Seamless Mobile Computing on Fixed Infrastructure
Fewer College Students Choose Computer Majors
The gloomy state of the tech job market is chiefly to blame for decreasing numbers of enrollments in college computer programs, and many educators are worried that there will not be enough people to fill out the U.S. tech workforce when the economy bounces back. The Computing Research ...
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Next-Generation Search Tools to Refine Results
As the digitization of recorded information continues, technology researchers are working on ways to more effectively search the rapidly growing store of data. This month, the New Paradigms for Using Computers Conference highlighted several of these efforts: Inxight showed off ...
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Controlling Software Component Quality
Information Society Technologies' QCCS project offers a solution to the problem of under-specification in component-based software development, which project coordinator Anne Marie Sassen says can avoid costly and calamitous errors such as those that led to the destruction of the Ariane 5 ...
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Work on Higher-Speed WLAN Standard Begins
Suppliers are investigating how to boost WLAN speeds beyond 100 Mbps, and analysts predict that a new standard approach dubbed 802.11n will soon be introduced and then incorporated into products projected to ship in 2006. The speed of wireless connections can already be doubled through "Super G" ...
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Hewlett-Packard Expresses Interest in University's Neural Network
Researchers in Idaho have developed the first hardware system that would give machines the ability to learn on their own, and without programming. The hardware approach is based on the concept of a neural network, which would enable computers or robots to perform a number of computations ...
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Open Supercomputing Hits Big 1-0
This week marks the tenth birthday of the original Beowulf open-source supercomputing cluster, and Beowulf project co-founder Donald Becker commented at an anniversary celebration that the general attitude people have toward the supercomputer has changed in the last decade from profound ...
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Can Quantum Dots Compute?
Researchers at Harvard University and Duke University have created entangled quantum dots using semiconductor technology, and experts say the vast body of knowledge and available resources in the semiconductor industry could mean more reliable and scalable quantum computers than those ...
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Developing Nations See Linux as a Savior From Microsoft's Grip
Government officials in Brazil, China, and other developing countries are hoping to remove their dependence on Microsoft by opting for free or low-cost software systems such as Linux. This migration away from proprietary software is being driven by economic, security, and ideological ...
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Nano, Bio Converge to Provide Key Nanotech Link
Academic researchers are investigating new technologies and systems that can be created through the convergence of biology and nanotechnology. The goal of MIT's Synthetic Biology Working Group is to create a repository of compatible genetic components with specific uses that can be assembled into ...
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Jack of One Trade, Master of All
At the 12th World Computer Chess Championship held last month at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, human beings had little to do apart from feeding their computers with the maneuvers of competing machines and moving the pieces on the chessboards per their programs' instructions. Bar-Ilan professor ...
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Carnegie Mellon Develops Robot That Successfully Explored Gas Mains in NY
A wireless prototype robot designed to crawl through and examine subterranean gas mains has been developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers funded by NASA, the Northeast Gas Association (NGA), and the U.S. Energy Department's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The ...
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Security Expert Q&A: the Virus Writers Are Winning
In an interview, F-Secure computer security expert Mikko Hypponen says the new Mydoom.M worm is inserting a distributed denial-of-service client in infected computers instead of the spam Trojan that Mydoom.A was carrying. He believes those behind this latest worm are also behind the other Mydoom ...
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Feds Seek a Few Good Hackers
The recent Defcon 12 hackers' conference included a recruitment presentation by federal law enforcement agents searching for talented people to work for the government. "The Department of Defense understands how important computers are to defending the United States, and is always ...
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XP: Lessons From the Front Lines
ThoughtWorks technical architect Fred George bases the value of Extreme Programming (XP) on real-life experiences, and comes to the conclusion that the practice is not less productive than traditional programming, as some people argue. George writes that he has seen programmers become more ...
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A Bright Spark
The U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, by the end of 2004 plans to open a joint program office for a revolutionary new intelligence modeling and simulation system that promises to overhaul the way in which intelligence agencies ...
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Tricky Business
Government agencies need better information systems to counter the terrorism threat, but current projects fail to address equally important privacy concerns, according to a new report from the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Programs such as ...
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Seamless Mobile Computing on Fixed Infrastructure
The pervasive installation of public-access computers in a wide range of locations is envisioned by Intel Research's Michael Kozuch, Carnegie Mellon University's Mahadev Satyanarayanan, et al as a major step toward seamless mobile computing: In this scheme, a computer acquires a user's singular ...
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