States Ready E-Voting Systems as Election Day
Approaches
Computerworld (10/02/08) Weiss, Todd R.
U.S. states are preparing for a heavy voter turnout that could cause
problems for local elections officials and electronic-voting systems.
Election officials say they are increasing efforts to review election-day
preparations and ensure that there are enough paper ballots on hand and
that poll workers are adequately trained. The U.S. uses a variety of
different types of voting systems, which varies between states, counties,
and even precincts. Some districts use only one type of voting system,
while others use a combination of systems. Some of the states that have
encountered trouble in the past are hoping a new, more closely monitored
approach will improve accuracy. Denver, which faced significant problems
after several key changes were made to how voters cast their ballots, has
switched from direct recording electronic (DRE) machines to optical
scanners, and successfully performed a test run of the new system during
this year's primary election. New York state will use mechanical-level
voting machines for this election due to disputes over certification and
who will pay for e-voting equipment. Florida also has switched to optical
scanning, following several controversial elections. After a thorough
review of its voting systems, most Californians will vote using optically
scanned paper ballots. Ohio is following the EVEREST report, which cites
security shortcomings and blames inefficient electronic systems for long
lines at polling places. In Ohio, 53 counties use DRE machines while 35
counties use optical-scan voting systems, though voters will be given the
option of using a paper ballot instead of using a DRE machine.
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Microsoft Unveils Plan for 3 Labs in Europe
New York Times (10/03/08) P. C9; Pfanner, Eric
Microsoft has announced that it will establish research centers of
excellence in Britain, France, and Germany as it focuses on improving its
Internet search technology. Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer says the three
centers, which will be near Paris, in London, and in Munich, will employ
several hundred people. "Investing in anything at this time can be a tough
sell," Ballmer says. "But when economic times are tough, we have to keep
our faith in the promise that technology holds to transform the future."
Microsoft wants to improve its Internet search technology and attract the
advertising revenue that comes from searches. ComScore says Google
accounts for nearly 80 percent of Internet searches in Europe and slightly
more than 60 percent in the United States. Microsoft has barely 1 percent
of the European search market, and in some countries the software giant
trails even small, local search engines, comScore says. Ballmer says the
European centers also will focus on new types of searches, including mobile
device searches and searches involving pictures and video. French finance
minister Christine Lagarde says Microsoft's investment in France, Germany,
and England will receive tax breaks, as France and other European
governments aim to strengthen their technology sector.
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Software Conference Probes Traditional, Unorthodox
Programming Trends
AScribe Newswire (10/01/08)
This year's OOPSLA Conference on Programming, sponsored by ACM's Special
Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN), will give researchers
and practitioners the opportunity to learn more about the latest
developments in software patterns, programming languages, and computing
concepts. Scheduled for Oct. 19-23 at the Nashville Convention Center in
Nashville, Tenn., OOPSLA will offer a variety of panels, including "Escaped
from the Lab: Innovation Practices in Large Organizations," "DSL's: The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and "From Sorceress to Scientist: Women in
Computing." Research papers include "Runtime: Tolerating Memory Leaks" and
"Java Type Inference is Broken: Can We Fix It?" The 21st year of the
program also includes "Out-of-the-box Thinking at the Frontiers of
Computing," as part of the Onward! Track, and the SIGPLAN Student Research
Competition. Egyptologist Mark Lehner will give the keynote address
"Social Programming a Pyramid" on Oct. 21. The list of guest speakers also
includes Vanderbilt University's Janos Sztipanovits on "Model-based
Software, Systems and Control Engineering," on Oct. 22; Lucy Suchman of the
United Kingdom's Lancaster University on "Practice-based Design
Possibilities," and Mark Dominus, author of "Higher-Order Perl," on
"Atypical Types," on Oct. 23.
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STEM Report Calls for Refocus in Education
The Journal (09/25/08) Nagel, Dave
Sweeping changes are needed to improve science, technology, engineering,
and math (STEM) education in the United States, concludes a State
Educational Technology Directors Association report. The report focuses on
the need to expose children to STEM early on and to integrate STEM subjects
throughout the school curriculum, starting as early as kindergarten. The
report, "STEM Education: Achievement and Innovation," notes that while the
fastest-growing segments of the U.S. job market require science and math
skills, only 8 percent of the total number of degrees awarded in 2001 were
in engineering, mathematics, or the physical sciences, and there has been a
50 percent drop in undergraduate enrollments in computer sciences over the
last five years. If current trends continue, 90 percent of the world's
scientists will be in Asia by 2010. The report says that in higher
education there is inadequate preparation for teachers and too little focus
on STEM content understanding. Meanwhile, in K-12, high-quality STEM
education is hindered by several factors, including a lack of qualified
teachers, a lack of funding to promote STEM education, inadequate
recruitment and retention policies, and certification issues from
STEM-trained professionals who want to enter teaching. The report notes
that only about 60 percent of current educators that teach math in middle
and high school actually majored in math in college. The report recommends
establishing societal support for STEM education, exposing students to STEM
careers, providing ongoing STEM professional development, providing STEM
pre-service teacher training, improving policies to recruit and retain STEM
teachers, and providing early exposure to STEM and integration of STEM
subjects throughout the curriculum in every school.
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Zeroing in on Wi-Fi 'Dead Zones'
Rice University (09/25/08) Boyd, Jade
Research into finding Wi-Fi gaps in large wireless networks recently won
best-paper honors at MobiCom 2008, ACM's Annual International Conference on
Mobile Computing and Networking. Rice University professor Edward Knightly
and graduate student Joshua Robinson worked with Ram Swaminathan, a
research scientist at HP Labs, to develop the new technique. The method
uses basic topography, street locations, and general information about land
use to predict how well a wireless transmitter will cover segments of a
neighborhood. They have demonstrated the approach on Google's system in
Mountain View, Calif., and TFA-Wireless, an experimental network owned by
Houston-based nonprofit Technology For All. "Our goal was to efficiently
characterize the performance of urban-scale deployments, and our techniques
can be used to either guide network deployment or to assess whether a
deployed network meets its performance requirements," Knightly says. He
says the technique should help make obtaining proper wireless coverage
easier and cheaper.
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Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China
New York Times (10/02/08) P. C1; Markoff, John
Researchers have uncovered a large surveillance system in China dedicated
to monitoring and archiving certain Internet text conversations that
include politically charged words. The system tracks text messages sent by
customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator
and eBay, which owns Skype. Researchers in China estimate that more than
30,000 people monitor online traffic, Web sites, and blogs for political
and otherwise offensive content as part of the Golden Shield Project.
Activists at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto discovered the
surveillance operation last month, which includes a cluster of eight
message-monitoring computers in China that contain more than a million
censored messages. The researchers examined the text messages and
reconstructed a list of restricted words, including words related to the
religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, and the Chinese Communist
Party, as well as words such as "democracy" and others related to the
recent earthquake and tainted powdered milk. The list also works as a
filter on text messages, blocking transmissions of those words and sending
a copy of the message to the server. The Chinese servers retain personal
information about the users who send such messages, and record chat
conversations between Tom-Skype users and Skype users outside China. The
system also recorded text messages and Skype caller identification, but not
the content of Skype voice calls.
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Saudi Arabia Buys Some Big Iron
HPC Wire (10/01/08) Feldman, Michael
IBM and King Adbullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have
announced a collaborative effort to build Shaheen, a 222-teraflop Blue
Gene/P supercomputer. When deployed in 2009, Shaheen will be the most
powerful computer in the Middle East and one of the most powerful systems
in the world. KAUST also plans to install a petascale machine within two
years, and eventually an exascale system. However, teraflop computing is a
significant step for Saudi Arabia toward becoming a center for scientific
research and its larger goal of transforming the country into an
information society. A multi-hundred teraflop machine such as Shaheen will
put the Saudis at the same level as top systems in the United States and
Europe, with the exception of a handful of petascale machines that will be
deployed over the next year. Meanwhile, working with IBM and a variety of
other institutions will enable KAUST to access a larger reservoir of
talent. In addition to IBM, KAUST will be working with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Imperial College London, Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology, American University in Cairo, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, and a variety of European and Asian research
partners. KAUST interim CIO Majid Al-Ghaslan says the KAUST supercomputer
will be available exclusively to academic research and scientists focused
specifically on resources, energy and environment, biosciences and
bioengineering, materials science and engineering, and applied mathematics
and computational science.
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Hollywood Sues RealNetworks
Wall Street Journal (10/01/08) P. B7; Wingfield, Nick
The major movie studios are suing RealNetworks for its release of RealDVD,
software that enables consumers to copy DVDs onto their computers. The
studios' suit claims that RealDVD, which went on sale at the end of
September, illegally bypasses copy-protection measures intended to prevent
the duplication of DVDs. The studios have asked the court for a temporary
restraining order preventing RealNetworks from selling the software, along
with financial damages. RealNetworks, which filed its own suit, says the
software is protected by fair-use laws. RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser says
the company wants to protect consumers' fair-use rights to make copies of
their own purchased DVDs. The company says the software does not violate
laws because it does not break copy-protection systems designed to prevent
the copying of DVDs. Instead, the software makes a copy of everything on a
DVD, including the copy-protection system, and puts it on a PC, layering on
additional software protections to prevent users from trading movies
online. The lawsuits will likely hinge on whether RealDVD circumvents the
copy-protection software in DVDs, a violation of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
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Women Playing Catch-Up in Fast Paced IT Industry
Computerworld Australia (09/29/08) Edwards, Kathryn
Being undervalued is the biggest concern among Australian women working in
IT, reports the Australian Computer Society's (ACS's) Women Members Survey.
Of the 628 respondents, 30 percent said that they do not receive payment
equal to their male counterparts. ACS CEO Kim Denham says the rapid
development of the IT industry has left many women playing catch-up.
Denham says maternity leave often results in the longest break from a
woman's career, and that one member in the survey said after 15 years she
is still trying to recover from her time off. Many survey respondents
expressed concern that IT has become a "boys club" where decisions are made
over beer and women are not necessarily invited to these meetings. "It is
particularly disappointing that women who are highly qualified, and have
significant experience, feel they are overlooked and undervalued compared
to men," says ACS chairman Kumar Parakala. Despite being highly qualified,
the majority of the women surveyed said they must work harder and achieve
better results to earn the same salary as their male counterparts. Other
key issues for women in IT include unpaid overtime and a lack of
flexibility in hours and positions. Denham says the results of the survey
is surprising because companies have done a significant amount of work to
combat workplace inequality.
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Tracking Laptop Thieves Safely
Technology Review (09/30/08) Naone, Erica
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and the University of
California, San Diego have developed Adeona, free laptop-tracking software
that records location information in a way that only a legitimate user can
gain access to it. While most computer location data is transmitted and
stored in an unencrypted form, making it particularly vulnerable to
interception, Adeona uses cryptographic techniques to keep location
information secure. A laptop running the software sends location
information to a central server; the data is encrypted so it cannot be read
without a private cryptographic key. Even if a laptop is stolen other
cryptographic tricks prevent the tracking information from being used by
the wrong people. "Most people are focusing on convenience and data-mining
capabilities and forgetting about privacy," says Johns Hopkins University
professor Aviel Rubin. "Seeing an effort to build something that will not
compromise privacy even though it has every potential to--for me, it's
refreshing." When Adeona is installed, a cryptographic key, known as a
seed, is generated and stored separately on a USB flash drive or DVD for
example. The seed is used to generate a unique cipher each time an update
is sent to the server. To prevent a thief from discovering the original
seed by analyzing past messages, the software also generates a new seed
every time an update is sent. An add-on for Adeona also can periodically
take photographs using a laptop's built-in camera to provide additional
evidence to show police. "We're hoping other people will take this idea
and extend it in other ways to make it more useful--for other types of
electronic devices, or for other types of forensic confirmation," says UW
professor Tadayoshi Kohno.
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Combining GIS and Semantic Technology to Create a
Cultural Visualizer
Directions (09/29/08) Shapshak, Mans
The CINeSpace project in Spain combines semantic technology with a GIS
augmented reality device to immerse tourists in an area's cultural heritage
by transporting the user to the past through the use of multimedia
archives. A rentable mobile device combines a PDA-type device with a GIS
interface displayed on a touch screen to help users navigate and select
multimedia content, as well as video binoculars to create the augmented
reality effects. GPS is used to establish a user's position within
approximately 10 meters. Markerless optical tracking, which uses
algorithms to compare reference images of real objects to images captured
in real time to produce the current location and orientation, is then used
to establish a more defined location. Next, inertial tracking is used by
mathematically integrating the equations of motion to find the current
position from acceleration data provided by integrated circuit
accelerometers. Lastly, additional orientation information from solid
state accelerometers measures the direction of the force created by the
earth's gravitational field on microscopic cantilevers. An electronic
three-dimensional compass provides the orientation of the device relative
to the earth's magnetic field. These methods allow the device to provide
position and orientation information so historical film clips can be
layered over the real world to create an altered reality. A challenge in
creating the device is the need to allow the user to access a wide variety
of geo-referenced information while making the device small and portable,
and allowing the user to annotate information in an efficient manner.
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Sandia Lab Tool Puts Internet Traffic on the Map
East Bay Business Times (09/23/08) Fitzhugh, Michael
Sandia National Laboratories Livermore (SNLL) interns Scott Crawford and
Andrew Schran have developed the Sandia Heuristic Intelligent Network
Imaging tool (SHINI), a way of transforming text-based computer security
logs into a map using Google Earth. SHINI enables computer scientists to
view connections between computers as lines drawn between points or
color-coded heat maps using Google's digital globe software. SNLL's Steve
Hurd says there are many tools to help find these connections, but there is
always a gap between what analytical tools can show and what reality is,
sometimes requiring viewing results from a different perspective. SHINI
has already helped detect unusual network connections for further
investigation, Hurd says. Visual patterns generated by the computer log
data as it is drawn on the map can create both the usual patterns and
pattern anomalies, highlighting something worth further investigation.
SHINI also can display various data types, helping analysts examine
different types of Internet traffic. Sandia is considering releasing an
open source version of SHINI for use by computer scientists and people in
other fields that could benefit from visualizing data with geographical
components in real time. Endsight CEO Mike Chaput says SHINI could help
organizations better understand data flows and recognize when patterns are
broken, helping them spot potential viruses or hackers.
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Can Hollywood Bring 3DTV Home?
EE Times (09/22/08) Merritt, Rick
Interest from Hollywood in stereoscopic 3D television, encouraged by the
profitability of 3D theatrical features, is fueling the drive for a
mainstream standard, and at least four major industry groups have been
organized this year to move toward such a goal. In July, the Society of
Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) called on anyone interested
to join a task force to probe the possibility of defining a mastering
standard for 3DTV content that could be transmitted over broadcast, cable,
satellite, packaged disks, or the Internet, while the [email protected] Consortium is
focused on the drafting of 3DTV needs and requirements statements. A 3D
working group also has been formed by the University of Southern
California's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) to categorize the
central issues involved in feeding 3D content into the home, and ETC
executive director David Wertheimer says the lab's efforts complement the
SMPTE task force. There are several government-funded 3DTV groups hosted
by Europe, including the 3-D4YOU program emphasizing the definition of
capture, coding, and format specifications for 3DTV, and the Original
System for Image Rendition via Innovative Screens Project to investigate 2D
and 3D projection technologies. Fox Group's Andy Setos says the 3DTV
content standard must be backward compatible with today's 2D capture,
production, and display systems, while systems makers have to establish
standards for reading the formats and displaying the content on various
kinds of TVs and devices. The Consumer Electronics Association has called
a meeting in late October to see whether the time is right for members to
set a 3DTV standard that could encompass TVs, set-tops, and Blu-ray
players.
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IU Sends Innovating Technology to Antarctica to Speed
Polar Research
Indiana University (09/22/08)
Polar Grid partners Indiana University (IU), Elizabeth City State
University, and the National Science Foundation's Center for Remote Sensing
of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas are set to deploy a collection of
customized computational resources to scientists in Antarctica, which will
allow the researchers to more securely and efficiently process data during
polar field expeditions. "It is critical to provide polar scientists with
access to advanced computing technology during field expeditions," says
Polar Grid Project principal investigator Geoffrey Fox, director of the
Community Grids Lab at IU's Pervasive Technology Labs. "It will help them
work more efficiently as they strive to gain a better understanding of the
problems facing our planet--and will allow them to move more quickly toward
finding solutions." The equipment includes computing clusters, servers, a
storage array, laptops, satellite transceivers, and networking and testing
equipment. The equipment will be used to support an extensive research
expedition that will start in November and end in February 2009.
Previously, data collected during this type of expedition could not be
processed or evaluated until the scientists returned to their home labs
when the expedition ended. The Polar Grid Project will help the
researchers improve the time between data collection and scientific
discovery by allowing them to start processing ice sheet data collected
from sensors and area and surface radar while still in the field. Doing so
will enable the researchers to identify data collection problems and adjust
equipment as necessary, ensuring that each expedition yields the highest
possible data quality.
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Lessons From Life Feed Ambient Info Future
Nikkei Weekly (09/22/08) Vol. 46, No. 2355, P. 17; Hasegawa, Akira
Shojiro Nishio, director of the Multimedia Data Engineering Laboratory in
Osaka University's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology,
predicts that the information society of the future will be one where
computers respond automatically to information collected from multiple
sensors to deliver services to people without their conscious involvement.
Osaka University is focused on research and development with the goal of
making this ambient information environment a reality through a program
called the Center for Excellence for Founding Ambient Information Society
Infrastructure. The program's core members include biological sciences
experts, as the initiative involves the development of technologies modeled
after living organisms' ability to flexibly adapt to environmental changes
so that the complex information networks of an ambient information society
can be effectively managed. Researchers are exploring the development of
symbiotic relations between living systems so that information networks can
be sustainable and capable of coexisting, as well as efficient. The advent
of the Internet has brought with it a susceptibility to system crashes, and
Osaka University researchers such as Masayuki Murata are considering ants'
ability to select the most efficient routes as a template for
next-generation networks that stay robust even when the best routes are
blocked. Researchers are looking into how to best present information to
people based on their location and what device is displaying the
information so that interfaces in the ambient information environment can
accommodate individuals even in group settings. One device yielded by this
research is a display that sits in the center of a table and presents 3D
images to people sitting around the table that they can view from preferred
perspectives using special eyewear.
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Metadata to Bring Order to Digital Chaos
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (09/08) Edling, Julia
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology have
developed three technologies to help classify media content, launch
effective searches, and organize databases. The researchers say that
in-depth analysis of audio and video data can provide more information on
the properties of the appropriate starting material, metadata, than is
possible when the material is manually cataloged by experts. The Digital
Music Finder manages music collections and searches through music using
content-based metadata. Complex properties, such as the genre or the
segmentations of a song into verse, refrain, and solos, can be included in
the search. Various technologies are used to supplement files with
semantic descriptions, which can include information on the tempo, melody,
or structure of a song, in addition to information on the title and artist.
Digital Music Finder also can identify similar-sounding songs and compile
recommendations. Another technology can distinguish between voice and
music, indicating the periods of time during a radio program or a podcast
in which someone is speaking or when music is being played. Finally,
VideoID Manager organizes video collections, identifies video material, and
checks for copyrights. The technology takes a digital fingerprint of an
unknown video, examining color distribution, optical flow, and color
histogram. The sequence is compared to video material held in a database
for identification.
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