The Dream of a Lifetime
Copyright Program to Require Explorer
Starting Oct. 24, artists can go online to pre-register certain works for copyright protection with the U.S. Copyright Office, but are required to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Technologists and other experts object to this requirement, claiming it gives preference to one browser and ...
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Who'll Mind the Mainframes?
Mainframe computing is a critical component of global infrastructure, yet the field is underrepresented in academia. Mainframe computer users and developers are especially worried about a shortage of mainframe talent as veteran mainframers retire or pass away. ''If mainframes are going to be ...
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Computer Character Lia Schools Girls in Tech
Efforts are underway to counter young girls' disinterest in science and technology, which tends to take root around middle school. One such effort is Lia, a virtual Hispanic teenager designed to be a role model for girls as well as minorities. Leigh Hallisey with Boston University's Photonics ...
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Guiding the Way Towards ICT Standardisation
COPRAS is a three-year, IST-funded project developed by three European standards bodies in collaboration with the Open Group and the World Wide Web Consortium, whose goal is to develop guidelines that can help research project partners determine whether or not they should pursue ICT ...
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Rumble in the Mojave
The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) 2005 Grand Challenge is a race for a $2 million prize in which customized robot vehicles will traverse a 150-mile off-road course in the Mojave Desert without human intervention. The unmanned vehicles will follow a programmed route using ...
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IT Sourcing: 'Workforce Trends and Skills Development'
As the issue of IT sourcing promises to pose a central challenge to tomorrow's business leaders, the Stevens Institute of Technology has developed a four-course program for MS and MBA students that approaches the sourcing issue in the categories of governance, legal issues, relationship ...
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Hackers Attack Via Chinese Web Sites
Hackers have been focusing attacks on hundreds of unclassified U.S. government systems through Chinese Web sites for several years, reported anonymous government officials. Analysts are split on whether these intrusions are the work of a coordinated Chinese government initiative to ...
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NASA Research Team Envisions Flock of Robot Aircraft Monitoring Wildfires
NASA researchers have tested a concept for monitoring wildfires through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) programmed to simulate the flocking of birds through innovative flight control software. Their vision involves dispatching two or three robotic aircraft to circle about 1,500 feet above ...
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New Directions for Computational Science Education
A group of professors describe undergraduate high-performance computing (HPC) education as "broken," because HPC skills and technologies are undervalued and underappreciated despite the fact that they essentially support the software, computing systems, and networks comprising the U.S. ...
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New Center Looks to Advance Search Technology
A new UC Berkeley center is exploring how people use search engines to improve search results. The facility involves the participation of 22 faculty members of various departments that include electrical engineering, business, computer science, and information management systems. Computer ...
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Grants Aids Computer Scientist in Drive to Help Colour-Blind
A computer science researcher at the University of East Anglia is making progress on a prototype of software that would help color-blind individuals distinguish the various colors that they encounter while surfing the Internet. The PhD student is still in the process of developing the ...
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IBM Works Toward Replaceable Biometrics
Although biometrics holds considerable promise for securing the systems of the future, the technology has been dogged by the vulnerability that could arise if a hacker were able to replicate an authentic user's physical feature used as an identifier. IBM is developing a software system that ...
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GPS-Based Applications Are Getting Around
The global positioning system (GPS), which was originally designed as a navigation aid with military use in mind, is breaking out into the civilian sector. Siemens' corporate technology unit is developing a GPS-based system for transmitting text messages to specific locations, where they are ...
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Project Aims to Create 3D Television by 2020
Japan envisions the future television as not only providing high-definition images in 3D from all angles, but also offering the opportunity to touch and smell objects that are being viewed. Japanese officials want to bring "virtual reality" television to the commercial market by 2020, and the ...
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Electoral Commission Eyes Open Source Voting
Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) CIO Ken Hunter said it is possible that its next-generation election application, known as the general enrollment election support information system (Genesis), will use open source software thanks to a migration away from incumbent legacy systems. ...
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AWOCADO: Using Metadata for Information Retrieval in Intranet-Based Document Management Systems
Mirjana Andric and Wendy Hall with the University of Southampton's Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group describe their prototype Adaptive WOrkflow Controller And Document Organizer (AWOCADO) system as "an enriched internal mailing system combined with a searchable 'source control'-like ...
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Pies in the Sky
NASA is funding a $75,000, six-month feasibility study into the concept of a food processor that can create tasty dishes to sustain astronauts on long space flights as well as enhance the terrestrial food industry by generating entirely new foods. The processor was envisioned by Icosystem ...
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Smart Talk: Speech-Enabled Apps Deliver Bottom-Line Benefits
Speech-enabled applications have started to positively affect the bottom line, says Datamonitor analyst Daniel Hong. He estimates that cost savings facilitated through a speech-enabled interactive voice response (IVR) system can allow the product to pay for itself in one to two years. ...
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The Dream of a Lifetime
John Markoff's new book, "What the Dormouse Said...," details the beginnings of personal computing by chronicling the work of such pioneers as Doug Engelbart, whose stories are largely unheard of, writes Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. Engelbart envisioned the augmentation of ...
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