Economics, Computer Science,
and Policy
Laurels for Giving the
Internet Its Language
ACM has named Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn winners of
the 2004 A.M. Turing Award for their pioneering work on the
design and implementation of the Internet's basic
communications protocols. The award, widely recognized as the
Nobel Prize of computing, honors ...
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Where Are All the
Women?
Women in high-tech positions of power are rare in Fortune
500 companies. Many experts agree that companies with
high-ranking women are more profitable, and there is
statistical evidence to support this view: A Catalyst analysis
found that companies with the most women in top ...
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Adding Semantics to the
Web
IST's ESPERONTO project has developed Semantic Web tools
that facilitate the upgrading of conventional Web content into
machine-readable semantic content and end-user employment of
the content. "We developed a knowledge parser that reads texts
and finds out what they mean," explains ISOCO ...
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ACLU Says Patriot Act
Diminishing Liberties
The ACLU's John Scalise warned that certain provisions of
the USA Patriot Act undermine citizen rights guaranteed by the
Constitution in his speech at Central Michigan University on
Feb. 15. The act, which was passed in late 2001, permits
federal agencies to request information from ...
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Valley's Global Rivals
Gaining
A Feb. 15 report from the AeA (formerly the American
Electronics Association) warns that the country's
technological leadership is in jeopardy as overseas
competitors make gains in manufacturing and innovation, while
nations such as India and China have overtaken America in ...
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White House Eyes NSA for
Network 'Traffic Cop'
The White House is debating whether the responsibility of
being "traffic cop" for government computer networks that
route homeland security data and other sensitive information
across federal agencies should fall to the National Security
Agency (NSA), reports a senior NSA ...
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Linux License
Overhaul--Don't Hold Your Breath
Revamping the General Public License (GPL) that governs the
open-source Linux operating system promises to be an uphill
climb, with Free Software Foundation legal counsel Eben Moglen
not expecting the overhaul to be completed any earlier than
2006. Reaching a unified consensus on the GPL ...
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A New Model Army Soldier
Rolls Closer to the Battlefield
The Pentagon expects robots to comprise a substantial
portion of the U.S. armed forces as the technology grows more
sophisticated and automated. Pentagon officials and military
contractors say the ultimate goal is to make warfare unmanned
and bloodless, or keep casualties light and ...
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Augmented Reality: Another
(Virtual) Brick in the Wall
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology's Augmented
Environments Lab have crafted an augmented reality (AR) tour
of an Atlanta cemetery that combines elements of both linear
and random access audio tours. AR typically involves users ...
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IT Execs Swarm Capitol
Hill
The nation's capital was a beehive of dialogue between IT
executives and congressional legislators at a series of
hearings, trade shows, and other events this past week. The
House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
heard testimony from the CEOs of Motorola, Lucent, Alcatel,
...
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Just How Exciting Is
It?
U.K. Royal College of Art research fellow Brendan Walker
aims to construct a Thrill Measuring Device that can gauge
exciting experiences and produce an industry-standard measure
that can be applied to the real-time refinement of such
experiences. Potential areas of application include ...
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To Start Up Here,
Companies Hire Over There
High-tech startups are joining mature multinational
companies in adding jobs overseas. However, unlike
multinationals, which are moving existing jobs in the United
States to other countries around the world, startups are
creating jobs abroad that were never here to begin with.
According to a ...
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Software Validation
Testing Tool Gains Plaudits
The IST-funded MATELO project has developed MaTeLo, a
software validation testing tool that project coordinator
Patrick Leserf claims can trim about 20 percent off
validation's portion of the software development effort. The
tool also lets developers improve software quality by enabling
them to ...
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New School of
Thought
Leading schools have started to offer interdisciplinary
programs that blend IT studies with high-demand skills and
business courses to produce IT professionals who can more
effectively function in an environment where business and
technological prowess must be applied in equal measure. The
...
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Do the
Locomotion
The two-wheeled Segway scooter may not have lived up to its
hype as a product that would revolutionize transportation, but
the vehicle's gyroscopic balance represents a critical step
forward for robot technology. The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency snapped up a fleet of ...
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Service-Oriented
Computing: Key Concepts and Principles
Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) tackle the basic
challenges of open systems by enabling efficient operation and
supporting consistency in the presence of autonomous and
heterogeneous components, and service-oriented computing (SOC)
provides a standardized approach for building on ...
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Economics, Computer
Science, and Policy
University of Pennsylvania computer information science
professor Michael Kearns observes that computer science is a
major point of interaction between network and economic
approaches to scientific and social problems, and this
convergence can greatly influence matters of policy. "One of
the ...
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