Leahy, Others Speak Out Against New ID Standards
Washington Post (05/09/07) P. D3; Nakashima, Ellen
Citing concerns about American's privacy, Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said that he will push to repeal the 2005
Real ID Act, which is aimed at creating new government standards for
driver's licenses and requires states to comply by 2008. States can
request more time, but after 2013 anyone with IDs that fail to meet the
standards will be barred from boarding planes or entering federal
buildings. Leahy has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to repeal the
provision, and a similar Democrat-backed bill is pending in the House. To
date, seven states have passed laws or resolutions opposing implementation
of Real ID, 14 states have legislation pending, and the DHS has received
more than 12,000 public comments in response to the rules. The Real ID
legislation was tacked onto a 2005 emergency spending bill by House
Republicans, without any debate in the Senate, and was signed by President
Bush. The bill's passage interrupted negotiations between state and
federal government organizations. Advocates of a repeal want to restart
negotiations, but supporters of the Real AD Act say the effort to
strengthen state-issued driver's licenses security standard is a key
recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. Critics warn that the proposed
rules to implement Real ID's national database creates the possibility of
privacy invasions and increases the risk of identity fraud. For more
information about the Real ID Act, and to read ACM's detailed comments on
it, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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USACM Urges Revisions to National Identification
Policy
AScribe Newswire (05/08/07)
ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) issued a series of
recommendations on May 8, citing serious flaws in the nation's Real ID Act.
The Real ID Act is intended to establish a national identification system
by requiring states to collect, maintain, and share personal information,
as well as issue a standard form of identification to all Americans. USACM
said the proposed regulations are inadequate to properly protect privacy,
ensure security, and maintain accurate personal information. USACM also
said the regulations fail to establish clear standards for states to use in
the implementation of standard driver's licenses and identification cards.
"The policy behind Real ID has been flawed from the moment Congress
proposed it. Without sufficient safeguards, it has the potential to enable
identity theft on an unprecedented scale. The proposed rules are at best
vague in addressing privacy, security and accuracy risks, and at worst,
they increase these risks," USACM Chair and Purdue University computer
science professor Eugene Spafford said. "States are likely to be
financially strapped when the begin to implement Real ID. Simply punting
the implementation details to the states is a recipe for disaster. We
could see a multitude of standards with minimal resources dedicated to
ensuring that privacy, security and accuracy concerns are addressed."
USACM said the proposed regulations fail to specify minimum standards or
accountability for states to manage state-to-state data exchanges openly
and comprehensively. To read the comments issued by USACM, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Electronic Voting May Be Ready by Fall '08, Official
Says
New York Times (05/08/07) Hicks, Jonathan P.
New York State Board of Elections co-chairman Douglas A. Kellner said New
York State may be able to replace its aging voting machines by September
2008, despite predictions to the contrary. Earlier this year, Kellner said
most members of the Board of Elections agreed it would be better if the
state did not have to make changes during the 2008 presidential election,
which is expected to have a high voter turnout. Now, however, Kellner said
that although there is little to no chance the new machines would be ready
for the state's presidential primary in February 2008, they could be
installed by the November 2008 presidential election, and possibly in time
for the primary elections for Congress and the State Legislature in
September 2008. "If we certify the new machines by December, they should
be able to get most of the system in place for the November 2008 election,"
Kellner said. "And I think the September primary, too." Debate over
replacing New York's voting machines has been rocky, and New York is the
last state to update its voting machines, despite a federal mandate
requiring it to do so. A significant portion of the delay comes from
questions about the laboratory testing required for the potential machines
being offered by five bidders. At a state Congressional hearing, several
voting machine experts testified about a number of problems concerning new
electronic voting machines, including conflicts of interest in the testing
process and questions about the security and reliability of the machines
currently in use. "The testing labs are failing to weed out insecure and
unreliable voting systems," said one of the experts, University of
California at Berkeley computer science professor David Wagner. "The
federal certification process has approved systems that have lost thousands
of votes and systems with serious security vulnerabilities."
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44th Design Automation Conference Professional
Development Fund to Award $165,000
Business Wire (05/08/07)
The Design Automation Conference (DAC) Professional Development Fund will
provide more than $165,000 this year to several EDA-related scholarship and
education programs. The A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarships program
will offer $24,000 to support graduate students who are interested in
electronic design automation and circuit design, and the P.O. Pistilli
Scholarship for Advancement in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
will receive funds so the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation
(SIGDA) can offer annual awards of $4,000 to students from
under-represented groups. Money will go to the SIGDA/DAC University Booth
program to help fund university demonstrations at DAC, and the Young
Student Support Program will receive $28,000 to send top undergraduate
students and first-year graduate students on meetings and tours, and enable
them to associate closely with an industry professional. ACM SIGDA
co-sponsors and administers the program, and also co-sponsors the
NSF/SIGDA/DAC Design Automation Summer School (DASS), which will receive
funds to offer a two-day course on EDA research and development to graduate
students. The DAC Professional Development Fund has provided more than
$3.73 million in awards over the past 13 years. DAC is scheduled for June
4-8, 2007, in San Diego at the San Diego Convention Center. For more
information about DAC, and to register, visit
http://www.dac.com/44th/index.html
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CU-Boulder Center to Participate in $2 Million Grant to
Engage Minority Students in Computing
University of Colorado at Boulder News Center (05/07/07)
The ATLAS Institute's Assessment and Research Center at the University of
Colorado Boulder will be a leading institution in the new national
Empowering Leadership Alliance, which focuses on engaging underrepresented
minority students in computing with the support of a $2 million, three-year
grant from the National Science Foundation. The Empowering Leadership
Alliance is composed of dozens of leading universities, professional
societies, laboratories, research centers, and corporations and will
provide students with research opportunities, mentoring programs, and other
activities to keep students interested and motivated in their pursuit of
careers in computing. The alliance will focus on students who are
scattered across the country and may be the only, or one of very few,
minority students in their classes. Rice University professor and director
of the Empowering Leadership Alliance Richard A. Tapia said, "Research
shows that isolated, unsupported students of all kinds will leave an
environment that does not meet their needs." Tapia said that some students
who complete their bachelor's degree may have had such a difficult and
painful experience that they are unlikely to consider graduate school,
resulting in another lost opportunity to add diversity to national
leadership in computing and advanced technology. According to the
Computing Research Association, during the 2004-2005 academic year, there
were only 38 minority, African-American, Native American, or Hispanic,
Ph.D. graduates in computer science or computer engineering, out of 1,189
total graduates. The Empowering Leadership Alliance will provide students
with summer research opportunities with highly experienced and successful
computing researchers, mentoring and personal meetings with national
leaders, an online speaker series, and meetings to encourage students,
discuss challenges, and engage minority role models. Other participating
institutions include Rice University, Boston University, University of
California at Berkeley, University of Texas at Austin, and Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale.
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'Guessing' Robots Navigate Faster
New Scientist (05/08/07) Simonite, Tom
Purdue University researchers have developed an algorithm that allows
robots to use geographical information they've collected to "guess" what
type of terrain lies ahead. Typically, robots use laser scanners and
odometers to measure distances for mapping, and researchers have used
different algorithms and teams of robots to explore an area to try to speed
up the process. Purdue University researchers have created an algorithm
that predicts what unknown areas will look like. "We realized that,
because you are building up a map as you go along, you can use it like a
database to predict the environment in unknown areas," Purdue University
team member George Lee said. The algorithm identifies unexplored regions,
known as "frontier cells," adjacent to areas that have already been mapped.
By comparing patterns found in the corners of the frontier cells to
similar patterns already found, the algorithm uses the existing map to
predict the contents of the frontier cell. Each prediction comes with a
"confidence score," allowing the researches to explore and properly map
areas with low confidence scores and bypass areas with high scores. The
algorithm was tested using simulated robots in virtual mazes and office
environments. The simulated robots were able to navigate successfully
while exploring 33 percent less of the environment. Real-life tests were
conducted with small robots in an office building. The real robots also
saved time and experienced fewer errors. Lee said that there are plans to
extend the method to multiple robots that could share the data. Lee said
the algorithm works well is static like office buildings, but has a more
difficult time with less-repetitive outdoor environments.
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15th ACM International Symposium on Advances in
Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS 2007)
GISuser.com (05/07/2007)
ACM GIS has issued a call for papers for the 15th ACM International
Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, which takes place
Nov. 7-9, in Seattle, Wash. Modeling and querying is a focus of ACM GIS
2007, and topics such as constraint approach for spatial databases, spatial
data quality, image databases, and integration and management of raster and
vector data will be of interest. Suggested topics involving systems and
implementation include computational geometry, geospatial data integration,
geospatial data versioning, and interoperability and standards. The
symposium is also interested in applications such as geosensor networks,
mobile and distributed geographic computing and information services, Web
applications, and wireless networks. Papers must be limited to eight
pages, and the research must be original and unpublished. Authors must
submit abstracts by June 11 and full papers by June 18, and they will
receive a notification of acceptance by Aug. 11. ACM GIS 2007 will be
separate from the long-time host conference this year, which should help
raise the profile of the symposium. For more information about the
conference, visit
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/dept/acmgis2007/
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U.S. Critical Infrastructure in Serious Jeopardy
CSO Online (05/04/07) Turner, Aaron
The U.S. critical infrastructure's heavy reliance on networks has made it
extremely vulnerable to exploitation by hackers, but this threat is still
not fully comprehended by vendors, asset owners, incident responders, or
information security experts, writes Aaron Turner of Idaho National Labs
(INL). History has shown that increasing system complexity carries more
dramatic social and economic ramifications in the event those systems
become unwieldy or critically vulnerable, and it was the absence of
coordinated oversight and planning in the deployment of those systems that
led to incidents such as the 1929 stock market crash and the global
Internet worm epidemic in 2003. Control system security reviews funded by
the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security and performed by INL have
uncovered weaknesses in all the assessed systems that could be exploited by
attackers with a low level of expertise, and who do not need to access the
systems physically in order to wreak havoc. The INL experts determined
that currently implemented systems cannot support the easy deployment of
augmented security controls while also sustaining basic system
functionality. Turner remarks that the current strategy for guaranteeing
system resiliency is highly fragmented, resulting in a situation in which
"information security professionals have had to continue to shift resources
as the threats and vulnerabilities constantly change from day to day, with
very little time to look at the problem and limited resources to coordinate
a long-term strategy." Among the factors contributing to the critical
infrastructure's vulnerability is asset owners' increasing willingness to
link their control systems to the Internet in order to become more
efficient and competitive; vendors' continued production of infrastructure
system components that lack sufficient safeguards or an overarching
security framework; sparse awareness of control system security issues and
little public disclosure of serious incidents; and increasingly skilled
hackers. Turner concludes that the only real solution for this state of
affairs is to "maximize cooperation among asset owners and technology
vendors to understand and improve control system security across the entire
lifecycle of this necessary and critical technology."
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It's the 'Wiring' That's Tricky in Quantum
Computing
Wired News (05/07/07) Farivar, Cyrus
NEC, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), and the
Japan Science and Technology Agency have published a paper in the May 4
issue of the journal Science describing their ability to control coupled
qubits, which researchers say is a necessary step toward quantum computing.
The NEC team is the second group to have controllably coupled qubits, a
technique that enables qubits to act like classical logic gates by
maintaining an active link, or coherence between qubits. "Once this
coherence is destroyed, you cannot do any quantum information processing,"
says Tsai Jawshen, an NEC fellow and a co-author of the paper. "That's the
basic thing--you have to let these guys remain in a quantum state." A team
led by University of California, Berkeley's John Clarke published research
in December 2006 demonstrating controllably coupled qubits, but Clarke says
NEC's technique might offer a better ability hold off decoherence. "The
NEC version might have an advantage in that it can be used at the
degeneracy point, [which is] a particular point where it's less sensitive
to external noise sources, or something called flux noise," Clarke says.
"At the degeneracy point, the device is less sensitive to decoherence."
Tsai says the NEC team is now working on a more complex, five-step process
that could lead to the completion of a basic logic operation by the end of
the year.
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Audio Menus for iPods
Technology Review (05/08/07) Greene, Kate
Scrolling through an iPod menu requires a significant amount of visual
attention and can be a hindrance during physical activity and even
dangerous while driving. To make iPod menu navigation easier and safer,
the University of Toronto and Microsoft Research have collaborated to
create software that would allow iPod users to navigate the menu using
audio clues. The researchers have developed an auditory menu system called
earPod that provides audio feedback as a person moves his or her finger
over the touch pad. While earPod is not ready to replace the extensive
menus on real iPods, Microsoft Research scientist Patrick Baudisch says the
results are encouraging. After 30 minutes of using the technology, users
can navigate two levels of earPod menus faster than traditional visual
menus, and with just as much accuracy. Baudisch says that audio menus
could help gadgets save battery life by not lighting up the screen, and
could add functions to screen-free devices such as the iPod shuffle. The
earPod system assigns selections to different areas of the iPod's circular
touch pad, allowing users to jump directly to a selection, rather than
scrolling through as with the regular iPod. Eventually, the earPod could
even be programmed to read off a limited number of names of artists and
songs. Georgia Institute of Technology professor of psychology and
computing Bruce Walker says audio interfaces are not widespread in handheld
consumer devices because audio hardware and software is resource intensive,
requires significant amounts of computation and energy, and is difficult to
program, but because computing power is becoming cheaper, and there is
greater demand for new ways to interact with handheld devices, he expects
the number of researchers investigating ways to make better audio
interfaces to grow over the next few years.
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Ideas for Attracting Young People to IT Careers
CIO (05/07/07) Locher, Margaret
A group of IT education and training experts offer suggestions for
boosting the volume of students enrolling in computer science and
engineering programs and shoring up the U.S. technology workforce.
Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) executive director Chris
Stephenson observes that high school schedules are too constrained to fit
in ample computer science study, while the teaching of technology and
computer science subjects in grades K-12 does not follow a uniform
approach. Partial solutions he presents include a national computer
science curriculum, which CSTA is working on. Kate Kaiser of the Marquette
University College of Business Administration says aberrant, back-to-back
periods of low and high IT job availability created a misconception about
IT careers among students and their parents, a situation exacerbated by the
media's emphasis on offshore outsourcing; in fact, the market for tech
graduates is quite healthy--a message Kaiser says CIOs should circulate
throughout school districts. She also recommends telling students,
parents, and guidance counselors that IT careers require analytical skills
in science, math, engineering, and technology. A perception of IT
professionals as nerds who make few societal contributions is a major
stumbling block, and Forrester Research analyst Samuel Bright offers a
multipronged strategy in which every stakeholder in the IT domain plays a
part. CIOs, for example, should use outreach initiatives to communicate
the benefits of IT careers to students, while industry groups should
establish a motivational speakers' bureau to stoke interest, and current IT
students and young workers should speak to high school and middle school
students to relate their own experiences and debunk myths about the IT
field. LP Enterprises President Geoff Smith says a major stumbling block
is CIOs' ignorance or denial of the problem's existence, and he suggests
efforts to nurture IT talent at the K-12 level through workshops, events,
field trips, camps, and other interest-generating venues. For more
information about CSTA, visit
http://csta.acm.org/
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Dartmouth Institute Develops Robot that Learns
The Dartmouth (05/08/07)
The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth University has
developed a small, toy-like robot called Brainbot that is capable of
learning. Although the Brainbot is a primitive robot, Neukom Institute
director Richard Granger says we are only 10 to 15 years away from creating
robots with the capacity to think like humans. The Neukom Institute's
primary goal is to apply computational science to a variety of subjects,
ranging from music to public policy. A chief area of study for the Neukom
Institute is computation and neuroscience, which examines how the brain
works and applies the same process to computer systems. Granger says the
human brain can solve many problems that have eluded computer scientists,
and the Institute is trying to implement a human system of pattern
recognition into robots. Current robots under development are learning to
visually recognize different objects, hear and repeat different sounds, and
match objects with their corresponding names. Granger admits that the
robots' current capabilities are far lower than those of the human brain,
but notes the robots learn more every day. Recently, the Neukom Institute
created a new course, Introduction to Computational Neuroscience, and began
offering undergraduate internship opportunities through the Women in
Science Program.
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Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use
Discovery Channel (05/04/07) Staedter, Tracy
A team at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore is set to begin field
trials this month on software that will divide a computer screen in half,
allowing two people to work with their own operating system, desktop,
applications, cursor, and keyboard. "At the most basic level, we are
allowing two users to work completely independently on the same machine,
sharing both the processor and monitor," says Udai Singh Pawar, assistant
researcher and project leader. The developers envision the technology
serving as a cost-effective solution in developing countries and as an
attractive feature in homes when more than one member of a family wants to
use the computer. All that is required of users is to install the software
and plug in a second mouse and keyboard. The software also offers special
features for sharing documents and working together. Some observers have
expressed concern about permission problems, given the close proximity in
which users would work. The researchers plan to address the issue and
others during the trial, but the software could be available in a couple of
years.
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Fatter Chips, Untapped Potential
BusinessWeek (05/02/07) Ricadela, Aaron
Computer technology is rapidly advancing and soon computers will be
capable of performing tasks current technology is incapable of, such as
guessing which file a user will open next or organizing notes for an
upcoming meeting, but only if programmers learn to utilize the processing
power available in new technologies. Microsoft's chief research and
strategy officer Craig Mundie said that programmers have never failed to
fully utilize a computing resource, but unless computer and software
makers, high-tech startups, and universities do more to train developers
capable of fully utilizing new ultra-powerful chips, that is just what
could happen. During a speech at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus in
Mountain View, Calif., Mundie told venture capitalists and academics that
they need to do more to educate programmers and to fund startups that can
exploit the biggest advancements in computer programming in more than 20
years. Chipmakers continue to put more and more processors into their
products, creating the possibility for desktops, cell phones, and other
silicon-powered devices such as TVs to act as "personal assistants," and be
able to guess users' preferences and actions, Mundie said, but breakthrough
research and more training is necessary to create the programming that
could harness that processing power. "We haven�t created either the tools
or the trained people," Mundie said. "This is really a profound issue now
for the industry."
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Gaming Class Aims to Spark Girls' Interest in Computer
Careers
Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA) (05/04/07) Jones, Donna
ETR Associates in Scotts Valley, Calif., is giving young girls an
opportunity to learn how to design their own computer games. As part of
the health education, training, and research nonprofit's new after-school
program, 52 girls from local schools over the next 18 months will also
create a computer game business in Whyville, an online community for
pre-teens and teens. The girls will be paired with a mentor, and will have
an opportunity to visit game-maker Electronic Arts in Redwood City, Google
in Mountain View, and UC Santa Cruz. The program is funded by a
three-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, and
another group of girls will be able to participate in the second half of
the program. Gaming is a way for ETR to show the young girls that
technology can be fun. ETR hopes to inspire more young girls to think
seriously about a career in technology. More than twice as many men as
women are obtaining bachelor's degrees in computer science, and more than
three times as many men as women are getting engineering degrees, according
to a 2003 NSF report.
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Growing Data Stores Posing Increasing IT Headaches
Computerworld Canada (04/27/07) McLean, Dan
The volume of digital data being produced and stored is already gargantuan
and is rapidly increasing. A recent IDC white paper sponsored by the
storage company EMC said that if every byte of digital data was a page in a
small novel, there was enough digital data in 2006 to theoretically fill 12
stacks of small novels that would extend the 93 million miles from the
Earth to the sun, and by 2010 the stack would reach from the sun to Pluto
and back. The report estimates that electronic business accounts for only
25 percent of the world's digital data, with the rest composed of mostly
music, videos, digital television signals, and pictures. Companies face a
monumental challenge trying to control the flow of and access to business
data, as well as finding a way to organize digital information so it
remains useful. IDC says the amount of data created and replicated in 2007
will exceed the available storage capacity to store it, and predicts that
while storage media will grow 35 percent annually between 2006 and 2010,
the amount of digital data created and replicated during that same time
will grow 57 percent annually. Many businesses have more digital data than
they can handle and are unable to extract the information they need,
according to the report, which found that a business with 1,000 knowledge
workers loses $5.3 million a year because it can't find information it
already has, and loses another $5.7 million a year reformatting data for
use with different programs. Consultant Charles King believes that without
effective storage tools and strategies, businesses will reach a point where
the financial and logistical burden of managing data outweighs the
information's value to the business, a problem that will be even greater
for smaller businesses.
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The Disruptive Power of Networks
Forbes (05/07/07) Cerf, Vinton G.
Google chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf points out that the
Internet has yielded many benefits (users generating information, massive
group interaction, widespread and nearly instant access to information,
communities formed through social networking) and dangers (invasions of
privacy, identity theft, security vulnerabilities). "Overall, though, the
disruptive aspects [of networks] will, I believe, have positive effects,
giving ample impetus to the creative energy of our global community," Cerf
reasons. He anticipates a vast proliferation of Internet-connected
devices, including office gadgets and household appliances, while neural
interfaces to computer-based systems will also emerge. Computerized and
real worlds will be integrated, with interactions that take place in a
virtual environment having real-world impact, predicts Cerf. Whole
populations could be tracked to spot key health trends or epidemiological
threats early via the aggregation of personal health monitoring, while cars
and buildings could be equipped for self-awareness and self-guidance. Cerf
projects that mobile-knowledge robots will sift through the Internet's data
for correspondences and unforeseen patterns, flagging items of interest to
users. "As computing power, memory and transmission speeds continue to
increase, opportunities to develop new products and services will
multiply," he concludes.
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ACM Established to Develop Communication About
Computing
Communications of the ACM (05/07) Vol. 50, No. 5, P. 27; Longo, Bernadette
To mark ACM's 60th anniversary, the May issue of Communications of the ACM
offers a special section that traces the founding days of ACM. In the
section's introductory article, ACM History Committee co-chair David S.
Wise writes that ACM was formed six decades ago as a vehicle for the
computer science community to share knowledge in order to advance the field
and avoid excessive research overlap. It began with a 1947 symposium
organized by the Harvard Computational Laboratory's Howard Aiken, where
participants observed that the security of the United States and the
American way of life could be threatened by the lack of a system for
communicating computing knowledge. MIT electrical engineering professor
Samuel Caldwell made a presentation at the symposium in which he called for
the creation of a professional group that supports a communication system
comprised of "an organization to make us more immediately and more
continuously aware of a common purpose and thus furnish the incentive for
communication; and a medium for such communication." Shortly thereafter,
the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery (EACM) was established. It
was not long before the group dropped "Eastern" from its name to reflect
the national, and later international, scope of its membership. Thirteen
papers were presented at the inaugural ACM conference in September 1947,
and the event proved that the communication problems faced by computer
developers at the end of the Second World War were solvable.
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