Q&A: E-Voting Activist More Optimistic About This Year's
Voting Systems
Computerworld (07/03/08) Weiss, Todd R.
Johns Hopkins University professor Aviel Rubin says in an interview that
the kinds of e-voting problems activists are concerned about are the kinds
of things "that don't necessarily have a noticeable manifestation." He
says what is required is "a system that accommodates the ability to audit
to be sure that the machines got the right result." He believes that safe,
reliable, and secure e-voting systems can be built by technology companies,
and he cites the National Institute of Standards and Technology's
recommendation of designing voting systems where a software failure does
not have any possible effect on the election's integrity and accuracy.
Rubin says the easiest route to software independence is designing a system
that uses a paper ballot, while another option, currently in the research
phase, is cryptography, which he thinks will ultimately be able to supplant
paper. "I think if you take a different psychology, a different philosophy
toward building systems, where you say we're going to use software as much
as we can but we're not going to rely on it for security, you will actually
design a pretty good voting system," Rubin says. He notes that the state
of voting is much better than it was in November 2000, pointing out that
most states have switched to paper records. Rubin believes most systems
that employ paper ballots or optical scanning are likely to be
software-independent.
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Spying Has Few Legal Checks
Baltimore Sun (07/07/08) P. 1A; Olson, Bradley
U.S. citizens' communications, travel patterns, and spending habits are
being monitored and analyzed for suspicious activity by domestic
surveillance programs run by federal intelligence and law enforcement
agencies, and these programs have few legal restrictions. Although
protecting Americans' privacy is the goal of provisions contained in
pending amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there is
little oversight for surveillance programs that fall outside the bounds of
FISA. Critics say the safeguards are not infallible, while Congress has
often held back funding for surveillance programs because it is
dissatisfied with the information the administration has provided about the
programs. Such was the reasoning behind the House Appropriations
Committee's recent decision to stall funding for an initiative by the
National Applications Office to use American satellites for domestic
purposes until August, when the Government Accountability Office will issue
a report about how the program will address civil liberties and privacy
concerns. Lawmakers say even in instances where Congress has received
information about surveillance programs, their questions or concerns are
frequently handled by the agency responsible for surveillance, which adds
up to self-policing. Partially to address concerns about privacy, the
Homeland Security Department has set up a privacy czar to guarantee that
the technologies and programs initiated by the agency do not violate civil
liberties or chip away at privacy laws, but some believe the position
should be expanded to a Cabinet-level post in the executive branch. "We
should have what Canada has, which is a minister of privacy, someone
looking out for the privacy issues of Americans," says intelligence expert
James Bamford. "We have armies of people out there trying to pick into
everyone's private life, but we have nobody out there who's an
advocate."
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Is the Web Still the Web?
InfoWorld (07/03/08) McAllister, Neil
Static HTML pages are being replaced by rich Internet applications (RIAs),
which is challenging old ideas about Web browsing, writes Neil McAllister.
Although standards-compliant HTML lets pages be viewed on the broadest
possible spectrum of devices, RIA developers find such techniques too
restrictive to enable the kinds of rich application user interfaces that
users have come to expect. AJAX offers a certain measure of relief, but
device neutrality is not common among AJAX applications. Furthermore,
content delivered through AJAX applications is fragmented and less
organized than traditional Web pages. Products such as Google Web Toolkit
cause the concept of the HTML document as the most basic unit of the Web to
virtually vanish by making an executable program the sole "document."
Content delivered for plug-ins is completely unrecognizable as HTML. These
RIAs raise questions such as whether applications that are not really
hypertext, do not allow direct navigation to specific content, do not allow
content to be indexed and searched, do not allow source code to be viewed,
or cannot be viewed on all clients or devices, comprise true Web
applications. "Equally important, if today's RIAs no longer resemble what
we would call the Web, then is shoehorning those applications into the
Web's infrastructure really the right way to go?" McAllister asks.
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A Prosthesis for Speech
Technology Review (07/03/08) Chu, Jennifer
Boston University researchers are developing brain-reading computer
software that can translate thoughts into speech. When combined with a
speech synthesizer, the program could allow people with speech disorders to
produce speech. The technology has enabled Erik Ramsey, who has been
unable to speak following a car accident, to vocalize vowels in real time.
Boston University professor Frank Guenther and Philip Kennedy of
brain-computer interface developer Neural Signals have been decoding
activity within Ramsey's brain for the past three years using a permanent
electrode implanted beneath the surface of his brain in an area that
controls the mouth, lips, and jaw. During a session, the researchers ask
Ramsey to mentally "say" a particular sound like "ooh" or "ah." While
Ramsey repeats the sound in his head, the electrode detects local nerve
signals, which are sent wirelessly to a computer that runs software to
analyze the signals for common patterns that most likely denote a
particular sound. The software translates neural activities into formant
frequencies, the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract. So far, the
system can play back sounds within 50 milliseconds from when Ramsey first
says a sound in his head. The audio playback allows Ramsey to practice
mentally voicing vowels by hearing the initial sound and adjusting his
mental sound representation to improve the next playback. Although the
process is time consuming and requires a great effort from Ramsey, the
vowel sounds can now be said fairly well and the researchers are confident
the same can be accomplished with consonants.
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6 American Teams Make It to Finals of Microsoft's Imagine
Cup
Chronicle of Higher Education (07/03/08) Vinas, Maria Jose
An American student has won the Interface Design Technology Award at the
finals of Microsoft's Imagine Cup. A Ph.D. candidate in computer science
and engineering at the University of Washington developed a screen-reading
interface that allows blind people to access the Web. For the sixth annual
international competition, Microsoft has challenged students to focus on
technology that will help sustain the environment. Six projects from
American teams have made it to the finals, which are being held in Paris
and offer $240,000 in cash awards. Also in the interface-design category,
a team from Indiana University designed a Web site that allowed students to
compare dorm energy consumption, and a student from Arizona State
University created a user interface that teaches people to be sustainable
at home. Other projects include an embedded system that adjusts the power
consumption of home appliances, from a team from California State
University at Long Beach; and software that enables mobile-phone owners to
access and control environment data collected from a network of sensors,
from a team from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
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U.K. Scientists Demo Graphic Passwords
CNet (07/01/08) Lombardi, Candace
The developers of the Background Draw-a-Secret (BDAS) software are showing
off the graphic passcode system this week in London at the Royal Society
Summer Science Exhibition. With BDAS, users scribble an image, rather than
enter a letter/number combination. Users choose from a selection of base
images, which will be visually overlaid with a grid, then "trace" the image
on a touch screen. The unique drawing of the image becomes the passcode,
and the chosen image will appear each time as the passcode prompt. Users
doodle over the chosen image to get in, but their drawings do not have to
exactly match the original sketch. "Studies have shown that people find it
easier to remember images than words or numbers and our system has proven
over 1,000 times more secure than people's normal passwords," says BDAS
co-developer Jeff Yan, a computer science lecturer at the School of
Computing Science at Newcastle University. He says the subjective nature
of drawings makes graphic passcodes more secure, and the system is secure
enough to be used for cash machines, computers, and mobile devices.
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Networks Aim to Support Women in IT Fields
Calgary Herald (07/02/08) Sankey, Derek
More women are reaching the upper levels of the IT industry, but progress
is slow and there is still much room for improvement, concludes a Catalyst
Canada study. "We need to make sure we keep women in the pipeline so that
when women are making that choice to stay home or work--all of those
choices that come into play when starting to raise a family--that's where
we need to focus on providing that flexibility and support," says Telus
Corp.'s Andrea Goertz. "It's great to have strong female role models, but
I don't think it's the only way women can be successful." Telus has
launched an internal women's network that Goertz says has "definitely
opened up the lines of communication," and the company is also working with
other companies' women's networks to share best practices and bring more
attention to the issue. Goertz says building awareness is a big step. The
technology industry needs all the talent it can get and Goertz says keeping
women in the workforce is a significant part of the equation. TD Bank
Financial Group CIO Heather Ross says young women entering college often
believe IT is full of "techies" isolated from other workers, but she says
the industry needs a diverse group of people who can translate the value of
technology into various business areas. Higher education institutions are
increasingly creating or joining existing networks for women in technology,
and many are promoting high-tech careers for women by showcasing each
institution's vast range of career opportunities to young girls.
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UC San Diego Undergraduates Forge New Area of
Bioinformatics
University of California, San Diego (07/02/08) Kane, Daniel
University of California, San Diego undergraduate students have created a
new area of bioinformatics called comparative proteogenomics that could
improve genomic and proteomic annotations. Comparative proteogenomics is a
combination of comparative genomic and proteomics, or a study of all of an
organism's proteins. UC San Diego computer science professor Pavel
Pevzner, who organized the project, says comparative proteogenomics could
be a powerful way to improve both genome and proteome annotations, and to
address the difficult biological problems that remain outside the reach of
previously proposed bioinformatics approaches. The amount of genomic and
proteomic data is expected to increase as the genomes of more and more
organisms are sequenced, which will continue to make the industry-standard
manual genomic annotations less and less feasible. Comparative
proteogenomics provides an automated solution to the growing gap between
the number of sequenced genomics and researchers' ability to manually
annotate. Comparative proteogenomics is a significant step beyond
comparative genomics, Pevzner says. "Our bioinformatics undergraduates
have shown that you can simultaneously analyze multiple genomes and
proteomes, and use this information for scientific discovery," he says.
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Hydra Middleware Runner-Up at Best Demonstrator
Award
AlphaGalileo (06/26/08)
Researchers behind the European Hydra project demonstrated a middleware
application during the ICT Mobile Summit in Stockholm. The goal of the
Hydra project is to make it easier and cost effective for manufacturers and
system integrators to build networks of embedded devices. The
demonstration involved a sensor-equipped building that sent short messages
about an attempted intrusion or a technical problem. The Hydra middleware
networked the Lego Mindstorm technology of a model building, a Sony
Playstation for management tasks, and an oversized fully-functional model
of a mobile phone. A sensor detected water in the house, alerted the
inhabitants by sending a message to their mobile phone, placed an order for
emergency repair with a service company, and provided a limited-validity
electronic key for the building. "The middleware makes it easy for
developers to integrate additional devices and sensors into a distributed
infrastructure," says Dr. Markus Eisenhauer from Fraunhofer FIT, the
coordinator of the project. "And it helps them take care of privacy and
security requirements."
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Sensor Network Tests Get Real at Wollongong
University
ZDNet Australia (06/25/08) Tindal, Suzanne
The University of Wollongong will use Motorola's system to test its
theoretical research on wireless sensor networks. The Australian
university has pursued research on wireless sensing networks, but has not
been able to conduct testing in the real world, says professor Eryk
Dutkiewicz, director of Wollongong's wireless technologies laboratory.
Motorola's hardware will give Wollongong a better understanding of the
level of performance of current technology. "There's no point solving a
problem that doesn't exist," Dutkiewicz says. The university plans to
consider solutions, such as addressing communications algorithms and
routing mechanisms, if some problems are uncovered. Wollongong also plans
to work with an industrial partner so it can determine how the wireless
sensing network would perform in a "difficult environment," such as a steel
foundry or a mine.
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Whither the Mouse?
eWeek (06/24/08) Ferguson, Scott
Gartner analyst Steve Prentice predicts that technologies such as the
multitouch capabilities in the iPhone will bring about the end of the
computer mouse. Prentice says he saw multiple technologies at the 2008
Consumer Electronics Show that could replace the mouse over the next four
years as one of the main ways people interact with computers, including
facial recognition technology and multitouch capabilities. He says a
combination of different technologies that companies are adding to their
products are gradually making the mouse obsolete, including the facial
recognition features included in the Lenovo line of consumer PCs, cameras
that interact and respond to gestures, and the touch capabilities of the
iPhone and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7. The gaming and home
entertainment industry are also moving past the mouse. In his paper
"Gestural Computing: The End of the Mouse," Prentice highlights Emotiv
Systems, which is developing an interface that uses electroencephalography
to measure the electrical activity of the brain to control a gaming
console. More importantly, Prentice says, is that the company is looking
to sell such devices for about $300. The mouse and the keyboard will still
be used for tasks such as data entry, while highly specialized tasks that
involve graphics will likely be the first to switch to alternative
interfaces. Analyst Roger Kay also believes the time of the mouse is
winding down, but questions whether the average consumer or enterprise
employee is ready to use new technologies.
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A Tax on Buggy Software
Forbes (06/26/08) Greenberg, Andy
David Rice, an instructor at the SANS Institute and a former cryptographer
for the National Security Agency and NASA, has published "Geekonomics: The
Real Cost of Insecure Software," a new book that criticizes the software
industry for its careless attitude toward security. Rice says the total
economic cost of software security flaws is about $180 billion a year.
Rice suggests creating a tax on software based on the number and severity
of security bugs, even if the cost gets passed on to consumers, in order to
hold software manufacturers accountable. He says hackers simply use tests
to discover flaws in the software, which software publishers could do
before hackers have access to the programs. The software companies control
how much testing they do before programs are released, Rice says, and they
do not have the right incentives to do the testing necessary to create
secure software. He says the tax model would solve software problems in
the same way that taxes help curb pollution from manufacturing. Rather
than trying to stop manufacturing or prohibiting pollution, companies are
taxed for the amount of pollution they create, motivating them to reduce
emissions. Rice says software vulnerabilities, like pollution, are
inevitable, so instead of requiring software to be secure, tax insecurities
and allow the market to determine the price it is willing to pay for
vulnerabilities in software. Software manufacturers who are the most
insecure will pay the most. The tax will also create a system, similar to
the safety star-rating system used for cars, to help consumers know what
software is the most secure.
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The Man Who Inspired a Generation
BBC News (06/30/08) Shiels, Maggie
Microsoft's Chuck Thacker remains virtually unknown to the general public
despite the fact that while working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC) in the 1970s he developed the Xerox Alto, the first computer that
operates similarly to the ones used today. During his time at PARC he also
helped develop the Ethernet LAN and assisted in the design of the tablet PC
and the X box. The Macintosh also may have never come to be if it were not
for the Alto, as Apple reportedly was inspired to build it after Steve Jobs
visited PARC in 1979. Thacker is currently working on a hardware platform
known as BEE3, a cutting-edge architecture project. "I used to say that
the first revolution of computers was when scientists had them, the second
was when business had them, and the third revolution is when everyone has
them," Thacker says. "We haven't quite made that but I am optimistic that
we will." He says the most indispensable computer gadget today is the
smart phone.
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Using Ontologies and Vocabularies for Dynamic
Linking
Internet Computing (06/08) Vol. 12, No. 3, P. 32; Bechhofer, Sean;
Yesilada, Yeliz; Stevens, Robert
Certain problems associated with static, restricted, and rigid traditional
Web linking can be addressed with ontology-based linking. Conceptual
hypermedia supplies navigation between Web resources, buoyed by a
conceptual model in which an ontology's definitions and structure, in
conjunction with lexical labels, propel the consistency of link provision
and the linking's dynamic characteristics. "Ontology-driven linking would
let us use an agreed-on, common collection of significant concepts,
expressed as an agreed vocabulary in a given natural language, modeled
together with agreed interrelationships," the authors write. "In fact, the
objective is to reuse a model that has already been constructed for other
knowledge-management purposes--in other words, to get improved linking
functionality 'for free.'" With lightweight standard representations it is
possible to support Web navigation and browsing by using existing
vocabularies. This approach enables consistent management of the
navigation and linking of diverse resources founded on a community
understanding of the domain. The authors propose that the Universities of
Manchester and Southampton's Conceptual Open Hypermedia Service (COHSE)
should be modified to consume Simple Knowledge Organization vocabularies so
that resources can be reused. Issues that need to be resolved in building
a system such as COHSE include link source recognition, link target
identification, and the support for navigation of browsing around a
conceptual space.
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