Too Darned Big to Test
Virtual-Reality Movies Put a New Face on 'User-Friendly'
University at Buffalo researchers are developing increasingly "self-aware" computational agents that can ad-lib responses to human users' spontaneous actions in order to make movies and other forms of entertainment more interactive and user friendly, a breakthrough that is also expected to ...
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The GIMP at a Crossroads
Jozsef Mak contends that the GIMP open-source bitmap editor will have limited usability unless its graphical user interface becomes more supportive of fundamental human-computer interaction standards, and notes that senior open source proponents are urging for unified user interface ...
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Eclipse Lights Up Java Crowd
The Eclipse software development project has signed on BEA Systems, Sybase, and Borland International as board members, solidifying the open source platform's role as the leading source of innovation for Java tools. Less than one year ago, IBM rivals painted Eclipse as a Trojan horse meant to ...
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Poll: U.S. Has Conservative Tack on Innovation
An A.T. Kearney survey of over 300 technology executives finds a prevailing conservative attitude toward innovation that chiefly emphasizes existing services and products, even though executives consider innovation to be critical to sustaining competitiveness. A.T. Kearney's John Ciachella ...
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A Visit to the InfoGraphics Lab
The University of Oregon's InfoGraphics Lab focuses on the integration of GIS and graphic design tools with cartographic design. The lab has three areas of concentration: Public service, such as research and mapping initiatives for state agencies; support for faculty research; and campus ...
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Grand Ambitions
Institutions and organizations throughout Australia are identifying and working on grand challenges, which are complex scientific and engineering problems with wide-ranging societal effects that can only be solved via high-performance computing. Quantum computing, nanotechnology, "swarm" ...
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No More Crash-Test Surgery
Surgery could enter a new era with patient computer modeling techniques being developed by Stanford engineer Charles Taylor and collaborators. An accurate simulation of patients would allow surgeons to predict how their systems would react to surgical procedures and determine which surgical ...
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Women Making Strides in IT Sector
Canada's association of information technology professionals plans to address the under-representation of women in the IT industry during its fifth annual "Women in IT: Looking Towards the Future" program. The series of nine Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) events across the ...
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Software Learns to Translate by Reading Up
Kevin Knight of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute said his new translation software is in line with the new direction of machine learning. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., Knight said the ...
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Mobile Networks Seek Turbo Boost
Third-generation (3G) mobile networks will need to be dramatically faster if they are to appeal to users of broadband Internet connectivity that offers 0.5 Mbps of throughput, which overtakes current 3G networks significantly. A commercial 1 Gbps system could be up to seven years away, ...
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Microsoft Researchers Use Machine Learning Techniques to Help Advance HIV Vaccine Research
Microsoft Research is applying computer science algorithms to HIV vaccine development at the University of Perth in Australia and the University of Washington. The two universities are pursuing related approaches to developing an HIV vaccine based on specific identifying proteins called ...
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Thwarting 'Evil Geniuses'
Blue Water Technologies CEO John Shovic teaches computer-science majors at Eastern Washington University about cyberthreats and their perpetrators so that they can shield themselves against such dangers. He teaches four courses: The first two detail computer network operations, the deployment ...
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VoIP Without Wires
Office phones are gradually becoming mobile thanks to the convergence of VoIP telephony and 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs), although widespread adoption is currently impeded by high costs and connectivity issues. The challenges of wireless VoIP deployment include substantial ...
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Meet Me in Cyberspace
Online collaboration has taken off with new Web applications that allow geographically dispersed teams to share information quickly without leaving their normal work routines. Whereas e-meetings were seen as solutions for tightened travel budgets a few years ago, they are now preferred methods ...
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More Bits in Pits
Whereas conventional DVDs that use red lasers to encode data as pits in the disk's surface have a maximum storage capacity of 4.7 GB per layer, forthcoming blue-laser DVDs that use smaller pits will be able to store up to 15 GB or 25 GB per layer, depending on the format. However, researchers ...
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Advances in Voice Recognition
Voice recognition technology is imperfect, but an essential tool for people with disabilities that prevent them from using a keyboard and mouse, writes Hi-Tech Inventions senior partner Janine Lodato, who has multiple sclerosis and uses IBM's ViaVoice software. As the technology improves and is ...
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The Super Bowl of Smart
Junior high and high school students from around the world participate in the annual First (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, in which hundreds of teams assemble machines out of a standard kit of 300-plus components in six weeks and pit ...
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Too Darned Big to Test
As software grows bigger and more complicated and concurrency and distributed systems become commonplace, handcrafted tests become a less reliable means of spotting bugs, writes Keith Stobie, a test architect in Microsoft's XML Web Services group. Keeping test methods economical ...
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