Tech Grads Get Higher Salary Offers, But Existing Workers
May Face Job Perils
Computerworld (10/03/07) Thibodeau, Patrick
Job prospects for IT graduates look healthy with an increase in starting
salaries, but countering this trend are cutbacks at some of the leading IT
vendors, putting midcareer high-tech workers' future in doubt. The
Rochester Institute of Technology's Emanuel Contomanolis reports that IT
recruiters are aggressively courting students, and a recent survey by the
National Association of Colleges and Employers estimates that computer
science graduates have been offered an average salary of $53,051 this year,
a nearly 5 percent increase over last year's level. The higher salary
offers may be informed by the fact that the pool of computer science grads
has shrunk, with the Computing Research Association reporting that the
total number of bachelor's degree grads from the 170 North American
institutions that grant computer science degrees up to the Ph.D. level fell
from over 14,000 annually in 2000 to 10,206 for the academic year that
ended in the spring of 2006. Factors believed to have contributed to this
decline include the dot-com implosion and the outsourcing of tech jobs to
lower-wage countries. Among the high-tech companies planning to reduce
their IT workforces is Sun Microsystems and Intel, which sends the message
that "midcareer workers better beware," according to RIT professor and
author Ron Hira. "The same firms that are laying off thousands are
clamoring that they need more foreign workers," he notes. "One
interpretation of this phenomenon is that companies have no interest in
retraining or retaining incumbent workers to fill those positions." For
example, in a September filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, Electronic Data Systems declared that it was offering an early
retirement program to around 12,000 of its 50,000 U.S. employees.
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Registration for 2007 Tapia Conference Still Open
HPC Wire (10/02/07)
More than 300 people have already registered for this year's Richard Tapia
Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. Speakers from industry,
academia, and research include Shirley Malcom, head of the American
Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS); Norman Johnson, chief
scientist at Referentia Systems; Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd
College; and Richard Tapia, the Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in
the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University.
The inaugural Ken Kennedy Distinguished Lecture will be given by Manuela
Veloso, Herbert A. Simon professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon
University, and the closing plenary talk will be given by Anne Kuhns,
director of IT security at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. ACM and the IEEE
Computer Society are co-sponsoring Tapia 2007, which is scheduled for Oct.
14-17 in Orlando, Fla. The event also offers two-and-a-half days of
technical presentations, a poster session for research projects, and a
number of panel discussions on encouraging more students from
underrepresented groups to pursue computing.
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NSF Provides Funding to Transform Computing
Education
National Science Foundation (10/04/07)
The National Science Foundation has awarded $6 million to more than 25
institutions across the country as part of its effort to improve
undergraduate computing education nationwide. The NSF's Directorate for
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has launched the
CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education (CPATH)
program to focus on the computing curricula and better prepare students for
the workforce. Computer science programs have seen their enrollments fall
recently, while other nations have closed the gap on computer science and
engineering. The NSF believes computing education, which has not changed
much in recent decades, must keep students engaged. "We need to inspire
the best and brightest to go into computing," says Jeannette Wing, the
NSF's associate director of CISE. CPATH is funding a project in which
Michigan State University will work with a local community college and an
industry consortium on tailoring computing classes and curricula to the
needs of the engineering workforce. "We will be able to develop and define
the process and provide a model that can be shared across the nation with
other universities," says Tom Wolff, associate dean of undergraduate
studies in MSU's College of Engineering.
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More E-Voting Tests Slated in Contested Fla. Voting
District
Computerworld (10/04/07) Weiss, Todd R.
The U.S. House of Representatives has okayed another round of testing for
the e-voting hardware used in Florida's 13th Congressional District during
the 2006 House election. The contested race between Republican Vern
Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings, in which direct-recording
iVotronic systems from Election Systems & Software were used, had 18,000
undervotes. Buchanan won by 369 votes. The Committee on House
Administration's Election Task Force will test the systems' firmware to
determine if it matches the certified version, test ballots using 112
scenarios including casting votes and changing votes, and miscalibrate
machines to see if there is a connection to the undervote. The three tests
were recommended in a report from the Government Accountability Office.
Testing is scheduled for Nov. 26-Dec. 7, after which the GAO will report
back to the task force. "The results of the GAO's testing will play an
essential role in determining whether the machines did or did not
contribute to the undervote in the contested election," says task force
chairman Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas). ES&S says it is still reviewing
the GAO report, but adds that previous tests found that its systems were
not at fault.
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High-Tech Culture of Silicon Valley Originally Formed
Around Radio
San Francisco Chronicle (09/30/07) P. A1; Abate, Tom
MIT industrial researcher Timothy Sturgeon and historian and author
Christophe Lecuyer trace the beginnings of California's Silicon Valley to
the advent of radio in the early 1900s, noting that hobbyist engineers
experimented with the then new technology and set up a meritocracy
controlled by those who improved the speed, performance, and affordability
of electronic products. Shortly afterwards a school for radio engineers
was established along with Federal Telegraph in Palo Alto, and Sturgeon
says the proto-Silicon Valley's first major customer was the U.S. military,
which awarded big contracts to Federal Telegraph in the first World War.
The next step in Silicon Valley's evolution was the establishment of
Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto garage, and Lecuyer reports that military
funding was crucial to the valley's growth in the 1930s through the early
1960s. It has become a popular myth that Silicon Valley was born 50 years
ago when eight engineers, including future co-founder of Intel Gordon
Moore, formed the valley's first chip company, Fairchild Semiconductor;
bolstering this myth of the valley's foundation is the fact that it marked
the first time that venture capital was used to fund the company, courtesy
of investor Arthur Rock. It also signaled the emergence of a business
model where funded ideas give birth to startups, products, and even entire
industries. "Silicon Valley created an environment that allowed ideas and
money and people to combine more easily," says dean of UC Berkeley's School
of Information AnnaLee Saxenian. Her book, "The New Argonauts," projects
that the valley will maintain its status as a hub of design and innovation
by teaming up with lower-cost manufacturing facilities overseas, although
high-tech job opportunities appear to be less abundant.
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$100 Laptop a Bargain at $200
New York Times (10/04/07) P. C1; Pogue, David
A lightweight, silent, ruggedized laptop equipped with a tablet screen,
video camera, microphone, a graphics tablet, game-pad controllers, and a
memory-card slot has been developed by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The
battery-powered XO laptop's retail price is $200, and if enough of the
units are sold then the price could fall even further. OLPC's goal is to
make cheap, rugged computers that can be used by poor children in
developing countries. The XO's lithium ferrophosphate battery can be
replaced cheaply and runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop
battery; the computer consumes 2 watts on average, versus about 60 watts on
a typical business laptop. The XO provides regular wireless Internet
connectivity as well as mesh networking, and its system software takes up
one-fifth of its 1 GB of flash memory storage. The majority of the
laptop's programs can be shared on the mesh network. The XO comes close to
the initiative's original vision of a $100 laptop, writes David Pogue, and
in November the computer will be offered for sale to the public in
industrialized countries for two weeks through OLPC's "Get 1, Give 1"
program. Under the program, a consumer pays $400, which covers the cost of
one XO laptop--complete with tax deduction--for the consumer and one for a
student in an impoverished country. "The XO laptop, now in final testing,
is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet," Pogue
writes. "Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after
breakthrough."
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IBM Attempts to Reinvent Memory
Technology Review (10/04/07) Bullis, Kevin
IBM is developing a nanowire-based memory device that could boast greater
simplicity, speed, density, reliability, and affordability, and perhaps
ultimately emerge as a universal memory. The device would squeeze 100 bits
of data onto one nanowire, and be potentially capable of storing between 10
and 100 times more data than flash memory while running much faster, says
IBM physicist Stuart Parkin. In addition, the device would be a
solid-state memory and offer far more durability than magnetic hard drives.
The devices would blend the best elements of hard drives, flash drives,
and dynamic random access memory while avoiding many of their shortcomings.
Parkin's proposed memory would be spared hard drives' need for mechanical
parts, run orders of magnitude faster than flash, and would not require a
continuous supply of energy to store data, as DRAM does. The devices could
also beat conventional solid-state memory in terms of cost and compactness,
and the storage of information bits would be facilitated by the creation or
removal of domain walls within magnetic nanowires. The discovery that
electronic currents in magnetic materials can shuttle these walls along a
nanowire, and in the same direction, is vital to the memory's operation.
Right now this current is too high to be practical, while another technical
problem that will have to be overcome is getting a clearer picture of
domain wall behavior, which University of Virginia professor Stuart Wolf
says could determine the density of the proposed memory.
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Spam Weapon Helps Preserve Books
BBC News (10/02/07) Rubens, Paul
An anti-spamming weapon developed at Carnegie Mellon University is now
aiding university researchers in the preservation of books and manuscripts.
The CAPTCHA test consists of an image of letters or numbers that have been
distorted and must be translated by humans in order to access Web sites.
Most spam bots are incapable of solving such puzzles, but a CMU research
team that is digitizing old books and manuscripts provided by the Internet
Archive is using the CAPTCHA method to decipher words that cannot be read
by optical character recognition software. These indecipherable words are
distributed to Web sites around the globe where they are used as
conventional CAPTCHAs. Visitors solve these "reCAPTCHAs," which are then
sent back to CMU. To guarantee the correct deciphering of reCAPTCHAs, site
visitors are shown images of two words to study, the contents of one of
which is already known. "If a person types the correct answer to the one
we already know, we have confidence that they will give the correct answer
to the other," says CMU professor Louis von Ahn. "We send the same unknown
words to two different people, and if they both provide the same answer
then effectively we can be sure that it is correct." Von Ahn reports that
popular sites' adoption of reCAPTCHAs is helping the system to translate
about 1 million words daily for CMU's book archiving initiative.
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CERT Advances Secure Coding Standards
Dark Reading (10/02/07) Higgins, Kelly Jackson
CERT and Fortify Software have announced an alliance to automate
compliance with CERT's C and C++ Secure Coding Standard. CERT is
converting its guidelines into a coding format that will run on Fortify's
Source Code Analysis tool, and the software module borne from this effort
will be freely available from CERT, allowing other tool vendors to
translate it to their products. Programmers who wished to employ the
voluntary CERT guidelines on writing cleaner and more secure software in C
and C++ were forced to mine the huge checklist manually, which Fortify
chief scientist Brian Chess calls a tedious process. CERT obtains input
from software developers and other organizations to help spot common
programming mistakes that cause software bugs and supply secure coding
standards through its secure coding initiative, but Matasano Security's
Thomas Ptacek says, "Product teams don't get better by reading secure
coding standards. They get better by working with security testers, seeing
how their code gets broken by attackers, and learning from the experience."
What is needed is a top-down security commitment, which Ptacek says is
beyond the abilities of many vendors. Though CERT vulnerability analyst
Robert Seacord acknowledges the importance of internal buy-in, he says it
is impossible without guidelines on how to guarantee that security is a key
consideration in software design. "There's a big need for a common
language that security testers and software developers can speak so they
can agree on what needs to be done and what needs to be taken seriously,"
maintains Ptacek. "I don't see the harm in what CERT is doing, but we
should figure out the 'what' before we spend lots of time on the 'how.'"
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Robot Dogs Race to Be Soldier's Best Friend
New Scientist (09/25/07) Knight, Will
Boston Dynamics was commissioned by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency to develop a quadruped robot modeled after a canine that
can traverse rough terrain as a prototype for robots that can serve as
"pack mules" and other assistive machines for military personnel. The next
step in the evolution of the Chihuahua-sized robot, known as LittleDog, is
the development by university researchers of control algorithms in the hope
that this will indicate the best adaptive methodology for moving over
uneven surfaces. Competing to develop the algorithms are six
DARPA-selected teams from institutions that include Stanford and MIT. Each
team has been assigned a LittleDog robot and a section of artificial ground
the device must cross, and after rigorous laboratory tests the teams send
their control algorithms to DARPA on a monthly basis for further testing.
Throughout the coming year the agency will test new algorithms on more
unpredictable, previously unseen terrain, which means the algorithms will
have to quickly identify footholds and the most optimal routes, with an
overall winner announced at the end of 2008. Jerry Pratt of Florida's
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition reports that most of the teams
are transitioning from a static approach in which three of LittleDog's legs
are on the ground to one in which only two legs are rooted at any time.
The current LittleDog model uses an external motion-capture system, but
successive robots will ultimately have to study the ground ahead for
themselves.
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Computer Science Researchers Explore Virtualization
Potential for High-End Computing
Virginia Tech News (10/02/07) Daniilidi, Christine
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $300,000 Computer Science
Research grant to Virginia Tech computer science professors Dimitrios
Nikolopoulos and Godmar Back for their Virtualization Technologies for
Application-Specific Operating Systems project. "This research develops a
new framework for customizing the system software environment that hosts
the execution of parallel applications, on emerging supercomputers built
from multi-core processors," Nikolopoulos says. "We leverage
paravirtualization, a technique which enables us to tailor the system
software to applications, tune applications and system software in a
synergistic manner to make best use of hardware resources, minimize the
intrusiveness of system software, and eventually improve performance and
utilization on precious supercomputing resources." Applications running on
today's supercomputers require system software modules customized to
specific hardware and application properties, but the diversity of these
properties precludes the existence of a universally applicable system
software development strategy--a problem that becomes profound with the
emergence of multicore architectures. Nikolopoulos says their approach
involves devising a new paravirtualization architecture that delivers
applications that offer substantially more precise perception and
accounting of hardware resources than current paravirtualization systems.
"By combining supercomputing, parallel programming, virtualization, and
operating systems aspects, this new grant demonstrates the new
possibilities for collaboration that were enabled by bringing together
different researchers with different areas of specialty under the roof of
the Center for High-End Computing," Back says.
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Darpa Hatches Plan for Insect Cyborgs to Fly
Reconnaissance
EE Times (10/03/07) Johnson, R. Colin
The goal of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Hybrid-Insect
MEMS program is to integrate insects with microelectromechanical systems
for remotely controlled military reconnaissance missions. DARPA is funding
research into this concept at MIT, Boyce Thompson Institute, and the
University of Michigan. DARPA's Jan Walker says the first two institutions
are focusing on embedded MEMS for large moths, while the third has enlisted
horned beetles for its experiments. The project will culminate with the
flight of a cyborg insect to within five meters of a specific target
positioned about 100 meters away using remote control or GPS. The HI-MEMS
project seeks to embed the electronics in the insect while it is in a
preliminary stage of metamorphosis so that the living tissue grows around
the implant before it is activated. A cyborg insect would come equipped
with a MEMS chip, sensors, a radio receiver, GPS, and probes linked to the
muscles, while personnel would need to be trained to fly these insects
remotely or via microcontrollers. The chip would draw power from the bug's
movements to keep the other components functional. DARPA's ultimate
objective is to enable operators to link to the insects' own natural
senses, so that they could, for instance, see directly out of the insect's
eyes rather than through attached cameras. "There are enormous engineering
problems with actually realizing remote-controlled animals," notes
Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley. "I
would say the short-term odds of DARPA's project actually succeeding are
very low--it's theoretically possible, but could take another 100 years to
actually do it."
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Experimental Evidence Buoys Potential of Circuit-Design
Theory
Stanford Report (09/26/07) Stober, Dan
The growing density of transistors on chips and the resulting increase of
damaging heat output is seen as a threat to the continued viability of
Moore's law, although a new circuit-design theory from Stanford researchers
that taps quantum physics may turn out to be the law's salvation. The
theory, which was confirmed by experiments in Germany, revolves around the
Quantum Spin Hall Effect. The experimenters used special semiconductor
material fashioned from layers of mercury telluride and cadmium telluride,
and coaxed the electrons' spins to align; in these circumstances, the
current streams only along the edge of the semiconductor sheet. It is
interesting to note that electrons with the same spin travel in the same
direction, while those with the opposite spin flow in the opposite
direction. This atypical current does not produce deleterious heat via
power dissipation or electrons colliding because of defects in the
semiconducting material. Stanford physics professor Shoucheng Zhang says
this unusual electron behavior represents a new a state of matter. He
reports that semiconductors that harness the Quantum Spin Hall Effect,
which have the added advantage of being fabricated from materials already
familiar to manufacturers, could sustain Moore's law for decades. The
research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S.
Department of Energy.
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K-State Research Leading to Software to Help Nation's
Cattle Producers Identify Biosecurity Risk, Evaluate Impact of Cow-Calf
Diseases Online
Kansas State University News (09/27/07) Sanderson, Mike
Kansas State University researchers are working on two projects to create
software that will help cattle producers maintain secure feedlots and
understand the impact of specific diseases. The feedlot security project
is developing software that evaluates biosecurity and biocontainment at
feed yards by asking producers several questions, such as where they import
their cattle from and how much contact healthy and sick cattle have with
one another. The program also evaluates features such as lighting fencing
and how much access is given to visitors. When the research is complete
the K-State researchers will report their findings to the Kansas Animal
Health Department so producers across the nation can be assessed. The
other project is the development of a Web-based modeling tool to help
producers evaluate how the herd will be affected by cow-calf diseases.
Similar modeling tools are used in the beef industry to evaluate financial
risks. Cattle producers will be able to enter information such as the size
of the herd and the number of imported cattle, enabling the program to
create a multiyear simulation of the production and economic impacts if
diseases were to infect the herd, as well as the economic impact on the
producer.
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New Night Vision System Reduces Car Accidents
EurekAlert (09/27/07)
Researchers in Europe have patterned a night-time driving system after
artificial vision systems. Experts at the Department of Computer
Architecture and Technology at the University of Grenada have developed a
microchip that can be installed in cars that will make it easier to provide
drivers with visual, acoustic, and other signs about obstacles ahead in the
road. The system also makes use of two infrared cameras placed on cars to
record scenes at a greater distance than conventional headlights are able
to illuminate. "Dipped headlights only illuminate about 56 meters when the
breaking distance at 100 km/h is about 80 meters," says professor Eduardo
Ros Vidal, who is involved in the DRIVSCO project. The microchip will
improve the extraction of information from cameras and driving elements
such as bends, pedestrians, and other cars, offering real-time processing
of movements. The system is also expected to improve the sophistication of
intelligent cars. Researchers from the University of Munster in Germany,
who are working with eye-tracking systems, contributed to DRIVSCO.
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Internet Volunteers Transform Search and Rescue
New Scientist (09/29/07) Vol. 195, No. 2623, P. 26; Marks, Paul
Volunteers sifted through satellite photos on the Internet to search for
the missing plane of millionaire aviator Steve Fossett, and in the process
discovered the wrecks of eight other downed aircraft, illustrating the
potential of "crowd-sourced" search. "The Internet is probably the only
way you can do a massive search cost-effectively," says FireBall
Information Technologies President Tim Ball. The search for the missing
millionaire is only the second time crowd-sourcing has been tapped as a
search tool. In the first instance, which was instigated by the
disappearance of Microsoft research engineer Jim Gray, organizers coaxed
satellite operators GeoEye and Digital Globe to contribute satellite images
of the search area with 1-meter resolution, which were then segmented and
sent to online volunteers using Amazon's Mechanical Turk Web site for
examination. Each image sent to examiners searching for Fossett covered an
85-square meter area and was sent to 10 online volunteers; images flagged
by the majority of the volunteers were prioritized for viewing by the U.S.
Civil Air Patrol or Air National Guard teams. These search and rescue
missions are unique in that the people being searched for were well
connected, which begs the question whether similar efforts would be made
for less well-connected people. The chief difficulty of mounting such
missions is companies' reluctance to donate satellite imagery, and there is
no assurance that the satellites will pass over a given area precisely when
they are needed. Meanwhile, a 160-megapixel camera and image-processing
system developed by FireBall and San Francisco's High Altitude Mapping
Mission that can reportedly image "state and nation-sized areas" from an
altitude of 20,000 feet is currently being test flown.
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Privacy Threats Are No Longer 'Terra Incognita'
The Star Online (10/01/07) Geist, Michael
Hundreds of privacy commissioners, government regulators, business
leaders, and privacy advocates from around the world met for three days in
Montreal last week to gain a better understanding of how new technologies
such as ubiquitous computing, radio frequency identification devices, and
nanotechnology will impact privacy protection. The theme of the
International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners conference was
"Terra Incognita," a reference to not knowing what lies ahead as technology
rapidly changes. At the conference U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff argued that governments will need to collect more data if
they are to protect citizens in the years to come. For example, Chertoff
said fingerprints can be used to increase surveillance, and he noted that a
single fingerprint taken from a vehicle used in a bombing in Iraq was
matched to one taken years ago at a U.S. border crossing. Although the
idea of a broad surveillance society made many privacy advocates cringe,
Chertoff suggested that there will be little they can do about it. The
conference focused on current privacy protection strategies such as privacy
audits, privacy impact assessments, trust seals, and global cooperation.
Although such measures have become more effective, there was a general
feeling among the participants that more needs to be done, writes Michael
Geist.
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West Is Taking Fight Against Terrorism Online
International Herald Tribune (09/30/07) Carvajal, Doreen
Western nations are moving forward to establish online security perimeters
with proposals to impede Web sites and to issue emails containing spyware
that would keep an eye on jihadists, even though critics caution that such
measures could give rise to censorship and privacy infringement. A series
of anti-terrorism proposals will be unveiled by EU justice commissioner
Franco Frattini in November, and included in the proposals will be a
package for the development of technology to block Web sites that post
bomb-making recipes and other terrorist how-tos, and for the
criminalization of online terrorist enlistment. "The Internet, as we all
know, is abused for terrorist propaganda and also for disseminating
information on how to make bombs," notes Frattini spokesman Friso
Roscam-Abbing. "What we want to achieve is to make that phenomenon
punishable." Sweden, Germany, Australia, and other countries are
individually seeking additional powers and technologies to ostensibly
thwart terrorism online. Frattini and other public officials pledge that
governments are balancing free speech and security to guarantee that Web
sites are not used to share data in a way that constitutes a threat to
public safety. Critics are worried about these plans since the EU nations
are already moving to adopt a "data retention directive" mandating that
ISPs will need to hold on to information about communications from six to
24 months to help in the identification of terrorism networks. "One way of
viewing these trends is that the terrorists have won," says University of
Cambridge computer security researcher Richard Clayton. "They're making us
change our society to counteract, not what terrorists are doing, but what
they're threatening to do."
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