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ACM TechNews - Friday, February 18, 2005



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ACM TechNews
February 18, 2005

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • How to Make the PC Beautiful
  • The Fight Over Cyber Oversight
  • EU Parliament Approves Software Patent Restart
  • Engineering the Services of Tomorrow
  • Software Firms Fault Colleges' Security Education
  • A 3-D View of the City, Block by Block
  • Computer Program Matches Intelligence of Mankind, at Least in California
  • Women Make Inroads Into IT
  • Geeks to the Corps
  • A Little of Everything at Demo
  • Rambling Robots Show Human Efficiency
  • Inside the Future
  • Building Open Blocks for Composite Web Services
  • Making Your IM Secure--and Deniable
  • Malware 101: University Offers Course on Spyware
  • Spring Comes to AI Winter
  • Mind Over Machines
  • Rugged Computers Get Flexible to Fit Any Application
  • Testing Darwin

     

    How to Make the PC Beautiful

    A key differentiator and selling point of consumer technology is its "sexiness," a quality that PC manufacturers are trying to instill within their products by enlisting industrial design specialists to transform generic office machines into sleek entertainment systems. Hewlett-Packard ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Fight Over Cyber Oversight

    Opinion was split at the recent RSA Conference on whether government regulation of corporate accountability for intrusions would improve corporate network security. Advocates such as former national cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke said such a measure would be beneficial, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    EU Parliament Approves Software Patent Restart

    The way is now clear for the European Parliament to formally request the European Commission to restart the legislative process around IT patenting following the EP Conference of Presidents' decision to reject the European Union's proposed directive, which drew fierce criticism from EU member ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Engineering the Services of Tomorrow

    Projects funded by Information Society Technologies have developed software engineering solutions to pave the way for new end-user service economies. The CAMELEON project was launched to give designers and software developers of interactive ubiquitous services techniques, tools, and models that would ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Software Firms Fault Colleges' Security Education

    In a panel session at the Secure Software Forum on Feb. 14, software companies such as Oracle and Microsoft laid a lot of blame for flawed software on a lack of education in secure programming for computer science graduates. The software industry is a target of criticism for some ...

    [read more]      to the top


    A 3-D View of the City, Block by Block

    Companies are building three-dimensional digital simulations of cities and other urban areas whose potential applications include virtual shopping, navigation, socializing, video games, tenant leasing, and urban planning. Tel Aviv-based GeoSim Systems is stitching together models of central ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Computer Program Matches Intelligence of Mankind, at Least in California

    The IBM Almaden Research Center's Maisy 5 program has successfully passed the Turing test for artificial intelligence--at least by the standards of the California educational system, according to center director Dr. Mark Dean. The Turing test dictates that a computer is capable of thinking if ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Women Make Inroads Into IT

    Statistics New Zealand estimated that women accounted for 27.5 percent of computer science graduates in 2001, but just 11 percent of technical IT professionals. The firm also reckoned that there are three male IT professionals for every female across all IT careers. Meanwhile, a 2004 ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Geeks to the Corps

    Founded as an altruistic organization for bridging the digital divide between the world's technology haves and have-nots, the International Executive Service Corps/Geekcorps recruits volunteer programmers, network designers, and other tech-savvy individuals to help set up sustainable tech ...

    [read more]      to the top


    A Little of Everything at Demo

    Edward C. Baig was impressed by numerous offerings at the 15th annual Demo conference, where some 73 companies showcased their latest wares. Notable products exhibited at the conference included AutoXray's CodeScout, an automotive plug-in that scans cars for malfunctions and identifies them in ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Rambling Robots Show Human Efficiency

    Three robots that stride like human beings made their debut at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 17. The machines, which were produced by researchers at the University of Michigan, MIT, Cornell University, and Delft University in the Netherlands, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Inside the Future

    British Telecom's resident futurist Ian Pearson predicts that computers synthesized from biological cultures will appear within a generation, and raises the possibility that computer intelligence will equal human intelligence after 2015. He theorizes that in 15 years' time a bacterium ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Building Open Blocks for Composite Web Services

    The IST's ADAPT program is developing open-source middleware for building adaptable, scalable, and composite Web services. "The problem has been that although distributed applications are being used on an increasingly wide scale there has not been much work on advancing the provision of ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Making Your IM Secure--and Deniable

    University of California at Berkeley researchers Nikita Borisov and Ian Goldberg have devised a plug-in for the Gaim instant-messaging clients that can be used to keep IM conversations confidential and unverifiable by encrypting the messages without a key. Their off-the-record (OTR) ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Malware 101: University Offers Course on Spyware

    The University of Calgary's computer science department next fall will offer a class on spyware and spam that will lead to each student writing their own spyware program. The class is not the department's first controversial offering; two years ago the department began a course on ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Spring Comes to AI Winter

    Artificial intelligence research is starting to bounce back after a long fallow period with a resurgence of interest in neurobiology and a concentration on practical medical, educational, manufacturing, and customer service applications. Redwood Neuroscience Institute founder Jeff ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Mind Over Machines

    Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is still in an infant stage of development, but promises to enable severely disabled patients to live fuller, more independent lives. There are two leading interface models: Implantable interfaces that tap brainwaves through a direct neural ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Rugged Computers Get Flexible to Fit Any Application

    Rugged computers can now be adapted for almost any military application through modular design that allows on-the-fly assembly and repair. The pervasiveness of rugged computers in the military carries design challenges if they are to support almost all tasks. Kontrol America's Embedded ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Testing Darwin

    Scientists at Michigan State University's Digital Evolution Laboratory are using digital organisms to explore and test Darwin's theories. These organisms consist of command strings that can replicate themselves into tens of thousands of copies within minutes, and they can also mutate and ...

    [read more]      to the top


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