A New Push to Raise Cap on H-1B Visa
New York Times (11/15/06) P. C2; Helft, Miguel
Compete America, a coalition of business and education groups, is reviving
the drive for an increase in the number of skilled foreign workers
permitted to enter the U.S. each year. They are asking for an increase of
both the annual number of H-1B visas granted to skilled immigrants and the
number of employment-based green cards made available. Microsoft's Jack
Krumholtz says, "The first part is to ensure that U.S. companies have the
ability to hire the best and the brightest." Since the end of the Internet
boom, the limit on H-1B visas granted each year was set at 60,000, with an
additional 20,000 visas given to foreigners with an advanced degree from an
American university. A bill, passed by the Senate earlier this year, would
have raised the number of H-1Bs given each year to 115,000, and
employment-based green cards from 290,000 to 410,000, but came to a halt
when Congress encountered internal conflict over broader immigration
reform. Some, such as the I.E.E.E.-U.S.A., a professional organization
that represents engineering and computer programmers, believe that reform
of the H-1B system is needed before the cap is raised. They claim that
current laws allow companies to pay immigrants less than standard wages,
which does harm to the overall wages of America's workforce. Compete
America, with the backing of the National Venture Capital Association,
believes that next year's Democratic Senate will pass the bill.
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Salary Survey 2006: Hot Skills, Hot Pay
Computerworld (11/13/06) Collett, Stacy
Pay for IT workers went up across the board this year at an average of 3.1
percent, according to Computerworld's 20th Annual Salary Survey. Several
specialties saw above average raises, such as network architects, who saw a
5.3 percent rise this year, and Web developers, Internet managers, and
directors of e-commerce, all of whom saw a rise of 4 percent or greater
this year. Consumer demand is said to have caused the jump, says analyst
David Foote: "The dominant business model is now Web-based. Customer are
dictating the way the want to interact across the network with the vendors.
They're willing to define the relationship in part by how secure and how
easy it is to do business with them." Computerworld's survey, as well as
others, reveal a solidifying labor market. About 41 percent of responding
IT execs said recruiting talent was more difficult than last year. Nearly
half of the respondents said they were passively or actively looking for a
new job, and three quarters said they sought better pay. David Rial,
Internet services manager for the California Department of Technology, says
the demand for specialists in the private sector has made it dangerous to
train his employees for fear they will chase higher paying jobs elsewhere.
Job-hopping is making a comeback, as a result of what Foote calls a fight
for specialized skills. "There have always been talent wars in specific
fields," he says. "The different today is it's now down to this niche
level." Foote points out the popularity of signing or retention bonuses,
and praises them over simply giving a new IT hire whatever position they
want, as a way to prevent overly inflated pay scales in the future.
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CSCW 2006: Notes on the ACM Conference on Computer
Supported Cooperative Work
Gumption (11/13/06) McCarthy, Joe
About 400 hundred people attended ACM's Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW 2006) in Banff, Alberta, Canada, last week, which
was the conference's 20th anniversary. The paper, "FEEDme: A Collaborative
Alert Filtering System" was presented, which considers ways of deciding
when people should be alerted as to changes in resources included in the
IBM Activity Explorer application. A paper titled "Providing Artifact
Awareness to a Distributed Group through Screen Sharing," discussed a
project aiming to translate informal awareness activities taken from one's
actual desktop into virtual desktops in order to aid distant collaborators.
Another project aimed to create technology for collaborative work in a
life-critical medical setting. Improving the development and sharing of
multimedia via phones through increased interactivity, cohesiveness, and
flexibility, was also discussed. A CSCW 1996 paper concerning email was
the topic of a presentation that focused on ways that email had evolved
since its publication. Studies focusing on various social aspects of
del.icio.us, World of Warcraft, thefacebook.com, geographically distributed
teams, and megachurches, were also presented. The afternoon was concluded
by a discussion of what has been accomplished in 20 years of CSCW.
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Charging Batteries Without Wires
Technology Review (11/14/06) Greene, Kate
MIT researchers have devised a way to wirelessly charge portable devices
such as phones, laptops, and cameras. The technology behind the original
idea of wireless power idea is known as inductive coupling, which occurs
when current is passed through wires in a device (charger), producing a
magnetic field that induces a current in the wires of a nearby device such
as a cell phone. The researchers propose that a suitable mid-range
wireless-energy system could be established by plugging a power base into a
wall outlet and would emit low-frequency electromagnetic radiation between
4 MHz and 10 MHz that would be picked up by receivers resonating at an
identical frequency within devices. Low frequency, "near-field" radiation
would be used because it "just sits there" rather than radiating in all
directions, explains Imperial College physics professor John Pendry. He
suspects that people will be uneasy at first about having electricity being
transmitted through the air around them, but explains that while the
electric field could be harmful if humans were nearby, the magnetic field
would be a lot safer and just as easy to utilize. The system is still
completely theoretical, but it is suspected to be about half as effective
as plugging a device into a wall outlet; so what the researchers envision
are power stations on the ceiling of every room in a home in order to
provide constant charging.
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Supercomputing: A New Who's Who
IEEE Spectrum (11/14/06) Guizzo, Erico
The new TOP500 supercomputer ranking project list was unveiled at this
week's SC06 high-performance computing conference in Tampa, Fla., and
showed "how the field remains both constant and constantly changing,"
according to its organizers. The IBM Blue Gene/L at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., was
again given first place, and with 280.6 teraflops performance does not seem
to be giving up its title very soon. Second place went to the Cray Red
Storm at the Sandia National Laboratories, which was upgraded from
single-core to 26 544 2.4-GHz dual-core Opteron processors and was rated at
101.4 teraflops, the second ever to break the 100 teraflop mark.
MareNostrum of the Barcelona Supercomputer Center in Spain, which came in
fifth place, is a cluster of blades, technology that some are calling
revolutionary. With 2560 IBM blade servers in 44 racks, MareNostrum
clocked in at 62.63 teraflops. Receiving ninth place was the Tsubame
supercomputer of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, which included the
addition of ClearSpeed number-crunching acceleration boards with two
massively parallel floating-point coprocessors to help with math-intensive
projects. The Tsubame sustains a speed of 50 teraflops, and is an example
of the idea of putting boards in servers that are hooked up to assemble a
less expensive supercomputer.
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IT Women in the Industry
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (11/14/06) Miller, Nick
Sex discrimination ranging from subtle to blatant is still a problem for
women in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry,
according to a poll of 289 female ICT professionals conducted by James Cook
University researchers. The Department of Education, Science, and Training
reports that the proportion of women to men in the ICT industry has dipped
from 26.65 percent to 20 percent in the past five years; the survey finds
that over 10 percent of ICT women are subject to outright discrimination,
while more than 50 percent claimed that understated discrimination is an
offshoot of ICT culture. More than one-third reported that key decisions
were made outside the workplace, while 20 percent said they were not
included in non-work socializing--viewed as critical to career
advancement--as a result of their work culture. Over 40 percent claimed
they were judged according to a higher standard than their male
counterparts, and nearly 20 percent said they have to act like men to get
what they want; one respondent said advancing one's career in the ICT
industry required a more rigorous work ethic than men face. "The stories I
hear are that women need help in areas like influence, like learning
leadership skills, feeling like it's a bit of a boys club, and they don't
feel like they can break through barriers," notes consultant Dr. Catherine
Norton, who adds that organizations need to do a better job of encouraging
female employees and helping them network with other IT women. In return,
women's exceptional communications, organizational, and balancing skills
can benefit the workplace tremendously. A diverse workforce often produces
better end products, according to Google engineering director Jen
Fitzpatrick. She says women are stimulated to pursue IT careers as well as
network by projects such as the Anita Borg scholarship. The James Cook
University report says many women are discouraged from studying ICT as a
career choice because of the stereotypical image of tech workers as
antisocial nerds. Thoughtware Australia CEO Sonja Bernhardt believes that
"If more females were involved in designing and creating technology, we may
see a world with different designs and one that takes into account an
inclusive set of perspectives. We may even see technology that is simpler
to use and more attractive." For information about ACM's Committee on
Women in Computing, visit
http://women/acm.org
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Designers Give CAD Research Gurus an Earful
EE Times (11/13/06) Goering, Richard
At last week's International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD)
in San Jose, chip designers told researchers of various problems they
faced. Typically, ICCAD is a conference of CAD researchers, but organizers
chose to add a designer's perspective this year. "Our goal is to bridge
the gap between practitioners and research," said Soha Hassoun, ICCAD
general chair and associate professor of electrical engineering and
computer science at Tufts University. "We would like them [designers] to
tell you [researchers] what critical issues should drive CAD research in
the next few years." Design-for-reliability was identified as an area
where help is needed by several speakers. Marek Patrya, principal
component design engineer at Intel, said that simply using tools available
on the market with design-for-reliability could lead to problems; "It takes
manual intervention and a lot of experience to develop a product that meets
specifications and still is within reliability requirements." Many other
concerns were expressed, such as how a "well-behaved" power grid is to be
built, and how to create "power grid-aware" synthesis and other types of
tools, both of which were brought up by Mondira Pant. She is against the
current situation where researchers and designers "work in isolation. The
design and EDA communities need to work together to develop a robust die-on
power delivery system." Similar need for collaboration was expressed by
those who spoke on other issues.
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Intel Eyes Nanotubes for Future Chip Designs
CNet (11/10/06) Kanellos, Michael
Intel has successfully built interconnects using carbon nanotubes instead
of copper wires, which could lead to a new generation of semiconductors.
Although the interconnects are still merely prototypes, this advancement
allow theories concerning the properties of carbon nanotubes used as
interconnects to be tested. As Moore's law drives the size of transistors
down, shrinking copper interconnects will have increased resistance, thus
slower electron movement, due to "electrons carom[ing] off the metal
atoms," according to Dave Lammers, a director with VLSI Research, a
semiconductor analysis firm. Carbon nanotubes, however, display "ballistic
conductivity," where electrons are free from obstruction and scattering.
They are also much thinner than metal interconnects, at only a few
billionths of a meter thick, which should make the job of chipmakers much
easier for years to come. Currently, the problem with carbon nanotubes is
that it is impossible to mass produce uniform nanotubes (some are
conductors, some semiconductors; length also varies), so a way to achieve
uniformity, or separate them into groups, is needed. Carbon nanotubes
interconnects are still several years off from being used in commercial
chips.
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Scientists Use Pixels to Ease Amputees' Pain
University of Manchester (11/14/06)
University of Manchester researchers are using 3D computer graphics to
help reduce the painful sensations that follow an amputation. Phantom limb
pain (PLP) is pain felt in a missing limb, which past research has shown
can be decreased if a patient's brain is made to believe it can see the
limb. School of Psychological Sciences professor and project leader Dr.
Craig Murray said, "One patient felt that the fingers of her amputated hand
were continually clenched into her palm, which was very painful for her.
However, after just one session using the virtual system she began to feel
movement in her fingers and the pain began to ease." The system consists
of a headset and sensors that allows the patient to view themselves in a
life-sized virtual environment with all of their limbs. The sensors are
fitted around the remaining limb, either arm or leg depending on what has
been amputated, which is used to control the limb that appears in the 3D
computer-generated world in place of the missing one. Four out of five
patients that the system has been tested on said that PLP improved, almost
immediately for some. Another professor from the School of Computer
Science who contributed to the project, Dr. Stephen Pettfier, explains,
"It's very satisfying being able to apply the same technology [people are
familiar with from the entertainment industry] to something that may have a
real positive effect on someone's health and well being."
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IU Team Building Data-Sharing Model to Aid Scientists in
Developing Nations
Indiana University (11/02/06)
Indiana University School of Informatics and Center for Genomics and
Bioinformatics (CGB) researchers have developed a secure database
environment that will provide conservation scientists a way to publicize
their findings without the fear of it being used fraudulently. The aim of
the project is to encourage sharing of data concerning natural resources in
developing countries. CGB conservation scientist Sukamol Srikwan, said,
"While professional publications provide a way to assign academic credit,
and the notion that patents protect ownership of inventions, there is no
similar system to protect raw data such as what a field biologist might
observe and collect in a jungle." The database system the researchers have
devised credits the work to its contributor using a technique known as
cryptographic time-stamping. School of Informatics researcher and computer
security expert Markus Jakobsson, said, "Our design has its foundation in
computer security principles, but goes beyond the traditional approaches
for access control and privacy. Many current data-sharing systems are
deigned by biologists with little or no guidance from computer experts--or
designed by computer scientists with no input from biologists. Our work
seeks to avoid these pitfalls."
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An Interview With Linux Australia's Cover Girl
Computerworld Australia (11/13/06) Tay, Liz
Pia Waugh believes that the cultural stereotypes keeping many women from
careers in IT could be overcome if the actual state of IT was better
understood. In addition to running Linux Australia, Pia runs Software
Freedom International and her own consultancy, as well as holding a
research position at Macquarie University. She blames the low rate of
women entering IT in countries such as the U.S. and Australia on "cultural
expectations...that you need to be masculine to go into IT," whereas in
countries such as Malaysia, Finland, or Iran "there's not a gender
association with IT." Waugh believes that "The kids of today are more
technologically gifted than any of the generations above them. They are
all very comfortable using technology to solve problems," she says. She
cites cell phones as away to prove to children, especially girls, that
technology is useful rather than intimidating. Any student who likes
"solving problems...having challenges, learning, and being surrounded by
smart people" would be a good fit for an IT career, Waugh says. "Because
there's such a diverse amount of jobs out there, you don't need specific
math, science, programming, or even creative skills. There's a job for
pretty much everyone in IT," she says. The gap between the perception of
the industry held by teachers and that which actually exists, especially
the diversity of jobs available, must be addressed, says Waugh, because
schools are about six years behind. "Some schools are actually telling
their kids not to go into IT," she says. For young girls, who are more
career-oriented than young boys, according to Waugh, such misguided advice
is very influential. For information about ACM's Committee on Women in
Computing, visit
http://women/acm.org
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Sensor Networks Protect Containers, Navigate
Robots
Washington University (St. Louis) (11/09/06) Fitzpatrick, Tony
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have achieved a new
level of flexibility in wireless sensor networks, which can support
multiple applications over the same hardware to meet changing conditions.
In an experiment, a sensor network that utilized software agents was able
to locate a simulated fire and direct a robot to the location, using heat
detection. After finding the fire, the software agent "clones" itself,
forming a ring of software around the fire that a fireman can use to learn
about the fire, and if the fire grows, another ring can be created. The
research team created a middleware program called Agilla that allows agents
to traverse sensor networks connected through the Internet, creating
intricate communities of agents in cooperation. Gruia-Catalin Roman,
Ph.D., the Harold B. and Adelaide G. Welge professor of Computer Science
and department chair, and director of Washington University's Mobile
Computing Laboratory, who contributed to the project, predicts that
wireless sensor networks are ready to have a huge global impact, not unlike
the rise of the Internet following the development of the World Wide Web.
"What researchers are banking on is that sensor networks will be so cheap
to make that they can be employed on a very large scale," says Roman.
"This way you can spread hundreds and thousands of them around gathering
data and communicating." Potential future applications include a farmer
retrieving data concerning the various types of soil on his land, or a
warehouse monitoring its containers.
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Researcher Finds 'Trusted Computing' Chip in Apple
Models
eWeek (11/10/06) Turner, Daniel Drew
A "trusted computing" module (TPM) was found in Intel-based Apple
computers, but the reason for it is unknown. Amit Singh, a member of
Google's technical staff, discusses the existence of the chip in his book,
"Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach," in which he also writes that
there is no way for Apple's Mac OS X to directly make use of the TPM; no
DRM or similar restrictions are linked to the chip. "The TPM is an opt-in
feature," said Singh. "Apple can't turn it on--nobody can, other than the
user." The TPM is a single chip that is made up of a random number
generator, a small memory chip, and a low-power processor, plus a few other
parts. It has no influence on the system due to a lack drivers that are
aware of it in either the computer's OS or its firmware. While it is
possible for users to make use of the TPM, Singh's best guess is that the
chip is simply part of the motherboard package from Intel. Ross Anderson,
a professor of security engineering at the Computer Laboratory at the
University of Cambridge, does not believe that the TPM would be included
without reason. Based on "software economics" and "Apple's traditional
business model," he suggests "future use of the TPM, whether in OS X 10.5,
10.6 or later," or "use directly by application software vendors, e.g. in
Office 2007." Anderson has been very critical of past trusted computing
efforts, linking them to attempted, strict DRM restrictions, such as the
prevention of the copying of purchased media files or the playing of a CD
on more than one computer.
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Military Dreams Big With Help From OSU Brains
Albany Democrat-Herald (11/09/06) Lair, Patrick
Oregon State University's research into artificial intelligence is one of
many DARPA-funded research projects that could one day develop practical
products for civilian use. Tom Dietterich, director of Intelligent Systems
Research in OSU's school of electrical engineering and computer science, is
currently developing a computer that can play video games, and a
personalized assistant that learns (PAL). The challenge of a project such
as teaching a computer to play a video game is to understand and reproduce
the way that strategies are comprehended and applied, Dietterich says. PAL
development aims at producing an AI secretary that knows the needs of its
user and can perform tasks such as the filling out of orders forms. DARPA
has always had the goal of developing military technology, but as Terri
Fiez, director of electrical engineering and computer science at OSU,
explains, "For years, DARPA has supported research that has helped the U.S.
economy become successful." Fiez is currently involved in development of
system-on-chip (SoC) technology. Along with reducing interference between
digital and analog circuitry, Fiez's team plans to create software that
identifies future problems on a given system.
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Software Devises Best Plan for Tackling Forest
Fires
New Scientist (11/10/06) Simonite, Tom
Researchers in Spain are using artificial intelligence to give planning
software the ability to suggest firefighting strategies to firefighters.
SIADEX, the planning system, is quickly able to show fire departments the
best ways to coordinate firefighters, vehicles, and other resources, based
on whether they want the fastest approach, the least complicated solution,
or the cheapest option. "It suggests two or three optimizations for
approval based on different measures of success," says Luis Castillo, an
artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Granada, who
designed SIADEX along with several colleagues. The system analyzes how
standard operating procedures of firefighters apply to a current blaze,
using Hierarchical Task Network planning techniques and more advanced
software. Fire department administrators, firefighters, and emergency
workers will be able to use PDAs, laptops, or desktop computers to go to a
Web site and find their specific duties for responding to a blaze. Systems
such as SIADEX, which is expected to be tested outdoors in 2007, could be
used by governments, emergency planners, and militaries to coordinate
response to natural disasters or homeland security emergencies, says
Edinburgh University researcher Austin Tate. "People are desperate to get
AI into these areas," says the emergency planning systems expert.
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Hoping to Avoid Election-Day Glitches, One County Calls
in the Computer Scientists
Chronicle of Higher Education (11/17/06) Vol. 53, No. 13, P. A35; Foster,
Andrea L.
Yolo County, Calif., enlisted 60 computer-science grad students from the
University of California at Davis to help clear up confusion about the
assembly, disassembly, and use of electronic voting machines among elderly
poll workers on Election Day, although the machines ultimately saw little
actual use. The machines were rolled out for use by disabled voters, but
voters reported a preference for paper ballots because of a lack of trust
with the e-voting machines. Around one-third of voters cast ballots on
e-voting systems nationwide, but while reports of problems with the devices
were sparse, watchdog groups said it was too early to generally rank the
systems' performance this election. "You can't really tell how well things
went until after the dust clears, and that hasn't happened yet," reported
Stanford University computer science professor and VerifiedVoting.org
founder David Dill. "We definitely saw some problems." E-voting machines
were cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the culprits behind
precincts that opened late and long polling place lines. A lack of poll
worker training and voting machine testing will likely generate major
problems for both this latest election and future elections, according to
Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project co-director Ted Selker. Lax security
of voting machine equipment in terms of handling and storage is also a
problem, and many computer-security experts see a need for a
voter-verifiable paper trail. E-voting machines are required by California
law to supply a paper record of ballots.
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An Ecological Approach to the Design of Information
Systems
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology
(11/06) Fidel, Raya
It is a sensible notion to base the design of information systems on the
comprehension of the activities people perform, according to director of
the University of Washington Information School's Center for
Human-Information Interaction Raya Fidel. But these activities are not
consistent for everyone at any time, bringing to mind the idea that each
activity type may need its own individual information system. Anyone who
participates in cognitive work--work that involves decision making--should
have customized information systems designed according to analysis of their
activities, and such analysis can be guided by the cognitive work analysis
(CWA) framework developed by researchers at Risoe National Laboratory. CWA
analyzes the work activities as well as the environment in which they
transpire through the empirical study of environmental factors or
"constraints" that influence the activities. The framework labels the
people who perform the activities "actors," and the analysis of actors is
predicated on the assumption that people within a certain group have traits
in common that facilitate effective performance of their tasks.
Understanding the constraints that shape and impact the actors' activities
involves analyzing seven dimensions--including the actors themselves, the
workplace environment, and their task or tasks--proposed by the CWA.
Probing the work domain, the tasks, and the decisions that are made can
particularly benefit from means-ends analysis, which posits five analysis
levels (goals/constraints, priorities, functions, processes, and resources)
whose relationships are also means-ends relationships in themselves. Fidel
concludes that the customization of information systems for defined user
groups is already happening: Such systems are being used to facilitate
electronic commerce, and she reasons that further customization can
significantly improve access to online information.
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Playing for Keeps
Queue (11/06) Vol. 4, No. 9, Geer, Daniel E.
Removing some of the general-purpose aspects of computing is one way to
address the complexity versus security challenge, according to Verdasys
chief scientist Daniel Geer. He observes that software vendors'
self-interest demands increasing software complexity, while the
availability of computers and computer-like devices to people is rising
thanks to orders-of-magnitude innovations in labs. The decline in the
proportion of (people) skill to (computer) horsepower is precipitous and
shows no sign of slowing down, and data is becoming increasingly valuable
as hardware costs shrink. As software complexity grows, subtle product
flaws are multiplying, and Geer writes that the solution is to eliminate
complexity from the equation through the creation of appliances. One
example of this principle in action is virtualization, which substitutes
purpose-built appliances for the general-purpose computer. "Whether it is
a side effect or a purpose, little virtual machines that are fast to
restart also get you high availability by making recovery time near zero,"
Geer points out. Another option is surveillance, which the author notes
has much more traction than appliance creation.
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