The Sensor Web: A Distributed,
Wireless Monitoring System
Supercomputer Hacks
Highlight Ed Security Challenge
Under pressure from government regulations, increased user
demands, Internet-borne attacks, and even legal threats from
the private sector, universities are turning to advanced
security technologies such as intrusion prevention systems.
Universities have historically tried to ...
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Weighing the Results of PC
Recycling
Next month Dell plans to publicly disclose its goal to
boost the amount of hardware it recycles by 50 percent by
weight of materials collected, which could spur more PC
recycling as well as set up a common recycling metric for the
computer industry in general. Another benefit of such a plan
would ...
[read more]
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Segway Battlefield
Applications Explored
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
has sent at least 15 modified Segway Human Transporters to
researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford
University, NASA, the Neurosciences Institute, and elsewhere
with the goal of developing them into thinking, reasoning ...
[read more]
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FTC to Look Closer at
'Spyware'
Privacy advocates are in a furor over "spyware" and
"adware" that is often installed on Windows PCs in many
popular programs--free music and file-sharing programs, for
example--users download off the Internet, sometimes without
the user's awareness. The FTC will investigate the ...
[read more]
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Making Software
Customisation a Commodity
A new open-source software development platform allows
organizations to more effectively manage variants of
open-source applications. Whereas version management software
allows companies to keep track of and manage different
versions of a vendor product, they do not adequately address
the ...
[read more]
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Could Open Source Elections
Close Out Hanging Chads?
Electronic voting systems based on open-source software are
a better alternative to those using closed-source proprietary
software, according to many computer experts. A local
government in Ontario recently used a Linux-based system in
its elections that was developed by the local firm ...
[read more]
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New Web Protocol May Leave
DSL in the Dust
North Carolina State University computer science
researchers boast that current high-speed digital subscriber
line (DSL) connections are positively "lethargic" compared to
Internet connections using binary increase congestion
transmission control protocol (BIC-TCP). NCSU's Jon Pishney
...
[read more]
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Testing Times for Women in
IT
Information technology testing has become an increasingly
attractive area of the IT profession for women. Five years
ago, females accounted for just five percent of IT testers,
but today they represent more than one-third. Now, according
to Vizuri, a risk management and recruitment company, if ...
[read more]
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Making the World Safe for
Free Software
Daniel Egger, a partner at the venture capital firm Eno
River Capital, wants to establish the legality of Linux so
that his startup firm Open Source Risk Management can begin to
offer insurance protection for users of the open source
operating system. Egger's efforts are a response to the ...
[read more]
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Internet Governance Debate
Heats Up
The process by which the Internet will be governed in the
future has become a hot topic, generating plenty of debate in
political and industry circles alike. Some countries are
arguing that governments should play a bigger role in
overseeing operational aspects of the Internet such as the ...
[read more]
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A Voting Revolution in
India?
India expects to stop election fraud, cut costs, accelerate
the electoral process, and boost voter turnout from 60 percent
to 70 percent by deploying $200 electronic voting machines
that are simple and easy to use. Voters use a keyboard to
enter their choice by pushing a button next to the name ...
[read more]
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Testing 101: AWOL on the
College Campus
Few college and university computer science curricula
include testing for quality, which is a vital ingredient in
software development, according to industry experts. Go Pro
Management President Robin Goldsmith maintains that college
curricula overemphasize people and project management, leaving
...
[read more]
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The Makings of a
Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer
The Flashmob1 supercomputing project at the University of
San Francisco drew hundreds of computer enthusiasts together
in an attempt to build one of the world's fastest computers in
just one day. While the goal to break into the Top 500
supercomputing list was not met, the participants did ...
[read more]
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Happy
Memories
Motorola has given other electronic manufacturers
prototypes of a chip to evaluate that could one day start a PC
instantly, power batteries all day, never lose data, and
operate at high speed. The magnetoresistive random access
memory (MRAM) chip is the same technology Motorola
demonstrated last ...
[read more]
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Spam to
Go
Spam is invading text messaging, with the volume of spam
text messages originating in North America outstripping
legitimate messages last year, according to messaging firm
Wireless Services. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, and
California have all passed laws to try to stem the tide, ...
[read more]
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Paint the Light
Fantastic
Animating organic objects--clouds, trees, hair, fire, skin,
and the like--in a computer is a tough challenge, since even
an untrained eye can usually see through the artifice, often
in a single glance. The two key components of computer
modeling are the object's shape and the way light ...
[read more]
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The Sensor Web: A
Distributed, Wireless Monitoring System
The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Sensor Web
Project was designed as an instrument made up of multiple
sensor platforms or pods that share information among
themselves and perform as a single unit for the purposes of
environmental monitoring and/or control. A Sensor Web pod is
comprised ...
[read more]
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