To Err Is Human: Teaching a GUI Good Manners
Fancy Meets Function on Runway
Wearable technologies from 35 exhibitors hailing from 10 countries were on display at the fourth annual SIGGRAPH Cyber Fashion Show this week. Sensor-equipped purses from Gauri Nanda of MIT were designed to communicate with skirts and scarves so that the wearer can be alerted to inclement ...
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Invention Intervention
A cry for dramatic reform to the U.S. patent system is echoed by lawyers, lawmakers, inventors, and companies, but few can agree on what kind of remedy would address the system's many problems, which include an overwhelming backlog and dubious criteria for patentability. Rep. Lamar ...
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Dear IT Graduate, Just One Word: Mainframes
The mainframe is enjoying a comeback of sorts with a resurgence in centralized IT functions among many organizations; also contributing is the need for companies to replace retiring mainframe experts and Chinese, Eastern European, and other international companies investing in mainframes ...
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Under Siege in Dulles By New-Generation Hackers
VeriSign's Aristotle Balogh believes the hacker wars reached a critical milestone last year as hackers transformed from irritating nuisances into serious threats. An Aug. 2 report from IBM estimates that over 237 million security attacks occurred worldwide in the first six months of 2005, a 50 ...
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IT Jobs Call Stateside, But Who's Answering?
University of Washington computer-science program director David Notkin, who recently joined the board of the Computer Research Association, suggests that IT jobs are more plentiful now than they were prior to the dot-com boom--at least for people with design and other higher-level ...
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Lawmakers Push Pentagon Over Science, Tech Programs
The House and the Senate will hammer out a compromise on the Pentagon's fiscal 2006 authorization bill in September; both measures would provide more than President Bush sought for its science and technology programs. The House bill sets aside $892 million more for science and technology, ...
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Worms Could Dodge Net Traps
Concealed Internet sensors designed to spot malware before it becomes a threat could be thwarted by future computer worms if preventive action is not taken, according to two papers presented at the Usenix Security Symposium on Aug. 4. One paper authored by University of Wisconsin ...
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Students Work to Protect Passwords
A new technique with the potential to increase the security of password authentication has been developed by Stanford computer science researchers, who created a free and open browser plug-in that helps shield passwords. Stanford student Nicholas Miyake, one of the researchers who developed the ...
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Grid Meets P2P
The San Diego Supercomputer Center's Karan Bhatia, SICS' Per Brand, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Karlo Berket, Microsoft's Alex Mallet, and Oracle's Sergio Mendiola have authored a new Global Grid Forum paper discussing how grid computing and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications can ...
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Europe Follows Grokster's Lead
A directive supported by the European Commission calls for the criminalization of "attempting, aiding, or abetting and inciting" copyright infringement--a proposal that could, like the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in the case of MGM v. Grokster, make developers of file-sharing ...
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Google Now a Hacker's Tool
Hackers are utilizing Google's massive database, with blame falling to Internet users who are unaware what Google makes available, according to Computer Sciences Corporation researcher Johnny Long. Recently, Long and other researchers were able to harness Google to find an unprotected Web ...
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New 'Roadcasting' Concept Allows Music Sharing in and Between Cars
A team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a radio program called Roadcasting that enables users to share music with listeners from other cars up to 30 miles away; the software also learns a user's tastes and offers the capability to search for music of a particular ...
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The College Library of Tomorrow
Schools such as MIT and Stanford University are embarking on projects to build digital libraries where access to knowledge is just a mouse click away. Many of these initiatives were jump-started by the U.S. government's plans to digitize 95 percent of its material this year, while Google's ...
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Optoelectronics to Increase the Broadband Flow
LABELS is an IST-backed project that aims to optimize the capacity of existing fiber-optic cables in an effort to help address the growing demand for faster data transmission. LABELS is exploring ways to surmount logjams in the movement of data; the optical method the researchers are advancing ...
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Open GL ES 2.0 Advances 3D Graphics Acceleration for Cellphones, Handhelds, PS3
The Khronos Group consortium announced OpenGL ES 2.0, a new iteration of the OpenGL desktop application programming interface (API), at the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference on Aug. 1. OpenGL ES, designed for use in cell phones, handhelds, and embedded systems, offers more flexibility than its ...
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Microsoft Tries to See Academe's Future
In an interview at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said he expects higher education to change dramatically as a result of new technologies. He predicted the continued enhancement of tablet PCs and their eventual ascendance to the preeminent computer on ...
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Digital 3-D at a Theater Near You
Many experts say that new 3D technologies could be the catalyst for the rollout of a digital cinema standard that promises to reduce film distribution costs and re-invigorate the experience of going to the movies, which translates into healthy profits for studios and theaters. Disney's ...
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Calls to End U.S. Domination of the Internet
The U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) wants control of the Internet to pass from the U.S. Department of Commerce to an international coalition of governments, companies, and civilian entities. The Commerce Department holds the keys to the Internet through the Domain Name System's ...
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To Err Is Human: Teaching a GUI Good Manners
User interface designer and author Niall Murphy insists that user errors must be considered in the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) if the end product is to provoke less frustration. He writes that reducing the number of error messages an interface produces requires the elimination of ...
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