Qwerks of History
Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
A fall-off of computer science majors--23 percent fewer this year, according to a poll of several hundred North American universities by the Computing Research Association--has prompted industry leaders such as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to lecture at schools, telling students that ...
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E-Voting Terminals Face Super Tuesday Test
The March 2 primary election will feature the use of electronic voting machines that have been criticized for their susceptibility to hacking and other forms of tampering. Maryland, which has spent $55 million to deploy touch-screen e-voting systems, will wrap the machines in protective tape ...
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Wesleyan's Cluster Computers
Using Beowulf cluster architecture developed by NASA in the mid 1990s, Wesleyan University physics professor Reinhold Blumel and then-student Vasilios Hoffman constructed a supercomputer, WesWulf I, using obsolete, discarded desktops. The cluster's success prompted the development of a ...
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Design Space, Nothing But Net
On April 1, 1994, leading Internet figure and ICANN Chairman of the Board Dr. Vinton Cerf puckishly posted a fictitious email from a human outpost on Mars, circa 2023, to illustrate his belief that the Internet would eventually transcend terrestrial boundaries. Three years later, he started ...
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Model Keeps Virtual Eyes Right
University of Southern California research partially funded by the National Science Foundation has yielded a computerized 3D model of a human head that boasts realistic automatic head and eye movements based on a computer simulation of regions in the primate brain that are responsible for initial ...
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IBM Heeds Message to Integrate IM, E-mail
Most of IBM's 315,000 employees use an experimental messaging client that integrates instant messaging (IM), email, voice, and other communication forms: The so-called NotesBuddy application is the future of IM, which has already become a critical business tool. The rapid rise of IM in the ...
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Report Raises Questions About Fighting Online Piracy
A March 1 report from the Committee for Economic Development concludes that the economy and business could be hurt by the U.S. entertainment industry's push for stricter laws to shield copyrighted material from digital pirates. Critics argue that the delicate balance between content creators' rights ...
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Anti-Spyware Law Proposed
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Conrad Burns (D-Mont.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced the Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act on Feb. 26 in an effort to limit the use of spyware. The bill proposes new regulations that would ban harmful ...
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Radio, Net Phone Draw Feds' Attention
Dan Gillmor writes that Internet telephony and low-powered community radio, which are garnering federal attention, could become entangled within the machinations of lawmakers, bureaucrats, and other affected parties fighting to protect their regulatory and political interests. Voice over Internet ...
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Kick-Off for the Wireless World Initiative Research
The Wireless World Initiative (WWI) has kicked off a series of Integrated Projects in the European Commission's Sixth Framework Program (FP6) Information Society Technology with the goal of determining systems and operations that offer the best possible user experience while keeping ...
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Visually Impaired Can Now 'Surf' Internet Thanks to Indian Software
More than a hundred visually-impaired children in India are using software that lets them surf the Internet. The software product, called Vachantar, is being used by students at the Government High School for Blind Girls in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Developed by the Center for ...
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Forget India, Let's Go to Bulgaria
India handles a lot of offshore software outsourcing work, but Bulgaria, Romania, and other European nations are moving into "near-shoring"--moving work to nations that are less expensive but nearby. For instance, German software company SAP has an outpost in Bulgaria, which is taking on various ...
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Click Here to Keep Your Info Private
A U.K. information technology expert believes he has come up with a happy medium for Web users and Web site owners over the issue of privacy and cookies. Lykourgos Petropoulakis of the University of Strathclyde has developed a new system that allows Web users to turn cookies on when they ...
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Senator: Information Sharing Is Key to Thwarting Cyber Attacks
Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) has been awarded the RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy for his work on high-tech security issues. He supports work being done by the Cyber Security Information Sharing Project, which is working on a nationwide information sharing system to anticipate, ...
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Thinking Inside the Box
Integrated security gateway (ISG) solutions that bundle together an array of security features are expected to displace dedicated security appliances in the enterprise within a few years, although they come with certain trade-offs. ISGs are particularly attractive to CIOs for their cost, as ...
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High Performance Computing: Past, Present and Future
In just a few years, supercomputer design has been transformed from costly, proprietary, and specialized systems to less expensive cluster computers consisting of PC architectures, commodity microprocessors, Gigabit Ethernet, and standard networked storage schemes. As a result of cluster ...
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Ten Technologies That Refuse to Die
An array of technologies has survived and flourished despite the advent of more advanced technologies that were expected to supplant them: The long life of analog watches illustrates the importance of device performance over extra features, and the value of elegant and intuitive functionality. ...
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Qwerks of History
Brian Hayes cites Intel's microprocessor family and the Unix operating system as examples of technologies that have proved remarkably resilient--and in key aspects, unchanged--over the last 35 years or so. All of the processors Intel has rolled out since the 8086 back in 1978 are ...
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