Wary of E-Voting, Some Professors Sound the Alarm
China Will Keep Pursuing Digital Standards
Despite its decision to shelve a wireless-encryption standard in response to international pressure, China is going ahead with other initiatives to set standards for global technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) and digital compression. Not only would this ...
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Privacy Advocates Swap Horror Stories
The hazards of e-voting, FBI wiretaps, and the accuracy of Google searches were just some of the topics discussed at the ACM's 14th Annual Computers, Freedom, and Piracy conference in Berkeley. Keynote speaker and Stanford University computer science professor David Dill warned that electronic ...
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Scientists Peg Data's Speed Limit
Scientists report in the April 21 edition of Nature that the topmost speed at which data can be written on disk and then retrieved is around 1,000 times faster than today's cutting-edge storage devices. This conclusion was reached by using Stanford University's particle accelerator to blast ...
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Who Should Keep Out The Hackers?
A recent Department of Homeland Security report that places the responsibility for healing the Internet's security holes squarely on the shoulders of tech providers has gained credence with an April 21 DHS advisory that users and network operators act quickly to prevent a pair of ...
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Push for Voting Changes May Not Cure All Ills
Despite the best intentions, the modernization of the U.S. electoral process required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 is behind schedule, which means that many voters will still rely on traditional, non-computerized voting systems for the November presidential election. ...
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Linux Creator Calls Backporting 'Good Thing'
The practice of backporting newer Linux features into older versions sparked controversy at the Real World Linux Conference in Toronto, when SUSE CTO Juergen Geck said competitor Red Hat's backporting threatened to fragment Linux. In an email exchange with internetnews.com, Linux creator ...
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Nonlinear Nets Approach Runway to Wireless Apps
New research in neural networks has yielded an architectural network for telecommunications devices and a mathematical model equivalent to the universal Turing machine model used for computers; the developments are one more step in creating man-made systems that function as efficiently and ...
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E-Translators: The More You Say, the Better
Scientists are improving electronic translation devices by using entire phrases instead of individual words. Phrases are far less ambiguous than individual words, says Carnegie Mellon University systems scientist Robert Frederking, who works in the school's Language Technologies Institute. NEC ...
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Applying Grid Middleware to Industry
Information Society Technologies' DAMIEN project is a middleware toolset that can be applied to computational- and communication-intensive tasks, such as simulation testing on aircraft designs. "Most Grid projects tend to be aimed at new applications, such as searching across databases or Web ...
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Virtual Reality the World Over
Some 180 virtual reality panoramas were taken in 40 different countries during the vernal equinox on March 20 as part of the World Wide Panorama project. The panoramas--360-degree images stitched together from still photographs on a computer--are designed to give users the experience of ...
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Software Makers Ready Desktop Lockdown
Leaked corporate documents have made headlines in recent weeks, including an incriminating email from Microsoft, a memo at the SCO Group, and RealNetworks' failed plans to partner with Apple. That media attention, plus the entry of desktop giants Microsoft and Adobe Systems, has given new ...
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More Brain Power to Your Engine
Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) are working on an engine that can boost its fuel efficiency and halve harmful gas emissions through the use of neural network software modeled after learning mechanisms of the human brain. It is hoped that such a breakthrough would ...
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Wooden Computers Offer 'Greener' Desktop
Swedx believes wooden computers might ease some of the concerns people have about the impact of electronic waste on the environment. The Swedish company manufactures computer monitors, keyboards, and mice encased in wood that decompose faster than the plastic skeletons of common personal ...
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Why Does a Technical Manager Function as a Regulator?
Around the middle of last month, the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) sent a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding the issue of Internet governance. The content of the letter addressed the transparency of ICANN's processes. The ...
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IT's Uneasy About Being Green
The information technology industry is facing some serious challenges to the way in which companies build computers, as concerns grow about the toxic materials in units. In the 2004 annual report from Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, personal computers are described as "a toxics trap," ...
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The Internest
The Georgia Institute of Technology's Dr. Craig Tovey and Oxford University's Dr. Sunil Nakrani are taking a cue from honeybee colonies to optimize Internet server performance. Their approach is based on the observation that bee colonies maximize the rate of nectar collection by ...
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Security Holes Force Firms to Rethink Coding Processes
Microsoft recently released 14 patches to fix critical security holes in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and earlier iterations, but security experts say throwing patches at the problem is not the solution; a much more effective strategy is building tools and processes for creating more ...
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IT Job Market Causes Concern
With outsourcing dampening their hopes of finding stable, well-paying IT work after graduation, Queens College computer-science students are considering alternate careers, while some are planning to pursue jobs outside the United States. Queens senior Theodore Karoutsos laments, "If ...
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Wary of E-Voting, Some Professors Sound the Alarm
Respected academics are criticizing the security of direct recording electronic voting machines and online voting, alleging that such systems could be tampered with by just about anyone and be used to commit electoral fraud without the public's awareness. Their warnings have prompted ...
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