Feds Test New Data Mining Program
USA Today (03/07/07) P. 3A; Yaukey, John
The Department of Homeland Security is testing a new data searching tool
that has many concerned that federal data analysis abilities are outpacing
Congress's ability to oversee them. The program, known as Analysis,
Dissemination, Visualization and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE), can link
and cross-match materials from Web sites and blogs with government records
and personal data in order to identify patterns that suggest terrorist
involvement. Homeland Security has been developing the system since 2003,
when the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program was scrapped due to
privacy issues. "Congress is overdue in taking stock of the proliferation
of these databases that increasingly are collecting and sifting more and
more information about each and every American," said Senate Judiciary
Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). In January, Leahy and other
Senators introduced the Federal Agency Data Mining Report Act of 2007,
which would require all federal agencies to inform Congress of all data
mining activity. "We have not used any data that was not legally
obtained," says Homeland Security's Chris Kelly. However, the lack of
public knowledge concerning such programs worries many. "There is not
enough information about these [data mining] programs to meaningfully
evaluate the benefits," says Electronic Privacy Information Center director
Marc Rotenbeg. Whether or not ADVISE is deployed will depend on demand for
it, says Kelly.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Searching for Michael Jordan? Microsoft Wants a Better
Way
New York Times (03/07/07) P. C3; Markoff, John
On the opening day of Microsoft's three-day Techfest, the company focused
on its research into improving Web search abilities. By changing the way
users and computers locate information on the Internet, Microsoft believes
it can surpass Google in the search market, despite its inability to make
up any ground in the past. A new service called Mix, to be released within
six to nine months, allows users to organize and share search results.
Another service on display, Web Assistant, aims to increase the relevance
of searches by resolving ambiguities in search terms such as those that
would return results containing different people with the same last name.
Web Assistant is "a prototype of a browser that aims to change the way we
interact with information," says Microsoft researcher Silviu Cucerzan. By
considering searches conducted by other users, and the way they changed
search terms when presented with results they did not want, search
applications could potentially refine results. Another way of increasing
relevance was displayed by Personalized Search, which compares results with
Desktop Search, the index built by Windows users from documents on their
hard drives. Such a system could predict that a user was searching for
Michael Jordan the machine-learning expert, not Michael Jordan the
basketball player. Microsoft predicts that the future of Web search will
look nothing like today's simple interfaces. "If in 10 years we are still
using a rectangular box and a list of results, I should be fired," says
company search expert Susan Dumais. Researchers are also exploring several
other techniques for enhanced understanding of what users are searching
for, including conversational-style interfaces.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Assessment, Incentives Key to Government's Data Center
Energy Gals
Computerworld (03/05/07) Dunn, Darrell
More than two dozen technology leaders met with representatives from the
Department of Energy in Austin, Texas, last week to discuss how federal
energy-efficiency legislation for data centers should be applied. Congress
is currently evaluating more than 70 energy-related pieces of legislation,
and the President signed a bill at the end of last year requesting an
in-depth study into data center efficiency. The discussions in Austin are
expected to produce Energy Saving Assessments (ESAs) of the country's
largest data centers. A recent study of 200 heavy industrial businesses
has shown that more than 50 trillion BTUs of natural gas could be saved,
and 250 more ESAs are planned for this year. In order to improve energy
efficiency, those in Austin agreed that assessment, incentives, server
consolidation, and virtualization should be pursued. The unification of
facilities and IT personnel was also discussed, since "there has been an
inconsistency of approach, no common vision, and sometimes a lack of trust"
between the two realms, according to Hewlett-Packard's Paul Perez. The
creation of an Energy Star certification, an awareness effort, and a metric
for measuring data center efficiency were also discussed. One participant
suggested a consumption tax for businesses exceeding a certain baseline, if
a metric were to be established. The President's submitted budget for 2008
identifies $9 billion for energy efficiency efforts.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Senator Introduces U.S. 'Competitiveness' Bill
IDG News Service (03/05/07) Gross, Grant
Tech industry groups are welcoming the introduction of the America
Competes Act, which seeks to double the $5.6 billion annual funding for the
National Science Foundation (NSF). The legislation answers the call from
many tech companies for an increase in funding for math and science
programs to help ensure the competitiveness of U.S. workers and industries.
"To keep our competitive edge, we need to embrace technology and ensure
that our children receive a stronger education in the core subjects of
mathematics and science," according to a statement from Sen. John Ensign
(R-Nev.), who introduced the bill. The legislation would boost the budget
of the Department of Energy's Office of Science from $3.6 billion for
fiscal 2006 to $5.2 billion in 2011, have federal agencies funding science
and technology research require spending of about 8 percent of R&D budgets
on high-risk projects, create training programs for math and science
teachers at the NSF, and provide greater support to math and science
programs at the NSF and other agencies. U.S. competitiveness is the
subject of Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and
House Small Business Committee hearings on Wednesday.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Silicon Valley's Immigration Problem
Forbes.com (03/05/07) Corcoran, Elizabeth
The U.S. technology industry has benefited tremendously over the past 20
years from the presence of talented immigrants from India, Taiwan, and
other Asian countries. Although there is a perception that the best and
brightest immigrants have their eyes set on the United States, that may no
longer be the case. According to Rosen Sharma, only three of the 40
students in his graduating class from the Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT) in Delhi in 1993 decided not to pursue jobs in the United States, but
last year the figure reached 35 of the 45 IIT graduates who participated in
the same program. Such a trend would have huge implications for the nation
in terms of competitiveness. Over the past decade, foreign-born immigrants
started 25 percent of U.S. technology startups, which collectively employed
450,000 people and generated $52 billion in sales, according to a study by
AnnaLee Saxenian, currently dean of the School of Information at the
University of California at Berkeley, and researchers at Duke University.
Meanwhile, students born in the United States understand the global nature
of the business world today, and see international opportunities as a way
to gain valuable experience for their careers. The hope is that they will
return to the United States and help grow the domestic industry.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Look, Ma, No Scalpel
Globe and Mail (CAN) (03/06/07) Belford, Terrance
A system conceived by an undergraduate biomedical engineering student at
the University of Toronto is allowing people to see what they would look
like with different facial features. Three years ago, Alireza Rabi took
facial-recognition software developed by his professor and began tweaking
it to not only recognize a face but to replace features in a way that "the
resulting face looked natural and not like you had stuck someone else's
nose on someone's face," Rabi says. The software, called Modiface, is
available online as a beta version and has drawn an average of 100,000 hits
per day since January. Applications exist that simulate the results of
plastic surgery, but "this one is entirely automated," explains University
of Toronto Artificial Perception Laboratory head Parham Aarabi. "It is all
point-and-click. Anyone with a digital camera and an Internet connection
can do it." The process of creating Modiface first involved developing
algorithms that could perform facial recognition at sufficient speeds, then
developing software that could work in the high-traffic environment of an
Internet site. Rabi says the system learns from its mistakes, such as
placing a nose or eyes incorrectly on a face, and the researchers adjust it
every few weeks to remove problems caused by users submitting images other
than faces. "Essentially the software amends and updates its own
algorithms automatically as it gains more experience," Aarabi says. "By
seeing how it deals with learning, we, in turn, get insights into
artificial intelligence."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Gates in DC as New H-1B Battle Shapes Up
Computerworld (03/06/07) Thibodeau, Patrick
Bill Gates is scheduled to appear in front of the Senate Committee on
Health, Education, Labor & Pensions during a hearing titled "Strengthening
American Competitiveness for the 21st Century," which will include
discussion of H-1B visas. Committee chair Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) is
currently working with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on an immigration reform
package that will likely recommend an increase of the current cap on H-1Bs.
Applications for the visas will be accepted starting April 1 and the cap
of 65,000 visas is expected to be reached within a few months. Many
believe that Gates can have more of an impact on increasing the H-1B cap
than the President, to whom H-1Bs are only a small part of immigration
reform. In a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Gates explained
that computing jobs are growing, even as the number of students pursuing
related degrees is decreasing, exacerbating the need for an influx of
skilled workers. The opposition is led by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who in
his Democratic response to the State of the Union address spoke of a
responsibility to protect American workers against the decreasing number of
white-collar jobs. The main concerns with the H-1B program include the
potential for employees to hire foreign workers at lower than average
salaries without considering American workers for the positions. Both
sides agree that green cards should be easier to obtain so skilled workers
can stay in the country without depending on temporary H-1Bs. Rochester
Institute of Technology public policy professor Ron Hira says that "More
and more members of Congress are becoming aware of the serious flaws in the
H-1B program."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
New Research Center at UF Expected to Improve Powerful
Computers
University of Florida News (03/06/07) Hoover, Aaron
The first U.S. research center for reconfigurable computing has been
established at the University of Florida. The NSF Center for
High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing will operate as a consortium of
universities and more than 20 federal and industry members, with the goal
of creating techniques for next-generation computers to adapt internal
hardware for optimal performance of any given task. The center is a
response to the increasing need for maintenance, electricity, and other
concerns of the high-performance computers that so much of today's research
relies on. Special-purpose logic devices are built to perform a single
task with extreme effectiveness, while general-purpose logic devices are
built to perform nearly any function, but do so with less effectiveness, so
"What we need are technologies that can be both powerful and flexible,"
says the center's director, Alan George. "Think of an integrated circuit
as a big ball of clay. If you were a sculptor, you could model that clay
into anything and everything you wanted, limited only by the amount of clay
you have," he adds. "That's the basic idea behind a reconfigurable system
... we can combine and morph [digital logic gates] into structures for
whatever purpose we need at any given time."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
E-Rescue Plans for Coping With Disasters
The Australian (03/06/07) Foreshaw, Jennifer
A four-year project led by the National ICT Australia (NICTA) is
developing technology to help response efforts in the case of natural
disasters or other emergencies. The Smart Applications for Emergencies
(SAFE) initiative will include video surveillance with smart cameras,
wireless mesh networking, planning, and information management. "We need
to improve our game, in terms of how we operate across agencies, how we
warn the community, and how we can better provide response and long-term
response systems to enable more efficient deployment of resources
post-disaster," says Safeguarding Australia project leader Renato Iannella.
A NICTA lab is currently building a demonstrator to prove that these
technologies can be combined into an effective response system. NICTA's
Smart Transport and Roads project is building testbeds on Sydney streets to
trial wireless and sensing technology, eight of which have been completed.
These testbeds include advanced video sensing and surveillance techniques,
new traffic control systems, and multi-modal interfaces for control-room
operations. As these technologies develop, they are expected to be applied
to military, logistical, and airline systems. Many aspects of the SAFE
project were on display at Techfest 2007, NICTA's annual technology
showcase.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Google Helps Terabyte Data Swaps
BBC News (03/07/07) Waters, Darren
Google is helping researchers transfer data that is too immense to be sent
over a computer network by providing them with hard drive systems capable
of storing 120 terabytes of data that will then be passed along to other
researchers. Machines used are about the size of a brick and contain
numerous hard drives. The data is kept by Google in an open format and
placed into the public domain or covered by a creative commons license.
The idea came about when the project to re-construct the Archimedes
Palimpsest, a medieval parchment containing treatises by the Greek
scientist, had created huge amounts of data. "The networks aren't
basically big enough and you don't want to ship the data in this manner,
you want to ship it fast," says Google open source program manager Chris
DiBona. "You want to ship it sometimes on a hard drive. What if you have
these huge data sets--120 terabytes--how do you get them from point A to
point B for these scientists?" The program is not currently open to the
public, rather Google approaches researchers who are known to need massive
data storage, or researchers contact the company themselves. Google's open
source efforts include funding, totaling more than $1.5 million last year,
and a program called the Summer of Code, where student developers work with
open source teams. "The founders of Google are passionate about open
source," explains DiBona. "They see Google as a net beneficiary of open
source technology."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Vint Cerf: Father Knows Best
Dark Reading (03/02/07)
Vinton Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP stack used to build the Internet
infrastructure, has been involved with the Internet longer than most, and
from his new position with Google he can see the need for increased
security efforts. Cerf's work includes promoting Internet access to those
who don't have it around the world, Internet policy development, promoting
concepts within Google engineering groups, and bringing new employees and
partners to Google. At the same time, he is chairman of ICANN, and works
at the Interplanetary Internet effort at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Cerf remembers a time when being called a hacker was something to be proud
of and says "purists wish that we could apply some other terms so as to
keep 'hacker' what it once was, but I think the language has become too
polluted." Currently "much work is needed to increase the security of the
Internet and its connected computers," he says. Domain Name Security
(DNSSEC) technology could be useful in protecting the Internet's DNS
servers, he adds. In addition, he believes that the "use of IPSec would
foil some higher-level protocol attacks ... [and the] digital signing of IP
address assignment records could reduce some routing/spoofing risks." OSes
need to be more secure, and two-factor authentication should surpass normal
passwords as the standard. "Security is a mesh of actions and features and
mechanisms," says Cerf. "No one thing makes you secure."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
The Digital Building--Security Starts at the Door
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (03/07)
German researchers have developed digital building technology that blurs
the line between IT and the physical world. The system, known as
"facilityboss," enables rooms to be reserved using only the Internet, locks
to be adjusted automatically and remotely to grant access to certain people
on certain dates and to instantly alter accessibility, and all IT systems
and electronic devices to be interconnected. "Facilityboss is a kind of
operating system for the digital building, making it possible to link and
control a wide variety of components in a building," says the Fraunhofer
Institute for Secure Information Technology's Thorsten Henkel. Building
operations, from heating to computers, can be controlled from a single
interface, which gathers information from a network of sensors throughout
the building. RFID tags enable the building to know where various
equipment is being used at any given time and enable people to access
certain areas by identifying themselves. The radio-based locking system is
comprised of cylinder locks with an integrated radio system and a PC that
runs administration software. Each cylinder lock connects to the
administration through an access point, allowing changes to be made
remotely in the case that keys are lost or a new employee is hired. When a
room is reserved for a certain time, those meeting there are able to gain
access during the hours reserved. "The [locking] system combines the
advantages of electronic locking systems with those of wireless
communications," says the Fraunhofer Institute for Communications Systems
ESK's Markus Augel.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Our Manycore Future
HPC Wire (03/02/07) Vol. 16, No. 9, Feldman, Michael
HPC Wire editor Michael Feldman believes that "The Landscape of Parallel
Computing Research: The View from Berkeley" is one of the most important
works on the subject of manycore architecture "not because it claims to
have all the answers, but because it manages to ask all the right
questions." The report claims that manycore architecture and the software
built for it could "reset microprocessor hardware and software roadmaps for
the next 30 years." Its authors promote the use of small, simple
processing cores, which they argue are best suited for parallel codes.
Thirteen computational methods, known as the 13 Dwarfs, will serve as the
foundation for parallel apps, according to the report; they will consist of
Phil Colella's original Seven Dwarfs from scientific computing and six more
from other computing domains. Parallelized applications could dominate IT
in the coming years, as Internet-based applications such as text searching
become more parallelized. If word processing is to evolve further,
parallelism would play a key role, enabling voice recognition, improved
language translation, and other functions. The main concern for the
industry is how to program massive parallelism, and the Berkeley professors
do not side with either sequential nor multicore programming; the goal is
to create multicore processing that is independent of the number of
processors. Although the paper's authors promote human-centric design,
they are aware of the tradeoff between ease of programming and runtime
performance. The report also details how the HPC and embedded communities
are being brought together by a common need for energy efficiency, low-cost
hardware building blocks, reuse of software, and high-bandwidth data.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Here's Why Your Web Apps Are Sitting Ducks
Network World (03/01/07) Brown, Bob
Web servers are still at a high risk of being targeted by hackers,
according to a new paper from researchers at the Honeynet Project. The
Honeynet Project provides real systems for unwitting attackers to interact
with so they can study what the attackers are looking for and what tactics
they use. Web applications remain vulnerable for a variety of reasons,
including poor-quality code, the emergence of search engines as hacking
tools, and the ability to use PHP and shell scripts to execute attacks.
Hackers can also obtain massive amounts of information from Web servers
because they have higher bandwidth connections than most desktops and are
often connected to an organization's databases. According to the Honeynet
Project's report "Know Your Enemy: Web Application Threats," hackers found
vulnerabilities using search, spider, and IP-based scanning and executed
attacks with code injection, remote code-inclusion, SQL injection, and
cross-site scripting. Hackers also attempted to disguise their identities
using proxy servers, the Google Translate service, onion routers, and
several other systems. The primary objectives of the attacks were
defacement, phishing attacks, email spam, blog spam, botnet recruitment,
and file hosting.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Puppetnets: Misusing Web Browsers as a Distributed Attack
Infrastructure
Honeyblog (03/05/07) Lam, V.T.; Antonatos, Spyros; Akritidis, P.
Puppetnets are networks generated by malevolent Web sites for the purpose
of indirectly misusing visiting Web browsers as unwitting tools for worm
propagation, distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), reconnaissance
scans, and other attacks on third parties. Though the threat rating of
puppetnets is lower than that of botnets, the regularity of client-side
exploits could make puppetnets a serious problem in the future, according
to the authors of a study presented at the recent ACM Conference on
Computer and Communications Security. Unlike botnets, puppetnets are not
critically reliant on the exploitation of specific deployment flaws or on
social engineering strategies that fool users into installing malware on
their computer; they also support a model where the attacker has only
partial control over the actions of the participating nodes, while the
dynamic nature of puppetnet participation makes puppetnets harder to track
and filter. The authors contend that the use of puppetnets illustrates a
flaw in the Web's design, namely that the security model is committed
almost exclusively to shielding browsers and their host environment from
malicious Web servers and servers from malicious browsers, thus ignoring
the possibility of assaults directed against third parties. The power of a
puppetnet depends on how popular a malicious Web site is as well as the
users' browsing patterns. The authors offer several approaches for
countering puppetnet attacks, although they are only partial solutions at
best. Disablement of JavaScript will reduce the effectiveness of
puppetnet-engineered DDoS attacks, reconnaissance probes, and worm
propagation by at least one order of magnitude, while carefully
implementing existing defenses can also mitigate the puppetnet threat to a
certain degree. Other defenses evaluated include server-side controls and
puppetnet tracing, server-directed client-side controls, client-side
behavioral controls, and filtering that uses attack signatures, all of
which have their pluses and minuses.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Eastern Europe's Silicon Rush
Chronicle of Higher Education (03/09/07) Vol. 53, No. 27, P. A45;
Woodard, Colin
Eastern European universities are helping attract technology
multinationals to the region through their outflow of first-rate
computer-science graduates, but there are concerns among academics that
their departments will be emptied and their programs demolished by IT
graduates and even faculty jumping ship to the private sector in order to
earn a higher salary. Among the factors that have generated so much
foreign interest in Eastern Europe is the growing dominance of regional
students in international programming contests, while the region enjoys a
competitive advantage over other countries through its geographic and
cultural closeness to Western Europe. Yet Eastern Europe's industrial
growth could come to a screeching halt if excessive numbers of
computer-science graduates are drawn away by the promise of more money. To
avoid such a scenario, technology companies have partnered with
universities in Kosice, Slovakia, to bolster the schools' computer-science
departments and establish a center for research and innovation.
"Businesspeople have come to the conclusion that they need the
universities, not just their graduates," reports Technical University of
Kosice computer-science professor Anton Cizmar. "If we're to produce good
graduates, the professors also have to have the right working and living
conditions." A group of companies, the local government, and the Technical
and Pavol Jozef Safarik Universities have joined forces to set up the
Kosice IT Valley Association to lay down a sturdy platform for the local IT
industry. Association coordinator Tomas Sabol says the aim of the
organization is to first build a "critical mass" of computer-science
graduates, and then use them to draw more research and development so that
Kosice can become a center of excellence that attracts more investment and
fortifies the local economy with the creation of high-paying jobs.
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link to Publication Homepage
to the top
Possible Ontologies
Internet Computing (02/07) Vol. 11, No. 1, P. 90; Hepp, Martin
More and better ontologies are necessary for creating the Semantic Web,
but Digital Enterprise Research Institute researcher Martin Hepp points out
that ontology generation has an inherent social component that suffers from
technical, legal, economic, and social bottlenecks. He cites five basic
aspects of building and committing to ontologies that are inadequately
addressed by existing ontology-engineering practices: The conflict between
ontology engineering lag and conceptual dynamics; consumption of resources;
communication between creators and users; incentive conflicts and network
externalities; and intellectual property rights. Hepp details four major
obstacles in an attempt to explain why actual Web ontologies are so few in
number. He mentions that there is widespread ignorance of the dynamics
among conceptual elements, which holds relevance when constructing
ontologies for specific domains. Another major bottleneck is economic
incentive, and Hepp notes that even if the ontology's overall benefit
throughout its lifetime more than compensates for creation costs, its
creation must still be economically feasible for each individual who must
contribute. The third big hindrance is ontology perspicuity, with Hepp
writing that a lack of understanding of the inferences that are to be
derived from a specific ontology up front makes their authorization by
individuals or organizations difficult. The fourth bottleneck is
intellectual property rights, which limit the creation and re-publication
of ontologies as derived works. Through analysis of these bottlenecks,
Hepp predicts a situation in which "the more detailed and expressive the
ontology, the smaller the actual user community will be because it
increases the resources necessary for reviewing and understanding the
specification and associate documentation, which makes committing to the
ontology reasonable only for a smaller number of individuals."
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link to Publication Homepage
to the top
Human-Computer Interaction: The Human and Computer as a
Team in Emergency Management Information Systems
Communications of the ACM (03/07) Vol. 50, No. 3, P. 33; Carver, Liz;
Turoff, Murray
Incorporating the computer as a part of the emergency management team
guarantees that people will continue to excel at jobs requiring their
particular skill sets while being supported rather than impelled by the
technology. The success of systems proposed as aids to the emergency
management team's decision-making process depends on the human-computer
interface design's consideration of user requirements, and the interface's
role as a facilitator of human-computer interaction. Tools under
development along these lines include information prioritization, decision
support and modeling tools, and a representation of a common operating
picture. Context visibility is offered as a method for mitigating
information overload. The approach involves the realization that any
external event is a root item that enables the dynamic convergence of all
related events, and that the resulting knowledge structure template for an
action/decision process must be accessible to all roles focusing on that
particular event. By establishing local networks at the sites of
catastrophes and creating a framework for sharing digital voice, graphics,
and video, the emergency management team can improve the flow of reliable,
timely, and relevant data between on-site members and command, control, and
coordination staff. Allowing the user to do his job by managing the data
stream as the volume of sensor data mounts is a task for automated systems,
although automation must always be under human control. The major
characteristics of shoddy automation include autonomous behavior, failure
to supply adequate feedback about activities and intentions, a tendency to
interrupt human activity, and difficulty in reconfiguring the automation in
a desired manner; behaviors that may result from such poor design include
automation bias, automation complacency, and automation surprises. Such
facts make the case for a user-oriented systemic approach in which user
requirements are a driving force in technology development.
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link to Publication Homepage
to the top