Conversational Computers
Senators Question E-Voting Paper Trail
Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) both expressed opposition to establishing a paper trail for election ballots by hooking printers up to direct electronic recording machines (DRE). Lott is principally concerned with the increased chance of the election day ...
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Women's Share of IT Jobs Plunges
A new report from the Information Technology Association of America shows a severe decline in the percentage of women in the IT workforce. Women held just 32.4 percent of IT jobs in 2004, a proportion that represents a 41 percent drop since 1996. The report also highlights a disproportionately ...
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9/11 Response Hurting Science, ACLU Says
A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union, "Science Under Siege," accuses the Bush administration of developing policies in response to the 9/11 attacks that threaten U.S. scientific enterprise and the nation's technical superiority. The report notes a dramatic increase in ...
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Gov't. Collected Airline Passenger Data
In direct violation of a congressional mandate, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been gathering personal information about U.S. citizens who flew commercially in June 2004. Under the guise of the program Secure Flight, designed to screen for terrorists, the TSA's ...
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Software Patents: EU Parliamentarians Adopt Council of Ministers' Line
The European Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs voted Monday to propose sweeping limitations on the patentability of software. The close vote decided what will be debated and the terms that will be used to discuss it, in the July 6 plenary session concerning the Directive on the ...
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New Supercomputers Overhaul Top Ranks
IBM once again highlights the list of the 500 fastest supercomputers released this week at the International Supercomputing Conference in Heidelberg, Germany, building six of the top 10 systems and 259 of the top 500. The list ranks computers by how many trillions of algebraic ...
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Engineer's Tiny Chip Changed the World
Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, died Monday of cancer at the age of 81. The 2000 Nobel Prize recipient held over 60 patents, though none were more influential than the microchip technology that launched the microelectronics industry. Kilby's central innovation was the combination ...
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HLRS Director: HPC Users Need Quality, Not Quantity
Michael M. Resch, director of the High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) in Stuttgart, outlined in an interview his belief that the best supercomputers are designed with the end product in mind, and that technologies need to be adaptable to the industries they serve. The Center ...
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In Chess, Masters Again Fight Machines
The celebrated defeat of Garry Kasparov, world chess champion at the time, by the Deep Blue computer in 1997 will not be the final word in the battle between man and machine for preeminence in the chess world. More and more top ranked players are taking on matches against computers, such as the ...
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Taking a Virtual View of the World
Six partners from France, Germany, and Italy have developed software that enables users to browse data collected from satellites and aerial vehicles in three dimensions. "Using Vplanet Explorer, anyone can set off on a journey to discover new regions in 3D, rather than staring at a flat map ...
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Snoozing About Security
The two-year-old Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cybersecurity division has gone through three cyberczars and millions of taxpayer dollars with no progress in the quest to control the increasing number of worm and virus attacks, writes CNet executive editor Charles Cooper. In an Internet ...
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Gadget Firms Start to Notice the Gals
Consumer electronics companies are starting to recognize women as an under-appreciated audience in the packaging of their products. The Consumer Electronics Association reports that in the $100 billion per year industry, women are involved in 89% of the purchase decisions, and ...
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NSF Backs Next-Gen Internet Plans
MIT senior research scientist David Clark has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to begin preliminary research on developing a new architecture for the next Internet. The NSF is funding Clark's work as the first step in a larger program of blueprinting a successor to the current ...
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Careers: Hiring Is Up But Salaries Are Flat
Information technology staffing company Robert Half Technology found in a recent survey of over 1,400 company CIOs that 17 percent will make changes to their current IT staff levels in the next quarter. Of these, 82 percent intend to add more employees, while the rest expect to reduce staff levels. ...
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Common Criteria or Common Confusion?
The process of certifying the security of commercial software is not necessarily flawed, but the two dimensions of the Common Criteria results in some confusion, according to Mike Wolf, general manager of the advanced products engineering group at software vendor Green Hills. Common ...
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Seeing Tech's Future Now
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is taking an active role in the research and development (R&D) of future technology initiatives. Richard Russell, associate director of technology for the OSTP, says one of its main responsibilities is to track innovative ...
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Technology That Imitates Nature
Engineers are looking increasingly toward nature as an inspiration for technological innovation. The field of biomimetics will soon be more accessible to engineers, as scientists at the Centre for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies at the University of Bath in England are developing a ...
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Conversational Computers
Industrial and academic researchers are attempting to better understand the elements that constitute speech in order to make synthesized speech systems capable of sounding more human; such abilities are essential as computer-generated voice transactions become commonplace. The most ...
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