Strategic Supercomputing Comes of Age
One Small Step in Uphill Fight as Linux Adds a Media Player
Novell and Red Hat are the latest Linux companies to announce the inclusion of RealNetworks' media player in their desktop Linux distributions. The move bolsters Linux's position on the desktop against Microsoft, which has come under legal attack in Europe because it bundles its media player and ...
[read more] to the top
Scientists Help Create Spacecraft That Think for Themselves
Machine-learning and pattern-recognition software that can be applied to a wide array of spacecraft is an area of research for scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Arizona State University (ASU), and the University of Arizona (UA). The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) ...
[read more] to the top
H-1B Increase Faces Stiff Resistance
Initiatives to raise the federal H-1B visa cap, whose 65,000 limit was reached in February, have made little progress, given record unemployment levels for engineers and a welter of state legislation to restrict offshore outsourcing. The IEEE-USA estimated last month that the jobless rate for ...
[read more] to the top
Wi-Fi Finds the Way When GPS Can't
Wi-Fi is emerging as a back-up technology for GPS systems, whose signals are often blocked by tall buildings and other structures in urban areas. The number of Wi-Fi base stations sprouting in public places is burgeoning, and the University of Washington's Anthony LaMarca and scientists at ...
[read more] to the top
EBay Shows It's Sold on Software Makers
This year's EBay Live convention was preceded by the first-ever EBay Developers Conference, which the company set up for the growing number of software entrepreneurs creating EBay-specific applications. People began selling EBay add-on software as early as 1997, when David Eccles wrote his ...
[read more] to the top
Java's Place in the Universe of More Than Just Passing Interest
The chief value of Sun Microsystems' Java technology is its cultivation of a wide-ranging community or ecosystem that has helped Sun sustain its status as a feasible choice for purchasers of large-scale computer systems, according to Sun CEO Scott McNealy. Sun estimates that some 1.75 billion ...
[read more] to the top
The Robot That Does a Simple Job Very Well May Be Wave of Future
University of Notre Dame professor Steven B. Skaar believes many academicians are in a state of denial about their lack of progress in the field of robotics. The slow advancement of robot technology is attributable to the unexpected complexity of performing simple physical ...
[read more] to the top
VP Tool Re-Creates Hallucinations
Researchers at Australia's University of Queensland have created software that can simulate hallucinatory experiences in a 3D virtual reality environment modeled after a psychiatric ward. The hallucinations--unsettling images and malevolent, disembodied voices--are ...
[read more] to the top
DARPA Funds New Photonic Research Center at Illinois
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has earmarked $6.2 million to be allocated to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over four years for the establishment of a photonic research facility committed to the development of ultra-fast light sources for high-speed ...
[read more] to the top
Better Videoconferencing Requires Less Computer Network Jitter, New Software Tools
Ohio State University engineers have discovered that users' attitude toward Internet videoconferencing greatly depends on the degree of "network jitter"--the disruption of a video signal that creates a jumpy, freeze-frame effect--they experience. Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) ...
[read more] to the top
OASIS Passes Flaw-Reporting Standard
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) has approved Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL) version 1.0 as a standard for enabling products to share information about security bugs in Web services and applications. Prior to AVDL's ...
[read more] to the top
Student Team's Robot Safely Detects Land Mines
A group of Johns Hopkins University engineering students have developed a prototype remote-controlled robot that can traverse uneven terrain to locate and mark land mines safely and inexpensively. Edoardo Biancheri, Dan Hake, Dat Truong, and Landon Unninayar spent nearly a year designing ...
[read more] to the top
Jeffrey Naughton Speaks Out
University of Wisconsin at Madison computer science professor, ACM Fellow, and winner of the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award Jeffrey Naughton clarifies a statement he made that database systems are control freaks by ...
[read more] to the top
Winning the War on Spam
The current model for fighting spam is treating it as a disease, with spam-blocking software, blacklists, and other techniques being disease-fighting antibodies. Some technology experts say this thinking is flawed because it does not try to address the root cause of spam, which is ...
[read more] to the top
Internet Takedown
The United States is depending more and more on the Internet to conduct business and government functions, but this poses a risk given the vulnerability of the Internet. Experts say that the chances of a major disruption--whether from deliberate attack or from an accident like the ...
[read more] to the top
A Road Map to Agile MDA
Despite being a vocal critic of the Object Management Group's Model Driven Architecture (MDA), Ronin International senior consultant and author Scott W. Ambler has organized an agile MDA scheme that involves active stakeholder collaboration, regular development of working software, the ...
[read more] to the top
Strategic Supercomputing Comes of Age
The National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program combines the resources and expertise of Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories with those of IBM, Intel, and other computing industry leaders to provide the processing power ...
[read more] to the top
To submit feedback about ACM TechNews, contact:
technews@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from the ACM TechNews Early Alert Service:
Please send a separate email to listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with the line
signoff technews
in the body of your message.
Please note that replying directly to this message does not
automatically unsubscribe you from the TechNews list.
ACM may have a different email address on file for you,
so if you're unable to "unsubscribe" yourself, please direct
your request to: technews-request@xxxxxxx
We will remove your name from the TechNews list on
your behalf.
For help with technical problems, including problems with
leaving the list, please write to:
technews-request@xxxxxxx
to the top
© Copyright 2004 Information, Inc.
