The People Own
Ideas!
Bush Dissolves IT Advisory
Group
The President's IT Advisory Committee (PITAC), a
congressionally mandated committee established in 1997 by
President Clinton to provide guidance on various IT policies,
has been shut down by President Bush. The latest executive
order for PITAC expired on June 1, and no new members have
been ...
[read more]
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Election Auditing Is an
End-to-End Procedure
Electronic voting machines are becoming more accurate, as
the most significant drops from 2000 to 2004 in the residual
vote rate, which measures uncounted votes, occurred in states
that rely on electronic methods of ballot casting. Due to
lackluster record-keeping, though, ...
[read more]
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An Army of Soulless 1's and
0's
By luring Internet users with an enticing offer just one
click away, hackers are seizing control of thousands of
computers that they can then deploy to attack other Web sites
or crack security codes. These computers, known as zombies,
are compromised when their user takes the bait and clicks ...
[read more]
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Net Guru Predicts Another
10 'Wild' Years
The future of the Web demands a class of politicians
sufficiently well-versed in technology to introduce
intelligent, forward-thinking legislation, according to David
Farber, computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon
University. Fearful that the Web could come to generate ...
[read more]
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Pentagon Creating Student
Database
The Department of Defense on Wednesday started working with
BeNow, a private marketing company, to formulate a database of
high-school students between the ages of 16 and 18 to assist
the military in locating possible recruits in a period of
falling enlistment in certain branches. The ...
[read more]
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Quantum Computer Springs a
Leak
Physicists from Leiden University in the Netherlands have
demonstrated the limits of quantum computing designed around
ever-smaller quantum bits, or qubits, in which stored
information is manipulated. Qubits involved in computation
must be isolated from their environment since any outside ...
[read more]
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Supercomputers Tackle More
Everyday Tasks
Supercomputers are gaining practical applications and
becoming widely used, from the manufacturing of consumer
products such as potato chips to facilitating graphics
animation. As prices drop and systems gain speed, advanced
computer systems are no longer relevant only to government,
many ...
[read more]
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Better PC Security Years
Away
The immediate future of secure computing will more closely
resemble a mainframe than a PC, until an enhanced operating
system and better hardware are developed. In the meantime,
researchers are working on technologies to improve PC
security, such as the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which ...
[read more]
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Sun Tries Sharing Java
Again; Still Not Open Source
At next week's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Sun
Microsystems will discuss plans for GlassFish, a project that
provides a window to the code under its Java Research License
(JRL), though it stops well short of offering open-source
access. Part of the company's "share" campaign, ...
[read more]
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Is IT Unfriendly to
Women?
Women, comprising 20 percent of the IT labor force but more
than 50 percent of the overall workforce, face significant
barriers from the IT industry. The Department of Labor Women's
Bureau reports that women earn just 9 percent of the
bachelor's degrees related to engineering and fewer than 28
...
[read more]
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When Computers Play Games,
Artificial Intelligence Is the Key to
Victory
The achievement of better general game playing (GGP) is the
subject of an article by Stanford computer science professor
Michael Geneserith appearing in this summer's AI Magazine.
"Programs that think better should be able to win more games,"
said Geneserith, who believes games that think for ...
[read more]
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A Wireless World, Bound to
Sockets
Tech companies are focusing more on preserving and
prolonging battery life as consumers accumulate gadgets such
as handhelds, cell phones, iPods, laptops, and digital
cameras. For consumers who have embraced the wireless world,
recharging such devices has become a troublesome issue. A ...
[read more]
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New Version of Linux
Kernel Released
A new version of the Linux kernel has been released for the
first time since Linus Torvalds changed systems for managing
the kernel source code, which has slowed the pace of
development. Version 2.6.12 of the Linux kernel, which comes
more than three months after version 2.6.11, offers ...
[read more]
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File Systems That
Fly
As more and more supercomputers are cobbled together from
inexpensive, off-the-shelf PCs, disk drives, Ethernet cables,
and Linux, the latest developments in file-system software for
these clusters will alter how companies purchase storage and
bridge the gap between the immobility of ...
[read more]
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Large Users Hope for
Broader Adoption of Usability Standard
A three-year-old usability standard should gain greater
acceptance in the business community when it is approved by
the International Standards Organization. The standard, called
the Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports (CIF),
is expected to gain steam once it is adopted ...
[read more]
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Humanistic Approaches for
Digital-Media Studies
The absence of a universal standard for evaluating the
effectiveness of technical applications in the humanities
leaves designers unsure of how to best improve their digital
projects, such as online newspapers and interactive museum
exhibits. In developing a curriculum for teaching ...
[read more]
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Lift Off at
Last?
The 2005 InfoWorld Compensation Survey reveals that
although company performance, salaries, bonuses, job
opportunities, and spending in the information technology
sector are all improving, dissatisfaction and uncertainty
about the industry is also on the rise. More IT workers have
...
[read more]
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The People Own
Ideas!
Stanford Law School law professor and author Lawrence
Lessig writes that Brazil and other nations are pushing a
movement to erect a "free-culture" economy atop a platform of
free software. He draws a parallel between the free-software
and free-culture movements by noting that their genesis ...
[read more]
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