Where Do System Standards Go From Here?
Father of Palm Handhelds Focuses on Making Computers Even Brainier
Palm handheld creator and Redwood Neuroscience Institute founder Jeff Hawkins recently unveiled a for-profit company, Numenta, that will concentrate on expanding computer intelligence through the application of his brain research. Hawkins theorizes that the human brain's ability to ...
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A Miss Hit
Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson wrote an article last year titled "The Long Tail" that said Internet firms such as Amazon.com, eBay, and Google based their businesses on obscure information and products rather than popular items; the meme gathered currency among bloggers, who ...
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Cybersecurity Regs Would Be Tricky
Although the federal government believes establishing a broad regulatory framework for cybersecurity would prevent counterterrorism, a 57-page report from the Congressional Research Service suggests the Internet is too vast to control, especially since cooperation and coordination among ...
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Kevin Mitnick and the Art of Intrusion--Part 1
Hacker-turned-security-consultant Kevin Mitnick, who has compiled stories of exploits in his book "The Art of Intrusion" as a guide to hackers' goals and attack strategies, notes that the companies he offers his services to are too concerned with regulation compliance and making money to fortify ...
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On the Trail of the Zombie PCs
Programmers participating in The German Honeynet Project are detailing their attempts to track down and monitor malicious "bots" used to turn vulnerable PCs into "zombie" computers that hackers use to coordinate exploits ranging from identity theft to spamming to disruption of online ...
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One-on-One
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) top cybersecurity official Andy Purdy says the most worrisome threat to national cybersecurity is the growing black market of tools that spread spyware or launch denial-of-service attacks. These networks of hijacked computers are currently being used by ...
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Retirement Having Little Effect on IT Skills, Survey Finds
The federal IT workforce is aging, but its IT skills remain strong, according to a new study by the CIO Council and the Office of Personnel Management. The CIO Council and the OPM surveyed 22,104 IT workers in 12 General Schedule or Foreign Service categories involved in IT or that have ...
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Study Seeks Hi-Tech Mountaineers
Researchers at the University of Aberdeen and the Macaulay Institute are recruiting mountain climbers and hillwalkers to participate in a year-long study to evaluate the ability of geovisualization software to evaluate terrain. Geovisualization can be used to create, inspect, and manipulate ...
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Gadgets Rule on College Campuses
U.S. college campuses have been invaded by an army of laptops, cell phones, and other wireless technologies students use to maintain constant connections between their classwork, their peers, and their professors. Critics such as college consultant Warren Arbogast warn that the push to ...
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NFC: Nearly There
Philips and Nokia continue to make progress on near-field communications (NFC), but advocates of the technology must narrow the scope of its potential uses, convince manufacturers to include it in their electronic devices, and find big customers, like RFID and contactless payment have in ...
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The Brain Behind the Big, Bad Burger and Other Tales of Business Intelligence
The restaurant industry is the exception to the rule when it comes to effectively using business intelligence (BI) software to extract useful insights that can be exploited to boost the bottom line. CKE Restaurants, parent company of the Hardee's fast food chain, employed a BI system to ...
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The Changing Landscape of Networks
The time has come to build a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)- and IP-based "infranet" that blends the reliability and functionality of private networks with the pervasiveness of the Internet, writes Juniper Networks founder and CTO Pradeep Sindhu. This will eliminate the barriers ...
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Will .Mp and .Mobi Make Life Easier for Mobile Users
Two new top-level domains--.mp and .mobi--designed to accommodate the viewing constraints of mobile Internet devices are expected to be available by mid 2005, despite opposition from some who say the domains violate the device independence of the Internet. The .mp domain is already in the ...
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Hack License
In reviewing McKenzie Wark's book, "A Hacker Manifesto," Simson Garfinkel outlines Wark's central argument and notes flaws that, in the reviewer's opinion, make the title of the book misleading. Wark, a professor at New School University, sees recent skirmishes over copyrights, trademarks, and ...
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If Smallpox Strikes Portland...
A group of Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers has developed EpiSims, software that can run computerized simulations of disease epidemics in order to determine the best ways health officials can respond. A disease's trajectory throughout the social network as well as the points ...
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Location-Aware Networking: We Know Where You Are
The deployment of enhanced 911 (E911), which is already required in several states, calls for the implementation of a location-aware infrastructure that supports VoIP over Wi-Fi and similar technologies, but enterprises should examine the opportunities--and drawbacks--location-aware networks ...
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Visual Modeling's New Look
Visual modeling, when properly executed, can enhance software application development by reducing manual coding, incorporating reusability into whole segments of application design, making maintenance less of a headache for IT organizations, and ensuring that business and development teams are ...
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Where Do System Standards Go From Here?
Cisco Systems' John G. Waclawsky writes that successful standards expand the general market because they focus on creating end-user value by reducing product or product components' complexity and cost, and making businesses capable of developing new products or services. Despite the ...
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