Mind Over Machine
Sparks Fly in E-Voting Debate
With Election Data Services predicting that 50 million voters--28 percent of the projected U.S. voting populace--will use paperless electronic voting systems this year, researchers at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science intensely argued over the ...
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U.S. Firms Lament Cutback in Visas for Foreign Talent
An improving U.S. economy has companies such as Rockwell Scientific turning to the H-1B visa program again to hire skilled foreigners to fill their openings. However, Rockwell Scientific CEO Derek Cheung and other executives believe there are not enough H-1B visas available now that ...
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Passwords to Guard Entry Aren't Enough to Protect Complex Data
Shielding complex data from unauthorized users with passwords and other access controls is only part of the equation; outgoing data must also be protected through filters, argues Stanford computer science professor Gio Wiederhold, who will discuss trusted information databases at the annual ...
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Innovation Alive and Well at Demo
The Demo 2004 conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., showed no shortage of innovation in the area of business software. Notable products spotlighted at the gathering include the USB-based Xkey from KeyComputing, a device that can be plugged into a home computer or a branch office system and ...
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New Anti-Spam Initiative Gaining Traction
Spammers would no longer be able to send junk email anonymously if the SMTP protocol was changed so that sending servers could be authenticated; the SMTP+SPF working group is developing the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) in the hopes that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) will approve it ...
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Pittsburgh Scientists Measure Productivity in Petascale Supercomputing
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has made it a priority to boost supercomputing power a thousand-fold to the petaflop scale by the end of the decade through its High-Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) initiative. Funded under the aegis of the HPCS effort is the Productive, ...
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Biology Stirs Software 'Monoculture' Debate
University of New Mexico biologist Stephanie Forrest and Mike Reiter of Carnegie-Mellon University have received a $750,000 National Science Foundation grant to explore methods to automatically diversify software code. The work stems from the belief that in computer networks, just as in ...
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Search for Tomorrow
Google has established itself as the first Internet search engine to achieve utility-like status, with the service handling more than 200 million queries daily; however, next-generation search engines are likely to make Google seem medieval in comparison. Google's worth as a navigation ...
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Where to Start to Launch the 'Butterfly Effect'
Cornell University computer science professor Jon Kleinberg talked about how computer algorithms can be applied to the problem of determining whether a few influential people can induce major changes in the thinking of large populations, in much the same way that the flapping of a ...
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Security Still Reigns as Wireless 'Weakest Link'
Though Amry Junaideen of the Deloitte & Touche Security Services division reports that wireless devices such as laptops and personal digital assistants have become more productive, that productivity is offset by their lack of security, which means that information could be compromised ...
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Spammers Exploit High-Speed Connections
Spammers are hijacking home computers with high-speed Internet connections to use as proxy spam relays, and email security companies estimate that between one-third and two-thirds of junk email is sent by "spam zombieswhose owners misconfigure their software or fail to implement or update ...
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Hackers for Hire
It has been a common practice for companies to hire "White Hat" hackers to test their network security, but some experts are questioning the wisdom of such an approach, especially as new, stronger, and more potentially damaging cybersecurity threats emerge and government regulations about data ...
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Congress and Cybersecurity
In an online discussion of cybersecurity issues, Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) raised such points as the need for increased awareness of such issues, and the progress both the public and private sectors have made. He acknowledged that there is still a lot to be done in many areas, such as ...
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Privacy Is in the House
The Defense of Privacy Act would require all government agencies to study the privacy impact of new rules before putting them into effect and would complement the E-Government Act of 2001. The bipartisan congressional coalition that backs it has been trying for three years to get such ...
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For Those Who Can't Wait for the Future to Arrive
Intel has created a trio of concept PCs to be exhibited at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum: The machines marry imaginative designs to state-of-the-art technology in an effort to "predict, inspire and direct the industry," according to Intel mobile chief technology evangelist Mike ...
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Pandora's Box for Open Source
Powerful tech companies are undergoing a shift in sales strategies as open-source software increasingly impinges on traditional markets, and many software makers are adopting open source just to keep abreast of industry trends. "This is a complex dynamic, because on the one hand, you need ...
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Quantum Cryptography: Security Through Uncertainty
Start-ups MagiQ Technologies and ID Quantique announced quantum cryptography hardware late last year, but most enterprise networks will not be able to take advantage of the technology. However, the continued development of quantum cryptography over the next few years is expected to ...
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'Smart Dust' Is Way Cool"
Smart dust" has enabled field biologist John Anderson of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor to collect information on thousands of Leach's storm petrels hunkered down in burrows on Great Duck Island, which is 12 miles off the coast of Maine. Anderson and his team of researchers make ...
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Mind Over Machine
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invested heavily in brain-machine interface research, whose promised benefits include thought-controlled robots for military operations and mentally-directed artificial limbs for paralysis victims. Such projects build upon research ...
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