Indoor Location Technology Opens New Worlds
Report Calls for Fixes in High-Tech Voting
Touch-screen voting systems need a quick solution if they are to be used in the upcoming presidential election, and the New York University School of Law's Brennan Center and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights have issued a report outlining how such a fix can be implemented. The report ...
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Court Rejects Law Blocking Internet Porn
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, which would have imposed a $50,000 fine and a six-year prison term for commercial purveyors of Internet pornography who allowed children to access illicit material. The majority opinion said the law was an ...
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When Standards Don't Apply
Some common computing formats are not formally ratified as standards, yet have achieved de facto standard status because of their popularity, and software vendors that control these popular formats say standardization would inhibit their ability to keep pace with changing technology. Some de ...
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In Wild West of Data Mining, a New Sheriff?
Privacy activists compare the current practice of government data-mining to the lawless frontier of the Wild West, and a panel led by onetime FCC chief Newton Minnow recently issued a report concluding that data mining, though an important tool in the war against terrorism, can subvert the Bill of ...
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EFF Publishes Patent Hit List
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has narrowed down a list of roughly 200 questionable patents submitted by the public to 10 that are potentially invalid and are being employed to hurt innovation and restrict free _expression_. Acacia Technologies' digital media transmission patent is ...
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High-Tech Equity
Rice University is trying to raise the percentage of female computer science graduates through its Computer Science Computing and Mentoring Partnership (CS-CAMP). CS-CAMP is a two-week program that helps generate an interest in computer science among young women who otherwise would have ...
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Software Fuse Shorts Bugs
Stanford University researcher George Candea says restraints on input and outputs could make software more stable, preventing much of the bug-related troubles that cost the U.S. economy nearly $60 billion each year, according to National Institute for Standards and Technology estimates. Software ...
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FTC Mulls Bounty System to Fight Spam
The perceived ineffectiveness of the federal CAN-Spam law has prompted the FTC to consider a bounty system in which a person who identifies a spammer breaking the law will receive a reward of at least 20 percent of the civil penalty the FTC eventually collects--a particularly attractive proposition, ...
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Apple Putting More Focus on Simplifying Searching
Apple Computer has tapped technology from its iTunes online music service to build a new search feature for Macintosh Operating System X called Spotlight that will permit users to look rapidly for words and concepts stored on a hard drive. Spotlight, which Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs ...
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Students Create Global Positioning System Text Messages
A trio of Iowa State University computer science students has devised "spatial cues," a computer program that combines text messaging with the Global Positioning System. Spatial cues incorporates a setup similar to those in art galleries and museums, in which patrons can play recorded ...
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USC Smartens HP Server Memory
The "Godiva" research team at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering has created one of the largest processor-in-memory (PIM) chips ever realized in academia, and integrated it into standard Hewlett-Packard Long's Peak server memory modules. The ...
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APCHI Conference Starts Tomorrow
Computer experts from 17 countries are expected to the Asia Pacific Computer-Human Interaction (APCHI) 2004 conference, taking place in New Zealand beginning June 29, 2004. Hosted by the Waikato University's computer science department, the four-day conference will be the site for ...
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Sustainability--A Virtual Reality?
The European Union's VIRTU@LIS project merges virtual reality experiences with environmental awareness programs. Consortium members from the IT, scientific, environmental, learning psychology, and public policy fields collaborated to create the applications, which allow non-technical users to ...
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Speech Technology Starting to Make Its Voice Heard
The accuracy levels of speech recognition technology must dramatically improve if it is to successfully penetrate the mainstream desktop market, although it is doing well in niche markets such as dictation software and speech recognition phone systems. Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn predicts ...
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Experts: Synthetic Biology May Spawn Biohackers
Harvard University genetics professor George Church believes the potential abuse of synthetic biological designs is a danger as great as nuclear weapons, noting that it is much easier to genetically engineer a virus than it is to build a nuclear bomb. Deconstructing a cell's molecular biology ...
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Richard Clarke Talks Cybersecurity and JELL-O
In reflecting on the events of the year following his resignation as White House counterterrorism and cybersecurity czar, Richard Clarke notes that the Bush administration has taken some positive steps toward better shielding the U.S. cyber-infrastructure, but continues to demonstrate a ...
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Petaflop Imperative
A petaflop computer capable of processing up to 1 quadrillion mathematical computations per second could revolutionize many industries, including weather forecasting, medicine, and design and engineering. Council on Competitiveness President Deborah Wince-Smith explains that breaking the ...
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Give It Some Gas
Liberating mobile devices from today's power sources is the aim of several research teams investigating how batteries in such products can be replaced with fossil fuel-based power sources. "Ultimately, the goal is to be able to make millions of these cheaply, like you make Bic lighters or disposable ...
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Indoor Location Technology Opens New Worlds
Jupiter Research estimates that there will be 184 million American wireless subscribers by next year, while the National Emergency Number Association calculates that people use mobile phones to make more than 30 percent of 911 calls in the United States; these and other developments clearly ...
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