Simulating Ancient
Societies
Advocates Urge Election
Assistance Commission to Require Verification and
Accessibility
Proponents of disabled voting rights and voter-verified
paper records (AVVPR) joined forces on July 28 by calling on
the Election Assistance Commission to make verifiable and
universally accessible voting systems a requirement. "Most
people are realizing that there is no need for conflict ...
[read more]
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DNS Servers--an Internet
Achilles Heel
At last week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, security
researcher Dan Kaminsky presented the results of his survey
that found susceptibilities to DNS cache poisoning in almost
10 percent of the 2.5 million Domain Name System machines he
scanned. The incentive to attack a DNS server is ...
[read more]
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New Rating System Aims to
Take Mystery Out of Open-Source Tools
To allay managers' fears over the unpredictability of open
source software, Intel, Carnegie Mellon University, and
SpikeSource have joined forces to compile a rating system that
will help IT departments decide which programs are worth
adopting. The Business Readiness Ratings will solicit feedback
...
[read more]
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Reddy Awarded 2005 Honda
Prize From the Honda Foundation
The Honda Foundation has awarded Carnegie Mellon University
professor Raj Reddy with the 2005 Honda Prize for his work in
computer science and robotics, particularly as it pertains to
"Eco-Technology" that is not only efficient and profitable,
but also environmentally friendly. Reddy was ...
[read more]
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Initial Report Undersold
E-Vote Snafus
The first mass testing of the new Diebold AccuVote TSx
electronic voting systems in the United States last month
demonstrated fallibility of far greater magnitude than
previously reported. During a mock election employing 96 such
machines in California, almost one-third of the units had ...
[read more]
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Apple Offers a Mouse to
Counteract the One-Button Blues
Apple Computer has changed its mouse form factor to
accommodate multiple buttons instead of just one with its new
Mighty Mouse offering. "The really interesting thing about
Apple coming out with a multiple-button mouse now is it shows
just how far the goal posts have moved in terms of ...
[read more]
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CMU Online Game Will be
Used to Teach Computers to See
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are developing
online games designed to advance computer technology. One such
game is Peekaboom, whose goal is to help train computers to
see through the interaction of two players. In Peekaboom, one
player receives an image paired with a word that describes ...
[read more]
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'Virtual
Clay'
University at Buffalo engineering professor Thenkurussi
Kesavadas' "virtual clay" system integrates sculpture with 3D
computer design through an interface that enables users to
shape virtual objects on a computer screen by molding an
actual lump of clay or Play-Doh using a sensor-equipped ...
[read more]
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Experts Warn on
Cyber-Security
Purdue University computer-security professor Eugene
Spafford and Akamai Technologies chief scientist Tom Leighton
painted a bleak picture of U.S. cybersecurity before a panel
of congressional staffers at a Tuesday event sponsored by the
Congressional Research and Development Caucus. Leighton ...
[read more]
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Hackers Annihilate WiFi
Record
The iFiber-Redwire team won the third annual Wi-Fi shootout
contest at last week's DefCon hacker conference by sustaining
an unamplified WiFi connection between a laptop on Nevada's
8,500-foot Mount Potosi and another on the 18-foot Utah Hill
mound in Utah--a distance of almost 125 miles--for ...
[read more]
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The Fingerprint of
Paper
A new deterrent for forgers and fraudsters could be in the
making with British researchers' announcement last week of a
relatively cheap method for distinguishing between authentic
documents and counterfeits. The technique involves the laser
scanning of a document, whose paper, ...
[read more]
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The Sniffer vs. the
Cybercrooks
As the motivation for hackers shifts from the pursuit of
bragging rights to high-stakes economic plundering, many
corporations are enlisting the services of sniffers, security
analysts who peer through the eyes of a hacker to exploit a
system's vulnerabilities in the name of improving its ...
[read more]
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Who Should Run the
Internet?
In this interview with the Washington Times, ICANN
President Paul Twomey reacts to a new report assembled by the
United Nations' 40-member Working Group on Internet governance
(WGIG). The authors of the report failed to reach a consensus
as to how the Internet should be run, but they did offer ...
[read more]
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Java Preps Dive Into
Real-Time Role
Though still plagued by programming difficulties, real-time
Java is making inroads into the mainstream. However, as the
language moves to supplant traditional C-based codes, it still
struggles for legitimacy, as a recent survey found that 9
percent of embedded developers are including a Java ...
[read more]
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HumanML: The
Vision
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured
Information Standards (OASIS) is developing the Human markup
language (HumanML) specification to more formally represent
human traits (cultural, physical, psychological, and so on)
and augment the fidelity of human communication by delivering
...
[read more]
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Healing
Power
Emerging and existing technologies could help the U.S.
electric grid become adaptive and more reliable, but cost,
security, and other issues are hindering such enhancement.
Among the technologies cited by industry experts is software
that can predict demand by analyzing patterns of ...
[read more]
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Facing an Innovation
Deficit
Some U.S. legislators believe a lack of innovation stemming
from declining federal IT R&D budgets threatens to
enervate America's economy, and they are organizing a National
Conference on Science, Technology, Innovation, and
Manufacturing to decide what steps should be taken to remedy
this ...
[read more]
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Engineering
EverQuest
Sony Online Entertainment's spectacularly successful
EverQuest online role-playing game, which runs on upwards of
1,500 servers worldwide, exemplifies how a company manages
accelerated growth and proficiency in scaling up computing
technology. The EverQuest universe is made up of ...
[read more]
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Simulating Ancient
Societies
Archaeologists are using computer simulations to model the
forces that shaped the culture and history of ancient
societies, one example being the use of agent-based software
to simulate how environmental factors might have influenced
the Anasazi civilization of the American Southwest. A ...
[read more]
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