A Conversation With Sam Leffler
EU Approves Software Patent Changes
Many amendments to the European Union's Software Patents Directive the European Parliament introduced in 2003 to set limits on software patents have been overruled by the European Council's May 18 decision to approve a revised version of the directive, according to a representative of the ...
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Fine-Tuning Spam Filtering
Unsolicited commercial email has expanded by more than five times its volume since 2001, and though spam filtering solutions help mitigate the problem, they are not foolproof--and worse, they can unintentionally prevent legitimate email from getting through, often without the user ...
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EU Seeks Quantum Cryptography Response to Echelon
The European Union is launching a four-year project to develop long-distance quantum cryptography: The aim of the $13 million program is to deter espionage systems, such as the U.S.-operated Echelon electronic eavesdropping system that collects intelligence data for the United States, ...
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ACM's SIGGRAPH 2004 Emerging Technologies Presents 28 Interactive Installations That Explore the Theme of Enhancing Life
The enhancement of life is a theme that will be demonstrated in 28 interactive installations set up by research labs, independent artists, universities, and industry for ACM's SIGGRAPH 2004 Emerging Technologies exhibition scheduled for August 8-12 in Los Angeles. SIGGRAPH 2004 ...
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Panel Urges New Protection on Federal 'Data Mining'
The Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee recommended in a report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that legislative safeguards be set up to shield Americans' civil liberties when the government mines data files and computer records for evidence of terrorist activity. "Our nation ...
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Visionary Computers May Put Hockey on Cell Phones
University of Calgary computer scientist Dr. Jeffrey Boyd and his team of students have created a prototype "smart camera" with computer vision technology whose applications are being developed and tested using hockey. The system converts on-screen movement to computer language via a ...
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IT Is Still It, Grads Find
Despite dire forecasts of a major migration of IT jobs to low-wage countries, computer science graduates are finding that there are still plenty of tech job opportunities, although the practice of wooing students while still in school has died down. "The IT industry as a whole will ...
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Camera Phones Link World to Web
Canadian programmer Simon Woodside recently released Semacode, a free system that allows camera phones to link to URLs that could be put up anywhere, in theory. Semacodes consist of standard URLs rendered as two-dimensional Data Matrix bar codes, while text URLs are converted into ...
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Kansas State University Computer Science Professor Receives NSF Career Award for Research on Robotic Teams
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given Kansas State University computer science professor Scott DeLoach a five-year, $450,000 CAREER Award to be channeled into research toward the improvement of robotic teamwork. "There are many applications for cooperative robotic teams, ...
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Semantic Web to Take Center Stage at ACM's WWW2004
ACM's World Wide Web Conference taking place in New York this week features discussion about the Semantic Web, a concept that will add intelligence to the Web through the use of metadata. The Semantic Web would enable computers to not only identify, but also understand content ...
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Language of Science Lags Behind Nanotech
One of the key challenges of nanotechnology--beyond creating it--is finding a widely acceptable terminology for the invention. Often inventors have come up with whimsical names for nanotech, a tradition that dates back to the use of the term "buckeyball" to describe complex molecules that ...
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Ex-Dean Aide Gets New Life in Valley
University of Illinois computer-science student and onetime aide of former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is turning the online collaboration software he co-developed for the Dean campaign into a "grass-roots organizing tool kit" for activists through the CivicSpace Labs ...
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Teen Techies Engineer the Future
Over 1,300 students from 40 nations gathered in Portland, Ore., last week to participate in the 55th annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), which awards college scholarships in the hopes of motivating high-school students to pursue careers in science and ...
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Makers of White-Box Supercomputers Hit Their Stride
Small supercomputing firms have started to gain on their larger rivals and nab high-profile contracts because of their expertise with building sophisticated clusters relatively cheaply using standardized components and open-source Linux software. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's ...
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Big Blue Says Breakthrough Means Millipede May Crawl Out of Lab
IBM has built a working prototype of the Millipede quantum storage chip, a silicon-based microelectromechanical device comprised of an array of cantilevers that use heated probes to "prick" data into the storage medium as well as read it. The company believes that the heated tip technique ...
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Cutter Summit: Update on Agility
Advocates of agile modeling want agile practices to encompass management, according to Jim Highsmith, author of Adaptive Software Development and Agile Software Development Ecosystems, and a founding member of the AgileAlliance. Agile modeling is somewhat at a crossroads as its practices ...
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IT Alliance: Japan, Korea, China Aim to Jointly Counter U.S. Dominance
U.S. information technology standards could face some challenges from protocols that result from alliances between Japan, Korea, and China. Representatives from the three countries are set to gather in July for a communications policy meeting in which a common fourth-generation ...
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Is Nanotech Ready for Its Close-Up?
Despite heavy funding into nanotechnology projects and companies from venture capitalists and the federal government, nanotech's most notable accomplishments are pedestrian in nature (moisturizer additives, stain-resistant pants, etc.), and are coming out of firmly established ...
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A Conversation With Sam Leffler
Independent consultant Sam Leffler, who has made valuable contributions to Unix and the Berkeley Software Distribution, explains that when comparing the open source software development model to the closed-source model, it is the people involved rather than the models themselves that determine the ...
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