Watchdog Groups Report E-Voting Problems
IDG News Service (11/07/06) Gross, Grant
Election watchdog groups across the U.S. received reports of e-voting
problems during the November 7 election. Over 1,4000 calls had been
received by Common Cause by 4 p.m. EST, including hundreds of reports of
vote flipping that were caught on the machine's summary screen. Verified
Voting, another watchdog group, called for a national investigation into
vote-flipping after the 2004 election, but this request was denied. David
Dill, founder of Verified Voting and a computer science professor at
Stanford, said, "Not surprisingly, we are expecting the same problems...I
think it's a national disgrace." However, Common Cause received fewer
e-voting complaints than after the 2004 election, although Dill claims that
many complaints are yet to surface. Denver voters had to wait in hour-long
lines at the polls as a result of a plan to let people vote wherever they
wanted. A single, overloaded database held all of the voter rolls: "It's
the classic situation where too many cars are jammed onto one highway,"
said Pete Naismith of Common Cause Colorado. Other problems reported,
according to Common Cause, the Election Protection 365 Web, and ACM,
include: 43 of Cuyahoga County, Ohio's 573 polling places opened late or
couldn't get some voting machines to work. A judge ordered 16 polling
places to stay open an extra 90 minutes; in one Indiana county, machines
failed to turn on, and in a second county machine activation counts were
not programmed correctly; and other problems were reported in Pennsylvania,
Utah, and Florida. To learn more about ACM's e-voting activities, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Computer Science 'Still a Good Career,' Leader of Job
Migration Task Force Says
Stanford Report (11/06/06) Lee, Brian D.
An ACM-commissioned study on software job migration was the recent focus
of the Stanford Computer Forum. In presenting the results of the study to
academics and members of the forum, Rice University professor Moshe Vardi
said competition should be more of a concern to students and the
information technology industry than the availability of jobs in the United
States. He said data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows IT jobs are
being created as fast or faster than they are being shipped overseas,
adding that the report predicts that industries such as construction,
health care, and retail trade will increasingly demand computer skills in
the years to come. "There are more IT jobs now than there were six years
ago at the height of the IT boom," said Vardi. The ACM-commissioned report
considers offshoring to be a symptom of globalization, and Vardi said the
IT industry will have to accept this period of change. A good way for the
country to respond to this change is to invest more in research and
development so it can remain a leader in innovation, and continue to
welcome students from overseas with open arms. He also said students
pursuing IT careers can better position themselves by gaining business,
communication, and interpersonal skills. Moshe Vardi was co-chair of ACM's
Job Migration Task Force. To view the complete report, "Globalization and
the Offshoring of Software," visit
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport
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Where Are All the Women in IT?
Financial Times Digital Business (11/08/06) P. 4; Thomas, Kim
The proportion of female IT professionals has been decreasing for years.
A report by Intellect, a U.K. IT trade association, shows that women
account for 16 percent of IT professionals in the U.K., down from 27
percent in 1997. About 61 percent of these women have low-paid, low-skill
jobs, while only 8 percent of CIOs in the U.K. are female, according to
recruitment firm Harvey Nash. In the U.S., women account for 27 percent of
IT professionals, while that figure drops to less than 20 percent in Norway
and Germany. Emerging economies such as Malaysia and India have many more
women in IT: 50 percent and 33 percent, respectively. The U.K. Department
of Trade commissioned a 2005 report titled "Women in the IT Industry:
Towards a Business Case for Diversity" that claims that women commonly
leave after the birth of a child and when they are between the ages of 40
and 50 years old, and therefore expensive to replace. Carrie Hartnell,
program manager at Intellect says, "This is no longer about a gender
divide, this is about how economies remain competitive." The common idea
that girls see computer science as a "geeky" field is still quite valid,
but a British Computer Society study on 14- to 16-year-old girls showed
that they lose interest in the field because they see it as secretary work.
Schools must take the blame for this misconception, and change their
curriculum to introduce creative use of computers. There is a belief among
women in IT that the field moves to fast for them to catch up with after
having a child. Some companies have begun targeting female graduates, or
establishing buddy systems, where a woman about to go on maternity leave
pairs up with a woman who has just returned from maternity leave so the
work of the woman leaving can be carried on. Women say their strength in
the industry is their superior ability to communicate. To learn more about
ACM's Comittee on Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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York Prof's Software Offers New Ways to Customize Your
Computer
York University (11/07/06)
Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, an associate professor in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering at York University, has responded to
computer users' desire to have more control over the desktop by developing
new software that would allow them to customize existing programs to their
specific needs. "They don't want to be provided with more menus or options
created by software developers who can't predict their needs and aren't
interface designers in the first place," Stuerzlinger says. "Imagine being
able to virtually cut up and reassemble elements of your interface to
create a new look and feel that's best for you," he says of his program,
which he calls "user interface facades." Described as a sophisticated
copy, cut, and paste tool, the application would allow computer users to
reconfigure toolbars, enhance options such as drop-down boxes and
scrollbars, which would be easier to use and add as functions.
Stuerzlinger is the author of the paper "User Interface Facades: Towards
Fully Adaptable User Interfaces," which was presented at ACM's Symposium on
User Interface Software and Technology earlier in the month. He believes
computer users are the best interface designers, adding that the extensive
level of customization could lead to more personalized and portable
computing. People could one day move their standard desktop applications
to PDAs, cell phones, and other mobile devices, Stuerzlinger says.
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'Vote Flipping' Emerges as Continuing Problem in
E-Voting
Computerworld (11/08/06) Weiss, Todd R.
The problem of "vote-flipping," originally reported during the 2004
election, emerged once again during Tuesday's general elections, as
watchdog groups received many calls from voters reporting that their votes
did not appear on the electronic voting machine's summary screen as they
had been entered. David Dill, computer science professor at Stanford
called for investigation into these claims. "People have been way to quick
to diagnose the problem," he said. Some have blamed the problem on
calibration, but others have ideas of their own. "It could be a
calibration problem with the touchscreens, but I'm no sure that anyone
really knows yet because no one's looked at it," added Dill. "My answer as
a computer scientist is that I want facts...and all I've heard for two
years is speculation." Dill believes that the summary screen shows that
conspiracy is not likely. One suggestion he made was that voters may
accidentally touch the screen inadvertently and not realize they have
selected a candidate, but he feels that a panel of experts must be convened
to get to the bottom of whatever the problem may be. "There needs to be a
serious independent investigation of this problem...across the country," he
said. Precinct-scan optical scan ballots, which are filled out by the
voter and read by a machine, are the method preferred by Dill, since they
give a voter written confirmation, providing a paper trail. ACM's many
e-voting activities are summarized at
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Y2K-Like Fears Create Shuttle Scheduling Crunch
New Scientist (11/06/06) Young, Kelly
NASA has already moved the launch of the space shuttle Discovery from
December 14 to December 7, and is now considering moving it up one more day
to get the shuttle back by New Year's Eve and avoid the same type of
problem threatened by software adjusting to the year 2000. The shuttle
computer's 30-year old software does not recognize when the calendar shifts
at the end of a year: January 1, 2007 would be read as the 366th day of
2006; a problem known as "year-end rollover" by NASA. The reinitialization
required to reset the computers would cause a period without navigation
updates or vehicle control. A decision to execute the flight over the year
end is prohibited by NASA's current procedural policy, which may be
reformed in the future. In 1999, amidst the Y2K scare, the shuttle was
able to land on December 27, although one spacewalk had to be cancelled. A
simulation of a shuttle mission operating on January 1 has already been
conducted, and it "went flawlessly," according to Joan Higginbotham, a
Discovery crew member. The Discovery mission will take crew members to the
International Space Station (ISS), where they will reconfigure power and
cooling systems. The ISS, first built in 1998, is designed to stay in
space year after year and does not have the roll-over problem. The launch
will most likely take place at night, which is not seen as a danger because
cameras on the shuttle will be able to spot chunks of ice or foam coming
off the external tank, which have caused problems in the past. Night
missions will be necessary to complete the ISS by the Discovery's 2010
retirement date.
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Few Tech Changes Expected if Democrats Take Control of
Congress
IDG News Service (11/06/06) Gross, Grant
Net neutrality and government surveillance programs are likely to be top
technology issues affected if the Democrats gain control of Congress
following Tuesday's elections. Should they have success on Tuesday, the
Democrats are expected to push for legislation enforcing Net neutrality,
data security, and privacy. However, Ed Kutler, a lobbyist for the It's
Our Net Coalition, which supports Net Neutrality, says, "People tend to
overthink what happens if Congress changes. We're pretty confident leaders
on both sides of the aisle understand there's not enough support to have a
telecom bill without a strong Net neutrality provision." Mike McCurry, co
chairman of the Hands Off the Internet coalition, an opponent of Net
neutrality, is not convinced majority Democrats would vote in favor of Net
neutrality, because many new legislators would be from traditionally
Republican areas. McCurry says that many of the Democrats likely to win
are "pro business, moderate" Democrats. "When you say to a Democrat, 'Do
you want to be the party responsible for bringing substantial regulation to
the Internet?' a lot of them stop and think," he said. Nevertheless, many
in the industry believe the current Congress has not focused enough on tech
issues, and expect Democrats to show a renewed interest in such areas as
identity theft and data breaches. A spokesperson for Vermont Senator
Patrick Leahy says Democrats will work for greater oversight of the Bush
administration's warrantless wiretapping program and other government
surveillance programs.
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43rd Design Automation Conference Award-Winning Papers
Now Available Online
Business Wire (11/07/06)
On-demand audio recordings of the best papers from the 43rd Design
Automation Conference (DAC) can now be accessed at the DAC Web site,
www.dac.com. The audio recordings of the award-winning papers have
been synchronized with slide presentations. At the DAC Web site, visitors
will find the front-end design winner, "SAT Sweeping with Local
Observability Don't-Cares," a paper on the use of SAT for the removal of
redundancies when simplifying circuit descriptions for Boolean reasoning,
by Dr. Qi Zhu and several other researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley, and Candace Berkeley Labs. Also available is the
back-end design winner, "Power Grid Physics and Implications for CAD," a
paper by Eli Chiprout of Intel and Sanjay Pant of the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, that discusses power grid design issues. Electronic
design researchers and industry professionals have until Monday, Nov. 20,
2006, at 5 p.m. MST, to submit regular papers for the 44th DAC, which is
scheduled for June 4-8, 2007, at the San Diego, Calif., Convention Center.
ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM/SIGDA) is a sponsor
of the conference.
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Students Bring Tech Support to Third World
Countries
The Tartan (11/06/06) Tetlow, James
Several programs at Carnegie Mellon University have taken on the challenge
of "empowering students and children around the world" using technology, in
the words of the original program's founder, Berardine Dias, a robotics
professor at CMU. Dias developed TechBridgeWorld because she "love[s]
those 'ah-ha' moments when [children's] eyes light up." Students
interested in spreading technology to developing countries were encouraged
to join TechBridgeWorld, which led to a class titled Technology for
Developing Communities that subsequently joined with several other classes
and an independent study program for graduate students. Technical
Consulting in the Global Community is an elective class that sends
undergraduates to developing communities for 10 weeks where they work as
technology consultant with government departments and nonprofits in a wide
variety of fields and disciplines. A program called V-Unit, an independent
study program for graduate students, aims to cultivate an idea of what
computer science and technology can accomplish in under-funded communities.
Students are set up with a local organization to which they contribute
their computer skills. Ayokor Mills-Tettey, a graduate student in
robotics, used an automated reading tutor created by CMU to help children
in Ghana learn to read English. "The children were great," he says. "They
felt really special because they go the chance to leave school and use a
computer."
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Swarm-Bots Could Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone
Before
IST Results (11/08/06)
IST researchers have developed a type of mini-robot, inspired by the ant,
that can work together to accomplish rather impressive tasks. Marco Dorigo
of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, who coordinated the "Swarm-bot"
project says, "We produced 35 complete s-bots [the individual bots that
make up one swarm-bot], and completed many experiments with them." The
robots, which are 12 cm in diameter and equipped with a panoramic camera,
sensors that detect infrared, light, temperature, and humidity, motors that
control grippers, and Wi-Fi and USB connections, were able to retrieve an
object to a "nest" by creating a chain of "eight robots spaced thirty
centimeters apart and visible to one another" explained Dorigo. "The other
robots followed the chain to find and retrieve the object, all in just 10
minutes." While still far from practical application, the s-bot project
has attracted NASA's interest in using the technology to build structures
on other planets. "Our project taught us the importance of tight
coordination between developing the hardware and control development," said
Dorigo. "Today they exhibit simple or reactive behavior. We would like to
do things such as adaptive task allocation, for example using 10 robots out
of 100 to solve a problem, rather than all of them together." He also
envisions using muscle-like material rather than rigid metal and plastic,
as well as improved memory that would give the robots the power to evaluate
a situation and figure out a solution.
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Virtual Worms Crawl Through 3-D Medical Images to Aid
Analysis
Vancouver Sun (BC, Canada) (11/06/06) P. A1; Leung, Wency
Medical researchers at Vancouver General Hospital are testing new
technology designed to help give them a better understanding of blood
vessels, air passages, and spinal cords that have been captured in
three-dimensional images using computer-aided tomography (CAT) scans and
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Simon Fraser University computer
scientists have developed "3D crawlers" that are able to navigate medical
images on a computer screen, and give clinicians a detailed look into a
patient's body that is not invasive. The artificial life application,
which acts as a virtual worm, is able to "feel" tissue in the body, explore
blood vessels, and allow medical researchers to see what it sees, on a
computer screen. "These virtual crawlers, they are put inside these 3D
worlds and you can imagine they are sensing the world around them," says
Ghassan Hamarneh, an assistant professor at the university. The 3D crawler
can even split in two when a vessel branches, allowing medical researchers
to analyze both branches. The technology is currently being used to
analyze spinal cords as part of multiple sclerosis research, and the
results have been encouraging. In addition to research purposes, Hamarneh
believes the 3D crawler could also serve as a diagnostic application.
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Inside the Hacker's Profiling Project
NewsForge (11/03/06) Biancuzzi, Frederico
The Hacker Profiling Project (HPP) has set out to combine criminology and
ICT security science in an effort to use information left by hackers on
compromised Web sites to gain an understanding of specific hackers so
future attacks can be prevented. Alerting potential victims to the type of
threat they face will allow system administrators to take proper defense
measures, explains Stefania Ducci, criminologist for United Nations
Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. By both circulating a
questionnaire among members of the hacker underground known not to be
professionals, and setting up honeynets that will register and collect
information regarding attacks and movements of hackers trying to penetrate
their systems, HPP expects to gain a greater understanding of different
types of hackers. The questionnaire is divided into personal data,
relationships (to other hackers, colleagues, authorities, etc.), and
technical and criminological data. Many of those expected to answer the
questionnaire practice hacking in their spare time, and many are considered
"ethical hackers" that will often alert sysadmins to vulnerabilities on
violated systems, although this information is often shared with others in
the hacker community as well. HPP wants to be able to construct a profile
of attackers including "technical skills, probable geographic location, an
analysis of his modus operandi, and a lot of other, small and big, traced
left on the crime scene," says Ducci. She envisions the project yielding a
complete, open "methodology for hacker profiling, released under
GNU/FDL."
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Can The Sims Make Programming Cool Again?
BusinessWeek (11/07/06) Jana, Reena
To combat the 50 percent drop in computer science majors in the U.S.
between 2000 and 2005, fun software is being developed to expose students
to computer programming. One such game, Alice, a creation of Carnegie
Mellon University researchers, has been provided with EA's software for
"The Sims," which could be compared to Disney giving away Mickey Mouse or
Coke giving away its formula. Alice, while not the first program of its
kind, "changes the mechanics of how people write programs," in order to
show children that programming can be fun, says Caitlin Kelleher, a
post-doctoral researcher in Computer Science & Human Computer Interaction
at CMU. "The idea is to familiarize kids with what programming is and to
introduce them to the key idea of choosing parameters." Critics disagree
saying the program is simply a video game. Predecessors to Alice have
given children problems to solve using simple programming language, but
Alice's creators feel that it stands alone as "edutainment," incorporating
a familiar gaming platform that its creators hope will spur the growth of
interest in programming. The game lets children select avatars and use
drop down menus containing plain-English code to control them. A recent
study conducted at St. Joseph's and Ithaca Colleges, using students judged
to be at risk of dropping out of the computer programming major, showed
that those who used Alice and then took the traditional programming course
did far better (averaging a B instead of a C), and retained the major at a
far higher rate (88 percent compared to 47 percent) than those students who
took only the programming course.
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Taking Robots to the Next Level -- by a Whisker
Chicago Tribune (11/04/06) P. C1; Manier, Jeremy
By developing robotic whiskers that function like those of a rat,
researchers are not only advancing a robot's ability to understand its
surroundings, but they are learning a great deal about evolutionary
biology. Robotic whiskers that can detect the shape of an object are being
developed for NASA rovers, such as those used on Mars, which often lose
their vision in dust storms. A wide ranging effort by scientists to
emulate animal abilities hopes to solve many current robotics and
engineering problems; Chris Assad, a robotics researcher with NASA,
explains: "we could emulate the traits that helped [animals] succeed
[evolutionarily]." By building robotic whiskers, mechanical and biomedical
engineers gain valuable perspective regarding nature's whisker systems,
which have been found to link to similar sites in the brain as human
fingertips. "Our lab really walks the line between engineering and
neuroscience," says Mitra Hartmann, a lead researchers in Northwester
University project that is developing rat-like robotic whiskers. Hartmann
imagines creating a "whisker paintbrush. You could sweep it over an object
and figure out its shape without a 3D laser scanner. That's a far-off
application." Simon Bovet, a researcher who has worked on robotic whiskers
at the University of Zurich's AI lab, points out that whiskers offer unique
insight into figuring out how the brain is able to transform huge amounts
of muddled incoming information into clear, recognizable perception:
"Considering how the world could be perceived through whiskers forces us to
think and look at things differently."
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Keeping the Pain Out of Work: Ergonomics Offers Solutions
to Everyday Problems
Technician Online (NC) (11/07/06) Mohan, Sibin
Ergonomics strives to ease the interaction between humans and the numerous
devices they make use of on a daily basis; computers for example. "People
should have a positive experience when using a computer," says Thomas
Horton, a doctorate student in computer science. "One of many factors that
led to the huge success of Apple's iPod is the ease of use of its
interface." The occupational and safety hazard administration (OSHA)
published an "ergonomics program" in 1999 that lists possible causes of
muscoskeletal disorders occurring in the workplace as: intensive typing on
keyboards, improper design of desks, and the fact that users rest their
forearms and wrists on the edge of the desk, which reduces blood flow and
movement. Employers spend more than $15 billion to $20 billion every year
on compensation for conditions resulting from these conditions. Horton
takes a different perspective than that of physical injury: "Computers are
used by hospitals, airlines, military to make decisions that affect the
lives of people every day," he says. "If a display isn't clear, or if a
system isn't clear, or if a system doesn't have protections against user
error, the consequence can be tragic." Don Norman, author of "The
Psychology of Everyday Things," says that computers don't make mistakes,
only their human designers or users do, which is why ergonomics and
human-computer interoperability is such a concern: technology cannot
recognize its full potential without taking into account psychology of the
user. N.C. State psychology professor Dr. Christopher Mayhorn, a
human-computer interoperability (HCI) researcher, says his work focuses on
how device design can be improved, training issues, the functions devices
should perform, and why errors happen. Horn says HCI touches both the
hardware and software side of computer science, as well as artificial
intelligence and computer graphics.
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Is There a Shortage of Analog Engineers?
Electronic Design (10/20/06) Vol. 54, No. 23, P. 59; Tuite, Don
An Electronic Design survey of 2,354 readers found agreement among 69
percent that their companies are not having any difficulty finding
qualified analog engineers, but Don Tuite notes that of the respondents who
believe there is an engineer shortage, 639 discussed how their companies
are dealing with the shortage. Of that number, 78 reported that their
firms aggressively court university grads or offer continuing education
reimbursement; 70 reported outsourcing or employing consultants; 11
remarked that they were seeking engineers abroad; nine said they pursued
retirees for their consulting needs; 58 said they were training existing
staff internally; 17 mentioned hiring analog engineer headhunters; three
cited a reliance on vendor or distributor FAEs; 46 said their companies had
perceived a shortage but were taking no action; and just one respondent
said his firm actively attempts to lure analog engineers from its rivals.
Tuite concludes from his observations that "a lot of companies would like
to poach engineers from their competitors, but [most]...engineers tend to
stay put--especially when employers are willing to match competitors'
salary or status inducements." He believes there is no shortage of
analog-circuit designers, but there is a pronounced scarcity of
graduate-level analog chip designers. Addressing this shortage entails
attracting undergrads before they start taking upper-divisional courses,
encouraging them to follow a program that will expand their university
education by several more years than a typical four-year program, and
persuading EE department chairs and department senates to offer such
options. Tuite consulted with three experts--Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute professor Kenneth Connor and Analog Devices' Sam Fuller and Dave
Robertson--who stressed the need for expediently getting undergrads
committed to analog engineering. Further questions Tuite raises include
whether the analog EE shortage is regional or global; what skill set
constitutes an EE; where and how can that skill set be obtained; the worth
of an analog EE; and whether there truly is an analog engineer shortage.
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Under Construction
InformationWeek (11/06/06)No. 1113, P. 44; Claburn, Thomas; Babcock,
Charles; Ricadela, Aaron
The infrastructure of the next-generation Web 2.0 must have six core
elements: Scale, content management, security, development methods, user
experience, and community. Web 2.0 companies begin with scalable IT
resources, and challenges in this domain include organizing a system of IT
components enabled for independent growth, and realizing that resource
requirements vary for different media-serving functions. Commercial
content management systems' lack of support for Web 2.0's interactivity
architecture means that firms will have to devise their own management
strategies; Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path attributes the
incompatibility of existing content management infrastructures and Web 2.0
companies to the fact that "[the companies'] definition of content
management was completely outside what the vendors were considering when
they created their software," and accommodating user-generated material is
central to this problem. Security must be considered by Web 2.0 developers
at the outset, and technologies that require users to enter responses into
forms or data fields constitute a major hazard, since so few Web sites
bother to carefully confirm the input. Another challenge of Web 2.0 is
delivering a happy and amazing user experience that offers what users
desire while also providing them things they did not realize they wanted,
with an emphasis on rapidity, detail, and fun. Lightweight development
tools can help significantly improve the adaptability of Web 2.0 sites to
rapidly shifting interests, while the challenge of cultivating Web 2.0
communities lies in the notion that successful community sites can operate
against the assumption that members are a harmonious bunch with no
hesitations about sharing their content, contrary to the site's business
objectives. "The real question is, how can users add value to what you
do?" notes O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly.
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Mining for Quality
DM Review (11/06) Vol. 26, No. 11, P. 46; Farmer, Donald
Microsoft's Donald Farmer defines data quality as "a measure of its
fitness for purpose" that can have a wide degree of variance in accordance
with the purpose at hand. He cites the work of Richard Wang and Y. Wand to
identify quality dimensions in their Communications of the ACM paper,
"Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations," as the most
successful attempt to define the problem space in the absence of an
absolute data quality standard. Such dimensions include accuracy (freedom
from error), consistency (continuity of format), timeliness, and
completeness, but Farmer argues that dimensions alone are not sufficient;
also needed are "premises on which to base our judgments of how good or bad
data is when measured along those dimensions." Farmer lists the premises
of authority, practice, patterns, and single object rules as examples, to
be used in combination with the dimensions. He anticipates the growing
importance of patterns as a data quality premise particularly as the forms
of data accommodated by enterprise decision support systems expand in
diversity; Farmer adds that patterns can also be employed with more
traditional forms of data, since even well-understood data can feature
rules that cannot easily be captured in a transparent or comprehensive
manner. As a practical method for applying patterns, the author offers
data mining, noting that the model generated by a data mining application
is essentially a learned experiential pattern that uses existing data as
its foundation. Farmer writes that mining for data quality can facilitate
the dimensions of accuracy, consistency, and completeness.
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Sex, Lies, and Video Games
Atlantic Monthly (11/06) Vol. 298, No. 4, P. 76; Rauch, Jonathan
Computer games are coming out that could potentially revolutionize the
game-play experience by integrating graphics, action, and emotional power
into "interactive drama," according to Brookings Institution guest scholar
Jonathan Rauch. A shared interest in artificial intelligence led
University of California, Santa Cruz, professor Michael Mateas and game
programmer Andrew Stern to join forces to develop a game in which the
player drives the narrative along by conversing with complex virtual adult
characters via keyboard input. The game, "Facade," differs from other
immersive games in that the setting is confined to one indoor environment,
and takes about 20 minutes to play. Mateas and Stern wrote "Facade" in the
ABL programming language, and then built an artificially intelligent drama
manager that studies characters and players' actions in order to determine
what preauthored plot points and prerecorded dialogue choices to select in
order to raise and then release dramatic tension. The next element they
built was a natural-language engine that analyzes the player's typewritten
input to find emotional and dramatic cues that the in-game characters can
respond to. The game is set up so that the player becomes a participant in
an episode of marital discord between a virtual couple. The hope is that
interactive drama will help the game sector move up from a relatively
marginal industry whose appeal is currently limited by the dominance of
action games whose great graphics are often countered by weak, formulaic
plots and shallow characters. "There is a huge untapped market for
experiences that are not about action adventures, quests, killing monsters,
and solving puzzles," notes Mateas.
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