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Volume 6, Issue 639:  Monday, May 3, 2004

  • "Proprietary, Paperless E-Voting Is Failing--and Selling"
    NewsForge (05/03/04); Lyman, Jay

    Computer security experts hope that open-source electronic voting systems and printed audit trails will be embraced by the Election Assistance Committee (EAC) when it debates the e-voting issue in June, but former Association for Computing Machinery President Barbara Simons is concerned that the hearings are so biased toward proprietary, paperless systems that the committee will ultimately support vendors such as Accenture and Diebold. She also feels that the EAC and other legislative bodies critical to the e-voting issue are understaffed with security and computer science experts. Stanford University professor and VerifiedVoting.org founder David Dill reports that e-voting vendors have built up their support base by "including restrictive secrecy clauses in contracts and huge expenditures on lobbyists, lawyers, and PR firms," as well as underwriting pro-voting machine hype by incorporating so-called "voter education" funding into voting machine contracts. VerifiedVoting.org legislative analyst Bob Kibrick expresses the need to not only employ open-source software and a voter-verifiable paper trail, but to make sampling of 1 percent to 2 percent of the paper ballots mandatory in order to guarantee that electronic results match up. Though Dill notes that his group and other organizations are trying their utmost to oppose major e- voting vendors' lobbying efforts, he says, "we have maybe one one- hundredth of the funding and we're not willing to stoop to the same tactics." A California panel's recent recommendation to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to decertify Diebold AccuVote TSx machines because of insecurities, along with Shelley's mandate to equip all machines with paper ballots by 2006, has been heartening news to e-voting critics. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University says that e-voting has reached a crossroads, adding that he will try to raise lawmakers' awareness of the issue at upcoming hearings.
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    For more information on e-voting, visit http://www.acm.org/usacm.

  • "Is It Possible Google Is Just the Bling-Bling of the Nethead Crowd?"
    Wall Street Journal (05/03/04) P. B1; Gomes, Lee

    Computers' failure to understand "meaning" has been a godsend to Google and other search engines that have become commercial successes thanks to alternative techniques that circumvent context by weighing such factors as how many links a Web site has. Collectively, these methods have increased search engines' usability and expanded their applications to include reference-desk-type inquiries, among other things. Growing in popularity are "navigational searches" in which search engines are employed as an easy way for a user to reach a site he already knows about. However, as search-engine companies pursue more intelligent searches to satisfy customer demand, they will likely be dogged by the same barriers that have thwarted artificial intelligence researchers--computers' inability to grasp meaning. But this obstacle may not necessarily impede the improvement of search engines: Yahoo! researcher Gary Flake reports that inexpensive 64-bit computers, with their dramatically larger memory capacity, will lead to more complex search algorithms. Furthermore, he and other researchers say the Web has inverted AI scientists' premise that data retrieval requires descriptive rules, when data-mining can do the job quickly and efficiently. Google enthusiasts may believe their loyalty to the search engine represents their technical sophistication, but Lee Gomes argues that they have simply been influenced by branding. Google's status as the epitome of the modern search engine owes little to technology, the author muses.

  • "Alarm Growing Over Bot Software"
    CNet (04/30/04); Lemos, Robert

    April 29 advisories from Symantec and Internet Storm Center CTO Joannes Ullrich warn that the most common type of bot software has received an upgrade. The resulting Agobot variant employs publicly available code to penetrate a computer's security through a flaw in the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service, which is installed on nearly every Windows system sold in the last five years. Bot software are remote attack tools that install themselves on susceptible systems, enabling hackers to commandeer the computers for their own ends while owners are unaware. The latest incarnations of bot software allow attackers to control infected systems, steal information, and attack other computers via chat servers and peer-to-peer networks. Worse, the proliferation of bot software is difficult to determine, given that such breaches are not widely reported: Symantec believes hundreds of thousands of computers have been infected, while other security experts believe millions of systems have been compromised. Bot software activity is less obvious than worm activity because bots usually comb through smaller networks for vulnerable systems, lowering the amount of data traffic generated by infected computers. Bot software's versatility is another cause for concern: It can be integrated with worms and viruses, allow hackers to launch denial-of-service attacks against Web sites, and tap the computing power of clusters of compromised machines to thwart encryption. The emergence of the Agobot variant, which incorporates code that exploits software flaws, could imply that a new virus or worm is just around the corner.
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  • "Haussler Honored by Computer Science Group as an Innovator Who Changed the Scientific World"
    Currents--UC Santa Cruz (05/09/04) Vol. 8, No. 36; Stephens, Tim

    UC Santa Cruz Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering director David Haussler and UCLA Cognitive System Laboratory director Judea Pearl have been named as co-recipients of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) 2003 Allen Newell Award for their respective contributions to the fields of computational biology and artificial intelligence. Haussler, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), is being honored as perhaps the most influential computational biology contributor for work that concentrated on the interaction between molecular biologists and computer scientists, and formed the basis of the probabilistic approach to finding and examining the biological elements of the human genome. He helped develop algorithms to put together the first public working draft of the human genome and publish it on the World Wide Web, and also helped create interactive Web-based browsers that studied and annotated genome sequences. Pearl, a fellow of AAAI and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, invented a theoretical and algorithmic platform for AI using probability theory as its foundation. By connecting computer science and statistics, he created models that are employed to define a vast collection of phenomena, including disease effects and probable terrorist behavior. Pearl's concepts play a crucial role in how causality plays into statistics, medicine, the social sciences, and psychology. ACM and AAAI co-sponsor the Newell Award.
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    For more information, visit http://www.acm.org/awards/anaward.html.

  • "Who Hacked the Voting System? The Teacher"
    New York Times (05/03/04) P. C4; Schwartz, John

    Johns Hopkins University professor Aviel D. Rubin has become a symbol of the crusade against the perils of electronic voting with his expose of serious flaws in one popular company's e-voting software, flaws that have prompted states to reconsider or limit the use of such machines in elections. Last July, a team of Johns Hopkins and Rice University researchers led by Rubin analyzed touch-screen voting software from Diebold, and their report concluded that the system "is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts," and further criticized e-voting as being a potential danger to the democratic process. Rubin's actions have angered the industry and election officials, and been honored by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which gave him its Pioneer Award in April. Rubin's critics disputed his conclusions on the grounds that he was unfamiliar with the electoral process, and Rubin responded to such criticism by acting as an election judge in a Maryland precinct during the March primary, where he helped voters use Diebold machines; he said the experience taught him that he had overestimated some e-voting vulnerabilities and underestimated others, but did not change his opinion that Diebold machines threaten democracy. When asked to express its view of Rubin's work, Diebold released a statement that "Our collective goal should always be to provide voters with the assurance that their vote is important, voting systems are accurate and their individual vote counts." Rubin demonstrated his integrity in August 2003 by resigning from an unpaid advisory position for the VoteHere voting company and returning his VoteHere stock options. Rubin teaches a class in which students hack e-voting system software to learn about e-voting security.
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  • "The Rise of the Humanoid Robot"
    Straits Times (04/30/04); Paul, Anthony

    RoboCup 2004 in June will be the latest display of a scientific effort with the long-term goal of developing teams of humanoid robots that can defeat the World Cup champions by the year 2050. "[Soccer is] a game that best illustrates a human's various complex skills," notes Dr. Zhou Changjiu of Singapore Polytechnic's Electrical and Electronic Engineering School. "These include locomotive skills [walking, running, kicking, jumping], perceptive skills [recognizing the terrain, identifying the ball and players], and mental skills [tactics, strategy and deceiving opponents]." Dr. Changjiu believes that a humanoid robot could be developed one day that is capable of performing all manual or perhaps even mental chores as well as a human being, if not better; he adds that robotics research and development will help cultivate the further development of control, sensor, vision, and manufacturing technologies. Notable milestones in humanoid robot technology include Sony's Qrio, a machine that can dance, walk, run, jump, and hold conversations in several languages. Other humanoid robots include Honda's Asimo; NEC's R100, which can learn to recall people based on photos it takes at the initial meeting, and model its behavior according to how people behave when it encounters them; and another NEC machine, the PaPeRo, which can recognize 25,000 English words despite variant pronunciation, analyze the subject, verb, and predicate in each sentence, and translate it into spoken Japanese. Sony Computer Science Laboratories chief Toshi Doi exclaims that the world is on the cusp of the "digital creature" era, and thinks these early "entertainment robots" are the forerunners of machines that function as servants.
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  • "File-Swapping Gets Supercharged on Student Network"
    CNet (04/29/04); Borland, John

    Students at universities with access to Internet2 are using the university network to trade files similar to the manner in which students have used peer-to-peer services to obtain music, videos, and software for free. Students say the new file-trading network on Internet2, dubbed i2hub, makes use of unused bandwidth on the university network, and can cost their colleges less than if they were to use the commercial Internet connections in their dorm rooms. However, concerned observers contend students are using i2hub for file-swapping because of the restrictions that universities have placed on the Internet line speeds of ordinary connections in dormitories. Though it would take many hours to download movies using regular broadband connections, traditional file-swapping can occur on Internet2 in the blink of an eye. There is some concern that the Recording Industry Association of America might target Internet2 because it enables the swapping of copyrighted material. Internet2 was designed as an alternative network universities could use to trade large data files, and experiment with high-definition video and other next-generation applications, while avoiding the traffic of the ordinary Internet. "The use policies for [the Internet2] backbone network are very clear--that use of the network for illegal means is not allowed," maintains Greg Wood, director of communications for Internet2.
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  • "Building a Secure Network to Secure Networks"
    IST Results (04/30/04)

    The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams' (FIRST) Computer Security Incident Handling Conference in mid June will focus on the creation and management of Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs), of which there are almost 90 in Europe, according to Karel Vietsch, Secretary General of the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA). "But that number is still only a drop in the ocean, given the growing number of threats to the continent's networks," he says. A typical CSIRT consists of between three and 15 members, and most teams focus on shielding institutional and academic networks. Vietsch notes that few smaller firms and commercial ISP customers can directly access CSIRTs, and he believes more people will actively look for more security-conscious ISPs if they are aware of the threats of network insecurity. TERENA set the standard for training the first generation of European CSIRTs in the early 1990s. Vietsch also coordinates TRANSITS, a pan-European CSIRT training program that has educated over 60 IT specialists over the past two years. "Our training courses help to build networks of trust," he says. Other topics to be discussed at the upcoming FIRST conference include Internet threats, network monitoring, wireless systems deployment, and security in the information society.
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  • "In Defense of Cyberspace"
    CITRIS Newsletter (04/04) Vol. 3, No. 2; Pescovitz, David

    Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society's (CITRIS) Evaluation Methods in Internet Security Technology (EMIST) project is a series of simulated malware attacks carried out on a testbed modeled after the actual Internet, according to UC Davis computer science professor Karl Levitt. "One of the challenges of creating effective defense programs for attacks from viruses and worms is that they are only tested in moderate-sized private research facilities or through computer simulations that are not representative of the way the Internet works in reality," notes UC Berkeley professor Shankar Sastry. The experiment will measure how well cyber-defense systems hold up against three types of attack--viruses, worms, and denial-of-service (DOS) attacks--so that more effective defense programs can be developed. The malware used on the EMIST testbed will be patterned after actual malware, including worms "captured in the wild," according to Levitt. The attack simulations will run on the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research (DETER) network, a virtual lab of 1,000 networked machines being developed within CITRIS. Levitt says that DOS and network router attacks can be thwarted and the damage they cause quickly repaired if the defense systems can detect any variations from the norm. DETER is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Homeland Security Department. EMIST is a project directed by UC Davis and Pennsylvania State University, with participating researchers from Purdue University, NAI Labs, SRI International, and the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley.
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  • "Why Certifying IT Workers Won't Help"
    ZDNet (04/27/04); Brampton, Martin

    The Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society say that a lot of IT money is wasted due to a lack of professionalism in software engineering, and argue for a professional IT community accredited by them. However, there is no evidence that links a given examination with practical achievement, and while the supposed status of engineers is apparently a goal of some, the certification of "engineer" does not automatically convey success, writes consultant Martin Brampton. Large engineering projects in other fields, such as the Millennium Footbridge in London and the Concord supersonic plane, have proven great failures in terms of being on time, within budget, and even safe-- and those projects were completed by well-certified professionals. In addition, there is no real definition of what exactly a certified software engineer should know. Educational institutions might play a role, but the examination of simple concepts such as using logical structure instead of jumps in programming causes doubt. Edsger Dijkstra observed successful programmers avoided goto in his article, "Goto considered harmful," but pointing out that linkage has not significantly improved the work of unsuccessful programmers. The main reason why software engineering projects fail is not the fault of the programmers themselves, but the pace of the industry and the insistence on the part of companies to release products without sufficient testing. Then there are political issues that keep some bad projects from being scrapped and started over. The rapid pace of computer technology ensures these types of problems will remain for some time in software engineering, irrespective of IT certification.
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  • "Trading in a Cloud of Electrons"
    Business Week (05/10/04); Hof, Robert D.

    Institute for the Future director Paul Saffo says the Internet continues to change culture and business, creating new value and opportunity for innovative companies and individuals. Many pundits said e-commerce would wipe out traditional retailers and other middlemen, but Saffo predicted six years ago that the Web would actually create more intermediaries, such as eBay and Google; Saffo also foresaw the importance of sensors in 1997, long before the buzz around radio frequency identification started. Saffo says the Sabre ticket reservation system built by American Airlines in 1959 is a good example of how new technology actually serves as a foundation for greater commerce and value: When the number of reservations on the system outstripped American Airlines' capability to take tickets, the company rolled Sabre out to its travel agents; other airlines appealed to the government to be included in the system, which then set the stage for American Airlines' frequent flyer loyalty program, which today has expanded to include credit card companies. In the airline industry example, cheaper computers and processing enabled greater complexity and value, Saffo says. In the future, the Web will be more ubiquitous, using wireless and peer-to-peer technology, and affect people's everyday lives; location- based marketing will be a big hit, as will the peer-to-peer file-trading of short, amateur video clips that can be played easily on mobile devices. Saffo says this digital lifestyle has created unprecedented demand for services and turned physical products into mere conduits of those services. Today, game players in Shanghai earn money by creating Everquest personas they resell on eBay, while tomorrow, car drivers may be able to download programs that modify their cars' performance--putting the focus more on the service than the car itself.
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  • "Touch and Smell Phone"
    Australian Associated Press (AAP) (04/27/04)

    NTT DoCoMo in Japan is working on advanced mobile phone technologies, including communication with the five senses, speaking without using vocal cords, and establishing which direction a call is coming from. It is currently possible to carry out a phone conversation while simultaneously communicating by video link or surfing a Web site thanks to DoCoMo's FOMA third-generation service. DoCoMo aims to roll out fourth-generation services that can reach a speed of 100 Mbps, which could lead to functions such as locating callers by recreating the sense of directional sound with help from a global positioning system. Embedding this function in a commercially available handset would enhance three-way audio-conferences. DoCoMo is also investigating phones that can recognize speech from the way facial muscles move, enabling callers to hold conversations without making sounds, an especially attractive proposition for users who wish to maintain discretion, observe silence, or be understood despite overwhelming background noise. The company has successfully replicated all five Japanese vowels using a voice synthesizer or onscreen through the use of electrodes attached to the speaker's face; under development is the reproduction of a larger group of consonants, as well as English sounds. Of the five senses DoCoMo researchers are attempting to utilize for mobile phone communication, "smell and taste will probably be the most difficult," acknowledges DoCoMo multimedia laboratories managing director Toshio Miki.
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  • "N. Americans Plan ENUM Directory"
    Light Reading (04/27/04); Hibbard, Justin

    A group of North American telecom companies is planning to form a non-profit limited liability corporation (LLC) in June to initiate the process of creating the so-called Tier 1 North American ENUM (electronic number mapping) directory, which would link phone numbers to URLs, thereby improving VoIP services. The planned Tier 1 directory for North America would route calls between the ENUM root server and a lower tier of directories that include separate codes for each entity operating under country code 1, which covers the U.S., Canada, and several Caribbean nations. As the contracting agency for ENUM, the LLC plans to choose the future administrator and vendor for the directory and expects to finalize the contract by the second quarter of 2005, though this schedule may change. The contract will expire periodically, thus allowing regular competition for its renewal. The administrator will be expected to charge customers for connections to the ENUM directory according to guidelines set by the LLC. The two top candidates for the ENUM contract are likely to be NeuStar, which operates both the North American Numbering Plan and the Local Number Portability, and VeriSign, which is responsible for registering all .com and .net top-level domain names. The planned LLC will consist of various members of the ENUM Forum, an open industry group, including AT&T and MCI, though it will not be directly affiliated with the ENUM Forum.
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  • "The Technology of National Security"
    TechNewsWorld (04/27/04); Vaudrey, Ginger

    Any technology holds the potential for abuse, and computer technology is no exception. National governments have developed powerful monitoring software, and in turn individuals and advocacy groups claim that the technology infringes on their right to privacy. A resolution will depend on finding a balance between national security and privacy. The International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar in 1993, which included a number of nations, focused on finding a new way to lawfully intercept telecommunications, and created a list of International User Requirements; the United States' modified version became the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994. Some say it is an improvement in national security, while others say that it invades privacy, but it and the seminar have changed technology by smoothing the way for the creation of new systems for law enforcement surveillance. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for example, created the email surveillance system Carnivore, later renamed DCSIOOO. It scans all email going through a given ISP for messages associated with an ongoing criminal investigation. Judicial oversight for the system has been limited by the USA Patriot Act, which also allowed the FBI to create its Magic Lantern software that logs the keystrokes on computers used by suspects in order bypass encryption schemes. Echelon, an automated global interception and relay system theoretically developed by the National Security Agency is said by that agency not to exist in reality, though the American Civil Liberties Union and the governments of Australia and New Zealand say otherwise. Ultimately, the constitutional questions raised by technology monitoring systems will need to be decided by lawmakers, while new technologies will necessitate continued reassessments.
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  • "Federal Programmers Get Agile"
    Federal Computer Week (04/26/04) Vol. 18, No. 12, P. 44; Zyskowski, John

    Increasing numbers of government programming projects are using agile development techniques, which advocates claim support the generation of better software in less time and for less money than traditional development approaches. Agile development methods, which are defined by the umbrella term "light methodologies," discard processes, procedures, and chores that slow conventional software development such as formal documentation and centralized planning and control. Agile development also involves more frequent and direct customer feedback to programmers so they can correct problems or modify software according to clients' wishes before the product is released. This means that software does not need arduous revisions afterwards, explains U.S. Army Environmental Center system analyst Dave Garrett, who is using agile development to create software that enhances environmental cleanup at military bases. His team's strategy, which involves integrating agile methods with automated software development tools, is designed to roll out software faster while squeezing the most out of frugal funding. Pair programming, in which two programmers work together on joint tasks, is another agile technique employed by Garrett's team; a study finds that pair programming causes overall programming cost to rise by a mere 15 percent or so, and this increase is neutralized by the savings in testing, quality assurance, and field support, among other things. The government, which values documentation and accountability very highly, might seem an ill fit for agile development methods, and its preference for IT contractors certified under the Capability Maturity Model rating system of the Software Engineering Institute would appear to support this assertion. However, many experts believe that the two seemingly incompatible techniques can complement each other and yield benefits that combine the best of both worlds.
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  • "Optical Storage Sings the Blues"
    Computerworld (04/26/04) Vol. 32, No. 17, P. 22; Anthes, Gary H.

    Optical storage products based on blue-laser technology are envisioned as the successor to those based on red-laser technology, which operate at longer optical wavelengths: Blue lasers can read and write data much faster and write more data in the same area than devices that employ red lasers. Blue-laser discs are expected to be the next step up from DVDs, and blue-laser devices could also find applications in archiving video, audio, and image files as well as backing up desktop PCs. Analysts predict that the price of blue-laser devices and media will eventually be on a par with their red-laser counterparts, while users will enjoy a significantly lower net cost per gigabyte of data stored; Plasmon, which has already rolled out a first-generation blue-laser disc drive, claims that the product's cost per gigabyte is 80 percent lower than that of red- laser-based products. Plasmon's drive can expand a 5.25-inch optical disc's capacity from 9.1 GB to 30 GB, and Plasmon's Dave DuPont expects a new market to emerge as government agencies and enterprises clamor for a way to store surveillance-camera images for prolonged periods. Blue- ray Disc Founders and the DVD Forum are touting a pair of non-compatible blue-laser formats: The Blu-ray standard will allow a single-layer disc to hold 67 percent more data than an HD-DVD, while a dual-layer disc will store 134 percent more data. HD-DVD advocates claim that their discs' manufacturing costs are lower than Blu-ray's because existing DVD production equipment can be used. Still, Blue-ray's credibility in the eyes of PC users received a boost when PC markers endorsed the standard. Analyst Peter Gere predicts that blue-laser media will drive up the acceptance of write-once, read-many optical storage, especially as new, more stringent rules about data retention are enacted.
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  • "Internet Technology to Improve Satellite Communications"
    Military & Aerospace Electronics (04/04) Vol. 15, No. 4, P. 22; McHale, John

    Commercial and military satellite designers are betting that transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) technology will transform satellite communications in the same way it has transformed workplace communications by bringing office-like connectivity to even the most isolated terrestrial regions. Lockheed Martin Space Systems VP Rick Skinner reports that TCP/IP is viewed as the solution to the growing problem of current satellite routing technology's inability to accommodate user demands for increasing amounts of data. A ViaSat white paper comments that TCP/IP and User Datagram Protocol/IP (UDP/IP) are the chief IPs, the difference being TCP's concentration on accuracy and UDP's prioritization of speed. Still, the half-second delay of satellite communications is a considerable disadvantage of TCP/IP links over geostationary satellites. Lockheed Martin and ViaSat are collaborating on the IP satellite component of a coalition military network based in Iraq that uses satellites to support secure voice and data services, voice-over IP, and connections between coalition forces; ViaSat's Rick Vandermeulen explains that TCP/IP converts the battlefield and brigade HQ into an office environment, while Skinner says Lockheed and ViaSat engineers will be able to receive feedback on how well Army staff adopt the technology. Another significant project is the U.S. Air Force's Transformational Communications MILSATCOM (TCM) space segment architecture, a system that will use TCP/IP to network mobile warfighters, weapons, sensors, and communications command and control nodes located on manned and unmanned aircraft, on the ground, in the air, on the sea, or in space. Meanwhile, Spectrum Astro engineers have partnered with the NASA Earth Science Technology Office to design the Space Network Router (SNR), an IP-compliant network hardware that is TCP/IP-compatible with terrestrial and non- terrestrial equipment for use in manned and unmanned spacecraft.
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  • "RFI on RFID and Pervasive Wireless"
    Network Magazine (04/04) Vol. 19, No. 4; Dornan, Andy

    A number of pervasive wireless technologies, each with its own set of pros and cons, are competing for the enterprise sector and possibly enabling the advent of machine-to-machine (M2M) networks that would connect a wide variety of everyday appliances, from elevators to air conditioners. Bob Heile, chairman of IEEE's 802.15 Working Group, says, "It's the enabler for distributed computing. A house can become a supercomputer, with all the embedded processors in appliances." Wi-Fi has already become a corporate fixture, but high power consumption, high deployment costs, and its need for access points (APs) are considerable drawbacks for its use as the backbone for widespread pervasive wireless networks. Wi-Fi meshes, in which APs serve as routers, are being touted as alternatives, but most cannot operate outside the line of sight, and none of the meshed Wi-Fi systems are compatible. Forrester Research estimates that Bluetooth is embedded in about twice as many devices as Wi-Fi thanks to its low power consumption, cheapness, and security, which could make the technology well-suited for telemetry; on the other hand, the technology is centered around cell phones, and Bluetooth networks can support no more than eight nodes. Low-power, radio-based UltraWideband has the potential to supplant Bluetooth in the long run, but technical and political impediments such as competing standards are in its way. Passive radio frequency identification (RFID), in addition to already being available, boasts very low costs, no power consumption, and new standards, but the technology possesses about the same range as Bluetooth and cannot support processing or data storage, while its underlying infrastructure is costly. ZigBee, also known as 802.15.4, is a radio technology primarily directed at telemetry; its data rates may not match those of Wi-Fi and its quality of service may not rival that of Bluetooth, but the technology can integrate with cheap, low-power chips and is less vulnerable to interference than Wi-Fi radio. Automated sensors will be ZigBee's chief enterprise use, and security will probably vary according to application.
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