Gates to Students: Consider IT Careers
eSchool News (02/25/08)
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says the widespread shortage of information
technology graduates in North America is forcing Microsoft and other
software companies to look to developing countries such as China to meet
their needs. "When we want to hire lots of software engineers, there is a
shortage in North America--a pretty significant shortage," Gates says.
Speaking at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Gates told
students that IT workers are in high demand and urged students to consider
a career in IT. Gates criticized the United States government for its
strict adherence to the H-1B visa and argued that there should be a free
flow of talent going into the United States. He said if there is a bright
person who wants a job it should not be difficult to cross a boarder to get
one. Gates also recalled when he want to college in "the Dark Ages" and
learned about computers on his own time, and told students how lucky they
are to be learning during this period. "Fortunately for all of you, you're
in a generation where all of these courses are going to be online and
basically free," Gates said. "I'm taking solid state physics from MIT,
though MIT doesn't know it." Speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, Gates
predicted that people will increasingly interact with computers through
touch and speech rather than with a keyboard, and said that software is
proliferating into different branches of science such as biology and
astronomy. Gates said that researchers have to manage so much information
that the need for machine learning is absolutely essential.
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HPC Challenge Awards at SC08
HPC Wire (02/21/08)
The DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) Program and IDC have
announced the annual HPC Challenge Award Competition as SC08, which
encourages HPC experts to develop hardware and software capabilities that
will improve the use of HPC systems. The HPC Challenge benchmark suite,
including Global HPL, Global RandomAccess, EP STREAM (Triad) per system,
and Global FFT, will be the focus of the competition. There will be four
awards for Best Performance on a base or optimized run submitted to the HPC
Challenge Web site. For the Most Productivity class of awards, the
evaluation committee will look for the most "elegant" implementation of the
benchmarks, with a 50 percent weight on performance and a 50 percent weight
on code elegance, clarity, and size. By Oct. 24, 2008, participants must
provide a short description of the implementation, the performance
achieved, lines-of-code, and the actual source code of the project.
Finalists will be invited to present their work at the awards session,
which will take place during the SC08 conference, which takes place Nov.
15-21, 2008, in Austin, Tex.
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One Million Trillion ‘Flops' Per Second Targeted By
New Institute for Advanced Architectures
Sandia National Laboratories (02/21/08) Singer, Neal
The new Institute for Advanced Architectures, launched jointly by Sandia
and Oak Ridge national laboratories, will focus on preparing the groundwork
for an exascale computer, which would be capable of processing one million
trillion calculations per second. Currently, teraflop computers are state
of the art, performing trillions of calculations per second. Sandia
project lead Sudip Dosanjh says the idea behind the new institute is to
close critical gaps between optimal performance and actual performance on
current supercomputers, which Sandia researchers believe can be done by
developing novel and innovative computer architectures. "An exascale
computer is essential to perform more accurate simulations that, in turn,
support solutions for emerging science and engineering challenges in
national defense, energy assurance, advanced materials, climate, and
medicine," says Sandia's James Peery. Dosanjh says one of the main goals
of the institute is to reduce or eliminate the growing mismatch between
processing speeds and data movement. In larger computers, data may be
stored farther away from a processor, increasing data movement and reducing
overall efficiency. The institute will also work to reduce the amount of
power needed to run a future exascale computer, as well as improve
software's ability to run in parallel.
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Java Increasingly Threatened by New App Dev
Frameworks
InfoWorld (02/21/08) Krill, Paul
Java could slip to second-tier status as a development language as rival
technologies start to garner more attention. Nearly 13 years old, Java is
now competing with scripting languages such as PHP, Ruby, and Microsoft's
.Net. Java has been praised for its ability to run on multiple platforms
through the Java Virtual Machine, and Java received most of the attention
for years before being seriously challenged by .Net and open-source
scripting varieties. Microsoft has since made its .Net platform a serious
contender, and a November 2007 report by Info-Tech Research Group found
that .Net is becoming more popular than Java. However, Java is far from
obsolete. Rick Ross, president of the DZone developer community and
founder of Javalobby, says that Java can be found in almost everything,
including major databases and in the Web sites of large companies such as
eBay, and notes that it represents a multibillion-dollar industry.
Info-Tech senior research analyst George Goodall says that Microsoft has an
advantage in its ability to offer a single soup-to-nuts stack that features
.Net, the Exchange email system, and the SQL Server database. Info-Tech's
survey of 1,900 companies, mostly midmarket companies with less than $1
billion in annual revenues, found that 12 percent of enterprises focus
exclusively on .Net while only 3 percent focus only on Java. Additionally,
49 percent center primarily on .Net, while 20 percent center on Java. The
survey did find that .Net popularity decreases very gradually as the size
of the enterprise increases, but that the decreased popularity of .Net does
not come from an increase in Java, but rather a preference for other
development platforms in heterogeneous environments.
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Europe Invests in Real-Time Java for Multicore
Systems
EE Times (02/20/08)
The Open Group is collaborating with a consortium of European real-time
technology developers, industrial manufacturers, and research organizations
to develop a new framework for Java-based real-time applications on modern
parallel processor systems. The Java Environment for Parallel Real-Time
Development (JEOPARD) project, with the support of the European Commission,
is creating an advanced framework for real-time Java on multicore and
parallel systems. The platform-independent framework will maintain the
reliability essential for safety and mission-critical applications while
using the additional processing power available in the latest parallel
processors. The JEOPARD project's goal is to provide the tools for
platform-independent development of predictable systems that make use of
symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) multicore platforms that enhance software
productivity and reusability by extending processor technology already used
on desktop systems for the specific needs of multicore embedded systems.
The project will contribute to standards required for the development of
portable software, such as the Real-Time Specification for Java. JEOPARD
will also develop a platform independent software interface for real-time
multicore systems that will be based on existing technologies, including
the Real-Time Specification for Java and Safety-Critical Java.
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'World Wide Computer' Is on Horizon
USA Today (02/25/08) P. 13B; Juskalian, Russ
The Internet is evolving into a gigantic "world wide computer" that will
eventually achieve a degree of artificial intelligence, theorizes Nicholas
Carr in "The Big Switch." He says IT and computing usage resembles
electrical power in that peak load and capacity patterns are similar. Idle
capacity can be reduced to a minimum by analyzing and matching the usage
patterns of various types of customers. Carr reasons that IT can function
as a utility, and that corporations can purchase IT services over the
Internet from specialty companies rather than setting up in-house servers
and applications at a much higher cost. Carr cautions that utility
computing should not be promoted as a panacea for societal ills, noting
that electricity made a similar promise that it could not fulfill. He
focuses in one chapter on the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of
Staff's 2003 Information Operation Roadmap, which he finds "disconcerting
to read military planners calmly laying out a doomsday scenario in which
American forces act to 'disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally
emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on
electromagnetic spectrum.' "
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Apostrophes in Names Stir Lot o' Trouble
Associated Press (02/21/08) Odriscoll, Sean
Despite their sophistication, computers are still often confused when an
apostrophe appears in a name, which can cause problems for users when they
to vote, schedule appointments, rent a car, book a flight, or take a
college exam. In addition to names with apostrophes, names with hyphens
and names with surnames such as "van" can also cause problems. Permission
Data's Michael Rais says the problem is sloppy programming. "It's standard
shortsightedness," he says. "Most programs set a rule for first name and
last name. They don't think of foreign-sounding names." Rais says
problems normally arise in two ways. First, online forms often have a
filter that searches for unfamiliar terms that might be a mistake or a joke
and might automatically block a last name with an apostrophe, hyphen, or
space. Second, if the computer system is sophisticated enough to accept
unusual last names, the names must be stored in the database, where a
hyphen or apostrophe can be mistaken for a piece of computer code,
corrupting the system. During the 2004 Michigan caucus, thousands of
voters with names such as O'Connor, Al-Hussein, and Van Kemp did not have
their votes counted. The technical problem is difficult to correct because
computer systems have numerous ways of recognizing names. "It depends on
the form filters and it depends on the database program," Rais says.
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Scientists Demand an Ethical Education in Computer
Engineering
Innovations Report (02/21/08) Flores, Francisco Javier Alonso
Computer engineers could become the depersonalized tools of other parties
if they do not receive a solid ethical education, concludes a new report
from researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M). Ethics is
ultimately about personal freedom because it guides computer engineers
along their destiny of personal growth as they find new ways to bring good
into the world, suggests study co-author M. Rosario Gonzalez from the
Complutense University of Madrid. The discussion of ethics in information
technology essentially involves the differing ideas of consequentialism
(that good actions are determined by the consequences) and deontologism
(that right or wrong is independent of the consequences). The researchers
studied the different ethics systems and came up with a model, "moderate
deontologism," or rational behavior based on rules and consequences. The
most correct ethical position takes the consequences of actions into
consideration while recognizing the barriers necessary for respecting human
dignity. UC3M will take a cross-sectional approach to professional ethics
for new computer engineering degrees offered in the incoming academic year.
Gonzalo Genova, another study co-author, says that "the subject is
important enough to warrant specific intellectual and rigorous
treatment."
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Global Consortium Launches Study on Open Source as a
Development Tool
United Nations University (02/19/08)
Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) will be the focus of a $1 million
European project over the next two years. Specialists from research
institutes, government agencies, private companies, and non-governmental
organizations in nine countries will come together to study the potential
of FLOSS as a development tool in target regions. UNU-MERIT, the joint
research and training center of United Nations University and Maastricht
University in the Netherlands, will head the consortium of 11 organizations
that are participating in the FLOSSInclude project. They will study the
key factors that could influence the growing use, deployment, and
development of FLOSS, and implement solutions, tools, and services that are
ultimately cost-effective and practical for each environment. The pilot
will build on previous projects by partners such as the FLOSSWorld study,
and provide a foundation for future collaborations between the European
Union and developing countries.
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No Directions Required -- Software Smartens Mobile
Robots
Scientific American (02/21/08) Sergo, Peter
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's three-year Learning
Applied to Ground Robots (LAGR) initiative, which awarded eight teams of
computer scientists $2 million to $3 million to develop software that would
give unmanned vehicles the ability to autonomously survey and navigate
off-road areas, recently concluded with final tests of the developed
systems on a test course in San Antonio. Initially, researchers believed
that visual learning would be easy to implement in computer systems, but as
New York University Laboratory for Computational Vision principal
investigator Eero Simoncelli points out, humans take vision for granted and
overlook its complexity. In addition to classifying natural obstacles,
LAGR researchers had to implement a software program that could improve a
mobile robot's ability to analyze and travel through an environment. Until
LAGR, most self-navigating robots could only scan their immediate
surroundings and plot a course over short distances, which makes it
difficult for robots to determine an optimum route to a destination farther
than their immediate area, about 25 feet. Many LARG teams failed to equip
the LAGR robot with sufficient long-range vision, but participants took
advantage of a mapping system that stored collected information, which made
their robots more successful at certain challenges the second time. Some
also developed systems that were exceptional at responding to obstacles
that suddenly popped up during trials.
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Computers 'Spot Alzheimer's Fast'
BBC News (02/22/08)
University College London researchers say they have developed a method
using MRI scans for identifying brain damage caused by Alzheimer's disease
with 96 percent accuracy. The new method works by teaching a computer the
difference between the brains scans of people with no signs of the disease
and scans from proven Alzheimer's patients. "The advantage of using
computers is that they prove cheaper, faster, and more accurate than the
current method of diagnosis," says UCL professor Richard Frackowiak. "The
new method makes an objective diagnosis without the need for human
intervention. This will be particularly attractive for areas of the world
where there is a shortage of trained clinicians and when a standardized
reliable diagnosis is needed." Frackowiak notes that symptoms only emerge
after a considerable amount of brain damage has occurred, so it is
important to make an early, accurate diagnosis to improve the chances of
preventing further damage. He says the next step is to see if the
technique can be used to track the progression of the disease in a patient,
a breakthrough that could be used to test the efficacy of new drug
treatments without the cost of clinical trials.
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Tech Workplace Climate Unfavorable to Women
eWeek (02/21/08) Perelman, Deb
Women in the technology industry are less satisfied with fairness and
their supervisory relationships than male tech workers, as well as men and
women in nontechnical fields, reveals a new Catalyst report sponsored by
IBM. The report, "Women in Technology: Maximizing the Talent, Minimizing
Barriers," says IT is making progress, but many women still feel excluded
and left out of the decision making process. IBM's Maria Ferris, a
contributor to the report, says she is unsure if women feel this way
because they see few females in their departments or organizations. "But
it's important to be inclusive, and to train managers on becoming more
inclusive," she says. "It's not that difficult to ensure that all people
who report to you participate in decisions that are made, to call on them
and get their input." A lower percentage of women in IT said they were
provided with regular feedback, good communication, or general availability
by supervisors than men, and both women and men in other fields. And
companies are not doing enough to develop their talent. The report also
notes that IT employment has rebounded since the dot-com bust, but the
number of women in certain technical fields has been flat or declined.
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Virtual Teachers Outperform Real Thing
MSNBC (02/21/08) Lloyd, Robin
Researchers at the Annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science said that virtual characters and digital tutors are
helping children and adults develop advanced social and language skills
that can be difficult to learn through conventional approaches.
Northwestern University's Justine Cassell says children with autism can
develop advanced social skills by interacting with a "virtual child."
Cassell has developed the Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA), a virtual
human capable of interacting with people using language and gestures. The
virtual child is a cartoon about the size of an 8-year-old that kids
interact with using a plasma screen projection. Cassell says that children
who played with the virtual child improved their language skills and
social-interaction skills. The virtual child can also teach autistic
children the ability to stay on topic in conversations, take turns, and to
talk and nod when being spoken to. Meanwhile, University of California,
Santa Cruz researcher Dominic W. Massaro has developed 3D animated tutors
that can teach remedial readers, children with language challenges, and
anyone learning a second language. The teachers are less cartoonish and
focus on speech accuracy. One of the tutors has been used by the Defense
Language Institute in California to teach foreign languages to Americans
doing military and other work in Iraq.
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Software to Evaluate Developmental Disorders in Children
Developed
The Hindu (02/14/08) Varma, Dinesh
The Automated Software Screener for development disorders is a 48-question
software matrix, based on a computational questionnaire matrix, that can be
used as a pre-clinical tool to evaluate if a child's development milestones
are age-appropriate. "We initially set out with a questionnaire of around
200 enquiries. The subsequent pruning based on inputs from experts has
helped make the matrix more reliable and sensitive," says computer
scientist Sampathkumar Veeraraghavan, who developed the software along with
physician Karthik Srinivasan. The software framework includes an automated
screener system, a report generator system, and gaming techniques, which
are still being fine-tuned. The screener uses responses given by the
primary care taker to evaluate such areas as fine and gross motor skills,
social skills, and language. Following a screening session, the program
sends a comprehensive report stating whether the child demonstrates any
symptoms of developmental disorders. Jaya Krishnaswamy, director of the
Madhuram Narayanan Centre for Exceptional Children, says the software will
enable even lay parents to be reassured that their child is attaining the
proper developmental milestones. Sampathkumar says the program will enable
properly-trained teachers to shortlist children suspected of a
developmental delay and refer them to an expert for further evaluation.
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Researchers Say Sharing Is the Key to Privacy for EPC
Tags
RFID Journal (02/14/08) O'Connor, Mary Catherine
ThingMagic's Advanced Development Group cofounder and head Ravi Pappu, RSA
Laboratories principal research scientist Ari Juels, and Carnegie Mellon
university graduate student Bryan Parno have published a paper describing a
process that can protect RFID tag data and address consumer privacy
concerns without sabotaging existing efforts to integrate RFID throughout
the supply chain. The process is based on threshold or secret-sharing
cryptography, which uses a secret key to encrypt a number, then divides
that key into multiple pieces. Anyone attempting decryption must collect a
certain number of those pieces to figure out the key. The researchers call
their technique privacy-through-dispersion. For example, when a product is
first manufactured, it is given an electronic product code (EPC) and packed
along with numerous identical products. At a distribution center, the
pallet is broken down, and a single case containing the product, which is
still in close proximity to several identical products, is sent to a store
location. At the store, the product is stored or shelved with identical
products, but when a consumer picks up the product, it is removed from the
presence of the other identical products and loses its ability to be
scanned because not enough pieces of the key are present. Pappu and Juels
plan to arrange the first real-world tests of privacy-through-dispersion
using pharmaceutical products in a closed-loop supply chain.
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Application Requirements & Objectives for Petascale
Systems
HPC Wire (02/22/07) Vol. 17, No. 8,
Doug Kothe, director of science for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL)
National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), says in an interview
that NCCS held a broad user survey to "first ... elicit and analyze
scientific application requirements for current and planned leadership
systems out to the petascale; and second, to identify applications that
would qualify for early access to ORNL's 250-teraflop and 1-petaflop
systems." Kothe says the survey's results uncovered substantially more
commonality in the application algorithms and software implementations than
they assumed, and says he is aware of at least 12 applications where a
single job can employ a large fraction, 50 percent to 75 percent, of ORNL's
processors today. "An important conclusion is that we cannot expect
application code developers to rewrite codes from scratch to achieve better
scaling or parallel performance," Kothe says, stressing the need to
collaborate with developers to help them refactor their existing code base
to enhance performance. He also points to the possibility that application
developers may need to extensively rewrite their codes in consideration of
forthcoming exascale applications. High-performance computing "centers
will collaborate to optimally map the applications to the platform and
continue to work with the researchers and vendors to ensure that the
science demands of today and the future are met with leadership computing
resources," Kothe projects.
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DNS Inventor Warns of Next Big Threat
Dark Reading (02/11/08) Higgins, Kelly Jackson
At the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, researchers from
Google and Georgia Tech presented their study on DNS resolution path
corruption and malicious alteration of DNS answers. The new DNS attacks
consist of DNS servers manipulated by hackers that redirect unsuspecting
users to malicious sites. Georgia Tech's David Dagon, Chris Lee, and Wenke
Lee, and Google's Niels Provos documented roughly 17 million open-recursive
DNS servers, finding that nearly 70,000 were conducting malware-based
operations through DNS queries. While DNS entries can be rewritten to
prevent malicious sites, hackers have joined the ranks of security experts
in infecting DNS resolution paths via viruses or malicious URLs.
"Companies are rewriting DNS answers, ideally to improve the user
experience, but also to expose the users to ads," says Dagon. "But DNS
vendors aren't the only ones commercializing the alteration of DNS traffic.
Malware authors also use this technique to exploit victims." Researchers
say the modification of DNS answers still needed to be thoroughly explored,
but DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris warns it is only a matter of time before
DNS attacks result in sizeable losses. Mockapetris says users connecting
through public wireless ports are at risk for hackers' manipulated DNS
servers, adding that successful DNS attacks could cost enterprises up to
$100 million.
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