Tragedy Spurs Renewed Interest in Mining Internet to Spot
Killers
Star-Ledger (NJ) (04/23/07) Coughlin, Kevin
In an effort to prevent future tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech,
the government is exploring a variety of controversial data-mining projects
that search Web sites and documents for subtle patterns and associations
that could expose potentially dangerous people, including shooters,
terrorists, and sexual predators. Rohini Srihari, a computer scientist at
the State University of New York at Buffalo and an expert on document
analysis, believes these automated systems could catch potential criminals
by scanning blogs, audio, and video files on Web sites such as MySpace,
Facebook, and YouTube for clues of potential trouble. "It's not
inconceivable to try and do that," Srihari said. "Are we there yet?
Probably no. But does the technology exist and is it feasible? Yes. And
I think we have to, for the safety of people." Privacy advocates are
concerned the government could compile dossiers on millions of Americans
using these data-mining operations. "The cost to law-abiding citizens is
way too high given the remote possibility of benefits," said Jim Harper of
the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. According to the Government
Accountability Office, by 2004, some 52 agencies had data-mining projects,
or were planning to do so, with the Department of Homeland Security running
nine programs and planning to create three more.
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Researchers Look to Devise Earthquake-Warning
System
Computerworld (04/20/07) Weiss, Todd R.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of
Southern California, the California Institute of Technology, and other
affiliated schools are developing algorithms that can accurately analyze
incoming seismic data so earthquakes near cities such as San Francisco and
Los Angeles can be predicted in time to send out warnings. The work is
complicated by the fact that the cities are located on top of major fault
zones, so early warning systems are unlikely to be able to provide a
warning more than 10 or 20 seconds before an earthquake hits. Bill Leith,
coordinator of the advanced national seismic system at the U.S. Geological
Survey, said 10 to 20 seconds could provide enough time for children to get
underneath their desks, allow emergency workers to respond more
efficiently, and help personnel at utility companies, airports, highway
departments, and other agencies better prepare. The three algorithms being
developed would use raw data from existing seismic collection systems in
California to determine how strong an earthquake is, how much the ground is
shaking, and how far away it is. David Oppenheimer, project manager for
the USGS's Northern California Seismic Network, said the three algorithms
are being developed independently using a grant from the USGS so each
algorithm can be analyzed to determine which would create the best early
warning system. Several countries have early warning systems for
earthquakes, including Mexico and Japan, where the systems are highly
developed because the government spent a significant amount of money to
create them, and the frequency of off-shore earthquakes, in both Mexico and
Japan, allow for a longer warning period.
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Bill to Increase H-1B Visa Makes a Comeback in
Congress
InformationWeek (04/19/07) McGee, Marianne Kolbasuk
The Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership (SKIL) bill, which aims
to reform green-card and H-1B visa limits, was reintroduced to the Senate
and House of Representatives on April 18. The bill features proposals
similar to those in larger immigration reform bills, but unlike the larger
bills that focus primarily on boarder security and lower-skilled workers,
the SKIL bill focuses on reforming issues surrounding highly skilled
foreign workers. The H-1B visas are the most common visa used by employers
to bring technology workers into the United States for up to six years.
The bill proposes raising the annual H-1B cap from the current limit of
65,000 to 115,000, with the ability to automatically increase the cap in
following years by 20 percent, or up to a total of 180,000. The bill also
looks to raise the limit on "employment-based visas," or green cards, from
140,000 to 290,000 per year, as well as create a new visa category, the
F-1, for foreign students pursuing a bachelor's or advanced degree in
science, technology engineering, or mathematics from a U.S. school.
Programmer's Guild President Kim Berry said he opposes any legislation that
seeks to raise the visa cap rather than reforming current H-1B hiring
rules. In early April, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin
(D-Ill.) introduced a bill that would require all employers to "pledge"
that they made a "good faith" effort to fill available jobs with American
workers. Currently, only companies where 15 percent or more of their
workforce have H-1B visas are required to make such a pledge.
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MIT Shows How Brain Tells Glossy From Grainy
Surfaces
MIT News (04/19/07) Trafton, Anne
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers studying the brain have
discovered the difference in how the brain views glossy and rough surfaces,
a discovery that could potentially be used to improve the visual systems in
robots. Researchers asked participants to rate the lightness and
glossiness of natural materials such as stucco or fabric, quantifying the
images in terms of "luminance histograms," which plot the distribution of
pixel values. The researchers found that the "skewness" of the histogram,
a measurement of its asymmetry, was directly correlated with the subject's
perceptions of surface qualities. Study author and MIT computer science
and artificial intelligence graduate student Lavanya Sharan said a
subject's perceptions of glossiness could be manipulated by digitally
altering the skewness of the images, and that technology based on this
research could be used in autonomous vehicles for detecting road
conditions.
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New Report Explores Nanotechnology's Future
EurekAlert (04/23/07)
A new report from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies,
"NanoFrontiers: Visions for the Future of Nanotechnology," summarizes
discussions between over 50 scientists, engineers, ethicists, policymakers,
and other experts on the opportunities for the significant advancements and
benefits nanotechnology could have on the energy crisis, medical
treatments, and environmental cleanliness. The report calls nanotechnology
a "platform technology," as it is capable of merging with other
technologies and "could change how we do just about everything." The
report says advancements in research tools, information management, and
assembly and manufacturing are fundamental to the advancement of
nanotechnology research and development needs. Researchers voiced a need
for integrated sets of probes and other tools capable of providing the
combined data necessary to obtain a "fuller picture of the nanoworld in 3D
and in real time." Gathering such massive amounts of information presents
a challenge, and scientists and policy planners are advised to focus on
"nanoinformatics," a discipline that address how to organize, standardize,
share, compare, analyze, and visualize the enormous amounts of physical and
biological data collected at the nanoscale.
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Free Wi-Fi Software Nixes Need for Routers
Network World (04/19/07)
New software from researchers at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
makes use of Wi-Fi to link nearby computers without a router. The WiPeer
software is designed to connect computers that are no more than 300 feet
apart inside buildings and no more than 900 feet away from each other
outside. Computer users can use the wireless connection to swap photos,
hold online chats, or transfer a 700 MB file within 15 minutes, according
to the researchers. "When there are two computers in the same room, it
doesn't make sense that they must go out to the Internet to communicate,"
says professor Roy Friedman of the Technion Faculty of Computer Science.
"WiPeer's main added value is the ability to keep things local." The
researchers are offering WiPeer for free online. They are now focusing on
adding a new feature that will allow cell phone users to bypass operators
and make free calls to people nearby.
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Gov't Straining to Secure Computer Systems
Washington Post (04/19/07) Krebs, Brain
Security experts from the Commerce and State departments told the House
Homeland Security Committee's cyber-security panel on Thursday that federal
computer networks are being targeted on an unprecedented level and that
recent high-profile compromises at two federal agencies are visible
symptoms of a government-wide security epidemic. Jerry Dixon, director of
the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division
(NCSD), said federal agencies are fighting and cleaning up after more
digital attacks against their information systems then ever before. In
2006, the NCSD received reports on almost 24,000 security "incidents,"
ranging from attacks probing electronic networks to find vulnerabilities,
to computer viruses, to unauthorized access of government information
resources. Dixon said the NCSD is already on track to receive more than
double that number of incident reports in 2007. "Report cards" issued by a
congressional oversight committee last week gave both the Commerce and
State departments failing grades, and the Department of Homeland Security,
which is responsible for ensuring that federal information systems are
protected and is supposed to lead the nation by example, received a grade
of "D." "I don't know how [DHS] thinks it's going to lead this nation in
security cyberspace when it can't even secure its own networks," Rep. James
Langevin, D-R.I., said. "Not only are these grades embarrassing, they're
dangerous."
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IT Managers Fear Growing Technical Gender Gap
Computerworld (04/19/07) Fonseca, Brian
Recruiting and retaining women for IT jobs such as storage administration,
which requires being on-call at almost all times, has become a problem for
many companies. Attendees at the recent Storage Networking World
conference discussed the issue, and some participants saw it as a major
problem in the years to come because more women are leaving such jobs and
not enough are coming in behind them to take their place. Though
statistics from the Department of Labor forecast an increase in IT jobs
through 2012, research from Gartner indicates 40 percent of women will
leave the industry for more flexible business, functional, and research and
development careers over the next five years. The IT industry stands to
miss out on the diversity and balance that women bring to teams that run
and maintain storage environments. Dot Brunette, network and storage
manager for Grand Rapids, Mich., retailer Meijer, says companies are
failing "to provide day care at work, or work at-home options for someone
who leaves to have a child." Mentor relationships, team building, and
training are also vital to retaining women, adds Lisa Johnson, manager of
systems at Freedom Communications in Irvine, Calif. For information about
ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Open Source, Transparency and Electronic Voting
Linux Insider (04/18/07) Mello, John P. Jr.
Critics of electronic voting systems are calling for any software used in
voting systems to be made open source and fully transparent. University
College Dublin in Ireland computer science lecturer and open source voting
software researcher Joseph Kiniry said using open source software for
electronic voting would add credibility to the process. Kiniry said with
open source, "not only can experts evaluate the software and make sure it
does what it says it does, but it also increases the level of trust that
normal, non-expert users can have in that software system." Software
engineer John Washburn pointed out a disturbing trend with electronic
voting's reliability and testing systems. "Everyone who is not paid by a
vendor who has looked at existing electronic voting machinery has found
significant flaws," Washburn said. "Moreover, they've never found the same
flaw twice. That tells me that that must be some defect-dense code. Not
only do you find something every time someone looks at it, you find
something new every time someone looks at it." Speaking before a
congressional subcommittee on elections, Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) staff attorney Matt Zimmerman said the EFF felt hindered, both as
election observers and as legal counsel for voters who felt compelled to
challenge election results due to malfunctioning equipment, by the lack of
transparency in the electronic voting "closed technological regime." Some
argue that creating open source voting software will expose electronic
voting systems to hackers, but Washburn says that argument is based on the
"security through obscurity model," and anyone who takes security seriously
knows better.
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IBM Props Up Mainframe Education in Schools
ITworldcanada.com (04/17/07) Lau, Kathleen
IBM and financial and academic institutions are working together in an
effort to create 23,000 mainframe-literate information technology
professionals by 2010 to ensure there are enough mainframe-skilled
employees in the global market to support businesses that use mainframe
technology. Mainframes are primarily used by large organizations with
critical applications such as bulk data processing of census data, consumer
and industry statistics, and financial transaction processing. Financial
institutions in particular rely on mainframes to process ordinary
transactions such as client transactions, according to TD Bank Financial
Group's Jeff Henderson. "The concern we have is young people view
mainframes as a legacy--almost a dead technology--when in fact, it's still
used very extensively and is a critical aspect of our infrastructure,"
Henderson says. A program such as this is widely considered a necessity as
it is estimated that half of IT professionals in North America with at
least 20 years of mainframe expertise will soon retire, according to an IBM
survey. The program will help mid-career IT professionals develop or
enhance their mainframe skills and assist organizations replacing
soon-to-retire mainframe experts, as well as provide course material to
universities and free access to IBM's mainframe hubs for students as part
of IBM's Academic Initiative Program.
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EU-Funded Project Seeks 'Quality Seal' for Open Source
Software
European Commission (04/20/07)
The European Union hopes the QualOSS project will give Europe more of a
competitive edge in the software market. Researchers involved in QualOSS
recently completed the first phase of the effort to provide organizations
with a better understanding of the reliability and deployability of open
source software. The EU-funded project will comprehensively evaluate
source code, documentation, data about the developer community supporting
the software products, and other available resources in an attempt to
assess the robustness and evolvability of open source software.
Organizations would be able to use the assessment tool to quantitatively,
objectively, and quickly determine which open source solutions are best for
their core operations. The QualOSS offering would be easier to use than
current assessment tools. There are also plans to create an automated tool
for rating open source solutions.
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Proposed ICANN Status Change Questioned
Washington Internet Daily (04/19/07) Vol. 8, No. 75, Standeford, Dugie
Experts are debating the implications of a possible move by ICANN to
recast itself as a private international organization (PIO) like the
International Red Cross. The move, which was recommended to ICANN by an
advisory panel, would give ICANN the privileges and immunities associated
with other PIOs, including avoiding lawsuits. Intellectual property lawyer
Andrew Klungness believes the proposed move to a PIO framework may be a
strategy to protect ICANN's resources from the draining effects of
lawsuits, thereby allowing more of these resources to reach actual end
users. Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller opposes the idea of
bestowing PIO status upon ICANN. "If [ICANN] does things that are really
out of line, you need to be able to sue it, to put it bluntly," says
Mueller. Allowing ICANN to avoid lawsuits would effectively allow it to
avoid accountability, and this would be a more dangerous development than
exposing ICANN to unrestrained litigation, according to Mueller.
University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin notes that the U.S.
government and other world governments have already indicated that they
would not be pleased if ICANN moved toward PIO status.
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Getting Women Back Into IT
CIO Insight (04/17/07) Chabrow, Eric
More schools should follow the lead of Carnegie Mellon University in
revamping their admission requirements for computer science studies, writes
Eric Chabrow. At a time when more women are leaving IT jobs and young
girls view IT as a career for nerds, the Pittsburgh school has decided to
focus on how computers are connected to many fields, according to a recent
story in The New York Times. Carnegie Mellon no longer requires high
overall achievement and programming know-how for admittance into its
computer science program, but now demands that would-be computer science
majors have high overall achievement, broad interests, diverse
perspectives, and the potential to become future leaders. With the new
admission criteria, Carnegie Mellon has seen the number of women enrolled
in its computer science program jump from 8 percent to almost 40 percent,
according to computer science professor Lenore Blum. Since 2000, the
industry has lost 76,000 women, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
Blum adds that factors that discourage women from IT could influence men
as well. For information about ACM's Committee on Women and Computing,
visit
http://women.acm.org
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Founding Father of the Internet Surveys His Domain
Scripps Howard News Service (04/17/07) Swett, Clint
Vinton Cerf shared his thoughts on the Internet during a speech Monday at
a gathering of TechCoire, a group of technology entrepreneurs, in Davis,
Calif. One of the founding fathers of the Internet, Cerf said he is very
surprised and pleased that people have been willing to put information
online with no promise of compensation in return. "It's created the most
democratic access to information we have ever seen," said Cerf, who helped
develop software that serves as the foundation for transmitting email,
movies, and everything else online. Cerf, currently Google's "chief
Internet evangelist," acknowledged that spam, viruses, worms, fraud, and
worthless content are problems, but added that society has addressed such
issues, sometimes in other forms, in the past. He said mobile devices
would be key to the future growth of the Internet, and that
Internet-connected devices would be seamlessly linked in the years to come.
Cerf, who is also chairman of ICANN, added that security and the
transmission of data needs to be improved.
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P2P Worms Get Their Turn
InfoWorld (04/16/07) Hines, Matt
Experts claim that botnet-driven mass attacks are replacing traditional
worms as the platform of choice for a growing array of skilled and
well-funded fraudsters. This trend is illustrated by the P2P, or Storm,
worm currently evading anti-virus systems and propagating itself through
botnet commands. The new breed of P2P worms are delivered through large
networks of hijacked computers and have sophisticated techniques, such as
exploiting private networks to contact external servers. Employed by a
variety of customers for a variety of purposes, botnets are easy to use;
single-purpose botnets can be abandoned after use, making pursuit even more
difficult. Many of those involved in creating the attacks are from China
and Eastern Europe, and criminal groups with pools of laundered money are
becoming involved as well. Experts worry that organizations are
consolidating to mount large-scale attacks with increasing professionalism,
and urge the IT security community to prepare for the growing botnet
problem.
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Robot Wars
Economist (04/17/07)
The Department of Defense want to replace a third of its armed vehicles
and weaponry with remote controlled robots by 2015, but officials at the
Pentagon are looking to take robotic warfare even further by giving robots
increasing amounts of autonomy, including the ability to decide when to use
lethal force. Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology is
developing a set of rules of engagement for battlefield robots to allow
them to use lethal force only under certain situations, essentially
creating an artificial conscience. Arkin's artificial conscience uses what
he calls a "multidimensional mathematical decision space of possible
behavior actions." Decisions would be based on multiple information
sources including radar data, current position, mission status, and
intelligence feeds, categorizing all possible actions as either ethical or
unethical. Arkin believes that robots may actually behave more humanly
under battle conditions than people as they are not subject to stress and
fatigue the way human soldiers are. Although robots may not be effected by
emotion, they are still capable of making mistakes, and surveillance and
intelligence data could be incorrect or conditions and situations on a
battlefield can change. Some question if robotic soldiers would cause wars
to break out more easily. Arkin has started to question policy makers, the
public, researchers, and military personnel to gauge their opinions on
autonomous robots capable of lethal force.
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Social Computing: From Social Informatics to Social
Intelligence
IEEE Intelligent Systems (04/07) Vol. 22, No. 2, P. 79; Wang, Fei-Yue;
Zeng, Daniel; Carley, Kathleen M.
Social computing is a core concept for a broad array of information and
communication technology (ICT) fields, and the authors note that its growth
is carrying repercussions across nearly all arms of software research and
practice. "From both theoretical and technological perspectives, social
computing technologies will move beyond social information processing
toward emphasizing social intelligence," the authors predict. Social
informatics studies indicate that ICT and society share a reciprocal
relationship, so that social computing has stressed technological
development for society while embedding social theories and practices into
ICT development, which frequently requires the construction of artificial
societies through the use of agent modeling methods in accordance with
specific rules and via the interaction of autonomous agents in the
environment. Theoretical underpinnings of social computing include social
psychology, social network analysis, communication and human-computer
interaction theories, sociology, organization theory, anthropology, and
computing theory; its infrastructure is composed of Web, database,
multimedia, wireless, and agent technology, along with software
engineering; and applications of social computing include online
communities (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.), interactive entertainment
(gaming, edutainment, etc.), business and public sector applications
(recommender systems, feedback, decision analysis, e-government, etc.), and
forecasting (predictive systems). Social computing's chief application
areas include the development of improved social software for enabling
interaction and communication between groups of people or between people
and computing devices, the computerization of human society aspects, and
projecting how changing technologies and policies will impact social and
cultural behavior. The representation of social information and knowledge,
the agent-based modeling of social behavior at both the individual and
collective strata, and analysis and prediction methods for social systems
and software constitute key issues in social computing research.
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