Cries to Change Patent Law
Baltimore Sun (04/30/06) P. C1; Bishop, Tricia
Patents have been protecting innovation rights for centuries, but now, the
current patent system is coming under fire from businesses and regulators
alike, with Congress taking up its own potential patent system reform
legislation. Currently three patent cases are on appeal before the U.S.
Supreme Court, including one that will determine if the courts can request
that alleged infringers immediately cease operations. Another case would
determine whether the connection between a problem and a solution could be
patented; while a third case, hinges on who should be allowed to file
patent infringement cases in the first place. Experts point out that the
decisions in these cases will determine whether court systems will be more
favorable toward patent holders or patent challengers in the future.
Technology firms are interested in weakening patent holder rights in order
to spur further innovation in their markets and to open up the markets to
further competition. Reform recommendations have been offered by the
National Academy of Sciences and the Federal Trade Commission as recent
patent cases such as the near shutdown of RIM's Blackberry service have
brought the issue to the forefront. "It seems like every five to 10 years
there is this upheaval in patent law. But my feeling is that this [time]
is more substantive, because it's happening on a lot of fronts," says Alba
Therapeutics vice president of intellectual property Christopher E.
Jeffers.
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Software Lets Programmers Code Hands-Free
New Scientist (04/26/06) Graham-Rowe, Duncan
New speech recognition software called VoiceCode could greatly ease the
plight of the some 22 percent of all U.S. software programmers who suffer
from repetitive strain injury. The tool automatically recognizes spoken
syntax, converting it into correct code and eliminating the need to spell
out every syntactic peculiarity as typical with most speech recognition
software. The project is a joint collaboration between National Research
Council of Canada researcher Alain Desilets, Harvard University's David
Fox, and the University of California at Berkeley's Stuart Norton.
Desilets says the software enables programmers to dictate code more
naturally, and can quickly interpret spoken programming syntax. VoiceCode
currently works only with Python, but Desilets says it can be adapted for
use with other languages. Desilets presented the program at ACM's CHI2006
conference held in Montreal last week.
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Guidelines For Radio Tags Aim to Protect Buyer
Privacy
New York Times (05/01/06) P. C6; Feder, Barnaby J.
New guidelines are being released during a technology trade show in Las
Vegas to protect consumer privacy when identification and tracking systems
that use small radio tags are used. RFID technology is becoming more
common in libraries, hospitals, and systems that track consumer goods
through the retail supply chain. The guidelines say consumers should be
notified when products have radio tags and that consumers should know how
to disable disposable forms of the tags easily. Procter & Gamble, IBM,
Microsoft, Visa USA, and the National Consumers League are some of the
participants expected to endorse the guidelines. Some opponents of the
guidelines include the National Retail Federation and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF). EFF lawyer Lee Tien says the guidelines give
the industry too much room and ignore government use of RFID along with
privacy concerns for employees in business-to-business dealings. A survey
last year found that 7 percent of 89 retailers and 11 percent of 120
consumer products manufacturers had delayed or cut back RFID investments
over privacy concerns, according to Christine Overby at Forrester Research.
RFID is currently used in wireless toll collection systems and to control
access to buildings, track livestock, and manage industrial assets.
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Software Allows Neighbors to Improve Internet Access at
No Extra Cost
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (04/27/06) Kloeppel, James E.
The PERM (Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming)
software framework allows neighbors to share wireless broadband without
compromising security or privacy at no added cost to users. The
peer-to-peer sharing model developed by computer scientists at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign uses flow-scheduling algorithms
to choose the best connection from those available but gives priority to
participants over their wireless routers. "Significantly improved speed
and the 'always on' feature of wireless routers have been driving the rapid
spread of broadband Internet access in many residential areas," says Haiyun
Luo, a professor at UI. "More than 56 percent of homes in the United
States already have Internet access, and more than half of those homes are
using Wi-Fi wireless home networks...PERM exploits the diversity of
broadband Internet access in residential areas to improve connectivity in a
managed way. Our design requires no support outside the user's wireless
router, and is immediately deployable." The service is only available to
registered users. To take advantage of it, a user must be willing to share
his or her connection. Though currently requiring proximity, future
rollouts of the technology may allow subscribers to share spectrum on the
go. "Wireless routers are necessarily location-based," Luo says. "But the
peer-to-peer sharing concept can just as easily be used between cars, or
between homes and cars, as between homes. As more users join the system,
the more powerful the system will become."
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New Weapons Needed for the War on Junk Email
University of Calgary (04/27/06)
Spam filters may be highly effective, but they cannot keep up with
spammers who are coming up with new ways to trick people into visiting
commercial Web sites or downloading rogue software carrying viruses, worms,
spyware, or other dangerous applications, according to John Aycock, an
assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary.
Aycock and his student Nathan Friess performed research that shows it is
possible to create a new type of spam, or bulk email, that can go past the
best spam filters and trick even the most advanced computer users. Aycock
and Friess will present their research during the 15th annual conference of
the European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research, being held in
Hamburg, Germany, on April 30. The goal of the research is to increase
awareness of the threat so that anti-spam software that anticipates what
spammers will do next can be written. "We want to look at potential
threats and see what we can do about them right now, as opposed to getting
to the point where we're forced to react," says Aycock. The majority of
spam today is sent from zombie computers, which can automatically send
large email messages. Aycock predicts that spammers may soon use zombie
computers to tap into a person's email account, which was previously
thought of as too complex, but research shows that is now possible. Aycock
wants companies that make anti-spam software and email programs to take
advantage of the new information and use the suggested solutions in their
existing software suites.
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Micro-Pump Is Cool Idea for Future Computer Chips
Purdue University News (04/25/06) Venere, Emil
Engineers at Purdue University continue to make progress on developing a
cooling system for the computer chips of the future. After creating a tiny
"micro-pump" cooling device, the researchers have successfully integrated
the unit onto a silicon chip that is approximately one-sixth of a square
inch. Suresh Garimella, director of Purdue's Cooling Technologies Research
Center, says in 10 years computer chips will likely have around 100 times
more transistors and other components, which will produce much more heat.
Better cooling systems will be needed to protect electronic components of
computers from becoming damaged or to keep computers operating at their
highest level. "Our goal is to develop advanced cooling systems that are
self-contained on chips and are capable of handling the more extreme
heating in future chips," says Garimella, a professor of mechanical
engineering. The researchers used electrohydrodynamics to achieve the
pumping action of the microelectromechanical system, and glued a thin sheet
of piezoelectric material to the top of the prototype chip's water-filled
micro-channels to increase the force of the pumping action. The feature
has boosted the pumping action by 13 percent in the prototype, but has the
potential to produce improvements of 100 percent or more. Among the
challenges the engineers face is designing a system that does not leak
water and can be manufactured under the same conditions as semiconductor
chips.
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Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship Program Honors
Young Academics Who Display Extraordinary Aptitude for Innovate
Research
PRNewswire (04/26/06)
Microsoft Research has named the five new recipients of New Faculty
Fellowships, awarded to early-career professors who demonstrate original
work in the field of computing. The winners were chosen from a pool of
some 100 individuals and will each receive a $200,000 grant to advance
their efforts. "Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellows represent the best
new professors in computing disciplines today," says Rick Rashid, senior
vice president of Microsoft Research. Winners will also get a chance to
work with researchers at Microsoft Research. The five winners, two women
and three men, will focus on finding new ways for people to interact with
and use computing devices. Regina Barzilay, assistant professor of
electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, is researching computational modeling of linguistic phenomena
by exploring the ability of computers to summarize information found in
multiple documents that contain related information. Aaron Hertzmann,
assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, is
working on developing simulated models for computer animation that could be
used to predict human motion in a variety of circumstances. Scott Klemmer,
assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, is working
on human-computer interaction tools in order to make the computer
environment more significant and accessible. Eddie Kohler, assistant
professor of computer science, University of California, Los Angeles, is
working to make computer systems easier to program by synthesizing basic
systems research and component-based programming language techniques.
Fei-Fei Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is developing algorithms
designed to enable machines to see like humans in order to create new tools
for personal photo organization and image searches.
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En Route to Personal Guidance for Mobility-Impaired
Users
IST Results (04/28/06)
European researchers expect to complete work on a guided travel system for
people with mobility or cognitive impairments, or even a larger audience,
by Dec. 18. More than 80 content providers, including big telecom
carriers, city governments, and chambers of commerce, have already thrown
their support behind a standard ontological framework using XML, which
should be ready by June 2006. IST is funding the ASK-IT project, which is
readying new software that the mobility-impaired can use to program their
personal needs and preferences into latest-generation mobile phones and
PDAs, as well as a Web service for housing information about local
facilities and services. A real-time system, ASK-IT would be able to aid a
wheelchair user plan a trip to Sweden by providing information on hotels
that offer suitable access and helping with travel arrangements, such as
recommending buses that have suitable wheelchair ramps or suggesting
parking areas that offer wheelchair access, if the individual is traveling
by car. "Inside the bus it works with the bus routing system, so it can
tell you when to disembark for example," says ASK-IT technical manager
Angelos Bekiaris of the system, which can also work with an in-car
navigation system via a Bluetooth connection. "Once inside the airport,
the system links with airport wireless networks to guide you to the
departure gate," he says of ASK-IT, which will make use of GSM networks and
the GPS satellite system. Users will be able to book and pay for services
online. Budapest, the Hague, Genoa, Helsinki, Madrid, Newcastle,
Nuremberg, and Thessalonica are building pilot ASK-IT databases on local
services, and are on pace launch to demonstrations in 2007.
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New Software Is Next Wave for Net Surfers
PhysOrg.com (04/27/06)
A group of researchers at the University of Alberta have created WebIC,
software that streamlines Internet searches for users. Tingshao Zhu, one
of the computer scientists that worked on the project, says WebIC "uses
machine learning" to provide the user with desired search results,
including those outside the keyword search. Zhu says, "On most search
engines the order of the keyed words is very important as the associations
are made sequentially. But our software uses machine learning to transfer
human inquiries into the type of inquiries a computer can fully understand.
Our system can point you directly to the sites that you want and not just
to sites that are related to your keyed words." A number of technology
trials involving university business students and others have been
conducted during the last five years. The researchers plan to have a
commercial version of the technology available before the end of this year.
A number of entities, including Canada's National Science and Engineering
Research Council, have contributed funds to the project. The software,
which is both downloadable and compatible with search engines, uses past
search results to help tailor new search results.
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RFID and Tracking Systems--The High-Tech Future of Old
Age?
silicon.com (04/27/06) Ranger, Steve
New gadgets and computer monitoring systems are focusing on the elderly,
allowing those without an extended family to live at home as long as
possible. Several such products are being tested at Accenture's Technology
Labs in Sophia Antipolis, France. Among these are camera systems that
follow the elderly around and call for help if they fall. These systems
can be used to monitor activity levels and eating habits as well. An
RFID-equipped online medicine cabinet is also in the works, alerting
seniors if they choose the wrong medicines. Interactions with relatives
and caregivers, meanwhile, are encouraged with the "connective table,"
which allows users to play board games and look at important documents via
camera sensors and video projectors. Accenture researcher Agata Opalach
says that by 2020 there will be twice as many people 65 or older than there
are today. Opalach says, "This demographic change is going to have an
impact. Technology can help people stay independent for as long as
possible."
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Better Organization, Focus Needed for
Cybersecurity
Government Computer News (04/27/06) Jackson, William
The U.S. government needs to create clear lines of authority and clarify
responsibility for an effective national information assurance policy,
according to former presidential adviser Paul Kurtz, who is now executive
director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. "We have a growing body
of law and regulation bearing on information security," said Kurtz during
the GovSec conference in Washington on Thursday. "We are not ready for a
major disruption of the information infrastructure today, and we have a
long way to go to get there." Kurtz suggested a two-tiered framework for
cybersecurity where critical functionality could be identified for
government attention, and less important issues are given to the private
sector. Kurtz and Tom Leighton at Akamai Technologies agree that
cyberspace is getting tougher and that an infrastructure needs to be built
to better respond to possible attacks. An assistant secretary for
cybersecurity is still needed in order to establish an effective policy,
according to Kurtz. The position has been vacant for almost a year now.
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Bugs Put Widely Used DNS Software at Risk
IDG News Service (04/26/06) McMillan, Robert
University of Oulu researchers say they found multiple flaws in the
software used for administering the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS),
which may cause several problems such as crashing the DNS server or giving
attackers a way to run unauthorized software. Oulu researchers have come
up with a DNS test suite to test for such vulnerabilities. Microsoft,
Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems are currently testing their products,
but there is no word yet on whether customers will be affected. DNS
servers have come under fire lately because of such attacks, which may
compromise the DNS system and take down several Web sites. Just last
month, unknown attackers used computers and DNS servers to spread
denial-of-service attacks against about 1,500 organizations, according to
VeriSign.
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Intelligent Scarecrow Can Save Aquaculture From Financial
Losses
Newswise (04/27/06)
University of Southern Florida computer-science students have created what
they call "The Erebus Scarecrow" that uses computing technology to scare
away birds from fish ponds. The Erebus Scarecrow has motion-detection
ability and the deterrence weapons of both 120 decibels sound shots, and
water spraying. Neither are projected at a level that will harm birds.
The machine also uses color-sensing to distinguish birds from other
motions, so it does not react to everything. The machine also can email a
user about each intrusion automatically. The fish pond farming industry in
Florida generates $40 million annually, says USF computer science professor
Ken Christensen. Among the scarecrow's equipment are relatively cheap
sensors and cameras. USF student Albert Ng says, "The Erebus Scarecrow is
not just another motion-detector. He is capable of intelligent detection,
deterrence, and can also record the events."
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Wear Your Heart on the Screen
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (04/27/06) Knight, William
Oxford University's Integrative Biology (IB) project is using computer
modeling to help scientists and doctors better understand the heart. To
create models of the human heart using advanced mathematics, researchers
"are looking at many sets of partial differential equations, coupled with
parabolic functions, non-linear equations and just under a million unknown
parameters," says IB project manager Sharon Lloyd. The human heart is so
complex that years ago, computers would require 1 million seconds of
running time to duplicate one second of a working human heart. Now with
grid-computing and access to the world's most advanced machines, IB can
perform similar work in hours. Lloyd says, "The researchers submit code
though a portal interface. It puts all the data in the right place and
pulls it back when you need to do things with it. It's making the
day-to-day life of the scientist a lot easier. Scientists want to focus on
the life science without having to think about how these big machines
work." The health-care industry has adopted grid computing to some
operational needs. Grid computing enables various computers to interlock
and combine computing power, says Grid Computing Now project manager Ian
Osborne, who notes that most of the technical issues with grid computing
have been solved. He says, "The question is one of making industry and
government organizations aware of the possibilities."
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Simple Networks Will Free Many Sensors From Wires
EDN (04/13/06) Vol. 51, No. 8, P. 40; Strassberg, Dan
ZigBee wireless personal area networking technology is making gains thanks
to its ability to enable low-speed sensors to conserve power without
breaking communications, and most ZigBee sensors are expected to be driven
by alkaline batteries at first. Power efficiency can be achieved through
the minimization of the duty cycle, which in this instance is the amount of
time the device is on the air. Some ZigBee applications could potentially
run without batteries through energy harvesting, a methodology for
collecting small amounts of energy from the environment. Another possible
power-saving measure is the incorporation of additional intelligence within
the sensor so that it can make data-dependent decisions by itself without
consuming a lot of energy, and without involving remote system elements.
ZigBee boasts multiple levels of security, including DSSS coding, 128-bit
encryption, access-control lists, and packet-freshness timers. It takes
time to demonstrate the reliability of a low-speed protocol such as ZigBee,
which is why the technology's deployment must be conservative. ZigBee aims
at a broad spectrum of building automation, medical, industrial, and
residential-control and -monitoring applications, and the technology could
be particularly beneficial to lighting controls, wireless smoke and carbon
monoxide detectors, medical sensing and monitoring, universal remote
control of set-top boxes, and home security, to name just a few examples.
ZigBee is expected to penetrate industrial applications in a gradual
manner.
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No Limits
New Scientist (04/22/06) Vol. 190, No. 2548, P. 38; Mullins, Justin
Companies will highlight a new wave of technology at the upcoming E3
videogaming conference that enables users to interact with artificial
environments in more compelling ways. Sony Computer Entertainment's EyeToy
allows players to control games using input from a video camera connected
to a PlayStation console. The current PlayStation generation can
distinguish a moving body from the background, but identifying and tracking
specific body parts is difficult. Furthermore, the EyeToy camera's frame
capture rate is too slow to allow a computer to track and respond to the
fastest human movements. The forthcoming PlayStation3 console will come
with more processing chips than its predecessor, accommodating a higher
frame capture rate for the EyeToy and enabling game control through more
complex player movements. Different body parts can also be independently
tracked with the PS3, while the size of the player's head can be measured
to approximate the distance between the player and console; this will allow
the computer to place objects ahead of and behind the player. Also on the
horizon is a next-generation games console from Nintendo with a controller
that can establish its position and orientation relative to the console,
most likely through a gyroscopic sensor. Gaming could be additionally
enhanced with a new generation of cameras that are sensitive to visible and
infrared wavelengths and capable of recording accurate three-dimensional
images, facilitating a more precise translation of the player's 3D
movements into the actions of a game character or object.
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Autonomous Mobile Robots Point the Way to Safer
Vehicles
Portable Design (04/06) Vol. 12, No. 4, P. 24; Donovan, John
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) 2005 Grand
Challenge was a 132-mile race between autonomous mobile robots over desert
terrain as a field test for technologies that could be applied to the
development of robotic military vehicles. The technologies are already
showing up in collision-avoidance systems that will one day protect the
lives of civilian motorists and passengers. A team from Stanford
University built the vehicle that won the Grand Challenge, a modified
Volkswagen SUV named Stanley. Stanley determines its location and the
location of environmental obstacles by mapping raw sensor data into an
internal state machine, and then ascertains possible paths forward by
combining input from its laser, radar, and vision systems. All sensor data
is constantly written to a 2D map that rates the drivability of each cell.
Following its environmental orientation, Stanley takes into account the
number of nondrivable cells along a route, the nearness of the road center,
the presence of corridor boundaries, the proximity of obstacles, and the
recommended amount of acceleration to follow a given path with its
path-planning module, which then estimates the path as well as the rate of
speed, using data from vibration sensors to adjust acceleration to road
conditions. A DARPA entry's software architecture typically consists of
vision processing and detection modules that gather disparate data from
lidar, visual, and radar sensors and then map the results against the
position of a fast-moving object. Both a very fast computer and advanced
software are needed for the vehicle to make split-second control decisions
based on these approximations.
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Telephony's Next Act
IEEE Spectrum (04/06) Vol. 43, No. 4, P. 28; Mockapetris, Paul V.
Nominum Chairman Paul Mockapetris sees several challenges in telephony's
transition from circuit-switched networks to the Internet, specifically
those associated with enabling the network to choose the best mode of
communication by keeping track of all potential communicating parties,
their hardware, and their services, and choosing the proper mix for each
contact. Such challenges include integrating the telephone system with the
Internet via voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and fortifying the segment
of the network that handles signaling across the globe and the Internet.
The difficulty with melding the global phone network and the Internet
resides in melding their respective repositories of data records, and the
key to a successful integration is ENUM (electronic number). Mockapetris
writes that the Internet is capable of handling the added burden because
its fiber-optic backbone is sufficiently capacious, and extra capacity is
always being added with new technology. However, the Domain Name System
(DNS) lacks the storage needed to accommodate telephony, and both Naming
Authority Pointer (NAPTR) resource records and the amount of names to track
in some servers will vastly expand. The interval of time between the
submission of a DNS query and the response to that query will also be a
sticking point, especially for people calling by telephone. "The Domain
Name System needs to be upgraded with software tested against the
high-volume, constantly changing loads of ENUM," concludes Mockapetris.
"Only by strengthening these DNS capabilities will we be ready for the
demands of ENUM and other new network technologies."
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