competitiveness
Computer Business Review (01/15/07)
Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) could be utilized to achieve the
European Union's goal of making it the world's leading knowledge economy by
2010, concludes a new study. "Given Europe's historically lower ability to
create new software businesses compared to the U.S., due to restricted
venture capital and risk tolerance, the high share of European FLOSS
developers provides a unique opportunity to create new software
businesses," says the report, which was commissioned by the European
Commission's Information Society Technologies program. FLOSS could also
make up for low information and technology investment: A 20 percent to 40
percent increase in the FLOSS share of software investment could bring
about a 0.1 percent rise in annual EU GDP growth, which is about a 10
million euro contribution. A survey by United Nations University and
Maastricht University joint research and training center UNU-MERIT found
that 63 percent of all FLOSS developers live in the EU, while only 20
percent live in the U.S. and Canada, and 42 percent of Sourceforge users
are in Europe, while 39 percent are in the U.S., and 7 percent are in Asia.
Europe's biggest challenge will be keeping these FLOSS developers in
Europe; of those that do not live in their native country, 5 percent had
left the U.S., while 26 percent had gone to the U.S. The ability to
cultivate Floss-related companies may be the deciding factor in the
competitiveness of the EU's information economy.
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The Legal Tangles of Data Collection
Washington Post (01/16/07) P. A9; Nakashima, Ellen
Data collection efforts are being aided by both loopholes and progressing
technology, as federal laws struggle to keep up. The Bush administration's
assertion that it could tap phone calls without a warrant has gained much
attention and opposition, but little has been done to curb such practices,
including those concerning email surveillance. The 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III of the 1968 Omnibus Crime
Control & Safe Streets Act stated that a warrant is need to tap a phone
call; this law was later extended to prohibit interception of electronic
communication without a warrant. However, in the 1980s and 1990s when this
addendum was made, emails would stay on a user's computer only. Today,
email stored on a third party's server can be obtained by the government
simply by serving a subpoena, which does not require notification of the
user, sometimes even prohibiting notification for a certain time. In fact,
any information held by a third party is subject to these same rules.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the government has extended its ability to obtain
private financial, phone-call, and Internet transaction data, using
national security letters that do not require judicial approval; 30,000
such letters were issued by the FBI in 2005. While information can help
law enforcement, mistakes have been made and people wrongly accused.
Privacy experts say that as more and more personal information is being
stored on the Internet and on database over which the individual has little
to no control, the law is becoming less capable of protecting citizens.
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A DVD Copy Protection Is Overcome by Hackers
New York Times (01/17/07) P. C4; Stone, Brad
A worldwide group of loosely affiliated hackers has overcome the Advanced
Access Control System (AACS) antipiracy software meant to protect HD DVDs
and distribute various films online. Less than a month ago, a hacker
called Muslix64 released software that allows users to copy HD DVDs onto
their computers, but left out the necessary title keys that are generated
by AACS software for each movie. Now hackers appear to have found these
security keys in DVD-playing programs on their own computers. Michael
Ayers, chairman of the business group of the trade organization that
administers AACS, says that while the intrusion is a serious matter, the
hackers have only cracked the DVD-playing software, not the DVD antipiracy
system itself. AACS was designed so that players, such as those that have
been attacked, could be shut down remotely, by having their licenses
revoked. Consultant Bill Rosenblatt says this latest intrusion is not as
serious as the defeat of the encryption system for standard DVDs in 1999,
since HD DVD is intended to "fail more gracefully and not be as brittle as
the DVD scheme." However, other experts say the intrusion is more serious.
Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of security company BT
Counterpane, says that while title codes could be changed on new disks, old
ones would still be available for some time, and there is little doubt that
hackers will increase their efforts to crack new disks. He says, "Data is
inherently copyable, just as water is inherently wet. All the technology
companies are doing is putting in tricks to make it harder to copy. But
all they are is tricks."
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Foreign Patent Applications Jump in the U.S.
EE Times (01/12/07) Riley, Sheila
The growing percentage of patent applications filed by foreign nationals
living in the U.S. shows the value of making it easier for highly skilled
foreign-born workers to stay in America. Duke University researchers found
that 24.2 percent of patent filings in 2006 were submitted by foreign
nationals, up from 7.3 percent in 1998. The largest group of immigrants
filing patents was the Chinese and Taiwanese combined, who made up 26.8
percent of patents filed in 2006, and Indians were second with 21 percent.
Duke University Pratt School of Engineering executive in residence and
leader of the study Vivek Wadhwa says that most of these patents were filed
by Ph.D. researchers working at universities under various temporary visas
who would return to their native country when a job was offered there.
"We've got all these brilliant people contributing to U.S.
competitiveness," he says. "We train them and we keep them in a holding
pattern while the economies of India and China are improving a lot."
Increasing the number of H-1B visas given out each year could only make
this problem worse. Green card reform, however, could encourage these
researchers to stay in the country permanently and become a citizen. Some
view the Duke results as an effect of globalization rather than
immigration; as U.S. companies outsource more work to certain countries,
immigration from these countries increases, and while the patent world
benefits from the contributions of foreign-born workers, job availability
for U.S. engineers suffers. IEEE-USA's Ron Hira says, "It surprised me
that the share is as large as it is. But the fact that it has grown so
rapidly raises lots of questions about why that's happened. We really just
don't know."
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Swimming in the Global Talent Pool
Computerworld (01/15/07) Brandel, Mary
As today's programmers compete for jobs with others around the world, a
new set of criteria is being used to judge them. While some U.S. companies
use offshoring to reduce costs, many are simply looking for the best talent
they can find, especially since employees can often work for several
companies from their home country. Today's technology recruiters are
concerned mostly with the "relevance" of an applicant's knowledge and
experience, especially concerning Web 2.0. David Hayes, president of tech
recruiter HireMinds, says, "The world has changed, and you can either
change with it or get swept up by it. On your resume, if you don't talk
about something you do that's connected to one of these new spaces, you
won't even be considered." Having an understanding of the open source
community is also very important for prospective programmers. Hayes says,
"There's a belief system in there, and you have to be able to express
that." Applicants who stand out also have a keen understanding not only of
technology, but how technology applies to business in a broader context.
The U.S. is not the only country scouring the world for the best talent;
Infosys' Global Talent Program has already hired 126 U.S citizens for
software engineering training in India. Tata Consultancy North America's
U.S. based practice director John Dubiel says, "Employers want people who
understand different work models, like offshore models, or where your team
is in multiple geographic locations outside the U.S." Most Europe and U.K.
residents are more accustomed to working for multinationals with overseas
headquarters than Americans are. However, in a few years, "the issue of
whether I work for a U.S. or Indian company will be irrelevant," says
Dubiel. "All these companies that offer services are pretty much the same;
only the headquarters will change."
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Officials Warm to Paper Trail to Verify Votes in
Maryland
Washington Post (01/17/07) P. B1; Rein, Lisa
A bill has been submitted in the Maryland General Assembly that would
require paper records to back up every vote cast in the state, meaning the
state may join a nationwide movement to make touchscreen voting a more
trustworthy and secure process. If the bill passes, Maryland would have to
retrofit its voting machines with printers, or make a complete switch to
optical scan machines. Over $100 million was spent on the state's current
voting equipment, which was purchased right after the 2000 election.
Maryland's touchscreen voting equipment is relatively early technology and
retrofitting it will be difficult and costly. Twenty-seven states have
already legislated changes in e-voting to increase reliability, and some
states have even gotten rid of touchscreen machines completely. Maryland
is one of only five states that use electronic voting systems without
providing voters any way to verify their vote. Neighboring Virginia and
D.C. use touchscreen machines in some districts or let voters choose
between paper and electronic systems. Paper trail advocates expect
congressional or state action to require a paper trail for all voters by
the 2008 presidential election. Last month, the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission recommended that all voting districts either switch to optical
scan machines or equip touchscreen machines with printers, since the latter
voting machines cannot be secured otherwise.
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Silicon 'Lego Bricks' Used to Build 3D Chips
New Scientist (01/12/07) Simonite, Tom
Researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom have
taken another approach to improving the speed of three-dimensional
electronics. Michael Kraft, Mark Spearing, and Liudi Jiang have developed
a method of stacking the electronics using silicon wafers with matching
sets of pegs and holes that make them resemble "Lego bricks." Typically,
more components are squeezed onto the same surface of a flat silicon wafer
to build 3D chips. "Our technique is simpler and uses standard silicon
processing equipment," Kraft says of the layering strategy. Researchers at
MIT have put together a prototype seven-layer turbine-on-a-chip, and the
assembly process makes use of a camera to help line up the different
wafers. The U.K. project was able to line up two chips within
200-nanometer accuracy, which is nearly five times better than the result
of using a camera. The U.K. researchers hope to try the stackable approach
on larger silicon wafers before developing functional electronics with
layered 3D chips.
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Why the Number of Women in IT Is Decreasing
IT Jungle (01/15/07) Roberts, Mary Lou
A recently presented Gartner report on the decreasing number of women in
the IT profession stresses that the differences between men and women must
be utilized by IT departments, rather than downplayed. Not only is the
popularity of IT decreasing among women, it is doing so at a faster rate
than in other fields, and the trend is global; Gartner numbers show that
between 1996 and 2004 the percentage of women in IT dropped from 42 percent
to 32.4 percent. Gartner's Mark Raskino, co-author of the report, says
that today's IT landscape is becoming more about information and
relationships, skills that women are thought to be more adept at, than it
is about technology. As a result, he says, "In the next three to five
years in terms of delivering what IT departments are expected to deliver,
the gender imbalance is going to put these departments in a really weak
position unless they do something about it and address it." From 2006 to
2016 Gartner expects the main forces driving IT to include a focus on the
consumer, international reach and coordination of efforts, and innovation.
Raskino notes that although women excel in all of these areas, recent
approaches have shunned treating the sexes as unequal. Although everyone
must be judged on their individual merits, Raskino believes IT departments
should exploit differences in the genders, rather than trying to get rid of
stereotypes. He also suggest increasing the chances for those who have
left IT departments to continue working from home. Many after school
programs, clubs, and camps have been developed to help show young girls how
interesting IT can be, and remove any stigma the industry may have at a
time when they are beginning to contemplate a career path.
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Sun's Fortran Replacement Goes Open-Source
CNet (01/12/07) Shankland, Steve
Sun's Fortress "interpreter" was recently released as an open-source
software prototype meant to execute the new Sun language, Fortress, line by
line. Sun Labs computer scientist and Fortress project leader Eric Allen
says, "We're trying to engage academics and other third parties."
Fortress, a replacement for the 50-year old Fortran language, was designed
through a Defense-Department supercomputing project, but can handle
mainstream tasks such as extracting work from multicore processing engines.
"We think as multicore becomes more important for ordinary desktop systems
that programmers are going to have to turn to a language like Fortress in
order to take advantage of the performance their hardware is providing to
them," Allen says. Sun hopes that Fortress will be able to solve the
problem of programs that do not scale very well, allowing them to utilize
parallelism. Fortress programmers must specify when software shouldn't run
in parallel, the opposite of previous defaults, and aims to store data
intelligently so it will be near the processor that needs it. Allen says
the language allows programmers to use ordinary mathematical expressions
instead of having to translate formulas into the intricate syntax of
computer languages. He says, "It provides more productivity because it
allows the scientific programmer to stay closer to his own problem domain
instead of learning some computer science language." He also says the
language is useful for writing business software for customer-relationship
management. The interpreter, which runs on Java, is still in the early
stages, and a Fortress compiler is planned to be released eventually.
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Computers Take on Blue-Collar Tasks
Columbus Dispatch (OH) (01/12/07) Curet, Monique
The Blue Collar Computing program will give Ohio companies an opportunity
to save even more time and money via the high-powered computers and
software from the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Remote access to
high-performance machines will take computer benefits to the next level for
companies, enabling them to shuttle employees away from time-consuming and
labor-intensive assignments to tasks that require them to use more
sophisticated equipment. For example, engineers would be able to simulate
a weld with a supercomputer, instead of building physical prototypes, and
companies may be able to reduce the number of physical experiments from a
dozen to one or two before wrapping up a project. The supercomputer center
has reached deals with the Edison Welding Institute, which represents 250
companies, as well as the Ohio Manufacturers' Association and PolymerOhio
that will allow many small companies to take advantage of its technology.
Ohio Supercomputer Center executive director Stan Ahalt says computing
tends to be limited to the desktop or the very high end, but the
marketplace still has blue-collar needs. Supercomputers can help industry
develop better products, but Ahalt says they will not replace workers.
"Our focus is to enrich the economy of Ohio," he says.
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Scholars Move to New Area of Artificial
Intelligence
Vanguard (01/11/07) Edukugho, Emmanuel
University of Lagos deputy vice chancellor and professor Adetokunbo
Babatunde Sofoluwe delivered an inaugural lecture in which he mentioned
some of his contributions to the discipline of artificial intelligence
(AI). Among his contributions is work on pattern recognition via single
layer perception; the determination of salient input features for
feedforward nets; a study of biologically inspired computing paradigms,
including those for tackling NP hard problems such as the "traveling
salesman" challenge; a critical examination of fuzzy logic and neural
networks; and a more effective Monte Carlo algorithm for addressing the
traveling salesman problem. Sofoluwe noted that AI is drawing a lot of
interest from scholars representing a wide swath of fields, including
linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. "The motivation is to explore and
adopt new paradigms in order to overcome the limitations that have been
identified in the manner that computations are carried out," he explained.
"The branch of computer science dealing with artificial intelligence is
focusing on intelligent behavior, learning and adaptation." Sofoluwe also
said there is an interest in creating intelligent machines.
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Sensor Nets Branch Out in Real World
EE Times (01/15/07) P. 1; Wirbel, Loring
Speakers at last week's IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium reported that
advanced modulation and radio-frequency (RF) transmission schemes are
making the jump from laboratory to field research in an effort to address
actual problems. "The heterogeneity and spatial variability common to many
environmental problems are almost tailor-made for embedded wireless sensor
networks," noted Deborah Estrin of UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked
Sensing. "If you don't have that fine-grained variability, you don't
really need to sense at multiple points." Estrin spotlighted the
combination of sensor networks with robotics and actuators in agricultural
work and species monitoring, pointing out that node mobility can help
eliminate undersampling. The center's networks are usually divided into
three levels: Dumb "motes" at the endpoints, microservers to control
numerous motes, and autonomous mobile nodes equipped with cameras and other
sensing machinery. Estrin says this permits citizen-researchers to
participate in projects such as disaster tracking in a decentralized
manner. She cited projects the center's networks have recently
participated in, including the measurement of arsenic contaminant transport
in Bangladeshi drinking wells, observation of continental microclimates via
terrestrial-imaging nets, seismic monitoring in the wake of a 2005
earthquake in Pakistan, and analysis of the mixing of California's San
Joaquin and Merced rivers. Also highlighted at the symposium was cognitive
radio, which Hiroshi Harada of Japan's National Institute of Information
and Communications Technology said could go beyond frequency band selection
and support mobile communications, wireless LAN and ultrawideband, and
digital terrestrial television with one appliance.
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'Dave, It's HAL, It's My Birthday and
I'm...Lonely'
Athens Banner-Herald (GA) (01/12/07) Thompson, Jim
It is highly unlikely that a thinking machine as sophisticated as HAL
9000--the neurotic and homicidal computer of the classic novel and film
"2001: A Space Odyssey"--will ever be realized, says Michael Covington of
the University of Georgia's Artificial Intelligence Center. Part of the
reason for this is that our expectations of what functions computers should
perform have changed in the nearly four decades since HAL was envisioned,
while another factor is the realization that the human brain is a much more
complicated instrument than previously thought. "A tool that helps people
with intellectual work need not look--or behave--like a human," Covington
argues. "In fact, our intellectual tools get a lot of their usefulness
from not being human-like in their behavior." He says it is folly to
design a computer that can trick users into thinking that it has a human
mind, and the consequences can be appropriately disastrous, as HAL's deadly
actions in the book and film demonstrate. A different opinion is offered
by Emory University professor David Cook, who teaches a course on the films
of "2001" director Stanley Kubrick. His view is that humanity's absolute
dependence on computers portrayed in the film comes close to our current
perceptions of technology, in which case the movie turns out to be eerily
prescient. Cook contends that the film explores the theme of how a
reliance on advanced technology can carry mankind into the future, but
leave people with no clue about what they should do once they have reached
that future. Modern AI research is focused on creating models of the human
mind in order to comprehend its workings.
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Malware Creators Turn Code Protection Technique to Their
Advantage
ITBusiness.ca (01/09/07) Khanna, Poonam
The programming method known as dynamic code obfuscation, originally
developed to protect code against intellectual property theft, is becoming
a popular way for hackers to keep their malicious code from being
identified, according to Finjan's Web Security Trends Report Q4 2006. Code
obfuscation, which allows code to always appears different, is a useful way
for programmers to prevent others from figuring out what their code
actually does, but hackers can use the technique to foil anti-virus
programs that rely upon a virus having a static signature. The technique
also allows spammers to hide their intentions. Security consultant Mary
Kirwan suggests that businesses think of security as something that is
built from the ground up, rather than simply being slapped on at the end.
Finjan also expects Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace, both of
which recently experienced malicious code-related attacks, Microsoft Vista,
and Internet Explorer 7 to see an increasing number of hacker attacks.
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Reports of COBOL's Imminent Demise Premature
SD Times (01/01/07)No. 165, P. 16; Koch, Geoff
The reported obsolescence of COBOL is being forestalled by colleges and
corporations thanks to its ability to accommodate massive amounts of
information in government and corporate data centers. "There is no other
language that will match COBOL in this respect," says "The Power of COBOL"
author and Luso Computer Institute founder Rui de Oliveira. There are
concerns that a shortage of legacy skills is imminent, as mainframe
professionals approach retirement age while business-critical applications
worldwide still have COBOL installations. However, Forrester analyst Phil
Murray does not project the abrupt mass retirement of mainframe pros
anytime soon. "Rather, some programmers will start much sooner and others
will start later, making it less noticeable because it will be spread out
over a much longer time frame: 2005 to 2035, as opposed to 2020 to 2030,"
he wrote in a Nov. 23 research report. Vendors with a substantial stake in
mainframes, such as IBM and Micro Focus, are sponsoring college and
university programs to train students in COBOL and other legacy
technologies. But Central Michigan University professor Zhenyu Huang notes
that interest in COBOL is flagging on campuses, and there appears to be no
way to reverse this trend.
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Digital Fingerprints
Science News (01/13/07) Vol. 171, No. 2, P. 26; Rehmeyer, Julie J.
Neither online criminals nor innocents may be safe from new techniques to
de-anonymize Internet users by studying their behavioral patterns.
Researchers at Italy's University of Torino are building on the typeprint
method, in which a person's identity is determined according to keystroke
timing, to craft a system that analyzes typing rhythms to keep track of
illicit activity around the Internet. There is concern that such a system
would allow authorities to identify innocent users by keeping a log of many
individuals' typing patterns, while hackers could conceivably employ the
typeprint analysis method to deduce passwords and other critical
information. University of Arizona researcher Hsinchun Chen led a team
that pioneered a program for identifying people by their distinctive
writing styles--punctuation, use of the passive voice, indentation,
paragraph length, proportions of uppercase and lowercase letters, word
choice, content, etc.--so that Internet abusers can be pinpointed through
message analysis. The consistency of writers in terms such as word length
and punctuation is graphically represented in a writeprint. Chen's team
reported in last April's Communications of the ACM that after examining 30
to 40 messages from any known author, the program could identify subsequent
messages by that author with 99 percent accuracy in English, 95 percent in
Arabic, and 93 percent in Chinese. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's
Peter Eckersley is worried that whistle blowing and public speech could be
stifled by tools such as writeprints. Identifying people on the Internet
by their mouse movements is another technique under investigation, and
researchers at the Wharton School in Philadelphia and the University of
California, Davis, are focusing on fraud prevention and ID authentication
via analysis of clickstream data culled from multiple browsing sessions.
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