Changes in E-Voting Likely Coming, Experts Say
IDG News Service (01/05/07) Gross, Grant
Several advocacy groups, including Common Cause and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, hosted a panel of election experts, who agreed that
something must be done about the state of the nation's e-voting systems,
but admitted that no widely accepted solution currently exists. Kentucky
Secretary of State Trey Grayson said, "We're at this point ... where I
believe there's a consensus that we need to do something. However, the
consensus is ahead of the solution." Grayson added that since Kentucky has
used e-voting machines without incident since the 1980s, many districts
would be reluctant to change. Transparency is a widely accepted goal for
e-voting, but experts disagree whether audits of both machines and ballots,
or attaching printers to voting machines, can achieve transparency.
Twenty-seven states currently require paper-trail systems to accompany
e-voting, but only 11 of them require officials to conduct audits to assure
the electronic votes match the paper ones. U.S. House of Representatives
Administration Committee staffer Thomas Hicks says it would be very
difficult to complete wide-ranging changes to e-voting systems before the
2008 elections; 2010 or 2011 is a more realistic goal, he says. Hicks
predicts that paper-trail audit legislation will be introduced in the next
two years, and that another bill could allow independent researchers to see
the source code used by e-voting machines.
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Attack of the Zombie Computers Is a Growing Threat,
Experts Say
New York Times (01/07/07) P. 1; Markoff, John
In light of the current trend of increasing botnet-enabled Internet crime,
computer security experts are admitting that the Internet is becoming more
at the mercy of cybercriminals, and that a new approach must be adopted.
Gadi Evron, a computer security researcher for Beyond Security, says, "It's
the perfect crime, both low-risk and high-profit. The war to make the
Internet safe was lost long ago, and we need to figure out what to do now."
Georgia Institute of technology researcher David Dagon, who co-founded a
startup that concentrates on botnets, estimates that botnet programs exist
on 11 percent of the over 650 million computers connected to the Internet.
Internet pioneer and Carnegie Mellon computer scientist David J. Farber
laments, "It's an insidious threat, and what worries me is that the scope
of the problem is still not clear to most people. The popular
[Windows-based] machines are so easy to penetrate, and that's scary." A
voluntary organization known as ShadowServer is observing botnet activity
on about 400,00 infected machines. Computer security firm Message Labs
estimates that over 80 percent of spam currently being sent comes from
botnets. A program known as "rustock" recently gained attention for its
ability to secretly add machines to a botnet, and use them for "pump and
dump" schemes, yet it could also be used for a wide array of Internet
crimes. Rustock is able to conceal infecting agents so that no digital
fingerprints can be detected. Despite their best efforts, computer
scientists cannot keep up with the improvements being made to botnet
programs and are even beginning to fear for the commercial viability of the
Internet; most ISPs are only making the situation worse, they say, by
either ignoring or downplaying the problem. San Diego Supercomputer Center
Internet researcher K.C. Claffy says, "It's a huge scientific, policy, and
ultimately social crisis, and no one is taking any responsibility for
addressing it."
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Researchers Use Wikipedia to Make Computers
Smarter
American Technion Society (01/04/07) Hattori, Kevin
The accumulated knowledge of Wikipedia could soon allow search engines,
spam filters, and other applications to better understand context when
analyzing a document, thanks to research at the Technion-Israeli Institute
of Technology. The program created by the research team uses a concept
database, constructed from Wikipedia, to understand single words and
phrases. The type of "background knowledge" that the researchers want
computers to utilize is a vital part of human problem solving ability, "but
we [previously] didn't know how to have computers access such knowledge,"
says Technion Faculty of Computer Science researcher Shaul Markovitch.
Whereas current programs simply treat documents as a group of words, the
new system aims to understand the meaning of the words it encounters. One
example given by the researchers is a current spam filter set to block
messages where the word "vitamin" appears. If "B12," a type of vitamin,
appeared in an email instead of "vitamin," the program would not block it;
the Technion system, however, would find upon consulting its database that
B12 is a type of vitamin and the email would be blocked. The system also
works at discerning the meaning of ambiguous terms, which would be very
valuable when dealing with translated documents.
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PCs Get Set to Scream in 2007
Wired News (01/05/07) Gain, Bruce
PCs will become faster in 2007 as a result of flash-memory-assisted hard
drives and software that utilizes the strength of multi-core CPUs. Analyst
Rob Enderle, who is currently testing a hybrid flash/hard-drive memory
system, says, "You take all of that stuff from the hard drive and put it in
high-speed memory, and the applications just pop. Not only does the system
come up faster, but the applications within the system come up a lot
faster." Flash memory will boost the demand for laptops by increasing
their battery life and decreasing the time machines spend coming out of
"hibernate" mode. Also sure to bring about faster computing are the newly
introduced multithreaded applications that make use of parallelism in
quad-core CPUs. Gabe Newell, co-founder of software developer Valve,
believes that these advancements mean quad-core processing "will have good
benefits near-term and huge benefits over the next several generations."
During 2007, traditional Ethernet 802.11 Wi-Fi antennas and access points,
including cellular networks, should receive a boost from wireless
capabilities. Along with 40-inch LCD monitors, manufacturers are working
on small second screens for laptops, which could allow users to view email
and other information via Microsoft's SlideShow platform without needing to
start up their machine.
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A Personal Computer to Carry in a Pocket
New York Times (01/08/07) P. C1; Markoff, John
The realm of the mobile phone is being invaded by the personal computer,
as several new devices are bringing the capabilities of desktop and laptop
computers to America's hip pockets. Symbian's Jerry Panagrossi calls this
development the "emergence of a fourth-screen," referring to the "movie,
television, computer, and now the smart-phone screen." Steve Jobs will
unveil Apple's new mobile communications device, which many anticipate to
be one of the first of the new breed of devices that can handle music,
entertainment, productivity tasks, and communications over cellular and
other wireless networks. Many expect Apple's product to signal the
beginning of intense competition between hardware vendors to create
increasingly capable hybrid devices. One company, Oqo, has already shown
its Model 2, and received a positive overall response. The Microsoft
Vista-equipped Model 2 is a fully equipped computer with a slide out
keyboard and is able to connect to Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Oqo
co-founder and computer designer Jory Bell says the company's "main goal is
to reinvent the PC in a pocketable form." Korean and Japanese companies
have already converted half of their customers to the new generation of
mobile computing devices that use data-oriented 3G wireless networks.
Analysts say the U.S., once far behind, is now only a year behind these
countries. Analyst Chetan Sharma says, "This is happening because of a
number of factors. Some have to do with culture and the others are purely
business-related. The carriers are now realizing that wireless data is a
substantial part of the business."
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Emotion-Aware Teaching Software Tracks Student
Attention
New Scientist (01/05/07) Simonite, Tom
Researchers in the United Kingdom and China believe software that is able
to determine the emotional state of students will improve the effectiveness
of e-learning systems. Universities around the world are turning to the
Internet and other technologies to deliver lectures and presentations to
students over large distances. "But these systems are unable to take into
account the needs and responses of the student in the same way a teacher in
a classroom can," says Vic Callaghan of Essex University, adding that
"that's what we are trying to do, by making a system that can sense
emotion." Callaghan has teamed up with Liping Shen, from Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, to develop the software, which is designed to determine
whether a student is showing interest in their studies and is comprehending
the subject matter. Their system would have users wear a ring fitted with
a sensor to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and changes in electrical
resistance resulting from perspiration, and would transmit the data to a
computer via Bluetooth. The system would also be able to slow down a
learning tutorial or switch topics, and even change the format such as from
text to video to help the user. Callaghan and Shen hope to test the system
on students in China.
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Augmented Cognition: Science Fact or Science
Fiction?
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (01/03/07) Costandi, Moheb
The immense volume of information coming in from multiple sources has
forced us to continuously switch back and forth between these sources, and
some researchers are pursuing augmented cognition as an enhancement to our
processes of attention and working memory. Augmented cognition uses
computational technology to ascertain a person's cognitive state with the
goal of improving it, and the field has drawn interest from the military
and the private sector. Optimizing the allocation of attention and
integrating multiple sources of information for more efficient data usage
is what researchers hope to achieve with augmented cognition, and
attention-augmenting devices could prove especially helpful in scenarios
that require fast decision-making. Under development is a "smart" cockpit
that reads the electrical activity of the pilot's brain and monitors mental
stress levels via an electro-encephalogram; the system automatically
filters out irrelevant data to reduce stress so the pilot can pay better
attention, or takes over the aircraft completely when the stress is
overwhelming. Dylan Schmorrow, director of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency's AugCog program, believes human memory capacity will be
enhanced by augmented cognition, which will "circumvent fundamental human
limitations by engineering work environments that will make it easier for
people to encode, store and retrieve the information presented to them
[and] develop interfaces that are context-sensitive by presenting material
in relation to the context in which it is encountered." Meeting this
challenge involves incorporating information in unique, image-able, and
multisensory contexts. Schmorrow describes the AugCog's program's mission
as "to extend, by an order of magnitude or more, the information management
capacity of the human-computer warfighting integral by developing and
demonstrating quantifiable enhancements to human performance in diverse,
stressful, operational environments...[and to] empower one human's ability
to successfully accomplish the functions currently carried out by three or
more individuals."
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When Is a D Better Than C? When It's a Language
InternetNews.com (01/05/07) Patrizio, Andy
A newly developed free programming language aims to address the
shortcomings of C/C++, though some question the likelihood of the
language's success since it is not being released in conjunction with any
other product or platform. The language, D, was developed by Walter
Bright, who created the first C++ compiler, Zortech++. He has developed a
compiler and standard libraries for both Windows and Linux for D. The
Phobus standard library and the compiler front-end are open source, and a D
compiler is included for the widely-used open source C compiler, GCC. D is
able to produce compiled code without the need of a virtual machine. The
language is also somewhat backwards compatible with C: It can be
interfaced with any C API without the need for a call interface; but it
adds Java and Microsoft C# functions such as garbage collection, an inline
assembler, and Java-like single inheritance. In production since 2001, D
has received considerable contribution from the Slashdot/open source
developer community. Bright designed the language with the experience of
C++ programmers in mind, not the sale of a product. He says, "The idea is
to make programming in D the most productive possible. Quicker to learn,
quicker to write code in, quicker to debug, and quicker to maintain."
However, Forrester analyst Jeff Hammond questions the programming
language's market potential. He says, "To make a technology viable, the
technology has to be more than just good. You have to build a business
model around it. What's the business model here?"
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System X Used to Model Behavior of Entire
Structures
PhysOrg.com (01/08/07)
Elisa Sotelino is using the Virginia Tech supercomputer System X to model
how structures will hold up under various conditions, such as fires or
earthquakes. "What I do is take the initial information that the
structural engineer obtains in the lab and create mathematical models to
predict loads for similar structures," says Sotelino, a professor of civil
and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. "My models are very large
and I need the advantages of the parallel computing capabilities of System
X to run these models." System X, which demands new algorithms, can be
used to solve structural problems mathematically, but in the real world
issues such as cost and visual appeal must be taken into consideration.
Sotelino is credited with developing a family of parallel algorithms called
the Group Implicit Algorithms, which have contributed enormously to the
area of nonlinear dynamic analysis of structures. The highly regarded
specialist in the field was also the force behind the creation of the
Structural Engineering Concurrent Software Development Environment
(SECSDE). SECSDE is an application for the reusing, quick prototyping, and
moving of parallel finite element analysis software for programming and
executing complex structural engineering applications.
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Scientist Trying to Figure Out 'Space Weather'
News-Gazette (01/02/07) Kline, Greg
University of Illinois electrical and computer engineer professor Jonathan
Makela studies the ionosphere, the region of the atmosphere in which
molecules are ionized by solar radiation, in hopes of being able to predict
the effects its activity will have on life on Earth. A 1989 blackout
effecting 9 million people in Quebec was linked to geomagnetic phenomena
occurring on the Sun, and is exactly the type of event Makela wishes to
prevent or at least predict. Other effects the ionosphere can have are on
satellite signals traveling through it, airplane communication systems, or
electricity being sent through the power grid. Makela uses his
"narrow-field ionospheric airglow imager," an especially sensitive digital
camera equipped with special filters and an exposure time of a few minutes
to observe the "airglow" over Earth's equatorial areas. The airglow is
caused by electrons that have been stripped from the atoms and molecules of
ionosphere gases recombining after sunset, and is difficult to see with the
naked eye. The imagining equipment transmits data to Makela via the
Internet. Along with colleagues, he has been able to create images like TV
weather maps of conditions in the ionosphere. Based on how the glow of the
airglow changes, the space weather causing the changes can be studied.
Makela admits that his research is not yet at the point of being able to
predict events. He says, "We're at the stage that meteorology was 50
(years ago)."
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DARPA Pushes to Bring Supercomputers to the Masses
Computerworld (01/08/07) Thibodeau, Patrick
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has embarked on a $650
million program to develop easy-to-use, high-performance supercomputers for
both commercial and national security applications; the focus for DARPA is
not just on the design of hardware, but also the creation of programming
languages, development tools, and techniques for scaling applications
across immense numbers of processors. William Harrod, the manager of
DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems Program, says constructing such
systems calls for a programming environment that "is easier to use and that
has less of a learning curve than the environments on today's HPCs." In
addition, the new systems will require an operating system and an
architecture that yield efficient performance. There were five vendors
vying for the development contract when the program started in 2002, and
the list has been whittled down to two: Cray and IBM won the $500
contracts to devise "economically viable high-productivity" supercomputers
by the close of the decade. The vendors are developing competing
programming languages--Chapel from Cray and x10 from IBM--to address
current limitations. "There will be one language at the end of the day,
and the government, multiple companies and HPC user communities are going
to have to put in some effort to adopt [it]," said Cray CTO Steve Scott.
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2007 U.S. Budget: NSF Braces for Opportunities
Lost
Science (01/05/07) Vol. 315, No. 5808, P. 24; Mervis, Jeffrey
The congressional Democratic desire to freeze the 2007 federal budget at
current spending levels until October could jeopardize potential projects
at the National Science Foundation (NSF), such as the development of a
petascale computer. The NSF is sponsoring a competition to build the $200
million next-generation supercomputer, but a flat budget could force the
agency to delay a $50 million down payment until the start of the 2008
fiscal year. The outgoing Republican Congress never completed work on a
federal budget in which the NSF had hoped to see an 8 percent increase from
its $5.6 billion budget. The increase was part of the Bush
administration's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), which called
for doubling federal spending on basic research in the physical sciences
over the next 10 years, with President Bush proposing that the first
increase occur in the 2007 budget. Some industry lobbyists plan to start
focusing on the 2008 budget. Sens. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), Lamar Alexander
(R-Tenn.), and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) in late December sent a letter to
President Bush asking him "to continue to make [ACI spending levels] a top
priority in your budget and for your administration." They stressed that
such a commitment to technology's role in innovation will be key to the
nation's ability to remain the world's economic leader in the years to
come.
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Web Users Driving Change in 2007
BBC News (01/01/07) Ward, Mark
Three technology veterans interviewed by BBC News each identified a trend
to watch for in 2007. Consultant Kathy Johnson says that as social
networks grow on the Internet, companies will strive for "actualization of
personalization," meaning they will seek a way to mine the information
contained in these communities, to enhance the ability of retailers to make
personalized recommendations to users. She points out that users have been
more likely to act on suggestions made by online interest groups than
retailers in the past. Entrepreneur Phillipe Courtot believes that the
simplicity and speed at which Web programs can be constructed will change
the way businesses purchase and create software. "You cannot keep on
developing software the old ways. The costs of distribution and support
are higher and higher and the customers are less and less satisfied."
Courtot expects many mergers and acquisitions among traditional software
firms as customers increasingly choose Web-based software and services
offered over the Web. Accenture European research labs director Dr. Martin
Illsley says customers will increasingly use mobile phones equipped with
cameras to provide businesses with negative feedback. Illsley also points
to service robots, and wireless sensor networks as trends that are ready to
explode in 2007.
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Online Tests Click With Students
Canadian University Press (01/03/07) Heise, Ryan
University of Alberta researchers are developing new ways of administering
tests by replacing pencil and paper with interactive multimedia components
designed to better hold students' attention and more accurately evaluate
their knowledge. The work is being led by computer science professor and
chairman of the Alberta Informatics Circle of Excellence Anup Basu, who
says, "The idea is to ... be very interactive. People can drag and drop
things; they can play games and in the process get tested." The software
is currently being run on computers, but other devices such as mobile
phones are being considered. The testing would also be scalable on an
individual basis. Basu says, "We want to tailor the test to a student's
ability. If the questions are too hard we make it easier; if the questions
are too easy we make it a little more difficult." Basu's thinking is not
that this will raise scores, but it will ensure that the student remains
interested in the test. The program's research director Irene Cheng says a
new scoring method would be used in these tests, which would use item
response theory and allow educators to tell whether students guessed or
not. "If you just count the number of correct answers, it's actually quite
misleading because now we actually monitor the response curve," Cheng says.
"We can see whether students are guessing or if the student has
improved--we can know their behavior." Cheng and Basu expect this type of
testing to be implemented in K-12 for now.
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Sierra: A Brain That Thinks About Thinking
Computerworld Australia (01/05/07) Tay, Liz
Author Kathy Sierra, a former game developer, says she has a dual role in
the IT industry: She helps people learn difficult technical subjects with
a minimum of frustration, and helps developers generate passionate users
irrespective of the product. "The way most learning happens today is so
inefficient, that we can make a dramatic improvement--orders of magnitude
improvement--with the technology we do have, simply by applying a set of
principles that have come from cognitive science, neurobiology, game
design, psychology, entertainment, and learning theory," Sierra notes. She
draws a distinction between the brain and the mind, arguing that the
dichotomy between "belief" (the brain) and conscious knowledge (the mind)
lies at the root of our problems with memory, learning, focus, engagement,
attention, and so on. "I think the biggest place to make a difference is
learning to create more brain-friendly materials including products and
user manuals," she explains, noting that the trick is to associate things
the brain does not respond to (such as computer code) with things it does
through the use of intriguing visuals, unique presentation, and interesting
narratives. Sierra authored the Head First books as brain-friendly
programming texts to give readers and learners a better learning
experience; show teachers that there are more engaging and fun ways to
teach technical subjects; increase awareness of brain-friendly principles;
and help people better comprehend the processes of thinking and memory.
Her topic of discussion at linux.conf.au 2007 will be applying lessons from
game design and other domains to product design, user documentation, user
community building, and other things with the goal of creating passionate
users, and Sierra maintains that instilling passion in IT employees is
crucial to this approach.
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Of Mice and Multimedia
Newsweek (01/04/07) Braiker, Brian
IDEO founder and industrial designer Bill Moggridge attributes bad user
interface design to the failure to imbue a product with both intuitiveness
and wide appeal. Detailing the principles of interactive design is the
purpose of his new book, "Designing Interactions." The book attempts to
explain the operational parameters and relevancy of design through
interviews with industry pioneers. Moggridge notes that the computer mouse
went through an exhaustive evolutionary phase in which a wide variety of
iterations were designed and tried out before the current incarnation,
widely accepted by consumers, emerged. He admits that he does not know why
designing highly intuitive interfaces is so tough, but he uses the lack of
competition for Apple's iPod to illustrate the value of a systemic
approach. Apple first acquired the company with the iTunes music
technology and then added attractiveness and ease of use; the company did
not roll out a physical product until the ability to manipulate music on a
computer was well established and the iTunes music store was set up. "I
believe you have to have both excellent design that people like or fall in
love with, and you also have to have the systemic approach that looks at
the entire experience," Moggridge contends. He points out that the move
toward Web 2.0 is progressing, and the time may soon be coming when a new
kind of interaction that combines locomotion, manipulation, and community
activities becomes available.
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The Logic of Privacy
Economist (01/04/07)
Stanford University computer scientists John Mitchell, Adam Barth, and
Anupam Datta are using the theory of contextual integrity to address the
tension between the wide availability of personal data and the demand for
privacy. The theory notes that total privacy is not required by people;
information sharing can proceed provided certain social norms are adhered
to. Mitchell and colleagues believe contextual integrity can be used to
represent the codes of privacy in the formal phraseology of a computer
language. Contextual integrity is dependent on four classes of variable:
An information flow's context, the acting capacities of the individuals
sending and receiving information, the types of information involved, and
the transmission principles that serve as the foundation of the information
flow. Barth is using linear temporal logic, a mathematical logic system
that expresses elaborate constraints on the past and future, to transform
the descriptions of contextual integrity variables into formal expressions
that can be employed in computer programs, in cooperation with New York
University's Helen Nissenbaum, the developer of contextual integrity.
Linear temporal logic-based computer programs, unlike those written in
other programming languages, describe the desired vision of the world.
Mitchell's team has crafted logical formulas to represent American privacy
laws, including those that encompass children's activities online,
financial institutions, and health care; transmission principles can be
communicated in logical terms by employing concepts such as "previously"
and "eventually" as mathematical operators such as "plus," "minus,"
"multiply," and "divide" signs. Questions of privacy can be handled better
through the application of contextual integrity, while the reasons why new
information gathering techniques arouse anger can be better determined,
according to Nissenbaum.
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