Software Patents Don't
Compute
Behind-the-Scenes Battle on
Tracking Data Mining
Despite opposition from the Bush administration and some
prominent Republican legislators, a measure requiring the
Justice Department to report to Congress on its use of
data-mining techniques passed in the House this week.
Opponents of the provision, which was an amendment to one of
...
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When Cell Phones Become
Oracles
The Reality Mining project led by MIT Media Lab researcher
Nathan Eagle distributed 100 cell phones to students and
employees that documented their everyday lives by logging
cell-tower data to record the devices' location; the phones
also scanned the immediate vicinity for other participating
...
[read more]
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Retracing Spam Steps Could
Halt Mass Emails
A team of researchers from IBM and Cornell University have
devised SMTP Path Analysis, a method that traces an email's
Internet route by examining Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
(SMTP) data embedded within the message's concealed "header,"
and determines from this information whether the ...
[read more]
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May I Have Your
Identification, Please?
Several email authentication technologies will go before
the Internet Engineering Task Force as candidates for an
industry standard. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a
joint venture between Yahoo! and Cisco Systems that marries
the former's DomainKeys and the latter's Internet Identified
...
[read more]
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SIGGRAPH 2005 Hosts
Full-Dome Animation Theater
Computer graphics and interactive technology professionals
will have an opportunity to see the best full-dome animation
from DomeFest 2005 at SIGGRAPH 2005. The Full-Dome Animation
Theater will be a part of the event's Computer Animation
Festival, and will feature animation from ...
[read more]
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Web Services Chugging
Along
Although Web services boast lower operational and
development costs, more ease of legacy-system and
external-system integration, and faster system development
than previous techniques such as EDI, they still have
significant pitfalls. Among the disadvantages Column
Technologies project ...
[read more]
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Students Imagine a World
Where Technology Kills Boundaries
The best entries from this year's Imagine Cup, a
competition sponsored by Microsoft that challenges students
from around the world to conceive of real-world applications
for technology, will compete this week for the top prizes.
With its focus on solutions for today, rather than theoretical
...
[read more]
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Computers Graduate in
Education
The IST-funded Diogene project has developed a prototype
information and communication technology training system that
selects course materials that are relevant to the topic and a
single student, allowing courses to be tailored to individual
students' level of expertise and the subject they ...
[read more]
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'We Have the
Technology'
Spinal cord stimulators and cochlear implants are some of
the commercially available computer technologies being used to
recover lost sensory input or manage chronic pain. The
stimulators employ internal leads that channel electrical
currents over nerve fibers that relay pain signals to the
brain, ...
[read more]
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Software Learns to
Recognize Spring Thaw
NASA is pleased with the performance of new software
controlling the Earth Observing-1 satellite that is able to
track changes in the frozen section of the Earth and provide
scientists with updates of information and images, all on its
own. The software behind the Space Technology 6 Autonomous ...
[read more]
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I Think, Therefore I
Am--Sorta
PsychSim, a virtual reality artificial intelligence
technology, is helping train the U.S. military as it crafts
real-life scenarios and thrusts its trainees in the middle of
them, forcing them to interact with simulations, known as
agents, endowed with human intelligence. Stacy Marsella, one
of ...
[read more]
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Open Authentication
Initiative Gaining Ground
An estimated 85 percent of enterprise users are not using
authentication, and the Initiative for Open Authentication
(OATH) seeks to change that by promoting the adoption of
interoperable authentication technologies based on open
standards, which OATH also certifies. OATH officials say
people ...
[read more]
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A First Programming
Language for IT Students
Quintin Gee, Gary Wills, and Eric Cooke of the University
of Southampton's Learning Technologies Group discuss what
programming language should initially be taught to IT
students, taking into account substantial differences between
IT students and traditional computer science students. ...
[read more]
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Digital Watermarks Make
Life Tougher for Bootleggers
To combat the growing popularity of digital bootlegging,
many content providers are turning to digital watermarks to
protect a file from sharing by identifying copyright
information. The watermark is appealing because even if a file
is bootlegged, special software allows the copyright holder
...
[read more]
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Think
Thin
Thin client hardware is starting to break out of its niche
roles in industries such as health care, banking, city
government, and education because it offers better security
than desktop PCs, with less inconvenience. Enterprises can
avoid expensive upgrades since thin clients ...
[read more]
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Home Is Where the Work
Is
Domestic jobs are plentiful for high-end U.S. software
programmers, according to the latest findings from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. The organization estimates that jobs in
"computer and mathematical occupations" experienced
second-quarter growth of 7.5 percent over the previous year;
...
[read more]
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Magical History
Tour
Museums are deploying pervasive or ubiquitous computing as
a visitor-assistive technology, and the knowledge such
deployments yield about the presentation of personalized
multimedia to mobile users, among other things, will point the
way toward more commercial applications. ...
[read more]
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Look Ma--No
Wires
Many IT experts agree that Egypt is on track to becoming a
major global IT player, but a lot more has to be done.
Industry analysts say Egypt must adopt India's software
industry as a template for its own IT sector, and
substantially improve the quality of its products in order to
become a ...
[read more]
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Software Patents Don't
Compute
Brookings Institution guest scholar Ben Klemens attributes
the advent of software patents to the blurred line between
machinery and mathematical algorithms, and writes that a clear
boundary must be laid down. He outlines two approaches to
distinguishing between patentable machines and ...
[read more]
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