Web Metadata Standards:
Observations and Prescriptions
Vote for
Change
New federal rules for voting machines are on track to be
enacted before the 2006 mid-term elections, while electronic
voting machine companies are preparing products that will be
certified under 2002 federal standards. However, whether
e-voting systems will be more secure and reliable by the ...
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The Bleeding Edge of
Computing
Computing technology is expected to make radical leaps in
the future, thanks to progress in many areas of research. Thad
Starner with the Georgia Institute of Technology notes that
artificial intelligence systems have begun to perceive the
world much like humans do using cameras and ...
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EU Patent Law Could Impede
Open Source
Attorneys warn that the European Union's proposed directive
on "computer-implemented inventions" legitimizes software
patenting, which will enable patent holders to hinder the
progress of smaller software companies and open-source
developers. For any developer doing business in ...
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Laying Foundations for
Component-Based Software Markets
The European Commission is blazing the way for
component-based software engineering with several Information
Society Technologies projects that address technical,
economic, and organizational aspects of commercialized
component-based software development. The COMPONENT+ project
uses built-in ...
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Space Snakes and
Scorpions
Scientists in NASA's Autonomy and Robotics group are
working on improved intelligence and efficiency in new
generations of robot vehicles for interplanetary exploration.
Experimentation is proceeding on new software algorithms to
enable vehicles to automate chores that are currently ...
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Sender Authentication Hops
Off the Standards Track
Reconciliation between Microsoft's Sender ID Framework
(SIDF) and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) has been
sidelined by technical disagreements between the two
specifications, and Microsoft and the SPF community are for
now taking diverging paths within the Internet Engineering
Task Force's ...
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Tracking PCs Anywhere on
the Net
University of California Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno has
published a paper indicating that he has devised techniques
for fingerprinting computer hardware remotely, potentially
allowing any physical device to be tracked wherever it is on
the Internet, even without the device's cooperation. His ...
[read more]
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No Redress Route in Terror
Screening Plan
The Homeland Security Department is creating a new office
to handle terrorist screening programs, such as those that
check domestic airline passengers, cargo shipments, port
employees, and hazardous materials transport. The new
Screening and Coordination Office is still more than a ...
[read more]
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AI Expert Calls for
E-Defense for the UK
The United Kingdom needs to become more of an information
power, says Nigel Shadbolt, professor of artificial
intelligence at the School of Electronics and Computer Science
at the University of Southampton. Shadbolt, who believes the
UK needs to focus more on e-defense, is scheduled to talk ...
[read more]
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IPod 'Squeaks' Betray
Software Secrets
A 17-year-old computer science student from Germany has
worked out the code that allows Apple's iPod music player to
start up by listening to how the device generates "squeaks"
when scrolling through the on-screen menu. Nils Schneider's
impetus for tinkering with his Christmas present was to
install ...
[read more]
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Linux Security Rough
Around the Edges, But Improving
The National Security Agency's Security Enhanced Linux
(SELinux) provides greater security for the country's computer
infrastructure, and although the technology has won the
support of the Linux developer community, SELinux's complexity
threatens its widespread adoption by government ...
[read more]
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Domain Owners Lose
Privacy
Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department's National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
ordered domain registrars that sell .us domain names,
including Network Solutions, eNom, and Go Daddy, to stop
allowing registrants to hide their contact information via
proxy services. ...
[read more]
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The Semantic Aspects of
E-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics
for Grid and Service Oriented Systems
Applying semantics to learning content and services will
allow the grid infrastructure to support large-scale
collaboration of e-learning activities. The computers and
people participating in e-learning activities should
comprehend and communicate among themselves via a common ...
[read more]
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Q&A: Author of 'Dude,
Did I Steal Your Job?' Sounds Off
Programmer N. Sivakumar says in an interview that the point
of his book, "Dude, Did I Steal Your Job?," is to explain the
economic benefits of H-1B visa holders hired to work in the
United States, as well as address the perception that such
professionals are taking jobs away from U.S. workers. ...
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Whatever Happened
To...?
Examples of highly hyped technologies that have not panned
out or whose rollout is slower than anticipated include mobile
broadband, whose spread has been impeded by huge 3G deployment
costs; however, forthcoming deployments of High Speed Data
Packet Access, EvDO, and Universal Mobile ...
[read more]
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It's Raining Code!
(Hallelujah?)
CIOs are growing more interested in open-source
development, and have adopted cooperative strategies to
minimize the associated risks and expenses. One such
initiative is the Avalanche Corporate Technology Cooperative,
a collaborative development effort to identify mutually ...
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Caution: COTS
Ahead
The aerospace and defense fields are under more pressure to
adopt commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and open source software
for cost and flexibility reasons, but still find it difficult
to formulate unbiased policy and keep up with standards
efforts for COTS adoption. COTS software ...
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Is Realtime Real? Part
1
Video game realism has taken a big step forward in the last
year largely thanks to new graphic boards that facilitate more
refined real-time rendering. The advances in gaming hardware
and software were made possible by the advent of programmable
hardware. Microsoft's High-Level Shading ...
[read more]
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Web Metadata Standards:
Observations and Prescriptions
David Bodoff of the Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, Mordechai Ben-Menachem of Ben-Gurion University,
and Patrick C.K. Hung of the University of Ontario Institute
of Technology examine the development efforts of Web metadata
standards and prescribe solutions to various ...
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