The Infinite
Library
Student Engineers Develop
Program for Online Class Discussions
A team of engineering students in the ACM'sUCLA chapter is
developing a virtual communication system for classmates using
the open source Jabber instant messaging protocol. The
CourseChat service is being created in response to the School
of Engineering's request ...
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Berners-Lee Sees Killer App
for Semantic Web
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) director Tim Berners-Lee
told attendees at the Fourth Annual Bio-IT World Conference
and Expo on May 17 that the Semantic Web could enable
researchers and other users to uncover scientific data
concealed within dissimilar applications' formats and
organizational ...
[read more]
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NSF Researchers Test
Genetic Storage Technique
University researchers have developed a new method for
efficiently accepting large amounts of incoming data by
borrowing from genetic algorithms. University of Southern
California computer science professor Leana Golubchik says
government agencies face a serious technical problem ...
[read more]
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Battle of the
Coders
Shanghai Jiao Tong University's last-minute, first-place
win of the ACM's International Collegiate Programming Contest
in April demonstrates how computer-programming students in
developing nations are acquiring superior skills thanks to the
rapid ...
[read more]
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Beyond the Barriers: What
Women Want in IT
The Australian government has failed to increase the number
of women in the IT field because it focused on barriers to
recruitment instead of the qualities of the IT industry that
are off-putting for women, says Australian Computer Society
(ACS) Women board program director Su Spencer. ...
[read more]
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'Machine Learning' Is
Beal's Focus
University at Buffalo computer scientist Matthew J. Beal's
forte is Bayesian machine learning, a field of study that
seeks to build models that computers can use to become more
knowledgeable through probability inference. Beal, who joined
the Department of Computer Science and ...
[read more]
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Give Your DVD Player
Protection
UCLA engineering professor Rajit Gadh is developing a
DVD-protection scheme that taps the ability to write data to
radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. Upon the purchase
of a DVD, the buyer would be required to provide a password or
some kind of biometric data that would be written to ...
[read more]
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Butlers to Facilitate
Human-to-Human Interaction
The IST-funded FAME information butler is an intelligent
agent designed to help groups of people overcome linguistic,
cultural, communication, and information challenges while
collaborating on common tasks. "The information butler
facilitates human to human interaction, eliminating the ...
[read more]
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Move Over,
Herbie
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA)
Grand Challenge is a race between autonomous vehicles that
must navigate a 175-mile Mojave Desert course without human
assistance; the team that develops the first vehicle to cross
the finish line in less than 10 hours will win $2 million. ...
[read more]
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COBOL Skills Needed in the
Future
COBOL is not necessarily a thing of the past, considering
that use of the mainframe has been growing and the enormous
amount of the COBOL code currently running. In fact,
programmers who are skilled in the legacy language are likely
to be in high demand over the next decade when many ...
[read more]
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The Web: Video Search
Engines Come of Age
Experts expect new video search engines to significantly
enhance corporate intelligence gathering and help spawn new
applications and products such as phonetic-based Web searches
and Internet-specific entertainment from Hollywood, among
other things. Clew partner David Carpe is particularly ...
[read more]
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Repairs Underway for
Server Speed Tests
The Transaction Processing Performance Council is set to
replace a number of server benchmarking tests, including the
13-year-old TPC-C test that measures large database servers.
TPC-C will be replaced by TPC-E in 2006, enabling prospective
server buyers to more accurately gauge the real-world ...
[read more]
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SourceForge.net Surpasses
100,000 Open Source Projects
Upwards of 100,000 open source projects have been
collaboratively developed and stored on SourceForge.net, whose
registered users numbered a record 1,074,424 as of May 15,
2005. Among the companies and organizations posting successful
projects to SourceForge.net is NASA, whose Java ...
[read more]
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Failure Must Be a Part of
the Plan
Improving the overall cybersecurity situation means
preparing for failure by strengthening internal security and
business continuity planning, not just focusing on perimeter
security. Former White House advisor Richard Clarke says
software vulnerabilities are the main threat to cybersecurity
...
[read more]
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Building
Bridges
Portland State University attempts to stimulate an interest
in math, engineering, science, and computer science among
underrepresented high school students through the 35-year-old
Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) program.
Oregon MESA director Carla Faini says the ...
[read more]
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Flag Ruling Doesn't Signal
End to Copyright Issues
The U.S. Circuit Court in Washington recently determined
that the FCC exceeded its bounds by trying to require TVs or
other devices to read broadcast flag" coding designed to block
the copying of digital TV signals, but Chris Nolan writes that
the copyright controversy will ...
[read more]
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Making It on Their
Own
An organization can benefit enormously from end user
software development, which is becoming increasingly necessary
as untrained employees grow impatient with IT for the tools
they require to access and manipulate data. National Council
on Compensation Insurance CIO Shawn O'Rourke calls not ...
[read more]
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Flight of the Creative
Class
In "Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global
Competition for Talent," George Mason University public policy
professor Richard Florida writes that the global economy's
increasing reliance on knowledge industries requires the
cultivation of a creative class by nation-states; he warns
that the ...
[read more]
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The Infinite
Library
Many librarians and archivists have welcomed Google's
announcement that it will digitize millions of library books,
although some are worried that such an venture could lead to
the privatization of literary knowledge. There is another
concern that digital libraries will drive traditional ...
[read more]
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