Retooling the Global Positioning System
Viruses Nip Russia After the Cold War
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have opened Russia's borders to the Internet, which in turn has given rise to massive computer virus infections. Security experts expect things to get worse now that network intrusions and the authoring of viruses are no longer the sole ...
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Linux Contributors Face New Rules
The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) is working to avoid future conflicts over the origin of Linux source code by establishing a system for tracking and documenting changes to the kernel of the operating system. "As Linux becomes more mainstream, and more companies and governments are ...
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The Rise of the Talking Machines
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technology is expected to proliferate dramatically and may eventually be embedded into everyday household appliances. M2M systems are usually employed in one of three sectors: Remote control monitoring, financial transaction processing, and ...
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When Business Imitates Life
Just as with the industrial and information economies before it, the molecular economy will mean dramatic changes in the way people live and companies operate, according to the new book, "It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business," written by business and ...
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CIA's Spy Tools Make Maxwell Smart's Look Like Toys
Reports about intelligence failures related to Sept. 11, 2001, and the recent scandal surrounding an alleged Iraqi double-agent have done little to demolish the CIA's image as technologically incompetent. CIA Director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that information analysis ...
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Computer Science Luminaries Examine Future Interaction Design for Children
Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, and Alan Kay will open the Third International Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC2004) as members of a keynote panel pondering how best to design and implement educational tools for children and what they have learned from past efforts. The annual conference, ...
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Video Tracking Software Enters the Game
University of Calgary researcher Jeffrey Boyd has developed software that employs automatic segmentation and object recognition technology to monitor sporting events, take note of the highlights, and represent them as a schematic or diagram that can be viewed on a cell phone or other small ...
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Waving Goodbye to the Blue Screen
Information Society Technologies' DBench project administrated a series of dependability benchmarking tests on three Microsoft Windows systems--Windows 2000, Windows NT4, and Windows XP--and the results were published in two reports. DBench coordinator Karama Kanoun says testing ...
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When It Comes to Robots, Japan Has a Leg Up on Rivals
Japanese robots, which tend to follow a humanoid form factor, are much more appealing to consumers than European or American machines, which are primarily utilitarian devices. Japan's Patent Office estimates that the number of applications for robot technologies submitted by Japanese ...
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Web Viewed As in Baby Stage of Its Development
IBM chief Internet scientist Stuart Feldman says less than 10 percent of the Internet has been "formed" in the first 10-plus years of its life, while the next few decades will see the Net's computing and communications capability reaching virtually infinite levels and sparking dramatic changes ...
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RPI Study Eyes Sick Computers
The National Science Foundation is funding a project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that probes the parallels between biological virus and computer virus epidemics in order to find ways to obstruct the latter. For instance, malware's infection mechanism often takes the form of ...
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Can Linux Take Over the Desktop?
Linux developers and industry backers say the time is right for Linux on the desktop, given price advantages and increasing compatibility with Windows applications. Linux can be obtained for free and requires less computer processor and memory resources than Microsoft Windows, and Linux ...
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Group Dynamics Play Out in VR
Kyoto University researcher Hideyuki Nakanishi has created software that enables programmers to construct virtual spaces modeled after actual locations where software agents and large groups of people represented by avatars can interact. Developers crafting applications for the software, ...
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How Are Script Kiddies Outwitting I.T. Security Experts?
Teenage virus writers are known as "script kiddies," and are having an effect on the IT industry, but network security experts and antivirus vendors say their impact is not as great as is believed--most of them are not very good at virus writing. Even badly-written viruses require ...
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Technology Advances Take 3D Displays to the Masses
Now that 3D display technologies have progressed to the point where 3D images can be viewed without special eyewear, the market is showing signs of maturation. Sharp makes stereoscopic liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that have been incorporated into cell phones and notebook computers. Sharp ...
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Laying Siege to the Grid
Ever since the debut of the SETI@home project several years ago, hackers have begun harnessing distributed computing to attack Web targets, gather sensitive information, and send spam; now, hackers are targeting supercomputer grids such as those run at national laboratories and ...
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Trumping Tape
Certain applications that rely on robotic tape autoloaders for storing large amounts of archival information could switch to disk-based backup systems using massive arrays of idle disks (MAID) technology. MAID systems employ clusters of Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) disk drives that ...
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The Inevitability of Blade
Space-saving, cost-cutting blade servers are becoming more and more appealing to enterprises drawn not only to the technology's lower power consumption, reliability, and streamlined maintenance and administration, but its track record. "People have had enough experience, at least the ...
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Robots and the Rest of Us
The retirees who populate San Remo on the Italian Riviera could very well benefit from some mechanical assistance. But roboticists attending the First International Symposium on Roboethics in the resort town in January were more concerned with whether machines should have an ethical code, ...
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Retooling the Global Positioning System
As Global Positioning System (GPS) technology currently stands, civilian users can perform geolocation to within five to 10 meters, while military users who employ more expensive equipment can track their location to within five meters--or half a meter with differential GPS (D-GPS). ...
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