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ACM TechNews Alert for Friday, April 9, 2004



Title: ACM TechNews (HTML)
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ACM TechNews
April 9, 2004

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Welcome to the April 9, 2004 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this service, please see below.

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • See-Through Voting Software
  • Taking High-Tech to a New Dimension
  • W3C Advances Specs for Web Interoperability
  • Intel Readies Earth-Friendly Chips
  • College Campus Is IT Hot Spot
  • Panelists Call for Lightweight Linux
  • A Pearl for the Elderly
  • Nonlinear Nets Tackle Wireless Apps
  • Data Finds a Place on the Grid
  • Ballot Box Debate
  • Researchers Develop Electronic Nose for Multimedia
  • The Next Job for the W3C
  • The Mainframe's Mid-Life Crisis
  • Who's Responsible for Cybersecurity?
  • Managers Rush to Certify IT Security Workers
  • Search Engines--The Future
  • Visualization Aids Steering of Complex Simulations on the Grid

     

    See-Through Voting Software

    VoteHere is proposing a vastly more transparent approach to electronic voting than offered by other companies, allowing public inspection not only of its source code, but also the entire voting transcript. The electronic voting systems firm does not make voting machines itself, but licenses its ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Taking High-Tech to a New Dimension

    The Web3D 2004 Symposium sheds light on attempts to share information among computer devices for a number of 3D-display applications, ranging from game-playing to war-fighting. Sun Microsystems game technologies chief architect Dough Twilleager described a scenario where 3D content could be ...

    [read more]      to the top


    W3C Advances Specs for Web Interoperability

    New technical recommendations from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) spell an end to the browser wars of the late 1990s and create a new basis for Web interoperability. The Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core is an API standard that helps developers create applications that work ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Intel Readies Earth-Friendly Chips

    Intel and other chip firms are promising to eliminate lead and other hazardous materials from their semiconductor products. By the end of this year, both Intel and National Semiconductor say they will offer lead-free and nearly lead-free chips and chip packages. Reducing lead and other ...

    [read more]      to the top


    College Campus Is IT Hot Spot

    An increasing number of colleges and universities are offering majors in information technology, which should prove to be beneficial to the federal government. The list of colleges offering IT degrees includes Harvard University, which offers an online degree in IT for undergraduate and ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Panelists Call for Lightweight Linux

    Linux complexity was a hot topic for discussion at this week's ClusterWorld Conference & Expo in San Jose, with Linux users and distributors divided on whether to make the open-source operating system more lithe or more complex. Linux is big in the high-performance computing community, having ...

    [read more]      to the top


    A Pearl for the Elderly

    A research team from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University continue to test the elder-care robot Pearl at the retirement community Longwood at Oakmont in Pittsburgh. Pearl is one facet of the Personal Robotic Assistants for the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Nonlinear Nets Tackle Wireless Apps

    A new neural network design promises tremendous wireless bandwidth at low power, mimicking biological systems that handle complex tasks with minimal energy use. Unlike conventional linear circuit designs, the so-called echo state networks (ESNs) use nonlinear dynamics to operate close to ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Data Finds a Place on the Grid

    Large companies and public institutions are beginning to investigate data grids, which have garnered far less media attention than computing grids but work on the same principles. Just as computing grids allow resources to be viewed singularly and applied to a specific problem, data grids allow ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Ballot Box Debate

    The success of online voting in the Michigan Democratic Party Caucus Feb. 7, 2004, did not impress the computer scientists involved in the federal SERVE (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment) project. A month later, the Pentagon decided to table SERVE, which would have enabled ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Researchers Develop Electronic Nose for Multimedia

    Researchers at the University of Alberta are working to bring the sense of smell to the personal computer. Dr. Mrinal Mandal, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Rafael Castro, a master's student, have developed a device that recognizes the odors from 10 ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Next Job for the W3C

    World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee says many important Web innovations are in the pipeline, including voice browsing, greater Web collaboration, and the Semantic Web. He describes current voice recognition software as "less hopeless" than before, making voice browsing possible. Users would ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Mainframe's Mid-Life Crisis

    Mainframes, the backbone of many organizations' IT infrastructure, are accessible through network services, and companies need to reconsider how they secure their mainframes, writes consultant Rob van Hoboken. Experienced mainframe help is hard to find and often overworked, and ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Who's Responsible for Cybersecurity?

    Software vendors are taking responsibility for their insecure products, pressured by customers who are tired of being blamed for the poor state of cybersecurity. In the past, software vendors discouraged regulation of their industry while issuing numerous security recommendations for users. ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Managers Rush to Certify IT Security Workers

    Government managers are finding that they must hire, retain, and train employees who protect the government's information systems. "It is urgent that we hire people with the skill sets necessary to do this incredibly important job, and to keep them once we train and certify them," says ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Search Engines--The Future

    Web search engines will be much more sophisticated, powerful, and accurate in the future. As useful and even life-changing as today's search engines are, experts say there are obvious areas of improvement. Searches should be personalized, not targeted at a general Web audience or skewed in favor ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Visualization Aids Steering of Complex Simulations on the Grid

    Data transfer optimization and biological process modeling are just a few of the Grid-enabled applications that can benefit from visualization tools that would allow simulation progress to be monitored and steered, delivering meaningful results faster so that better-informed decisions can ...

    [read more]      to the top


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