The Robots Are
Here
Cyber-Terrorism Warning
Sounded
Experts and federal officials testifying yesterday before
the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology,
and homeland security warned that terrorists could heighten
the devastating effects of physical attacks by launching
cyber-attacks against the systems that manage ...
[read more]
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Controversial Government
Data-Mining Research Lives On
The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program may have been
killed by congressional decree, but key elements of the
program have survived at other intelligence agencies,
according to congressional, federal, and research officials.
TIA's goal was to employ data-mining to sift through ...
[read more]
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RSA Panel: Cryptography
Can't Foil Human Weakness
Four panelists invited to discuss cryptography with
Counterpane Internet Security CTO Bruce Schneier at the RSA
Conference devoted most of their attention to information
security failures, and concluded that the most advanced
cryptographic solutions can be undone by the user, who is the
...
[read more]
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Tech Jobs: Research and
Development
Demand for research and development personnel has never
waned, despite the turbulence of the American job market.
"R&D continues to be a strong area for jobs for
cream-of-the-crop kinds of people," asserts Challenger, Gray
& Christmas CEO John Challenger, who also reports that
demand is increasing ...
[read more]
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Immigration &
Innovation
The United States is no longer accepting H-1B applications,
claiming that the 65,000 annual cap has already been reached.
Experts worry that such actions will make the United States a
less attractive option for foreign-born IT workers, forcing
them to go elsewhere to develop new ...
[read more]
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Is Broadband Set to Make
Power Lines Sing?
The FCC has opened the door for electricity companies to
offer broadband over power line (BPL) Internet access, and
this move potentially adds electricity companies to the ranks
of broadband providers, which currently include phone and
cable companies. BPL would also help solve the last-mile ...
[read more]
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High-Tech R&D: Too
Vital to Outsource?
A 2003 study by AMR Research found that 50 percent of
research and development units in the automotive, aerospace,
defense, and high-tech industries had no plans to outsource IT
support, while only 4 percent of tech companies said they
outsource R&D. AMR's Lance Travis reports that ...
[read more]
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Real
Genius
Federally funded research and development projects spurred
by terrorism concerns are expected to debut as new
technologies this year. The Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency's (DARPA) $2.2 million Software for Distributed
Robotics program has yielded Centibots to assist in search and
...
[read more]
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Grid Forum Backs Utility
Computing Standards
The Global Grid Forum (GGF) is supporting the Distributed
Management Task Force's (DMTF) initiative to draft utility
computing standards. "The collaboration will deliver the
usability the industry requires, and provide standards that
capitalize on existing efforts to deliver the management ...
[read more]
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Finding a Way to Fry
Spam
Independent Internet and email consultant John Levine, who
co-chairs the Internet Research Task Force's Anti-Spam
Research Group and is a member of the Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial Email, argues that curbing spam must be
the responsibility of both users and ISPs, noting that ...
[read more]
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It's About Connectivity
Not the Internet!
Popular thought about the Internet is so muddled that most
people do not understand the opportunities lost when
discussing Internet governance, media consolidation, and new
carrier services, argues Bob Frankston. The word "Internet" no
longer denotes the transport of bits, but includes the ...
[read more]
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It's Time to Talk Mobile
Phone Security
The mobile phone industry needs to address the issue of
security, thanks to the migration of bugs and digital attacks
into that arena. AL Digital's recent study of mobile phones
lists Bluetooth-related vulnerabilities in some phones that
could allow an attacker to read and write to a phone's ...
[read more]
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Are You Ready for
MDA?
Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is touted to be applicable
to a wide-range of development tasks by vendor-backed
organizations and modeling experts, but other software
development thinkers understand MDA has serious flaws. MDA
relies on complex modeling tools to transform
platform-independent ...
[read more]
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Apache Rewrites
License
Starting March 1, all Apache projects must employ a
rewritten version of the Apache license that eases reuse
across projects, increases the license's compatibility with
the GNU General Public License (GPL), and bolsters safeguards
against patent infringement claims. "We want to make ...
[read more]
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Software
The dreams of prospective U.S. software developers have
been tempered in the last several years as more and more jobs
have been outsourced to cheaper overseas labor, and Silicon
Graphics CEO Robert R. Bishop concludes that American
programmers "are competing with everyone else in the world ...
[read more]
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RSA Show to Highlight New
Security Approaches
Security vendors and other large IT players plan to unveil
new approaches to fixing vulnerabilities and user
authentication at the RSA Conference 2004. The Organization
for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
(OASIS) is nearing the release of its Application
Vulnerability ...
[read more]
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Want to Stop Spam?
Multiple Techniques in Unison Is the
Answer
A multi-pronged strategy is the only true option a business
can take to curb spam, as there is no one method that can
thwart all of the tricks spammers use. A particularly
effective approach is to educate end users on spamming
techniques and countermeasures, such as: Not purchasing
products ...
[read more]
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10 Tech Trends to Bet
On
A number of tech trends are poised to do well over the next
few years: Smart dust--tiny, wireless, low-cost sensors that
can monitor temperature, vibrations, light, and even radiation
and toxicity levels--are expected to make their mark in
commercial, military, security, and ecological projects ...
[read more]
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The Robots Are
Here
Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, believes robot technology
is currently at the same point that computer technology was in
1978, and contends that robots will become as ubiquitous as
email and the Web in 15 more years. He points out ...
[read more]
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