Study Says Computers Give Big Boost to
Productivity
New York Times (03/13/07) P. C4; Lohr, Steve
Money spent on computing technology produces higher gains in worker
productivity than other investments by a factor of three to five, according
to a new study, which also noted that despite this the IT sector is not
likely to be a significant source of new jobs. The study, conducted by the
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, found that the power of
computing to enhance other areas of the economy trumps the importance of
the actual technology itself, and suggests that policies be established to
quicken the pace of technology-supported change in business. Health care,
electric utilities, and transportation are listed as areas that could most
benefit from the increased implementation of computing. "Going forward,"
according to the report, "it is unlikely that the IT industry will be
producing jobs gains out of line with its size. In part this is because
productivity in the IT industry has been strong, allowing it to produce
more output with fewer workers." However, job gains are expected in those
industries that begin using IT effectively to grow themselves, especially
in the service sector. Some economists question the report's claim of
exceptional productivity gains from investment in computing, claiming the
evidence is not sufficient to support the statement and that it is best to
promote all investment so all sectors have a chance to flourish. The
report is available online at
www.itif.org
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Where Are the Programmers?
EE Times (03/12/07) Merritt, Rick
At a time when the amount of students pursuing computer science degrees is
declining, researchers are struggling with the parallel programming that
will run on the next generation of multicore processors. Microsoft is
keenly interested in the technology, and unveiled two parallel programming
projects at its recent TechFest 2007. "We are at a low point of interest
in computer science," says Microsoft Research VP Rick Rashid. "Jobs will
go begging in the next few years." In order to meet the needs of
programming up to and beyond 32 cores, new approaches will be needed.
Microsoft introduced a language that uses a database programming method of
joining several processes into what is known as an "atomic transaction," in
order to automate the process by which some parallel-software constructs
are created. "The way people write parallel programs now, with threads and
locks, is intellectually challenging," said Microsoft Research lab manager
Roy Levin. "People get it wrong because parts of the program are not in
sync or the synchronization is too coarse, leading to poor performance."
Although the language could make programming easier, speed will suffer
unless chips can be made to avoid collisions in complex transactions,
possibly by tracking memory read-and-write operations. Microsoft has also
teamed with UC Berkeley to create a chip simulator that tests
parallel-programming concepts. Eventually, the company hopes to test the
ability of several potential memory architectures to handle transactions
developed using the new language. Although progress is being made, Levin
admits that more of the problems with homogeneous cores must be resolved
before heterogeneous cores can be seriously looked into.
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Languages for Supercomputing Get 'Suped' Up
Computerworld (03/12/07) Anthes, Gary
DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) contractors have come
up with languages that aim to make programming easier for multiprocessor
computers and clusters. Cray, IBM, and Sun have each released a language
that is intended to increase programmer productivity by a factor of 10 or
greater while operating at least as efficiently as languages such as
Fortran and C; work on a broad range of multicore machines, including
business and some mainstream applications; and allow programmers to take
advantage of parallelism and avoid chances for coding errors. All three
languages are available as open source software. Sun's Fortress language,
currently in the alpha stage, is designed for a relatively static
environment, so dynamic code-loading or Web accessing would still be done
in Java. Cray's Chapel language, also in the alpha stage, will be ideal
for machines with low communications overhead and will feature a separation
of algorithm specification from machine-dependent structural considerations
making it possible for programmers to code and debug algorithms in simple
programs before specifying how the data is to be laid out in the machine.
IBM's X10, a parallel, distributed, object-oriented language created as an
extension of Java, is intended for systems made from multicore symmetric
multiprocessor chips. The language uses object orientation in Java for
serial code and adds language constructs for parallel and distributed
processing. DARPA does not plan to choose a winner from these languages,
but recognizes the shift taking place from the realm of sequential
processing to that of parallel processing, and that in a few years, a
program that cannot handle parallelism will not be able to survive.
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IBM Scientists Develop Streaming Video for Visually
Impaired
InformationWeek (03/13/07) Jones, K.C.
An IBM researcher who has been blind since the age of 14 has developed a
tool that helps the visually impaired access streaming video and animation
on the Internet. Screen-reading software and self-talking browsers cannot
help those who cannot see buttons on a screen, but the IBM tool uses smart
keys or keyboard shortcuts to adjust volume and playback. Users can
increase audio speed, since audio from streaming video can seem very slow
to the visually impaired. By identifying sound sources, users can single
out items such as screen readers. The software also allows for metadata
that allows users to hear what is happening on the screen, provided the
content creator includes a voice narrative. "The new tool sits on top,
so-to-speak, of a normal media player," explains IBM Worldwide
Accessibility Center director Frances West. The tool is the first of its
kind, and IBM plans to introduce it to the company's Open Source
Consortium. IBM has also developed a talking browser and programs that
allow the visually impaired to adjust font size and color contrast on Web
pages.
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Software Developer Growth Slows in North America
IDG News Service (03/13/07) Mullins, Robert
More software developer jobs will be created in Asian than in North
America by 2010, predicts Evans Data. The worldwide software developer
population is expected to increase from 14.5 million in 2007 to 19.5
million in 2010, but the U.S. is only expected to account for 18 percent of
these jobs, down from 23 percent today; the Asian-Pacific (APAC) share of
the developer community is expected to make up 45 percent of the developer
jobs in 2010, up from 37 percent today. Growth rates for developer jobs
over the next three to five years are expected to be 15 percent in APAC, 8
to 10 percent in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), and only 3 or
4 percent in North America. However, the United States is still the
strongest software development community in many respects, such as the use
of the Ajax programming language. Despite the country having fewer Ajax
programmers than China and other APAC countries, "There is a much more
sophisticated developer in the U.S. versus the sophistication of the
developers in those emerging countries, simply because of experience," says
Evans Data President John Andrews. "Ajax is a deep development tool, you
can either go shallow or you can go deep. The tendency in North America is
to go deeper and leverage its full capabilities." Although some code
development and testing jobs are being outsourced, most fundamental
software development building new applications takes place largely in the
U.S. "A lot of the ideas come from here and a lot of people
internationally come to the U.S.," says Krugle VP Laura Merling.
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Mobile Web Searches Using Pictures
Technology Review (03/13/07) Greene, Kate
A software prototype from Microsoft, known as Lincoln, allows users to
take pictures of objects they see and search for related clips, product
information, or other material. "The main thing we want to do is connect
real-world objects with the Web using pictures," says Microsoft researcher
Larry Zitnick. "[Lincoln] is a way of finding information on the Web using
images instead of keywords." The system works best when users take
pictures of two-dimensional objects such as DVD covers or movie posters.
Users can add pictures and links to the database, meaning the effectiveness
of the system would partially rely on its ability to attract users.
Although this technology is being used in other projects linking the real
world to the virtual world, Microsoft claims that Lincoln is able to search
through millions of images quicker than other applications, thanks to an
algorithm that creates a signature from a given picture using a small
amount of data. The signature describes the relative position of the
pixels and the intensity of a certain feature. Data triplets created from
three features make the information highly searchable. Once a picture is
taken, these data sets are quickly established and compared with those in
the database. The whole process of searching using an image takes about 10
seconds, a large part of which is the uploading of an image to the server
and downloading the Web page.
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Lip Reader Combines Audio, Video
Discovery Channel (03/13/07) Staedter, Tracy
Adding the ability to read lips to computer voice recognition systems
could greatly improve their accuracy, especially in "noisy" situations.
Since some sounds that are easily confused in the audio domain are easy to
identify in the visual domain and some words look identical in the visual
domain, combining audio and visual recognition would help fill the gaps in
each technique. A group of researchers at the University of East Angia, in
England, is beginning a three-year project they hope will produce a camera
capable of recognizing simple words and phrases. The technology could be
applied to both law enforcement and voice-command systems. To iron out
ambiguities in lip-reading, the team will focus on extracting information
from the lips using two approaches--modeling the shape and color of the
lips as they move and measuring the size of the mouth opening. They will
then experiment with techniques for matching visual cues to the words
spoken, in order to differentiate between words that are produced by
similar lip movements. "The fact is that it works and gives good results,"
says University of Cambridge technology professor Peter Robinson.
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Hackers Get a Bum Rap for Corporate America's Digital
Delinquency
University of Washington News and Information (03/12/07) Lewis, Peter
University of Washington communications professor Phil Howard conducted a
review of data-breach incidents reported in major U.S. news outlets between
1980 and 2006 and found that organizational flaws in businesses, not
hackers, should receive the most blame. "The surprising part is how much
of those violations are organizationally prompted--they're not about lone
wolf hackers doing their thing with malicious intent," Howard says. His
study revealed that malicious intrusions represent only 31 percent of 550
confirmed incidents, while mismanagement, such as missing or stolen
hardware, insider abuse or theft, administrative errors, or accidental
exposure of data online was responsible for 60 percent of the incidents
reported. State laws that require companies to report breaches enabled the
study to be done with greater accuracy. "We've actually been able to get a
much better snapshot of the spectrum of privacy violations," says Howard.
The study also found that while universities make up less than 1 percent of
the total records lost, they make up 30 percent of the reported incidents.
Corporate America claims that market forces should be allowed to solve the
problem of data breaches and reporting them, but Howard believes that this
strategy is not sufficient, especially since identity theft is the nation's
fastest growing crime. He also believes that states seem more capable of
passing laws on the matter than the federal government.
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Tech Firms Push to Use TV Airwaves for Internet
Washington Post (03/13/07) P. D1; Babington, Charles
By sending Internet signals through idle TV channels, a coalition of tech
companies believes it can offer another high-speed Internet access
alternative. Two key considerations for the FCC are the outcome of a
multiple-month evaluation of a prototype device built by Microsoft, and
whether or not the Internet signal could be kept from leaking outside of
designated channels, or "white-space." If the device is approved, it could
be in stores by 2009. Both the FCC and the consortium's members,
Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel and Philips, believe the idea could
"take the success of Wi-Fi phenomenon to another level," says FCC
commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein. Telecom officials and analysts agree
the technology, if successful, would be a threat to existing ISPs and force
them to lower prices. However, they also say the available white space
might be too limited to have a significant impact. In rural areas where
setting up phone or cable lines is costly, the white-space spectrum could
be beamed to homes to connect them to an Internet provider; and in urban
areas the TV Internet system could be combined with other Internet service
to redirect Internet signals throughout a house, while keeping the existing
provider. Google is interested in the project for the potential to use new
platforms to transmit information, as well as the potential advantage it
could give them if Internet providers begin charging Internet companies to
carry their content at higher speeds.
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Virtual Reality for Virtual Eternity
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) (03/12/07)
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of
Central Florida have been awarded a three-year grant to develop a system
for creating virtual representations of real people using artificial
intelligence and natural language processing software. The goal of the
project is to enable people to interact with these virtual representations
as if they were the actual person, complete with the ability to understand
and answer questions. "The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with
the latest advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to
create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved using
traditional technologies such as text, audio and video footage," said UIC
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) director and principal researcher
Jason Leigh. EVL will construct a motion-capture studio to digitalize the
images and movements of people that will be made into avatars. Knowledge
will be stored in databases, voices will be analyzed to create life-like
synthetic voices, and mannerisms will be analyzed and used to develop 3D
avatars. The first human subject to have his virtual representation
created will be an NSF program manager. Over a few months, a student will
make video and audio recordings of him, including interviews to glean the
wealth of institutional information he possesses. The avatar could then be
consulted on topics related to the subject's expertise. Leigh expects the
increasing power of computers to make these avatars more "naturalistic" in
the future, and allow their use to become limitless.
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File-Sharing Lawsuit Worries Techies
Investor's Business Daily (03/13/07) P. A4; Deagon, Brian
An upcoming U.S. District Court case will pit the entertainment industry
against StreamCast, maker of the Morpheus file-sharing software and
co-defendant in the MGM v Grokster case, to determine the measures
file-sharing companies must take to comply with copyright laws. In the
June 2005 Grokster case, the Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of
file-sharing software could be sued under copyright laws for the illegal
music trading of their users, but did not explain what the manufacturers
must do to comply with copyright laws. The new case will begin with a
March 26 hearing and could result in U.S. District Court Judge Stephen
Wilson mandating the type of filtering technology that must be used. Many
are concerned about the possibility of a judge, rather than the market,
being responsible for such a decision. "Putting courts in the business of
redesigning software is a dangerous precedent to set," says Electronic
Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann. Last September, Wilson
ruled in favor of copyright liability, establishing the "inducement
doctrine," which states that the vendor of a product designed to infringe
copyright is responsible for breaches committed using the product, but
StreamCast has made it clear that it will force the courts to tell the
company exactly what it must do in order to comply with the law. Other
file-sharing companies suggest that StreamCast could use industry standard
software filters, but StreamCast claims it could still be sued if the
filter did not "exhaustively" stop illegal trading. The company maintains
that it needs specific information from the recording industry concerning
the artists and songs that must be filtered, but the industry says this
information is too valuable to be released. Until a compromise is reached,
Wilson will responsible for the decision on how copyrights must be
protected.
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Animation Tool Puts You in the Frame, or the Game
New Scientist (03/12/07) Simonite, Tom
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in
Saarbrucken, Germany, have developed a 3D animation technique that makes it
easier for animators to animate the movements of actors. Faster than
traditional methods, the technique would allow animators to scan the motion
of one person, and paste the high-resolution scan onto the movements of
another person. Usually, a skeleton must be designed for a character to
make sure movements impact the outer surface in a realistic manner. "We
wanted to be able to go directly from the desired motion to animating your
character," says Christian Theobalt, who headed the research effort. The
team has created a video of the technique, and says an inexperienced user
should be able to produce such animations in less than 15 minutes by using
about 60 markers for corresponding points on the scan and the source of
motion. The technique could be used to generate 3D video, or even to
create an avatar for a computer or virtual world. According to Andy Lomas,
who worked on the film "Matrix Revolutions," the approach is better suited
for when animators have the exact motion, but not for repositioning.
"Their method could be useful for getting those kinds of deformations right
if you don't have lots of camera angles to reconstruct a scene in detail,"
says Lomas, head of computer graphics for U.K. firm Framestore CFC.
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The Promise, the Limits, the Beauty of Software
British Computer Society (03/08/07) Booch, Grady
IBM Fellow Grady Booch's Turing Lecture focuses on the important role
software plays in everyday life, and stresses that developers should make
an effort to increase software's simplicity rather than its complexity.
Booch cites C++ designer Bjarne Stroustrup's contention that software is
the driving force of civilization--one that influences government,
communication, work, leisure, and even sleeping and eating, to which Booch
adds that our extensive dependence on software makes software designers
among the most important people in the world. The IBM fellow makes the
argument that civilization's reliance on software will probably become
total "within the next decade," and maintains that although software can
augment human intelligence, it cannot supplant human judgment or knowledge
itself. He points to a "significant beauty" in software engineering, and
calls software intense systems as possibly the most intellectually
sophisticated things people have created, despite the fact that most are
invisible. Booch calls the best software "simple, elegant and full of
drama, manifest in cunning patterns that form their structures and command
their behavior," and he recommends that developers commit 10 percent of
their time to simplifying software; Booch notes that simpler software
raises productivity. The retention of digital data is a source of concern
to Booch, who cautions that although the velocity of communication can be
boosted via email and other software, our aging digital archives are in
such a sorry state that the preservation of history is endangered. He
says, "Behind the preservation of classic software there is a need to have
a museum of software, not just of old PCs but the software that ran on
them. There is a need to establish the source code for Microsoft within
this museum for future generations."
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Chinese Hackers Seek U.S. Access
USA Today (03/12/07) P. 3B; Swartz, Jon
The recent cyberattack on a U.S. military computer system highlights the
weaknesses in Internet security and the Internet's infrastructure. Lt.
Cmdr. Doug Gabos with the Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command in Norfolk,
Va., said Chinese hackers were probably responsible for the November
intrusion that disabled the Naval War College's network and forced it to
disconnect from the Internet for several weeks. The hackers were probably
looking for information on war games being developed at the naval college.
The attack was part of an ongoing campaign by Chinese hackers to penetrate
government computers. Chinese hackers primarily use targeted email attacks
called "spear phishing" that try to trick the user into thinking the email
is from the recipient's organization, but they are also using traditional
attacks, such as viruses and worms, in very sophisticated ways. Hackers
are exploiting the side doors of private networks that connect to military
and government computers as well as trying to break in directly. The
Chinese attacks point out the flaws in American cybersecurity, and
emphasize the need for the government to develop policies that define
responsibilities between the public and private sectors to protect against
hackers and cyberterrorists. Part of the problem is that it is difficult
to locate the perpetrators of international cyberattacks, and almost
impossible to prosecute them. Jody Westby, a cybersecurity consultant in
Washington, said there are 243 countries connected to the Internet, an
estimated 100 countries planning cyberwarfare capabilities, and a great
number of countries that have no cybercrime laws.
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Why Google Put a Research Lab in Poland
Christian Science Monitor (03/13/07) Woodard, Colin
Western companies are beginning to notice the value of moving operations
to Eastern Europe, where the schools are producing many computer scientists
that will work for one-third of the pay of those in Western Europe. The
curriculum in many former Soviet-bloc countries is heavily grounded in
math, given the former Soviet Union's emphasis on industrial and military
production. Last year's TopCoder collegiate challenge drew 21,000
participants from around the globe, but half of the finalists were from
former Soviet-bloc countries. IBM, Google, and Motorola have all recently
opened research labs in Krakow, Poland. Successful programmers, such as
Tomasz Czajka, who won three TopCoder contests between 2004 and 2005, are
national icons that provide inspiration for children to pursue computing.
Many university computer science departments are concerned that
higher-paying western companies and universities could lure away
professors, leaving them without the capacity to continue producing
computer scientists and engineers. Some small cities that experienced
rapid growth in the IT industry have found themselves on the verge of being
without programmers, while others have been able to prosper by boosting
salaries and collaborating to help local schools increase their capacity to
retrain engineers and others. "We said why fight over the same 200
graduates each year?," says Jozef Ondas a CEO of a company in one such
area. "Let's invest and create an educational system that can produce 500
specialists each year." Investment in universities and research in
important areas will attract students to these areas, says Google's Kannan
Pasupathy. "It's a nice circle which ultimately benefits everybody."
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Internet Name System in Growing Danger: U.N.
Agency
Reuters (03/12/07) Evans, Roberts
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is warning that
domain-name tasting, the harvesting of expired domains, and other new
techniques being used by cybersquatters are threatening to undermine domain
dispute procedures that allow patent holders to go after cybersquatters.
"Domain names used to be primarily specific identifiers of businesses and
other Internet users, but many names nowadays are mere commodities for
speculative gain," said Francis Gurry, a top official with WIPO. These
speculative tactics could make it virtually impossible for even the biggest
companies to protect their name patents on the Internet, as domains have
become "moving targets for rights holders," Gurry said. As a result, it
would also become harder for consumers to find genuine Web sites. WIPO has
overseen some 10,200 domain dispute cases over the last eight years, and
the number of cases continues to grow. For example, WIPO heard 1,823 cases
in 2006, the most since 2000.
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Sign Language at Your Fingertips, Anytime,
Anywhere
University of Bristol News (03/06/07)
Mobile phone users will be able to access sign language signs and
communicate with deaf people by using a new sign language dictionary that
has been developed by the University of Bristol's Center for Deaf Studies.
The first of its kind, Mobilesign.org features more than 5,000 British Sign
Language signs, and an interface that simply requires the user to type in
the word they want to translate or choose from a list of words that are
presented in alphabetical order. The video dictionary is a free service.
"The need was for a very simple interface to allow easy access and to
compress the video files so they would play well on mobile displays and at
the same time be small enough to download with virtually no cost," says
Chris John, technical director at the Center. Mobile Sign will work with a
mobile, on any network, that has a video player, or a 3G phone. "Apart
from the obvious use to access signs when you need to meet a deaf person,
it will be of great value to students of sign language and to parents--who
just need that sign at any time," adds Linda Day, a sign language lecturer
at the Center. The staff plans to provide greater support for interaction
by building a phrasebook.
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Chip Revolution Poses Problems for Programmers
New Scientist (03/10/07) Vol. 193, No. 2594, P. 26; Biever, Celeste
Increasing the density of multiprocessors or cores on a computer chip will
facilitate computing performance upgrades, but this sets up the challenge
of programming the multicore chips to exploit the gains in performance.
What is required is the division of programs into smaller tasks that
different cores can execute, and so far the determination of an optimal
methodology for this process lacks consensus. "From an industry
perspective, this is pretty scary," notes University of California,
Berkeley computer scientist and former ACM President David Patterson.
Unless a simple, inexpensive multicore chip programming technique is found,
innovation within the market will dry up, warns MIT electrical engineer
Saman Amarasinghe. Researchers and chipmakers are attempting to avoid this
scenario by exploring ways to increase accessibility to programming in
parallel through the establishment of programming languages and tools and
the redesign of the core configuration. A team led by IBM Research's Vivek
Sarkar has developed an open-source language called X10 to address the
deadlock bug, which is what happens when a pair of tasks that should be
running in parallel are in stalemate because neither can continue without
an output from the other. Meanwhile, Stanford University computer
scientist Christos Kozyrakis is investigating transactional memory (TM) as
a method for simplifying the programming of multicore chips, with an
emphasis on solving the "race bug" program. Both X10 and TM allow
programmers to particularize tasks that do not generally interfere with
each other and so will probably work well in parallel, and then determine
when these tasks will need the same fragment of memory and lock those
fragments at only the times necessitated by each task. Among the hardware
advances being probed as tools to improve the ease of multicore chip
programming is enhanced core-to-core communication through chip design
modifications.
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