Congress and Tech: Little to Show
CNet (12/11/06) McCullagh, Declan
The 109th Congress, which concluded over the past weekend, was rather
ineffective in passing technology-related legislation during its two-year
life span. The politicians went home for the holidays before a vote could
be taken on raising the number of available H-1B visas, which is currently
set at 65,000 per year. Microsoft's top lobbyist, Jack Krumholz,
commented, "Without an increase in the number of H-1B visas and green cards
issued each year, our nation loses the opportunity to benefit from the
contributions of highly educated and skilled workers from around the world.
American business and society in general will be worse off." Web
censorship and filtering legislation did not have much more success: While
a bill targeting the protection of children on social networking sites
passed in the House, it died in the Senate. A House subcommittee let
another bill protesting Chinese Web censorship expire without much debate,
and voting on a bill that would require Web labeling was put off until
February. Net neutrality regulations were defeated soundly in the House,
and a Net neutrality amendment was rejected by a Senate committee that
voted 11-11 when a majority was needed. Democrats tried to reinsert the
amendment into a broader bill being voted on in the Senate, but the vote
never happened. Copyright and digital rights management has not received
much attention ever since the Grokster file-swapping case. The issue of
making "broadcast flags" mandatory for hardware makers was brought up, but
Congress avoided voting on the matter. A temporary extension of the R&D
tax credit was passed as part of a larger tax relief, but a popular tax
credit for R&D was not. The day they adjourned, Congress send an
anti-pretexting bill to the President, which would make it a federal crime
to buy or sell private phone information, but which exempted police and spy
agencies.
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Tool Will Give Robots a Leg Up
San Francisco Chronicle (12/13/06) P. D1; Abate, Tom
Betting that robotics is set to take off, Microsoft has released a
point-and-click software tool that is intended to make programming simple
robots rather easy. Microsoft Robotics Studio has already gotten the
attention of some robot enthusiasts; over 100,000 copies of the software
have been downloaded so far. While free for educational or personal use,
the software is being used by about 30 companies, who have signed deals
with Microsoft, to develop commercial robots. Stanford computer science
professor Sebastian Thrun, director of the DARPA automated car competition
team, says, "I know of nothing like this out there." Many experts notice a
similarity between Microsoft's entrance into the robotics field at this
time and their entry into the PC field in the 1970s. Microsoft veteran
Tandy Trower says, "You have all this passion and excitement and the
nagging question: What are these things good for." Jenny Grau, president
of educational robot company RidgeSoft, whose robots can be programmed
using the Microsoft software says, "Robotics is such an amazing tool for
teachers, elementary, all the way through university, to get kids
interested in computer science." Experts say that Microsoft's toolkit can
alleviate some of the tedious work involved in robotics programming by
standardizing fundamental software routines. Still, realizing the level of
standardization in robotics that has been achieved in PCs will take
years.
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A Window on the Environment From Tahoe to the
Ocean
UC Davis News and Information (12/11/06)
UC Davis environmental and computer scientists are utilizing a network of
hundreds of sensors to study the interconnectedness of many different
elements of the environment in a more efficient way than ever before. The
NSF funded project, known as the Coast to Mountain Environmental Transect
(COMET), covers coasts, forests, farmland, urban, and suburban areas to
provide perspective on environmental issues and allow forecasting of how
climate change will affect California. One application could be predicting
wildfires and the affect they will have on the climate. The data, ranging
from animal counts to chemistry, gathered by the various types of sensors
is put into a "virtual library" to be combined, reviewed, and analyzed.
Co-principal of the project and UC Davis department of computer science
associate professor Bertram Ludascher says the aim of the project is to
"allow scientists to spend less time managing data and more time studying
it." The other co-principal investigator, UC Davis department of computer
science associate professor Michael Gertz, says, "Up to 80 percent of time
is [currently] spent on data management. We want to reduce this
drastically." Other sensor networks are being built up around the country,
and Congress hopes that they will one day be able to link up.
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Shared Encounters: Content Sharing as Social Glue in
Public Space
networked_performance (12/12/06) Green, Jo-Anne
Organizers of ACM SIGCHI 2007 are calling for papers on the subject of how
the use of mobile and ubiquitous technologies to share content will impact
social interaction. The subject will be the focus of the Shared
Encounters: Content Sharing as Social Glue in Public Space workshop, and
selected authors will have an opportunity to participate in sessions. The
workshop will focus on the types of encounters among people and what makes
one meaningful, why certain shared encounters endure, and how mass and
personal media can be used to communicate and engage others. Key issues
also include the relationship of social groups in networked communities,
and the role of situated computing as an enabling technology. Organizers
are inviting experts in human-computer interaction, architecture, media,
psychology, urban studies and other fields to submit papers for the
workshop. Position papers must be received by Jan. 12, 2007. The workshop
is scheduled for Sunday, April 29, 2007, during ACM SIGCHI 2007 in San
Jose, Calif. For more information on CHI2007, visit
http://www.chi2007.org
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Return of the Porta-People
Technology Review (12/13/06) Talbot, David
Sun researchers have developed an improved teleconferencing system that
takes advantage of increased bandwidth to enable those not actually in
attendance to have a physical presence at meetings. The contraption
consists of microphones, speakers, and a tablet PC displaying a real-time
image of the person's face, all set up on a box that can be swiveled by the
remote colleague to look around the room. Sun principal investigator
Nicole Yankelovich says, "We are trying to give those remote people a real
tangible presence in the meeting room." The user can both hear what is
said and speak at will, and in the direction he chooses. The user is
presented with a panoramic screen, and by clicking the mouse on a certain
spot, the stand-in can be made to face that spot. Sun researcher Jonathan
Kaplan, who has used the system, says, "Being able to move the box lets you
grab people's attention, which is very hard to do ... on the phone."
Teleconferencing systems have been developed and sold for years, ranging
from simple Web cams to those that can actually move around a room. MIT
Media Lab director Chris Schmandt says, "The idea of indicators of presence
and of stereo audio are themselves not particularly new. What is new is
that now IP-based networks are omnipresent and can do a pretty good job of
carrying the voice traffic. Doing stereo over conventional telephone
channels is difficult, but over a packet network it becomes very easy."
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New University of Maryland Technologies Could Move Video
Surveillance to New Level
AScribe Newswire (12/11/06)
University of Maryland electrical and computer engineering professor Rama
Chellappa has created an artificial-intelligence-based real-time computer
video monitoring system that can identify suspicious activities or
individuals, which may remove some of the burden from security guards who
must monitor many video screens simultaneously. Chellappa, a pioneer in
pattern recognition and computer vision software, developed a digital
signature for the human gait, called "human gait DNA." Deviations in this
normal gait pattern cause asymmetries that the system can recognize and
analyze, but for now a concealed object not effecting one's gait would not
be noticed. Gait is also used to identify specific individuals, as is face
recognition software. To locate and observe actual pedestrians, Chellappa
has used corrective algorithms to compensate for changing light, shadows,
and viewing angles. Other recognition technologies are currently being
worked on with support from the Department of Homeland Security, including
an algorithm to estimate the heights of subjects in the field of view of a
camera, and a program that can find unattended packages using a structured
representation known as attribute grammars.
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Microsoft Research Goes to School
CNet (12/12/06) LaMonica, Martin
Microsoft's iCampus initiative, a partnership with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology that is scheduled to conclude this spring, has
allowed students and educator's access to specialized equipment and allowed
software companies experience in the realm of education. Microsoft
Research chief Rick Rashid explains that Microsoft "constructed the project
so that there wouldn't be any sort of Microsoft advantage out of it,"
instead the goal was to "educate and inspire students." ICampus allowed a
"rethinking" of "education in the context of technology" using
sophisticated equipment that is "very difficult to work with, from a
student-management perspective," according to Rashid. He says the
educational system is still lagging behind the "opportunities and
possibilities" that face today's tech professionals. Rashid faults the
educational system for not preparing students for a career in computer
science. He says, "Through high school, there's very little computer
education--that has been the case of K-12, where it's just not considered a
priority by the school system. So there, the issue is more one of just
general math and science training. There's a lot of work yet to be done
there." He also says that while "industry can be a catalyst in working
with universities," it doesn't have the resources to replace government
funding for universities.
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Gartner: Firms at Risk of Losing Women
Technologists
SearchCIO.com (12/05/06) Tucci, Linda
The IT industry needs to hire more women, as their superior communication
skills make them "innately better suited than men" to do business in the
world economy, according to the new Gartner report "Women and Men in IT:
Breaking Through Sexual Stereotypes." "Let's be frank: Men and women
behave, think, and operate differently. To pretend otherwise is to ignore
fruitful inputs into IT team-building, leadership, global projects,
innovation, and talent management," says report co-author Gartner analyst
Mark Raskino. While 80 percent of consumer spending decisions are made by
women, men still design 90 percent of IT products and services. Forrester
analyst Laurie Orlov has found that communication skills are "the
differentiator" in IT hiring these days, as companies realize "you can
train someone technically, but changing their personality is a much more
difficult job." However, Bank of New York VP of systems and technology
Ilene Grossman is quick to point out that while not all women are good
listeners and good communicators and not all men are poor listeners and
communicators, these skills are certainly lacking in the industry. She
adds that since men hold most COO and CEO positions, men will continue to
be hired at a greater rate than women because men are "more comfortable
with men." However, she says that once more women reach these positions,
the current gender inequality will begin to even out. For information
about ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Declining Level of IT Grads Could Hurt High-Tech
Sector
ITBusiness.ca (12/11/06) Lysecki, Sarah
A new study from the non-profit Software Human Resource Council (SHRC) has
called attention to the severe gap between the number of job openings in
the Canadian ICT sector, 35,000 each year, and the number of students
graduating from Canadian universities with computer science or engineering
degrees, 7,000 each year. The number of new hires needed is expected to
increase to 89,000 over the next three or four years, according to the
SHRC. SHRC President Paul Swinwood says, "We're looking at a maximum of
7,000 coming out of the school system. We're trying to figure out where
the heck the rest of the people are going to come from." Still, some
Canadian universities are witnessing an increase in science and engineering
enrollment, probably due to a curriculum change made in 2004 that removed a
course called geometry and discrete math as a prerequisite for many
undergraduate science and engineering programs. The course was avoided by
many students who feared a low grade that would bring down their average.
Ryerson University dean of engineering, science, and architecture Dr.
Stalin Boctor explained, "All of the engineering schools have noticed that
the numbers ... have improved." A stigma still exists among young people
that technology is not a reliable field, but Dr. Boctor says this is an
outdated assumption. He says, "There is a psychological impact from that
IT bubble bursting in 2001. We are far removed from that. There are very
lucrative jobs in the IT and communications industry."
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World's Fastest Transistor Approaches Goal of Terahertz
Device
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (12/11/06) Kloeppel, James E.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will
discuss their breakthrough involving transistor speed during the
International Electronics Device Meeting in San Francisco this week.
Milton Feng, the Holonyak Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, and graduate student William Snodgrass have developed a
transistor that has set a new world record for speed of operation; the new
device takes advantage of tinier components that have enabled them to
reduce its base to 12.5 nanometers in thickness. Their transistor, which
is made from indium phosphide and indium gallium arsenide, is nearly 300
GHz faster than other transistors in reaching a frequency of 845 GHz. "By
scaling the device vertically, we have reduced the distance electrons have
to travel, resulting in an increase in transistor speed," Snodgrass says.
"Because the size of the collector has also been reduced laterally, the
transistor can charge and discharge faster." Feng and Snodgrass have made
the "Holy Grail" of a terahertz transistor appear more of a reality, with
its expected improvements on the speed of computers as well as the security
and flexibility of wireless communication systems. For the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funded the research, a terahertz
transistor would mean better combat systems.
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Computers to Fix Themselves
ABC Online (Australia) (12/11/06) Salleh, Anna
Computer scientists at the University of Melbourne have created a system
whereby "intelligent" computers can provide help to those seeking technical
support. Monash University professor of computer science Dr. Yuval Marom,
one of the system's creators, explains that, "Help desk operators are
generally dealing with the same thing over and over again," so by mixing
and matching parts of generic responses based on key words it identifies in
a question, the system will be able to provide appropriate answers. To
build its knowledge base, over 30,00 genuine pairs of questions and answers
from email help desks have been analyzed by the software. Marom says the
program will only supply an answer if it has a certain degree of confidence
in its response, and even if its answer is not exactly what the user needs
to know, it should at least point them in the right direction. Although it
will mean a decrease in human positions at IT help desks, the software will
not completely eliminate the need for a human presence, as some questions
will always be beyond the scope of the program. The research will be
presented next month at the International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence in Hyderabad, India.
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Tapping Geek Talent
Bloomberg (12/13/06) Thaw, Jonathan
Yahoo's "Hack Day" event is an example of the way smart programmers are
being encouraged by businesses to channel their creativity to innovate the
Web. Yahoo co-founder David Filo says, "If we're going to be successful in
the next 10 years, we have to tap into all those external creative
resources." Yahoo wants to find new-product concepts to compete with the
likes of YouTube and MySpace. Of the approximately 500 attending
programmers, some were hoping to land a job, while others participated only
for fun. Each "geek" had 24 hours to create new uses for Yahoo's
applications, then present their ideas and code to executives. Prizes were
awarded to 17 teams. Winners included a platform that displays Yahoo's
weather information and stock quotes on TV sets, and a version of Yahoo's
email that provides photos of contacts. Hybrids, or mash-ups, made up a
large portion of the concepts developed. All of those involved maintain
ownership rights over what they created. Other companies such as Google
and Intel have held similar gatherings to harness the combination of
ability and creativity possessed by today's programmers. While such events
used to be confined to Silicon valley, they now take place across the
country.
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It Is the Business, Stupid
CIO Australia (12/10/06) Bushell, Sue
The failure of software projects is attributable to a dearth of
concentration on business outcomes and associated change and an
overemphasis on technology. Such failings were categorized as "managerial
unconsciousness" by David Avison, Shirley Gregor, and David Wilson in the
July issue of Communications of the ACM; they studied three disastrous
Australian projects that were connected by needlessly complex application
system software, bad IT governance, and novice and/or powerless IT
personnel without influence among corporate decision makers, and concluded
that senior management is responsible for correcting these faults at the
outset. Avison et al traced managerial unconsciousness to unawareness of
IT projects' importance and unwillingness to address complex issues and ask
hard questions. Fujitsu Consulting's John Thorp, author of "The
Information Paradox," proposes an "enterprise value management" strategy to
help executives make better informed IT investment decisions and achieve
projected return on investment: The strategy secures IT value through a
combination of "benefits realization" and "portfolio management." An IT
project can be doomed if it has little support from upper management, notes
Cutter Consortium Fellow Robert Charette. More and more organizations are
adjusting their management architecture to a project-based strategy to
augment their project management capabilities, while others have
established project management offices to give all project managers
centralized support. Valense managing partner Michel Thiry cites the
absence of an integrated project management vision as one of the reasons
why projects fare so poorly. Thorp sees an urgent need for a basic
revision of management's attitude so that organizations can implement a
management structure that stresses business programs via a focus on
business benefits, and building and proactively managing a portfolio of
programs; CIOs must powwow with business stakeholders to guarantee that the
project's intended business outcome is clearly understood from the
beginning.
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Computers 'Could Store Entire Life by 2026'
Telegraph.co.uk (12/13/06) Fleming, Nic
Computer scientists participated in a debate on the potential impact of
"human black boxes" Tuesday in the United Kingdom. During the Memories for
Life conference at the British Library, some experts said the ability to
record and store high-quality digital video footage of every second of
people's lives would do wonders for business, education, medicine, crime
prevention, and recording history. For example, such a device would enable
retailers to learn even more about customers, and could be used to deliver
vital data on patients' heart rates and blood sugar levels to health-care
providers, they said. However, other experts countered that a human black
box would have huge implications for the issue of privacy and would move
society a step closer to becoming a nanny state. "Technology can play a
vital role in memory, for example, by providing an artificial aid to help
those with memory disorders or enabling communities to create and preserve
their collective experiences," said professor Wendy Hall of the University
of Southampton. "However, we must also consider the social, ethical, and
legal issues associated with technology development and how increased
access to knowledge will affect our society in open, inter-disciplinary
forums." The pace of expansion of computer processing power means a human
black box, about the size of a sugar cube, could be a reality in 20
years.
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IT Job Market Best in Five Years, Survey Finds
InformationWeek (12/11/06) Gardner, W. David
The beginning of next year will be the best time to look for IT work in
five years, according to a new report from Robert Half Technology (RHT), an
IT employment service and agency. Some 1,400 CIOs were surveyed in the
latest RHT IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, which indicates that in the
first quarter of 2007 16 percent will be looking to add IT workers, with 2
percent planning to eliminate IT jobs. "The net 14 percent hiring
increase--the highest since the fourth quarter of 2001--is up from the
previous quarter's forecast," says the report. Most companies with plans
to hire will do so because their businesses are growing, and others said
they need more IT workers to help with customer and end-user growth.
Larger firms, with at least 1,000 employees, are expected to do most of the
hiring, with a forecast of a 23 percent net increase. Transportation is
likely to be the most active industry, with 24 percent of companies saying
they are looking to hire, followed by 19 percent of manufacturing
companies. The East South Central area consisting of Alabama, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Missouri is expected to be a hot region, as well as many
major cities. Windows administration skills were cited as in demand by
about 77 percent of CIOs, followed by network administration skills by 71
percent and database management skills by 63 percent.
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ICANN Conference Bears Much Fruit
eWeek (12/08/06) Prince, Brian
ICANN's fruitful Brazil meeting ended on Dec. 8, 2006, with a cornucopia
of accomplishments: approving a new .asia domain name, launching a new
ICANN Regional At-Large Organization, signing three gTLD registry
agreements, and agreeing on a three-year strategic plan for ICANN. ICANN's
three-year plan includes broadening international participation in ICANN,
launching international domain names (IDNs), and improving IANA
functioning. The strategic plan also calls for periodic independent
reviews of ICANN functions in an effort increase agency transparency. The
new ICANN Regional At-Large Organization will represent Latin America and
the Caribbean. It will include 22 regional user groups who will work to
present a regional consensus on various issues to ICANN. ICANN also
approved new registry agreements for .biz, .info, and .org--agreements that
included a 10 percent price-hike limit on those domains.
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Green Grid Attacks Data Centers' Power Draw
EE Times (12/11/06)No. 1453, P. 14; Merritt, Rick
The Energy Department held a meeting last in Silicon Valley to discuss
ways to more efficiently power large computer centers. As the meeting, the
Green Grid, an industry consortium aimed at increasing the energy
efficiency of data centers, revealed that it is preparing for the official
release of membership and agenda details in early 2007. The groups'
attention has recently been drawn to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
which is beginning development of a data center that "could triple power
requirements of the whole lab," says William Tschudi, the lab's project
manager. "These supercomputers used to be purchased for performance at any
cost, but ... the cost of power is becoming an issue." The Green Grid is
expected be comprised of various computer companies, such as Intel, and
later is expected to invite more government and industry groups to join.
John Pflueger, Dell Computer strategist and member of the Green Grid's
technical working group, says, "The worst thing we could do is fracture the
limited expertise in the industry." However, the Energy Department has
said that it plans to work with about seven such groups. The government
does not plan to enforce regulation of data centers, but is accepting
incentive proposals. Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim says, "We're getting
better ... but we could get another 20 to 40 percent in energy
efficiency."
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2006 CRN Industry Hall of Fame: Alan Kay
Computer Reseller News (12/11/06)No. 1223, P. 32; Cowley, Stacy
Alan Kay, who collaborated on the work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research
Center in the 1970s that produced much of what we know as the modern PC,
believes that the potential for the next great intuitive leap in computing
lies in children. "Children don't know the way the world is supposed to
be," Kay says. "In all of the revolutions, it was always the children who
did it--usually several generations of children." Kay hopes that the "One
Laptop per Child" initiative, as well as Squeak, a modern application of
Smalltalk designed to allow children to create their own media, will help
change the state of the computing world. He describes the industry as
having lost inspiration: "In the last 25 years we went from people
thinking about all this stuff very carefully to people who are not thinking
about it at all, just using external goal structures ... occupying
themselves with imitations of old media." Kim Rose, who co-founded the
Viewpoints Research Institute with Kay five years ago, says Kay's interests
cross many disciplines. Rose says, "There's so much I've learned from him,
whether it's basic properties of physics that I didn't understand properly
as a student or strategies for working with corporate executives." Kay's
many awards include ACM's A.M. Turing Award and Kyoto Prize. Despite his
many years in the industry, Kay says his work is never finished. He says,
"Anything that has to do with human thought and amplifying human thought
and finding better ways to think is not something you'd expect to have
closure on."
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Getting There From Here: A Roadmap for Software Product
Line Adoption
Communications of the ACM (12/06) Vol. 49, No. 12, P. 33; Clements, Paul
C.; Jones, Lawrence G.; McGregor, John D.
The authors outline steps to take and technical and business activities to
perform in order to facilitate the successful organizational adoption of a
software product line. An SPL organization embodies a trio of mutually
supportive operations, namely core asset development, product development,
and management. Core assets (plans, requirements, designs, documentation,
tests, and code) are used throughout the entire SPL as common resources and
can be customized in a predefined way to fulfill the requirements of
individual products, while feedback about the assets' quality and usability
is generated by product creation. What products to include in the product
line is a management decision founded on the existing core assets'
capabilities and the market's needs, and managerial oversight is needed to
guarantee that the assets are applicable to product development. The
Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Framework for Software Product Line
Practice lists many practices for successfully fielding a SPL, and the
combination and coordination of practice areas to yield useful outcomes is
detailed by product line practice patterns such as Adoption Factory. The
process of executing the product line strategy by blending technical and
business activities is mapped out by Adoption Factory, which positions an
organization to establish a product line context prior to code development
and set up real production capability before trying to operate the product
line. Time to market and cost can be reduced, while agility, quality, and
productivity can be raised by following the SPL strategy.
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