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ACM TechNews - Wednesday, August 10, 2005



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ACM TechNews
August 10, 2005

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • Critics Say Security Still Lags
  • Panel: Open-Source Needs More Women Developers
  • IBM Open-Sources New Search Technology
  • Wanted: IT Professionals
  • SIGGRAPH 2005 Summarized
  • Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts
  • Where Are the Visionaries?
  • Robot Catcher Grabs High-Speed Projectiles
  • Annual Hacking Game Teaches Security Lessons
  • CIGI Strikes Common Chord
  • Electrical Engineers Invent Wireless Internet Connection
  • U.S. Goes High Speed, Slowly
  • Fixed-Mobile Convergence: An End to Confusion and Commoditization?
  • Lucas Plans to Make Video Games with Artificial Intelligence
  • Maximizing Data Reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks
  • The Future Is Here. Can It Be Managed?
  • Smart Surveillance Has Alarm Bells Ringing
  • Car Computer Systems at Risk as Viruses Go Mobile

     

    Critics Say Security Still Lags

    Internet and computer security continues to face heavy criticism four years after Sept. 11, with industry organizations and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) urging the allocation of more federal resources to tech security. A CSO magazine poll of 389 security professionals finds ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Panel: Open-Source Needs More Women Developers

    A panel discussion at the seventh annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention last week focused on the severe underrepresentation of women in open-source projects. Panelists cited academic and private studies estimating that only about 2 percent of open-source software developers are female, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    IBM Open-Sources New Search Technology

    IBM has announced its intention to disclose the code of its new Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA), a search tool that probes unordered data, such as email, Web pages, and text documents for facts, trends, and relationships. UIMA surpasses keyword searches in its ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Wanted: IT Professionals

    A recent spate of IT recruitment in Canada is a positive sign, primarily for seasoned as well as aggressive technology professionals. Two months ago saw the launch of a Communitech-led hiring initiative in the Waterloo Region whose participants include over 50 area tech firms and several local ...

    [read more]      to the top


    SIGGRAPH 2005 Summarized

    SIGGRAPH 2005 once again explored the integration of computer graphics technology and art, a theme that was reflected in almost every work accepted for the Emerging Technologies gallery. One reason such a convergence is being emphasized is to encourage new ideas for expanding the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts

    The U.S. Army and Air Force are hoping to reverse the erosion of the domestic science and engineering workforce, which is critical to defense labs and industries, by training 15 elite scientists in the art of writing and selling screenplays. The reasoning is that films and TV shows ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Where Are the Visionaries?

    There appears to be an absence of trailblazing pioneers in the computing industry, which has left analysts scratching their heads when searching for the next Jack Kilby or Vinton Cerf. Although true visionaries are indeed rare, the rise of committee thinking makes it even harder to identify them, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Robot Catcher Grabs High-Speed Projectiles

    University of Tokyo researchers have developed a three-fingered robot that can catch a ball hurtling through the air at 300 kilometers per second. The device's "palm" is equipped with an array of photo detectors to track the trajectory of the ball, whose movement is recognized almost ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Annual Hacking Game Teaches Security Lessons

    The annual DEF CON conference hosts a hacker version of Capture the Flag, and this year's bout emphasized more real-world skills, according to University of California at Santa Barbara computer science professor Giovanni Vigna, whose Shellphish team was the victor. "The game required ...

    [read more]      to the top


    CIGI Strikes Common Chord

    Boeing's Common Image Generator Interface (CIGI) is making progress toward becoming a common standard for simulator visual-systems compatibility as CIGI's user base expands rapidly. Major CIGI adopters include NASA, U.S. Naval Warfare Center research laboratories, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Electrical Engineers Invent Wireless Internet Connection

    The 2.5 GHz helix antenna for WiFi invented by Virginia Tech researchers Warren Stutzman and Michael Barts has revolutionized wireless Internet usage and brought stable connections to remote locations such as hospitals, airports, and hotels. After many experiments with different shapes, the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    U.S. Goes High Speed, Slowly

    A Forrester Research survey of over 68,000 U.S. households found that the percentage of Americans with high-speed Internet access expanded from 19 percent in 2003 to 29 percent in 2004, and the study projects that 62 percent of U.S. residents--roughly 71 million Americans--should have ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Fixed-Mobile Convergence: An End to Confusion and Commoditization?

    The telephony infrastructure is inefficient and confusing for users, and traffic's migration to IP is threatening to slash revenues for facilities-based carriers while third parties and virtual network operators reap the big profits. But confusion and commoditization could end with ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Lucas Plans to Make Video Games with Artificial Intelligence

    Lucasfilm founder and owner George Lucas made a keynote speech at the Last week's SIGGRAPH 2005 conference in which he announced his intention to imbue video games with artificial intelligence. He described such a breakthrough as the gaming industry's Holy Grail. He said he expected AI ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Maximizing Data Reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks

    Wireless sensor networks cannot support real-world applications unless their various interrelationships are understood and addressed. To avoid potentially crippling overhead, wireless sensor nets need to be scalable, reliable, responsive, mobile, and power-efficient, and these traits' ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Future Is Here. Can It Be Managed?

    Panelists at the first annual World Information and Communication Technology Summit say the technologies for making ubiquitous computing a reality are either already available or nearly ready. "As the [IT and telecom] industries come together and this capability of embedding ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Smart Surveillance Has Alarm Bells Ringing

    Western Australia's Curtin University of Technology is developing a smart surveillance system that flags suspicious behavior to allow law enforcement to take pre-emptive steps. Curtin University professor Barney Glover says the system identifies unusual activity via behavior recognition technology, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Car Computer Systems at Risk as Viruses Go Mobile

    In-vehicle computer systems could be threatened by malware as hackers' interest in authoring viruses for wireless devices grows, according to automotive industry officials and analysts. Automakers' tweaking of on-board computers to allow consumers to transfer data with mobile phones ...

    [read more]      to the top


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