The Evolving Wireless
Landscape
Open Wallets for
Open-Source Software
Venture capitalists are once again investing in open-source
software technology companies despite the sometimes colossal
failures of the late 1990s. This resurgence of interest is
partly attributable to two developments: Increased adoption of
open-source software by corporate ...
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Grids Get Down to
Business
Grid computing for businesses is getting a big boost with
new guidelines from the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) and the
Globus Toolkit 4 from the Globus Alliance; the guidelines
provide help with technical details such as security and
utility pricing schemes, and is part of the year-old group's
...
[read more]
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Feds Rethinking RFID
Passport
On the heels of heavy criticism from computer professionals
and civil libertarians, the U.S. State Department is
considering adding previously rejected privacy protections to
federally mandated radio frequency identification (RFID)
passports, according to deputy assistant secretary ...
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Getting the Feel of Virtual
Reality
The IST-funded RealReflect project is expected to deliver
the first extensive industrial modeling application for
Bidirectional Texture Function (BTF) image acquisition.
"RealReflect is a major advancement over traditional virtual
reality modeling, which basically relies on ...
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Dropping Out and Booting
Up
Silicon Valley is currently dominated by a mind-set that
firmly believes technology should be protected as a
wealth-generating asset, but a second culture advocating the
unrestricted sharing of technology has even deeper roots that
can be traced back to the counterculture movement of the 1960s
...
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Open Source Developers
Provide 'Glimmer of Hope'
DAFCA object architect and software design expert James
Coplien said in an interview at the ACCU conference that
companies' rush to bring software to market is fueling a
decline in product quality, noting that the open source
community subscribes to higher quality software standards.
"The one ...
[read more]
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High-Tech Industry
Employment Slowly Turns the Corner, Says New
Report
The AeA's annual Cyberstates 2005 report reflects a
generally positive development in U.S. high-tech industry
employment, with job losses slowing down considerably in 2004:
The high-tech industry lost 25,000 jobs last year, compared to
333,000 jobs lost in 2003 and 612,000 lost in 2002. The ...
[read more]
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Encryption: The Key to
Secure Data?
Data encryption technology is now a mature market with
infrequent updates, but the failure of public key
infrastructure (PKI) to take off in the commercial sector has
left a gaping hole in the encryption framework. Encryption
comes in two flavors: Traditional symmetric encryption and ...
[read more]
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Net Becomes Domain of Its
Cofounder
TCP/IP co-author Vint Cerf compares the introduction of
TCP/IP to the then-embryonic Internet in 1983 to the ongoing
switch from IPv4 to IPv6, though the later move is vastly more
complicated because of the hundreds of millions of computers
now connected to the Internet; back in 1983, TCP/IP ...
[read more]
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Municipal Wireless
Networks Generating Controversy
Advocates of municipal wireless networks being built by
local governments in Europe and the U.S. support them for
their quick and easy deployment for use by city employees and
safety personnel, which lowers telecom costs overall.
Philadelphia government officials recently ...
[read more]
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Closing the Gender
Gap
With a $12,000 grant from Texas Instruments and the Dallas
Women's Foundation, the University of Texas at Arlington has
developed the Metroplex Area Gender Equity Institute with the
goal of boosting the number of girls pursuing math and science
careers. Attaining this goal requires ...
[read more]
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Center Aims to Improve
Cybersecurity in Higher Education
Indiana University is a hub for higher education
cybersecurity efforts: In addition to hosting the Indiana
Higher Education Cybersecurity Summit this week, the school is
home to the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (CACR),
an expanding information assurance program committed to
improving ...
[read more]
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The Blind Leading the
Blind
The Disability Discrimination Act requires U.K. Web sites
to be accessible to visually impaired users, and a recent
Disability Rights Commission (DRC) survey found that 97% of
major online organizations were cognizant of the Web
accessibility problem; but although more than two-thirds of
...
[read more]
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Building Robots With
People in Mind
NASA computer scientist William Clancey has long advocated
the view that cross-disciplinary research with emphasis on the
humanities is critical to the development of artificial
intelligence, and is putting his theories into practice as he
tests the use of robots in expedition scenarios ...
[read more]
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Animal Behavior: When
Robots Go Wild
Robots modeled after animals are migrating from the
laboratory to the wild to participate in previously unworkable
animal behavior research and experimentation. University of
California, Davis, behavioral biologist Gail Patricelli
studied the courtship rituals of satin bowerbirds using a ...
[read more]
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Staying Out in
Front
HP Laboratories receives just 5% of Hewlett-Packard's
research budget, but is working on important breakthrough
technologies that aim to revolutionize IT. Unlike in the past,
many of the projects pursued today are focused on high-level
system optimization and not improving discrete ...
[read more]
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AI's Next Brain
Wave
IBM's Watson Laboratory, Microsoft Research, Intel, and the
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) are all engaged in
artificial intelligence research that could pave the way for
computer systems capable of learning from their users as well
as their surrounding environment. IBM Watson's ...
[read more]
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Blow the Lid Off
Automation
The dynamic nature of many business processes necessitates
adaptable support systems, writes Delphi Group chief analyst
Nathaniel Palmer, noting that business process management
(BPM) software derives its optimal value from its ability to
insert a layer between users and IT infrastructure to ...
[read more]
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The Evolving Wireless
Landscape
For wireless broadband communications to equal wired
communications in terms of reliability and coverage, three key
innovations must take place: An increase in bandwidth, better
modulation schemes and associated elements, and more advanced
wireless network protocols. Short-range, ...
[read more]
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