Software Safety By the Numbers
GAO: Fed Data Mining Extensive
A May 27 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on federal data mining focusing on individuals found 199 active or planned projects across 52 agencies, and all but 77 of those projects involved Americans' personal data. The lion's share were coordinated by the Defense Department, and ...
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Is IT Really a Man's World?
Sheila Greco Associates President Sheila Greco says the percentage of high-ranking female IT professionals in Fortune 1,000 companies has never exceeded 15 percent in the seven years her company has been tracking such figures, while Claudia Morrell of the University of Maryland Baltimore ...
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Gone Phishing: Web Scam Takes Dangerous Turn
Phishing scams are not only increasing in number, but in deviousness as well: New phishing schemes not only employ convincing email addresses and fake Web sites, but also involve customized viruses that capture users' logins and passwords or take screenshots of login screens. Computer gangs ...
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WWW2004 Semantic Web Roundup
The Semantic Web is in need of working applications, now that the technical foundations of RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) have been established. Both boosters and critics of the Semantic Web effort say applications need to get on the ground soon to determine the ...
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Search Engines Try to Find Their Sound
Consumers are demanding more and more online multimedia content as broadband connections spread throughout households, and this is spurring search engine companies to widen the scope of their information retrieval technologies to include video and audio, not just text. Nor are content ...
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E-Vote Printers' High-Stakes Test
Several U.S. states have enacted or are planning to enact legislation that requires electronic voting systems to provide paper ballots so voters can verify that their choices were registered accurately; Nevada will be the first state to deploy such a paper-trail system this year by using ...
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To Quiet a Whirring Computer, Fight Noise With Noise
Brigham Young University physicist Scott D. Sommerfeldt has developed an active noise reduction technique to mask the annoying hum of computer cooling systems through a series of miniature speakers and microphones ringing the fan. The noise of the fan blades is detected by the ...
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'Heads-Up' Display Lives Up to Its Name
Students at the University of Washington led by Eric Seibel of UW's Human Interface Technology Laboratory have spent four years developing the Wearable Low Vision Aid (WLVA), a head-mounted device that helps people with poor vision circumvent stationary obstacles by beaming icons into ...
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Homeland Security's Missing Link
The United States government is undertaking numerous projects to use cutting-edge technology to secure borders and prevent terrorism, but critics such as Council on Foreign Relations transportation security expert Steven Flynn argue that too much homeland security capital is being poured ...
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New E-Learning Tools
Malaysian software provider Zeddel will develop new e-learning tools in collaboration with Canada's University of Alberta and University of Saskatchewan. The joint project will be led by the Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning (AICML), whose concentration is ...
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Technology Could Help Drivers Make Right Choice
Transit officials in Orange County, Calif., are looking at new technology that measures average vehicle speed and travel time in order to facilitate more effective traffic management and decrease the bottlenecks that slow down commuters. One technology would read a vehicle's speed and travel ...
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The Increasing Importance of Process Skills
As the pace of technological evolution quickens, IT process skills are becoming more important, writes George Spafford. The data center of 20 years ago still used IBM CSIS software for online computing and systems programmers would have as many as 15 years' experience in that technology, ...
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Will Code Check Tools Yield Worm-Proof Software?
A report from the Business Roundtable blames buggy and vulnerable software code for most of the major cyberattacks and network breaches that have harried American consumers and businesses in recent years, and says these exploitable code errors stem from software development processes that lack ...
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Sensor Technology Comes in From the Cold
The University of Southampton's GLACSWEB team has deployed a network of sensors within Norway's Briksdalsbreen glacier in order to monitor its behavior, which could yield insights into glacier dynamics and climate change. Southampton team member Dr. Kirk Martinez says the sensor probes ...
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Publishing by Design: Time to Make Human Factors a Concern
Nico Macdonald writes that insights into human-computer interaction (HCI) and design can solve many problems that currently limit the usability and appeal of digital mass communication, which is currently influenced by several false assumptions about convergence and traditional media. The ...
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Xerox: Peek at Tomorrow
A May event sponsored by Xerox's Innovation Group was used to highlight display breakthroughs that could be combined into transformative technologies for the workplace. Xerox fellow Beng Ong was on hand to present a plastic transistor jet-printed with semiconductive polymer ink, ...
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Going Mainstream
Linux is spearheading open-source software's penetration of strategic business processes and systems: An InformationWeek Research poll of 420 business-technology professionals estimates that almost 70 percent of respondents use the Linux operating system, compared to 56 percent a year ...
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Sparking the Fire of Invention
Microsoft Research founder and former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold contends that a focus on mission rather than invention is an attitude that both major corporations and small companies suffer from, and he and former Microsoft chief software architect Edward Jung have launched Invention ...
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Software Safety By the Numbers
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has developed the IEC 61508 standard to outline the functional safety of programmable electronic systems, which entails a systematic development process that stresses traceability, criticality inspection, and validation. When designing ...
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