Congressman Renews Push for E-Vote Paper Trails
Computerworld (02/06/07) Songini, Marc L.
U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has introduced his bill requiring a paper
trail for electronic votes once again in Congress. A Capitol Hill
controlled by Republicans did not act on the Voter Confidence and Increased
Accessibility Act last year, but Holt hopes the outcome will be different
now that Democrats are in power. "Until we require that voting systems
produce a voter-verified paper ballot, the results of our elections will
always be uncertain," Holt said in a statement. Under the bill, the
auditing process would consist of routine random hand counts of precincts
in every Congressional voting district. The proprietary software of
e-voting vendors would come under scrutiny in examinations by independent
inspectors, and voting officials would have to document their chain of
custody during elections as a way to improve the transparency of the
security of their hardware. The reintroduction of the bill comes at a time
when a lawsuit filed by Christine Jennings, a Democrat in the 13th
Congressional District in Florida, is still pending on whether the results
of her race, in which there were 18,000 missing votes, will be invalidated
and there will be a recount.
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Internet Servers Handle Major Global Attacks
Associated Press (02/07/07) Bridis, Ted
Three of the 13 computers that help process global computer traffic were
briefly overwhelmed on Tuesday, but due to increased distribution of
workloads to computers around the world, the attacks were not as serious as
those that confronted the same servers in 2002. UltraDNS, the organization
that handles servers managing traffic for .org sites, was the target of the
attack, which some suspect originated in South Korea. NeuStar, which owns
UltraDNS, reported only that it had registered an unusual rise in traffic.
There was no clear reason for the attacks, other than "maybe to show off or
just be disruptive; it doesn't seem to be extortion or anything like that,"
says the Supercomputing Center in San Diego's Duane Wessels. Included in
the targeted "root" servers were those run by the Defense Department and
ICANN. "I don't think anybody has the full picture," said ICANN chief
technical officer John Crain. "We're looking at the data."
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UM Study: Hackers Attack Every 39 Seconds
PRNewswire (02/06/07)
A study by University of Maryland researchers from the James Clark School
of Engineering observed the activities of hackers as they try to gain
access to a computer and exploit it. "Brute force" hackers were the focus
of the study, which set up four Linux computers with weak security and
Internet connections. The computers were attacked an average of 2,244
times each day, or every 39 seconds on average, confirming suspicions that
the average computer is almost constantly under attack. "Most of these
attacks employ automated scripts that indiscriminately seek out thousands
of computers at a time, looking for vulnerabilities," says lead researcher
Michael Culkier, an affiliate of the Clark School's Center for Risk and
Reliability and Institute for Systems Research. The study documented the
most commonly attempted user names, which were "root" and "admin," and the
most attempted passwords, which were identical to, or variations of, the
user name, as well as "123." After gaining access, hackers would typically
check the computer's software configuration, change the password, check the
configuration again, and download and install a program, which they would
then run. "Often they set up back doors'--undetected entrances into the
computer that they control--so they can create 'botnets,' for profit or
disreputable purposes," Culkier says.
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Web-Based Programs Designed to Bolster Student Interest
in Computing
Rensselaer News (02/02/07) Cleveland, Amber
A $300,000 NSF grant has been awarded to the creator of a Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute project that uses specific cultural contexts to teach
math to students, allowing for the design of a new interface that uses the
same principles to teach computer programming. Science and technology
studies professor Ron Eglash developed "culturally situated design tools"
(CSDTs), Web-based applets that focus on aspects of African American,
Native American, or Latin American cultures that involve mathematics. For
example, students would learn about the role math plays in the design of
cornrow hairstyles or Navajo rugs in a hands-on manner. Eglash will now
shift his focus to computer programming and create programs that require
students to use "pseudocodes" to create similar designs. When the
three-year grant is over, Eglash expects to have developed a group of
"programmable" CSDTs that make it possible for "anyone, anywhere to design
their own culturally situated design tools." Further plans for the grant
include training undergraduate students involved in the Student Leadership
Corps (SLC) of the NSF-sponsored Students & Technology in Academia,
research, and Service (STARS) Alliance to use hands-on techniques to teach
computing skills to students in grades seven to 12. These SLC mentors will
have the ability to create new CSDTs. "Use of these educational resources
has the possibility to improve students' mindset toward computing, and the
greater potential to foster in them a life-long love of computing," Eglash
says.
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Researchers Seek Energy Efficient Nets, Devices
EE Times (02/05/07) Merritt, Rick
The Energy Efficient Digital Networks initiative, a collaborative effort
by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers working with the EPA's
Energy Star program and academics in the University of Florida's Energy
Efficient Internet Project, is ready to launch a number of projects
intended to decrease power consumption in network and consumer systems.
The group aims to create new power standards and practices for large
network switches, wireless access points, set-top boxes, and other consumer
devices. They estimate that 200 TeraWatt Hours of energy is used by
electronic devices, which costs about $16 billion. The group has set a
two-year time frame for all of the projects, but some will probably finish
sooner, and others may not be a complete success. One project is a new
proxy feature that could save up to 10 percent of the energy used by a
single California home. Proxying enables a network card or external
network system to keep a PC on the Internet when the computer is in sleep
mode. The team may submit a proposal to the Internet Engineering Task
Force or the Distributed Management Task Force to make it into a standard.
Another idea is to create a sleep mode for household devices that could be
automatically controlled by OEMs or by a person using a remote control
button. Two education efforts will involve informing the OEM community as
to the low-power abilities of the 1394 interconnect, which is rarely used,
as well as forming a list of "green" home control devices to inform
builders on how homes can be built to use less energy. The Berkeley team
has already been responsible for a new low-power Ethernet standard.
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Bush Seeks Spending Increases in Research,
Surveillance
CNet (02/05/07) Broache, Anne
President Bush on Monday announced his budget proposal for next year,
placing priority on homeland security, the war on terror, and global
competitiveness via the American Competitiveness Initiative. Under Bush's
proposal the NSF would receive a 6.8 percent increase in funding, with a
large portion of that being dedicated to "research and related activities."
NSF's budget includes $390 million for nanotechnology research funding, a
4.5 percent increase, and $994 million for the Networking and Information
Technology Research and Development program, a 10 percent increase.
However, some programs received less funding, or none at all. For example,
funding for the National Institute of Technology's Advanced Technology
Program, which explores "unproven, early stage technology," was completely
left out of the budget. Homeland Security would get an increase of $21.9
million for its Science and Technology Office of Innovation, but the total
funding for the Science and Technology directorate would drop from $848
million last year to $799 in the upcoming year. Bush also announced plans
to considerably increase funding for Justice Department programs aimed at
intercepting data and investigating international travelers. Bush's budget
proposals were criticized by Democrats. House Science and Technology
Committee Chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) praised the funding
increases, but said the overall proposal "lacks the priorities and
consistency to ensure our competitiveness now and in the long run."
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MIT 'Optics on a Chip' May Revolutionize Telecom,
Computing
MIT News (02/05/07)
MIT researchers have developed a way to mass-produce photonic circuitry on
silicon chips, or "optics on a chip," a significant step toward bringing
the speed and power of light waves to traditional electronics. "This
breakthrough allows inter- and intra-chip communications networks that
solve the wiring problems of today's computer chips and computer
architectures," said electrical engineering and computer science professor
Franz X. Kaertner. Key to the advancement is a technique for separating
the two orientations of polarized light, a process called "molding" the
flow of light. Molding involves dividing the light from an optic fiber
into two "arms," horizontal and vertical, and rotating the orientation of
one of the arms so they are oriented the same way and can pass through the
same photonic structures. The importance of implementing optics into
silicon fabrication technology "is already highly developed and promises
precise and reproducible processing of densely integrated circuits,"
Kaertner said. "The prospect of integrating the photonic circuitry
directly on silicon electronic chips is ultimately also an important
driver." The technology is expected to reach commercial devices in five
years, say researchers, who note that supercomputers could make use of the
innovation to achieve high-speed signal processing, spectroscopy, remote
testing, and other tasks.
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Institutions Unveil High-Performance Computing
Network World Canada (02/02/07) Hughes, Greg
Seven Canadian regional computing groups have come together to form a
pan-Canadian research network known as High Performance Computing (HPC),
which is intended to maintain the competitiveness of Canada's economy by
enhancing its research and development abilities. Backed by the Canadian
Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the network will be primarily for
university researchers and will allow them to share data throughout Canada;
it will serve 60 universities and 600 researchers. HPC will include
multiple dedicated light paths with a total bandwidth of over 10 Gbps and
have a combined data storage capacity of 6.2 petabytes, according to CFI.
Various tier-two systems will be distributed throughout Canada, with some
potentially reaching hundreds of teraflops. "We will be installing
capacity clusters with thousands of CPUs with much higher bandwidth
interconnect and a vector computing platform [at the University of Toronto]
for the most highly coupled jobs, which is required for climate solutions,"
says University of Toronto physics professor Dick Pelltier. He expects to
see a refresh cycle for the resources every three to five years, so the
"platform will operate in perpetuity" and provide maximum benefit to the
Canadian economy. The network will also join nine other international
networks that will serve as data storage centers for activities conducted
by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
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Caught in the IT Pay Squeeze
Computerworld (02/05/07) Hoffman, Thomas
Given the increasingly tight IT labor market, CIOs are challenged with
courting top talent with attractive offers while not angering or
discouraging current employees. Management is telling CIOs to keep labor
prices down, as outsourcing has depressed salaries for some professions, so
many are looking for ways to include incentives that have business
rationale behind them such as trips to factories in other countries. A big
danger for many IT departments are key employees leaving for higher-paying
jobs, so many are giving new work or increased responsibilities to keep
employees interested and feeling relevant. However, compensation is still
respected as the most effective way to win over, or hold onto, the best
employees. On the whole, IT salaries have not been keeping up with
inflation, but the increasingly flexible market, partially the result of
outsourcing, allows some savings to be rerouted into salary. The IT
turnover rate is 15 percent, and 80 percent of those who have left recently
have done so seeking higher pay, according to Hyundai Information Service
IT president Rich Hoffman. The IT worker being sought out today is one
that is skilled in a variety of disciplines, many not related to IT.
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Mimicking How the Brain Recognizes Street Scenes
Newswise (02/06/07)
Researchers at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research made history
when they were able to apply a computational model of how the brain
functions to recognize objects in the real world, specifically a crowded
street scene. Although the idea of computers mimicking the brain has long
been discussed, "computer science and AI have developed independently of
neuroscience," says project leader Tomaso Poggio. "Our work is
biologically inspired computer science." The model was given random images
so it could learn to identify objects commonly occurring in a street scene,
and was then given images of street scenes from which it was able to label
objects such as buildings, cars, and pedestrians, proving its superiority
to traditional systems that can only label a single type of object. Object
recognition presents researchers with a paradox: Computers need a detailed
and particular model upon which to base their labeling of an object, but at
the same time they need to be able to identify a specific object despite
meaningless changes in size, lighting, or position. To mimic the hierarchy
of the brain, Poggio's model uses "layers" that process input and output
signals the same way neurons do; it is able to alternate between
computations that create a representation of an object that is not
influenced by changes in appearance and computations that create a
representation that is very specific to an object. The system's success
with a realistic scene is "concept proof that the activity of neurons as
measured in the lab is sufficient to explain how brains can perform complex
recognition tasks," says researcher Thomas Serre. The project will now
focus on having the model also replicate the brain's feedback loops from
the cognitive centers, a slower type of recognition that would allow
understanding of context and reflection.
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Not Your Grandma's Robot
Harvard Crimson (02/06/07) Singhal, Anupriya
Harvard robotics expert Robert J. Wood envisions tiny flying robots that
operate autonomously and could be used for search and rescue missions.
Currently, none of these robots have taken to the air, but the inspiration
for Wood's Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) comes from insects and their ability
to hover on a wingspan of less than two- or three-centimeters, Wood says.
Hovering is both the most important and hardest-to-achieve characteristic
of insect flight. Although the small size of MAVs would limit their
processing power, Wood says his team is "developing decision-making
procedures predicated on really simple control behavior--for example,
avoiding obstacles or flying towards sensory stimuli." Wood works with
biologists to learn the mathematics of insect flight, as well as how to
recreate their biological features. "We've been using insights from
biology as shortcuts to engineering," he says. Custom materials have been
developed for the project, since the intricate machinery that can be used
in large-scale devices wouldn't work in MAVs due to the effects of torque
on a device so small. "It's kind of like a micro-origami process," Wood
says. "By altering the geometry of layers of different materials, we can
produce different joint structures." The project is not expected to
produce a working MAV for at least a year.
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Looking for Love on All the Right Web Sites?
Cornell University (02/05/07)
Men who use online dating sites tend to lie about their height, while
women are not often truthful about their weight, according to a new study
by behavioral researchers from Cornell University and Michigan State
University. Eighty people who use Match.com, Yahoo Personals, American
Singles, and Webdate participated in the survey, which involved letting the
researchers look at their drivers' licenses and measure their height and
weight. The researchers found that roughly 52.6 percent of men lied about
their height, compared with 39 percent of women; and 64.1 percent of women
did not tell the truth about their weight, compared with 60.5 percent of
men. Also, 24.3 percent of men lied about their age, while 13.1 percent of
women did. The deception in their online profiles appears to be a strategy
for finding a partner with the physical attractiveness or social status
they were looking for, says lead author Jeffrey Hancock, an assistant
professor of communication at Cornell. "Participants balanced the tension
between appearing as attractive as possible, while also being perceived as
honest," he says. The April 2007 journal of the Proceedings of
Computer/Human Interaction will feature the study, which will also be
released during the ACM SIGCHI Computer/Human Interaction conference in San
Jose, Calif., on April 28-May 3, 2007 (see
www.chi2007.org).
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IBM Labs' Top-Five Research Projects
Network World (02/05/07) Leung, Linda
"IBM's Next Five in Five" is a list of innovations developed at the
company's research & development lab in Silicon Valley that includes
technology the company says could change people's live in the next five
years. The first is FonePal, a way for customers to actually see their
options when calling a call center. Rather than listening to the correct
number to press, customers could actually see the menus and where each
option would take them when FonePal sends the menu to the user's instant
messaging client or phone. Translingual Automatic Language Exploitation
Systems (TALES) is able to translate foreign news broadcasts into
searchable English text. The system currently works with Chinese and
Arabic. Another development is the use of sensors that allow remote
diagnostics could be placed inside devices or worn on a person's body to
monitor for unusual conditions and analyze data so doctors could more
effectively predict illness. Meanwhile, Second Life is currently testing
3D Internet, where a user could navigate virtual space to find out about a
company's products, or see what a certain product would look like in their
home. Finally, nanotechnology is being utilized to address potable water
shortages; the goal is to reengineer water molecules for filtration. IBM
Silicon Valley Lab VP Dan Wardman says the biggest change in the last 20
years is that R&D now involves working directly with consumers to find
solutions, rather than simply working on new technology.
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Titillating Tech With Multi-Touch
Washington Square News (02/06/07) Schoenfeld, Dan
New York University computer scientist Jeff Han has developed new
touch-screen technology that can handle input from as many fingers or
objects as can fit on their surface. "There's no manual," he says. "It's
natural. You just reach out and do it." The projection screens that Han
has built have been as big as 16 feet wide, and are designed to be used by
anyone. Han stresses the simplicity of the technology: "If you had a map
on a table, this is how you would move it. Normally you would need a hand
tool and rotate tool to do these functions, but now you can do it
intuitively and not think about it." In one demonstration, he placed two
fingers together on a map of New York, and by moving them apart he zoomed
in on NYU's campus. He then placed two fingers on the side of the screen
and with the other hand rotated the axis to get a better view into the
windows of a building. Han's screens use rear-projection technology and
are very durable. Han says, "The real promise is not for people who are
experts and computer geeks. It's for people who aren't so great with
computers and suddenly can do really advanced maneuvers."
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Web Project Goes to the Dogs
Halifax Herald (02/06/07)
Acadia University computer expert Andre Trudel is able to use his computer
to check on his 10-year-old English springer spaniel Twist. With the help
of Danny Silver, a computer interface specialist at Acadia, and computer
science master's student Fung Hu, Trudel has developed a computer and dog
interface program that makes use of an automatic dog feeder, a
ball-throwing device, stereo speakers, and a computer video camera. Trudel
is able to watch Twist, and press various commands in his voice such as
come, sit, stay, and "good girl." He can also press a button to activate
the ball thrower, and when the well-trained Twist retrieves the ball and
drops it into the throwing machine, he can press another button to release
food as a reward. Trudel says producing a level of fidelity that would
allow Twist to recognize his voice has been a challenge of the Human
Computer Dog Interface project. He believes there is a commercial
opportunity in allowing people to play with and feed their dogs from
anywhere in the world, using a computer with an Internet connection.
Trudel is seeking a research grant so he can continue to develop the
program.
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Fighting to Protect Copyright 'Orphans'
CNet (01/31/07) Terdiman, Daniel
A recent U.S. appeals court ruling dealt a blow to Internet activists'
effort to stop the extension of copyright protections for out-of-print
books and other orphan works by upholding the rejection of a lawsuit filed,
among others, by Internet Archive co-founder and director Brewster Kahle.
Nevertheless, the Internet Archive is by no means dead, as Kahle told an
audience of listeners at a recent discussion. He explained that the
mission of the archive is "to help build the Library of Alexandria version
2, starting with humankind's published works, books, music, video, Web
pages, software, and make it available to everyone anywhere at anytime, and
forever." The challenge, Kahle noted, lies in constructing a digital
domain that permits the creation of and reimbursement for new works and
their long-term preservation, while supporting access for the
underprivileged as well as different types of access for journalism,
scholarship, "and all in the new world." Kahle said resistance to the
Internet Archive stems from an earlier copyright battle in which major
media companies such as Disney, rather than simply extend terms of
copyright for profitable works, lobbied for and got a major restructuring
of copyright. This has set up what he called a "legal landmine" of which
people are afraid of running afoul. Kahle said there is a clear need for
aid in building an open content layer that has no central control, and the
potential threat of ISPs violating Net neutrality by choking certain kinds
of content is an issue of considerable importance. "I believe we can have
long term storage and access--which is key--by building a set of
International Libraries in different jurisdictions that have active trade
agreements," the Internet Archive director concluded.
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On the Record, All the Time
Chronicle of Higher Education (02/09/07) Vol. 53, No. 23, P. A30;
Carlson, Scott
The continuous recording of images, conversations, and other key moments
in one's life through electronic devices is predicted to become a
widespread trend by some researchers, most of whom are engaged in
"lifelogging." Microsoft Research's Jim Gemmell envisions a "personal
corpus" of recorded information that can be mined like a search engine so
that people can "be more reflective and come up with better ideas," and
this is the core concept of Microsoft's MyLifeBits project. Researchers
think lifelogging tools would be a tremendous aid to physicians and their
patients in terms of health management, especially in cases of memory
impairment. Academic lifelogging projects currently underway include an
effort at Ontario's Queen's University to develop a camera that starts
recording when the wearer establishes eye contact with someone; meanwhile,
MIT Media Lab professor and wearable computing pioneer Alex Pentland
expects major electronics firms to make lifelogging devices and tools
available for retail later this year. Lifelogging's potential implications
for personal privacy, scholarship, and society are a matter of considerable
concern, not least for the controversy of recording traumatic or
embarrassing moments. George Washington University law professor Jeffrey
Rosen says the possibility of undesired surveillance is enough to hurt a
person's sense of privacy. "It's the uncertainty about whether our
intimate moments are going to be observed that makes us more inhibited and
less likely to let down our hair," he says. Other issues lifeloggers must
contend with include whether the lifelogging of copyrighted material makes
one liable for infringement, or whether authorities should be allowed to
subpoena private details from lifelogging records. Attorney Emilio W.
Cividanes says most state laws allow people in public places to be recorded
without their permission, while some researchers believe lifelogging has
the potential to forever eliminate crime and deceit.
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What Makes the Cut?
InformationWeek (02/05/07)No. 1124, P. 38; Babcock, Charles
Companies need to know the difference between open source projects that
make lasting contributions and those that are doomed to obscurity if they
wish to avoid tangling themselves up in a miasma of support difficulties
and out-of-date software. Falling-outs with project leaders can become a
serious impediment by eroding the trust that open-source developers need to
encourage participation. A leader who inspires and guides developers and
asks the right questions--a sort of benevolent dictator--is essential.
Other tell-tale signs of successful open source projects include a robust
community consisting of a small group of lead developers, a large number of
contributors, and a driving user group that originates ideas to be
explored. The code generated by an open source project must innovate in a
manner that is considerably superior to commercial code. There must be
transparent decision-making, with an airing of discussion threads, active
mailing lists, and positive and negative comments. A good project is
marked by forums that encourage civility and keep primary objectives
paramount, while documentation is critical. The license must be
transparent, while full-time paid developers are another necessary element
of a successful open source project. Another important characteristic of
the best open source projects is a protracted incubation period and delayed
returns, and there must also be commercial support.
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IDNs: Straightforward Technical Problem or Machiavellian
Nightmare?
Internet Computing (02/07) Vol. 11, No. 1, P. 11; Goth, Greg
Governments, organizations, and individuals unhappy with the Internet's
current governance architecture have cited the technical difficulties of
internationalized domain names (IDNs) as a major issue, and they have
become more vocal in their complaints since the United Nations and its
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) started stressing the need to
expand the Internet's technology and governance structure on a global
scale. With the departure of ITU secretary general Yoshio Utsumi, a critic
of ICANN and its procedures, it is hoped that the ITU will be more open to
working with ICANN, the IETF, and regional and governmental organizations
to accelerate the implementation of IDNs. "Things the new ITU secretary
general [Hamadoun I. Toure] is saying sound a lot more cooperative and less
competitive than his predecessor--and as a consequence, rather than reading
the worst possible case into the resolutions, I'm hoping we see a more
sensible way forward," comments ICANN Board Chairman Vint Cerf. Andrzej
Bartosiewicz of the ITU's IDN working group says in the best case scenario
the ITU would advise member governments and Internet registries on IDN
rollout and compatibility, while former Internet Architecture Board
Chairman John Klensin and Swedish Museum of Natural History Internet
strategy and technology director Cary Karp contend that some of IDNs' most
vociferous opponents would attempt to divide the Domain Name System using
the ITU so that domain administration would become a function of the ITU
and not ICANN. Klensin says governments that are cynically opposing
internationalization initiatives should be permitted to sever themselves
from the worldwide network. Cerf and Klensin think the potential for
"phishing attacks" on IDNs could be more effectively addressed by letting
Unicode characters use a more limited set, and having regional registries
accountable for establishing and enforcing IDN registration policies.
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