USC Student's Computer Program Enlisted in Security
Efforts at LAX
Los Angeles Times (10/01/07) Gordon, Larry
The doctoral thesis of USC computer science student Praveen Paruchuri has
led to a computer program that police at Los Angeles International Airport
are piloting to bolster security. The idea is that the software would keep
potential terrorists and criminals continuously unsure about where, when,
and how frequently vehicles will be inspected at airport entrances.
Paruchuri's work focuses on game-theory research on the random timing of
police patrols and its impact on crimes such as home burglaries, and Los
Angeles World Airports official James Butts says the program affects police
deployment and the regularity of vehicle searches in a way that "makes it
virtually impossible to predict where resources might be deployed." The
initiative stems from a federally sponsored USC think tank that utilized
scholars in engineering, economics, political science, psychology, and
computer science to assess and minimize the risks of terrorism.
Paruchuri's thesis advisor, professor Milind Tambe, says LAX's use of
Paruchuri's research is "something that we, as researchers, dream of:
creating research that is not only academically wonderful but something
that is also very useful."
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GPL Defenders Say: See You in Court
CNet (10/01/07) Shankland, Stephen
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed a copyright infringement
lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for its alleged failure to comply with
the terms of the General Public License (GPL), and experts expect the case
to call more attention to similar violations in court. At the center of
the dispute is the BusyBox software, which is governed by version 2 of the
GPL, which allows anyone to view, tweak, and distribute the software,
provided modifications are also issued under the license. In addition,
anyone distributing GPL software in an executable form that a computer can
run is required to release the complete source code. "Simply coming into
compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would
mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only
punishment would be to come into compliance," says SFLC attorney Dan
Ravicher. He says the center is refusing to back down because "If you
start getting a reputation for being a pansy, then people are going to
conclude they don't have to do anything." Ravicher says that in most
instances both parties make a good faith effort to resolve disputes with
discretion, expediency, and little fuss. Although he says the Monsoon suit
is not part of an overarching effort to build GPL case law, Hunton &
Williams lawyer James Harvey predicts that more GPL-related lawsuits will
be launched.
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Artificial Brain Falls for Optical Illusions
New Scientist (09/28/07) Robson, David
A computer program that mimics the human brain is prey to the same
susceptibility to optical illusions as people, which suggests that future
robots imbued with human-like visual perceptive capability will inherit
this shortcoming. One theory suggests that a category of optical illusions
results from the way the brain attempts to disentangle the color of an
object and the way it is illuminated, and the brain learns to address this
problem through trial and error during infancy. Sometimes the brain
perceives an object as lighter or darker than it actually is, which
generates an illusion. University College London researchers David Corney
and Beau Lotto believe they have proven this theory with a program that
emulates a baby's brain by learning to predict an image's lightness based
on past experience--and that can be fooled by optical illusions. The
software was trained on 10,000 grayscale images of fallen leaves, and then
tested on lightness illusions that might trick people by first being shown
images of a light object on a dark background, and then the reverse. The
software predicted that the objects would be respectively lighter and
darker than they actually were, and also overestimated lighter shades more
than darker shades. Lotto says these experiments indicate that our ability
to perceive illusions directly stems from learning to filter useful
information from our surroundings. The ramifications for machine vision
would be that attempts to duplicate human vision systems would lead to the
same vulnerability to optical illusions in robots as in humans. "If you
build machine vision systems that perform similarly to humans, you should
expect them to be subject to the same illusions," says Indiana University's
Olaf Sporns.
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Software 'Chipper' Speeds Debugging
UC Davis News and Information (09/28/07)
UC Davis computer science professor Ron Olsson has teamed up with graduate
student Chad Sterling to develop a new tool that automatically "chips"
software into smaller pieces for debugging programs. The Chipper program
promises to speed up debugging because it makes it easier to isolate a bug
in the code. "It's really tedious to go through thousands of lines of
code," says Olsson. Chipper is designed to automate the process of
breaking software into smaller pieces while keeping the structure of the
program intact. "The pieces have to work after they are cut down," Olsson
says. Chipper is based on Java is able to scale large programs down to 20
percent to 35 percent of their size in less than an hour.
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Embedded Software Stuck at C
EE Times (09/27/07) Merritt, Rick
Embedded developers migrating to multicore architectures are unlikely to
get much aid from parallel programming languages, and a panel of embedded
software experts at a recent Power.org conference reported that a dearth of
standards is also a major obstacle. Green Hills Software CTO David
Kleidermacher said 85 percent of all embedded developers employ C or C++,
and was highly skeptical that "a new parallel language will get a
foothold." "The inability of C/C++ code to parallelize coupled with its
ubiquity throughout the embedded market is a major issue for multicore
going forward," said panel moderator and Venture Development project
director Eric Heikkila in an email. "Any alternative parallel programming
languages certainly won't materialize in the embedded market, but instead
will more likely gain momentum in a more mainstream computing market before
making its way into embedded applications." Virtutech's Michel Gerard
explained that embedded software developers will skip the burden of
migrating to parallel languages by simply running at a high level
independent programs or modules in parallel on multicore CPUs, where
synchronization will not be a major requirement. Wind River Systems CTO
Tomas Evensen noted that embedded software developers will be especially
challenged in working out a way to partition applications.
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Virtual Lessons Stimulate Students
BBC News (09/27/07) Sutherland, Ben
Primary school students in Singapore have taken a liking to a virtual
reality system that is able to display graphics as three-dimensional images
in the classroom. The Mixed Reality Lab developed the system, which is
designed to combine the physical world with the virtual world. Wearing a
small headset, a student is able to see an entire world of interactive
images of the Solar system or planets as if they were in the class with the
other students, rather than as images inside a large helmet. The
technology works through boards laid out on a desk, and displays objects
when the user looks through the head-mounted display and registers the
board. For example, students are able to see planets and move them into
the correct order in the solar system, and look beneath the surface of the
Earth. "The mixed reality classroom is a combination of our mixed reality
technology with educational theory," says Wei Liu of the Mixed Reality Lab.
In testing, students who used mixed reality performed better than those
who were only exposed to traditional learning methods.
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From PARC, the Mobile Phone as Tour Guide
CNet (09/28/07) Mills, Elinor
A mobile phone application that offers information useful to someone
roaming an unfamiliar city--such as event and establishment listings based
on the user's current location--has been developed by the Palo Alto
Research Center. The software, code-named Magitti, "predicts the likely
activity," according to project co-leader Bo Begole. The more a user
interacts with the application the more familiar it becomes with the user's
personal preferences, which is reflected in its suggestions. The software
employs collaborative filtering to recommend things that others with
kindred preferences like, and also lets people input their own reviews and
ratings. Japan's Dai Nippon Printing will commercialize this leisure city
guide system in Japan. Clues to the user's activities imparted in emails
and text messages can also be tapped by the system, and Begole says this
analysis takes place on the handset rather than on servers at the company.
The system boasts an easily comprehensible interface with big touch-screen
"buttons," and one-handed operation is also facilitated.
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Brown Bat Flight Team Wins NSF/Science Visualization
Award
Brown University (09/27/2007)
A multidisciplinary team from Brown University that modeled the flight of
bats has won a first place award in the fifth annual International Science
and Technology Visualization Challenge. The researchers conducted
experiments and computer simulations on how the wings of flying bats impact
airflow, and captured the top prize in the informational graphics category.
Kenny Breuer, an engineer, and Sharon Swartz, an evolutionary biologist,
led the effort to construct images from the first recorded fine details of
bats' wing and body movement in flight. The team filmed bats flying
through wind tunnels using motion-capture technology. David Laidlaw,
associate professor of computer science, Daniel Riskin, postdoctoral
research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
and Jaime Peraire, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, were
key members of the team that conducted the original research and produced
the graphics. The journal Science and the National Science Foundation
sponsored the competition. NSF has awarded the team a $580,000 grant to
combine direct measurement of bat flight mechanics and aerodynamics with
computer simulations and neurophysiological measurements. The research
could impact the design of micro air vehicles that are being developed by
the military.
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Carnegie Mellon's Yang Cai Uses New Scanning System to
Plot Digital Graveyard
Carnegie Mellon News (09/27/07)
New 3D reconstruction technology is being used to determine who is buried
at Old St. Luke's Church in Carnegie, Pa. Developed by Yang Cai of
Carnegie Mellon University, the new software is designed to scan
gravestones that are difficult to read and then store the images on
laptops. "Essentially, we reconstruct the tombstone surfaces by applying
filtering and detection algorithms for revealing the words on the archaic
surfaces," says Cai, director of the Ambient Intelligence Lab at Carnegie
Mellon CyLab. Old St. Luke's Church was built in 1765 to serve as a
stockade church for British soldiers. The software could potentially have
a huge impact on the field of archaeology. "Our goal is to take the guess
work out of archaeology and make this reconstruction technology available
for a variety of other industry sectors, such as security and medical
fields," Cai adds. Cai is also building a digital cemetery for the
church.
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Intelligent Playgrounds
CNN (09/26/07) Chan, Michelle Jana
New playgrounds outfitted with artificial intelligence and robotics
technology will be able to recognize a child's behavior and respond
accordingly, enabling children of different skill levels to play and
challenge each other. Known as augmented cognition, or "aug cog," such
technology is currently under development by the armed services to reduce
mental overload in the battlefield. For example, fighter pilot helmets can
be equipped with sensors that can tell when the pilot is being overburdened
and adjust the level of stimuli by dimming the interface and lowering
headset volume. Other aug cog applications include video games that are
capable of determining a player's skill level and adjusting accordingly.
University of Southern Denmark at Odense researchers have built four
special playgrounds, two at kindergartens and two at youth clubs. The
playgrounds have pressure-sensitive floor tiles and each tile has a small
computer inside that measures the force of the child's foot and responds
with colored lights and sounds. One of the games, called "Bug smasher,"
encourages children to chase after a light in the tiles, rewarding them
with a comical smashing sound when they step on the "bug." The playground
is able to adjust the difficulty of the game based on the child's skill
level and can even tell when a child is tiring. University of Southern
Denmark professor of robotics Henrik Hautop Lund says the technology aims
to operate at 10 percent above the participant's capabilities, and that he
is working on more applications for aug cog, including sports training,
physical therapy, and diagnosing children with autism.
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ICANN After Vint Cerf
Domaines.info (09/27/07) Van Gelder, Stephane
Vint Cerf, who has served as chairman of the ICANN board since 1999, will
step down from that position at ICANN's next annual meeting, which will be
held from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2 in Los Angeles. There are three current ICANN
board members who are being considered as possible replacements for Cerf.
One of those candidates is Roberto Gaetano, the current vice-chair of the
board. Gaetano is an Italian who has a great deal of experience with both
ICANN and the domain name industry. If he is selected as the next
chairman, it could be ICANN's way of sending a message that it has become a
truly global agency and one that is completely separate from the U.S.
Department of Commerce. Another candidate being considered is Peter
Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer who also has a great deal of ICANN
experience and is a respected member of the national registry community.
The third candidate under consideration is Steve Crocker, who helped
develop protocols for the precursor to the Internet, Arpanet. However,
Crocker is only a liaison to ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory
Committee and is not a voting member of the board. Although Gaetano,
Dengate Thrush, and Crocker each have a lot to offer in specific areas,
some say that none of these men has as many strengths as Cerf does. As a
result, there is some speculation that ICANN could split the chairman's
responsibilities between the three candidates, in order to take advantage
of each man's strengths and give itself more time to find another
candidate.
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Researcher Gives Update on Mars Rovers
EE Times (09/27/07) Merritt, Rick
A two-month dust storm on Mars is clearing, allowing Opportunity, one of
the two solar-powered Mars Rover vehicles, to continue its exploration of
the Victoria Crater, where it has been stationary since the storm began in
July. Rover team members were worried that the lengthy storm could have
prevented Opportunity from recharging its batteries, which were nearly
depleted by the on-board heaters needed to keep the electronics above 50
degrees Celsius. As of Sep. 27, Opportunity had completed 1,325 days, well
beyond the mission's originally scheduled 90 days. The other rover, the
Spirit Rover, has traveled about 7.2 kilometers, far beyond its expected
reach of 500 meters. Engineers are already designing the next-generation
Rovers, including additional storage and greater bandwidth between the
Rover and the satellite orbiter to which the Rover relays signals to, which
on current models operates at about the equivalent of a 56K modem. The two
Rovers were launched in separate rockets in the summer of 2003 and landed
on Mars in January 2004.
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Scientists Warn of 'Vocal Terror'
BBC News (09/14/07) Seward, Liz
Scientists at the recent British Association Festival of Science in York
expressed concern that improving human speech technology could give rise to
"vocal terrorism" in the next 10 to 15 years. Researchers said an
inability to verify who was speaking could prove to be particularly
problematic if the technology were to fall into the hands of terrorists.
Scientists today are developing computerized speech based on models of a
vocal tract, which helps produce a more realistic sound than the current
method of copying sounds. "If we get to the point where we are
synthesizing the actual shape of somebody's [vocal tract] based on analysis
of their speech, then the speech we are producing should sound and look
like the actual person," says Dr. David Howard of the University of York.
The researchers fear that someone could use the technology to impersonate
the voice of a bank manager and place calls requesting confirmation of
account information. People could use the technology to make prank calls
or even to flawlessly render the voice of a country's leader in an act of
vocal terror. "It's not scare mongering; it's tying to say to people, 'we
have to think about these things,'" adds Howard.
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Connecting the Dots
National Journal (09/29/07) Vol. 39, No. 39, P. 61; Perelman, Marc
The Automated Targeting System (ATS) has been cited by U.S. Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for enabling his department's Custom
and Border Protection agency to link a chain of information that can thwart
terrorist plots, and decried by privacy and civil-liberties groups for
being the tool of a clandestine federal data-mining program that is
collecting and storing highly personal information on travelers. The
system has been employed by federal officials to perform risk assessments
on people entering the country since 2002. "All the key characteristics of
the Automated Targeting System--including the assessment, the basis for the
assessment, the rules that apply, and the 'targeting activities'--remain
shrouded in mystery," says the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which
is opposing the ATS along with 40 other groups and individuals in the
privacy and technology sectors. Homeland Security officials claim the
system does not capture any racial, ethnic, or religious data and that the
goal is to analyze behavior, relationships, and contacts among individuals
and groups. Complaints prompted Homeland Security to announce a proposal
to retain information in the ATS database for 15 years instead of 40, and
to limit the purposes for which the government could use passenger data,
provide individuals with access to data, and add a redress procedure not
included in the original privacy proposal. Civil-liberties groups say the
ATS bears an uncomfortable similarity to the Total Information Awareness
data-mining program that the government terminated four years ago in
response to public resentment. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) warned at one point that the ATS database
"could be used as a warrantless well of evidence from which any law
enforcement, regulatory, or intelligence agency could dip at will--without
any probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or judicial oversight." Although
Democratic leaders in Congress have voted to continue ATS funding, sources
say they are carefully scrutinizing the privacy rule-making process.
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You Can Put Your Trust in Wikipedia 2.0
New Scientist (09/22/07) Vol. 195, No. 2622, P. 28; Giles, Jim
Wikipedia entries can be edited by anyone at anytime, which engenders
heavy skepticism about the accuracy of the online encyclopedia's
information. But the past several years have witnessed the development of
projects whose goal is to increase public trust in Wikipedia and make
vandalism less of a danger. One such project is WikiScanner, which reveals
the identity of contributing individuals or organizations so that the
motivations behind certain entries can be ascertained. In the meantime,
the Wikimedia Foundation claims that it is about to test a bunch of new
trust-based capabilities. Whereas edits to a Wikipedia entry can currently
be made by any user and appear immediately to all readers, a planned
upgrade will entail the instant implementation of edits made by "trusted"
users whose eligibility is based on their level of commitment to Wikipedia.
However, this measure could discourage the participation of new users, who
would no longer be able to enjoy the pleasure of seeing the instant
application of their edits. Also included in the upgrade will be the
installation of a system that automatically awards trust ratings to text
chunks within a certain article. The software underlying this function
uses Wikipedia's edit log to designate a color-coded trust rating to each
contributor, with contributors whose edits tend to remain unchanged awarded
high ratings, while those whose edits are quickly revised receive low
ratings; the idea is that rapidly altered edits are a signal that the
information is inaccurate or malicious. One of the system's drawbacks is
the risk it runs of punishing editors who correct malicious changes,
because the corrections are frequently changed back to the malicious
version by the malcontents. The system is therefore designed to determine
the decline in an editor's rating that transpired when the edit is modified
based on the rating of the other editor involved.
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The Trouble With Enterprise Software
MIT Sloan Management Review (Quarter 3, 2007) Rettig, Cynthia
Maintaining the operation of existing systems consumes 70 percent to 80
percent of IT departments' budgets, while a multiyear study of
approximately 400 companies by MIT researchers indicates that IT
departments practice more conservatism than innovation and are perceived by
business executives as liabilities. At the heart of this trend is the
increased application of data to analysis and fact-based decision making,
concurrent with the growing specialization and complexity of work, which
dovetailed with the advent of digital technology. Although enterprise
systems use general programming software that can manage a certain level of
complexity, it has no tolerance for ambiguity, discrepancies, or illogical
conclusions, and the complexity of software and that of the problems it is
designed to resolve have grown in tandem; because of this, many companies
failed to realize their vision of seamlessly connecting distinct and
far-flung locations via private networks with a single monolithic system.
Compounding this is the lack of statistical proof that the benefits of
enterprise resource planning system deployments compensate for the costs
and risks, while the probability that unpredicted bugs will crop up is also
raised as complexity grows. The vagaries of the data processed and
generated by software, particularly when multiple data sources are
integrated, are an additional headache. Service-oriented architecture is
proposed as the solution to these myriad problems through its ability to
construct modular cross-system business processes. However, this cannot be
achieved until many technical problems are ironed out. A tighter alignment
between an organization's IT and business units is seen as a critical
factor in the success of such an approach.
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'Not With a Bang': Civilization's Accelerating
Challenge
Futurist (10/07) Vol. 41, No. 5, P. 35; Brown, Arnold
As technology and society grow ever more complex and bureaucracy
proliferates without restriction, incompetence and information overload
become increasingly serious threats, and Weiner, Edrich, Brown Chairman
Arnold Brown writes that prevailing organizations will need to be more
adaptable and proficient at tapping teams and expert systems. He cites
research arguing that learning can be inhibited by too much mental
concentration on simple actions; that brain activity can be improved by how
one thinks as opposed to what one thinks about; that flexible thinking and
complex problem-solving can be impeded by the stress of taking exams; and
that impressions and instincts of other people's choices in decision making
are critical. Brown notes the unevenness of the team experience in
business, pointing out that "one apparent problem is the innate
competitiveness of those who are both capable and ambitious. They not only
want to win, but they also want to get recognition, reward, and advancement
for winning." This is a desire that is not always fulfilled by the team
strategy, so it behooves companies that want to take the team approach to
find a way to integrate the star and team systems. Business is learning
that performance improvements raise the effort it must put out to maintain
pace with consumer expectations, while Brown says people's expectations
about government, business, and institutions' ability to avoid or correct
errors are increasingly unrealistic. He points out that identity theft and
other new kinds of criminal activity have been nurtured by IT and
biotechnology advances concurrent with growing globalization and political
shifts, and the increased opportunities for crime are also playing a role
in the dearth of management talent. Brown foresees a world in which
products and services people use will be directed by non-human entities
(robots, networks, etc.), but with increased complexity and proficiency
comes increased fallibility, which is why the author sees an overwhelming
need for adaptability that emphasizes effectiveness over efficiency.
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