Qwerks of History
Microsoft, Amid Dwindling
Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career
A fall-off of computer science majors--23 percent fewer
this year, according to a poll of several hundred North
American universities by the Computing Research
Association--has prompted industry leaders such as Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates to lecture at schools, telling students
that ...
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E-Voting Terminals Face
Super Tuesday Test
The March 2 primary election will feature the use of
electronic voting machines that have been criticized for their
susceptibility to hacking and other forms of tampering.
Maryland, which has spent $55 million to deploy touch-screen
e-voting systems, will wrap the machines in protective tape
...
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Wesleyan's Cluster
Computers
Using Beowulf cluster architecture developed by NASA in the
mid 1990s, Wesleyan University physics professor Reinhold
Blumel and then-student Vasilios Hoffman constructed a
supercomputer, WesWulf I, using obsolete, discarded desktops.
The cluster's success prompted the development of a ...
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Design Space, Nothing But
Net
On April 1, 1994, leading Internet figure and ICANN
Chairman of the Board Dr. Vinton Cerf puckishly posted a
fictitious email from a human outpost on Mars, circa 2023, to
illustrate his belief that the Internet would eventually
transcend terrestrial boundaries. Three years later, he
started ...
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Model Keeps Virtual Eyes
Right
University of Southern California research partially funded
by the National Science Foundation has yielded a computerized
3D model of a human head that boasts realistic automatic head
and eye movements based on a computer simulation of regions in
the primate brain that are responsible for initial ...
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IBM Heeds Message to
Integrate IM, E-mail
Most of IBM's 315,000 employees use an experimental
messaging client that integrates instant messaging (IM),
email, voice, and other communication forms: The so-called
NotesBuddy application is the future of IM, which has already
become a critical business tool. The rapid rise of IM in the
...
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Report Raises Questions
About Fighting Online Piracy
A March 1 report from the Committee for Economic
Development concludes that the economy and business could be
hurt by the U.S. entertainment industry's push for stricter
laws to shield copyrighted material from digital pirates.
Critics argue that the delicate balance between content
creators' rights ...
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Anti-Spyware Law
Proposed
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Conrad Burns (D-Mont.), and
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced the Software Principles Yielding
Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act on Feb. 26
in an effort to limit the use of spyware. The bill proposes
new regulations that would ban harmful ...
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Radio, Net Phone Draw Feds'
Attention
Dan Gillmor writes that Internet telephony and low-powered
community radio, which are garnering federal attention, could
become entangled within the machinations of lawmakers,
bureaucrats, and other affected parties fighting to protect
their regulatory and political interests. Voice over Internet
...
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Kick-Off for the Wireless
World Initiative Research
The Wireless World Initiative (WWI) has kicked off a series
of Integrated Projects in the European Commission's Sixth
Framework Program (FP6) Information Society Technology with
the goal of determining systems and operations that offer the
best possible user experience while keeping ...
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Visually Impaired Can Now
'Surf' Internet Thanks to Indian Software
More than a hundred visually-impaired children in India are
using software that lets them surf the Internet. The software
product, called Vachantar, is being used by students at the
Government High School for Blind Girls in the south Indian
state of Andhra Pradesh. Developed by the Center for ...
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Forget India, Let's Go to
Bulgaria
India handles a lot of offshore software outsourcing work,
but Bulgaria, Romania, and other European nations are moving
into "near-shoring"--moving work to nations that are less
expensive but nearby. For instance, German software company
SAP has an outpost in Bulgaria, which is taking on various ...
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Click Here to Keep Your
Info Private
A U.K. information technology expert believes he has come
up with a happy medium for Web users and Web site owners over
the issue of privacy and cookies. Lykourgos Petropoulakis of
the University of Strathclyde has developed a new system that
allows Web users to turn cookies on when they ...
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Senator: Information
Sharing Is Key to Thwarting Cyber Attacks
Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) has been awarded the RSA Award
for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy for his work on
high-tech security issues. He supports work being done by the
Cyber Security Information Sharing Project, which is working
on a nationwide information sharing system to anticipate, ...
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Thinking Inside the
Box
Integrated security gateway (ISG) solutions that bundle
together an array of security features are expected to
displace dedicated security appliances in the enterprise
within a few years, although they come with certain
trade-offs. ISGs are particularly attractive to CIOs for their
cost, as ...
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High Performance
Computing: Past, Present and Future
In just a few years, supercomputer design has been
transformed from costly, proprietary, and specialized systems
to less expensive cluster computers consisting of PC
architectures, commodity microprocessors, Gigabit Ethernet,
and standard networked storage schemes. As a result of cluster
...
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Ten Technologies That
Refuse to Die
An array of technologies has survived and flourished
despite the advent of more advanced technologies that were
expected to supplant them: The long life of analog watches
illustrates the importance of device performance over extra
features, and the value of elegant and intuitive
functionality. ...
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Qwerks of
History
Brian Hayes cites Intel's microprocessor family and the
Unix operating system as examples of technologies that have
proved remarkably resilient--and in key aspects,
unchanged--over the last 35 years or so. All of the processors
Intel has rolled out since the 8086 back in 1978 are ...
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