Internet Gridlock to Occur in Just Two Years
ZDNet UK (04/21/08) Donoghue, Andrew
Without significant new investment, the Internet's current network
architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010, warned AT&T's
Jim Cicconi at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 in London. "The surge in
online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the
Internet today," Cicconi says. "In three years' time, 20 typical
households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today."
Cicconi says at least $55 billion in investments are needed in new
infrastructure over the next three years in the United States alone, and
$130 billion worldwide. The "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic"
will increase fifty-fold by 2015, Cicconi predicts, adding that AT&T will
invest $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade the core of its
network. Cicconi adds that more demand for high-definition video will put
an increasing strain on the Internet's infrastructure, noting that eight
hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute, and that HD video
consumes seven to 10 times more bandwidth than normal video. "Video will
be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today," he
says.
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Where Are the Women?
Gazette (Montreal) (04/19/08) Whittaker, Stephanie
Information technology educators are concerned that not enough women are
enrolling in programs that lead to high-tech jobs. Although the number of
women entering computer-related programs rose in the late 1990s, "in the
past five years, there's been a diminishment in their numbers," says Bill
Lynch, associate dean of undergraduate programs and student academic
services at Concordia University in Montreal. Lynch says women accounted
for about 20 percent of students studying information technology programs
at Concordia in 2001, but currently represent only about 10 percent. "I
really don't know why this is happening," says Cathy Dutton, co-chair of
the computer science technology department at Montreal's John Abbot
College. "It may be that there's a perception that it's not a
people-person job. Or, it may be the legacy of the dot-com bust." The
dot-com bubble burst turned many potential technology students, both male
and female, away from careers in the technology sector. Educators say that
despite the demand for high-tech graduates, there is still a perception
that jobs in the IT sector are scarce and insecure. In fact, there is a
shortage of IT graduates overall, both male and female. Dutton says
high-tech companies are working to reverse the perception that there are no
jobs in the field, with companies such as Microsoft making trips to
universities to push the profession. CSC's Josee Riopelle says she is
worried about the industry's ability to fill vacant positions, and as older
employees leave the workforce over the next few years there could be a
severe lack of qualified people.
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Crowd Laps Up Driverless, Robot Cars
Press Telegram (CA) (04/20/08) Stevens, Joe
Three driverless cars successfully navigated the 1.97-mile track on
Saturday at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in California. The cars'
developers say such cars will be a common occurrence in the future, and the
race was part of getting the public used to the idea of driverless cars.
Sebastian Thrun, the director of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Lab,
says he believes some type of driverless car will be on the road in the
next 20 years. Although experts say that autonomous cars can generally
travel about 100 miles without problems, there are still issues to work out
before they can be used by the public. "One of the biggest challenges for
us is robotic perceptions," says Stanford senior researcher Mike
Montemerlo. "The robot sees the world, but understanding the environment
is very difficult." Some problems go beyond technology, such as who would
be liable in a robotic-car accident. Meanwhile, others say that robotic
cars will never be used on the road due to safety concerns. However, Thrun
says robotic cars will make the roads safer. "One of the main reasons
we're developing this technology is for safety," he says. "Let's say
you're out, have too much to drink, then you can get in your car that could
drive you home."
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Malicious Microprocessor Opens New Doors for
Attack
IDG News Service (04/15/08) McMillan, Robert
Hackers can attack a microprocessor in order to gain unauthorized access
to a computer system, according to researchers at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The team demonstrated the attack on April 15
during the Usenix Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats, a
conference for security researchers held in San Francisco. The researchers
used a special processor running the Linux operating system, programmed it
to launch malicious firmware, then used a special login password to log
into the machine. "This is like the ultimate back door," says Samuel King,
an assistant professor in the university's computer science department.
"There were no software bugs exploited." Criminals who want to employ this
strategy in the real world would have to figure out how to get a malicious
CPU onto someone's machine. The U.S. Department of Defense warned of such
an attack in a February 2005 report, and offshoring could give hackers an
opportunity to attack a PC's microprocessor. Such an attack would be
nearly undetectable, but the team also has plans to develop tools that
could identify a malicious processor.
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Researchers Map the Math in Music
Princeton University (04/17/08) MacPherson, Kitta
Music professors Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn
at Yale University, and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University have
developed a new way of analyzing and categorizing music using the complex
mathematics found in music. The new method, called "geometrical music
theory," looks at sequences of notes, chords, rhythms, and scales, and
categorizes them so they can be grouped into "families." The families can
be given a mathematical structure that can be represented by points in
complex geometrical spaces, similar to x-y graphing used in algebra.
Different categorizations produce unique geometrical spaces, reflecting the
various ways musicians in different times understood music. The
researchers say that having tools for conceptualizing music could lead to a
variety of applications, such as creating new instruments, new musical
toys, and new visualization tools. Tymoczko says the most satisfying part
for him is being able to see the logical structure that links many
different musical concepts. "To some extent, we can represent the history
of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different
geometries," he says.
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20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi
Manber
Popular Mechanics (04/16/08) Derene, Glenn
The job of search has generally become exponentially harder because
people's expectations of what search can do are so high, and one step
toward fulfilling those expectations is refining search results to reflect
not only what search experts know about the Web, but also what other people
have searched for, says Google's Udi Manber in an interview. He says that
Google is very focused on addressing the frustration that people feel when
Web searches fail to retrieve the precise answers they are looking for,
noting that "very often it's something missing from the Web, like a
restaurant that does not put their location on their page." Manber says
Web content still lacks a substantial degree of search-engine friendliness,
and he argues that people should more deeply consider how other people
would look for their content and put the appropriate keywords onto their
Web pages. At the same time, searchers have a responsibility to consider
what words content providers use to describe their content. Manber says
retaining a profile and Web history of users can improve their searches,
and acknowledges that a balance must be struck between maintaining users'
privacy and keeping the search engine effective. He says Google elected
not to fold into its search algorithm the ability to manually change
results if the results are erroneous, because "we have to find what
weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to
that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it's better,
and then launch a general solution." This approach, Manber contends,
imposes less bias.
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Security Experts Split on 'Cyberterrorism' Threat
Reuters (04/16/08) Trevelyan, Mark
International experts in attendance at the security conference at the
Royal United Services Institute in London called for increased cooperation
to fight threats to computer networks, such as the botnet attacks that
paralyzed Web sites and caused severe disruptions to key services in
Estonia last year. "No one country can stand alone in facing cyber attacks
and threats," said Husin Jazri, the director of CyberSecurity Malaysia. He
added that cyberspace is borderless and that attacks typically do not
originate from within a country. That was the case with the attack on the
Estonian computer networks last year, which the country's government
believes was perpetrated by Russia after a diplomatic dispute over
Estonia's decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial. However, Estonian
defense ministry official Christian-Marc Liflander said it has been
difficult to prove who sponsored the attacks. He added that he believed
such attacks represent the beginning of an era of cyber terror and possibly
cyber war. But Stephen Cummings of the British government's Center for the
Protection of National Infrastructure said he saw no evidence that
terrorists were using cyber attacks to wreak havoc on certain countries.
He added that he believed talk of cyberterrorism--which he called a
"myth"--could distract people from addressing the real risks from
electronic attacks.
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Graphene Used to Create World's Smallest
Transistor
University of Manchester (04/18/08) Waddington, Alex
University of Manchester researchers Kostya Novoselov and Andre Geim have
demonstrated that graphene can be carved into tiny electronic circuits with
individual transistors nearly the size of a molecule. Geim and his
colleagues discovered graphene, the first one-atom-thick material, four
years ago, and it quickly became a hot subject in physics and materials
science. The Manchester researchers have now shown that it is possible to
carve nanometer-scale transistors from a single graphene crystal.
Graphene, unlike other known materials, remains highly stable and
conductive when cut into devices only a nanometer wide. Graphene
transistors also show good performance at sizes below 10 nanometers, the
size limit at which Silicon technology is predicted to fail. Still, "it is
too early to promise graphene supercomputers," Geim says. "Unfortunately,
no existing technology allows the cutting of materials with true nanometre
precision. But this is exactly the same challenge that all post-silicon
electronics has to face. At least we now have a material that can meet
such a challenge."
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Robots That Can Assist With Elder Care Created by UMass
Amherst Researchers
University of Massachusetts Amherst (04/15/08)
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have developed uBot-5, a
robotic assistant designed to care for the elderly and improve their
quality of life. The robot can call 911 in an emergency, remind patients
to take their medication, assist with grocery shopping and help people talk
to others such as health care providers. Family members can access the
robot and talk with the robot's ward using an Internet connection, even
guiding the robot around the home to look for someone. Doctors can use the
robot to perform virtual house calls. "For the first time, robots are safe
enough and inexpensive enough to do meaningful work in a residential
environment," says computer scientist Rob Grupen, who developed the ASSIST
project with computer scientists Allen Hanson and Edward Riseman. An array
of sensors serve as the robot's eyes and ears, allowing it to recognize
activities such as walking or sitting. The robot can also recognize
abnormal events, such as a person falling, to alert a medical caregiver.
The robot can ask a person to smile, raise both arms or speak, actions that
it can recognize. The robot can also detect and move obstructions and
carry approximately 2.2 pounds and has the potential to perform household
tasks that require dexterity, such as cleaning and grocery shopping. The
uBot-5 also has a Web cam, a microphone and a touch-screen LCD display that
acts as an interface for communication.
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5 IT Skills That Won't Boost Your Salary
Network World (04/18/08) Dubie, Denise
Advances in technology continue to create demand for new IT skills, while
making other skills obsolete. HTML programming is a high-tech skill that
will no longer boost the pay of IT professionals. Companies want Web 2.0
technologies such as AJAX, and expertise in AJAX and XML has increased
salaries by 12.5 percent in the last six months of 2007, according to Foote
Partners. Legacy programming languages such as Cobol, Fortran,
PowerBuilder, and Jini noncertified skills were among the lowest-paying
skills over the second half of last year. Demand for Novell's network
operating system NetWare has been surpassed by interest in Windows Server
and Linux skills. Non-IP network expertise and know-how in technologies
such as IBM's System Network Architecture (SNA) is another low-paying
skill. "For networking, IP skills have replaced SNA skills," says Foote
Partners CEO David Foote. The demand for PC tech support skills is also in
decline.
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US Army Develops Robotic Suits
BBC News (04/16/08) Mirchandani, Rajesh
The robotics firm Sarcos is conducting outdoor testing at a research
facility near Salt Lake City on a lightweight aluminum exoskeleton (XOS)
that promises to give users superhuman powers. The robotic suit is
designed to sense every move of the person who wears it, and instantly move
with the person. Though XOS can match the agility of a human, it can boost
the strength and endurance of its user. The robotic suit could enable the
military to establish quicker supply lines, reduce injuries among soldiers
who lift heavy items, allow troops to bring heavier weapons into combat,
and enable soldiers to carry wounded colleagues. Sarcos must find a way to
create a mobile power supply that can last for a considerable amount of
time, among other issues that still need to be resolved. Early prototypes
are expected to be delivered to the U.S. military next year, and more
refined XOS suits could be used within eight years.
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Positioning Systems Used by iPhone and iPod
Breached
ETH Life (04/17/08) Cosby, Renata
Researchers at ETH Zurich have shown that Skyhook's WiFi Positioning
System (WPS) and similar public WLAN positioning systems are vulnerable to
location spoofing attacks. Under Skyhook's localization process, Apple
iPods or iPhones find their position by detecting neighboring access
points, and send this information to Skyhook servers. After the servers
return the access point locations to the iPod or iPhone, the device
computes its location based on this data. However, the devices have to
report detected Media Access Control addresses, which can be forged by
rogue access points and easily impersonated. In addition, the access point
signals can be jammed and those in the vicinity of the devices can be
eliminated. ETH Zurich professor Srdjan Capkun and colleagues were able
to impersonate access points from a known location and jam signals sent by
access points in the vicinity to eliminate them, which ultimately shows
that location spoofing attacks were possible. "Given the relative
simplicity of the performed attacks, it is clear that the use of WLAN-based
public localization systems, such as Skyhook's WPS, should be restricted in
security and safety-critical applications," Capkun says.
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Storm Clouds Looming for Internet, Experts Say
Network World (04/17/08) Reed, Brad
Experts at FutureNet, an annual conference held to address communications
services, say the Internet architecture will face severe challenges over
the next few years that could significantly strain the Web's effectiveness.
One of the most prominent issues facing the Internet is the impending
shortage of IP addresses, which some forecasters say could occur within the
next few years. IPv4 offers about 4.7 billion possible IP addresses, but
it is running out of capacity. Juniper's Ron Bonica says there are three
likely solutions to this problem. The first is to sick with IPv4, which
would create some immediate problems with the impending shortage of IP
addresses but would also lead to the creation of an IP address trading
system through which companies and individuals that own an excessive number
of addresses could sell them at market value. Another possibility would be
a rapid deployment of IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol that is
capable of supporting several billion more addresses than IPv4. Bonica
says many companies and organizations are reluctant to make the switch
because it will require significant investments on the part of end users
and ISPs, and transition mechanisms to help make the switch have not been
deployed yet. Bonica says the third option is a compromise between these
two solutions that involves a gradual shift from IPv4 to IPv6. Another
issue addressed FutureNet addressed was the strain more IP addresses will
place on routing tables, which are not scalable and cannot adapt to
exponential increases in IP addresses. "The basic, fundamental problems of
scaling a network haven't been addressed in any innovative manner," says
American Registry of Internet Numbers Chairman John Curran.
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Robots, Games, Hackers: First IT-Olympics at Iowa State
Celebrates Computer Smarts
Iowa State University News Service (04/16/08) Jacobson, Doug
About 200 high school students from Iowa will gather at Iowa State
University for the first IT-Olympics. The competition, on April 25 and 26,
will include three events. The first is to build LEGO robots that can
push, flip, and fight each other in a gladiatorial event. The second event
is to create video games that teach a science, technology, or math concept
to middle schoolers. The third is to build computer networks that must
then be protected from teams of hackers. The event is intended to show
students that information technology can lead to interesting studies, good
jobs, and creative challenges. The competition is part of a larger Iowa
State program called IT-Adventures that is trying to build interest in
computer careers by establishing high school IT clubs throughout Iowa. The
program provides free computers, mentors, and learning materials. So far,
40 IT clubs have been established. "The students were already interested
in computers," says Nancy Peterman, a teacher at Kuemper Catholic High
School. "But this competition expands their exposure to computers. It
helps give them an idea if that's a direction they want to go." Organizers
say the IT-Olympics will help students see that there is a strong demand
for workers with computer and technology skills.
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Mobile Computing Gets Academic
Government Computer News (04/14/08) Vol. 27, No. 8, Marshall, Patrick
Mobile computing will be the focus of research and teaching at the
Mobility Research Center, a new facility that Carnegie Mellon University
plans to open this fall at its Silicon Valley site. James Morris, dean of
Carnegie Mellon West, says mobile computing makes sense as an academic
discipline because billions of people around the world are being introduced
to computation and the Internet because of handheld devices such as cell
phones, rather than desktop or laptop computers. "The United States needs
to have that perspective as we look at a global market for computing
devices on the Internet," Morris says. Context-aware applications and
services, serendipitous collaboration, and rich semantic information to
enable novel data and media management, visualization, and access will be
specific interests of the multidisciplinary program. "We have probably 30
faculty members who work in various areas--anything from antenna design
[to] anthropology and psychology--and we're getting a lot of these people
together into teams to perform research to look at the way people are going
to use mobile devices in the future," Morris says.
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Mapmaker for the World of Influenza
Science (04/18/08) Vol. 320, No. 5874, P. 310; Enserink, Martin
University of Cambridge professor Derek Smith has invented a method for
mapping out the evolution of the influenza virus, and he is helping flu
researchers employ this method as a tool to aid critical decision-making.
Smith reasoned that it was possible to map flu strains based exclusively on
each strain's antigenic distance from the others, and nine years ago he
partnered with several researchers to turn this theory into a viable
technique. Ian Barr of the World Health Organization's Collaborating
Center for Reference and Research on Influenza in Australia says scientists
can track the virus' evolution in near real-time thanks to Smith's work.
Smith can analyze questions on a global scale, thanks to the access he has
to antigenic and genetic data through his close relationship with the four
WHO Collaborating Centers. The maps generated by Smith's method raise WHO
members' confidence that they are taking the right course of action to halt
or prevent the spread of influenza, says WHO flu expert Keiji Fukuda.
Smith's latest aspirations include anticipating farther in advance which
flu strains will become dominant in a given year, while Smith and a close
collaborator are attempting to predict a strain's antigenic profile
directly from its gene sequence.
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