Likewise, 44 percent of the main processors used in current designs are 10-90 MHz.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:26 AM Permalink
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April 26, 2006
More Portal Highlights
Jeremy Chan continues his blogs from the LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld Conference & Expo, focusing on Bdale Garbee's keynote speech "The Community Development Model: Mission Critical or Warm & Fuzzy?"
Jeremy's other blogs include:
- In the Security track, Tony Howlett examines open-source tools available for performing network security audits, covering network discovery and mapping, TCP/IP service enumeration, network vulnerability, firewall and router auditing, and wireless security.
- In the Smalltalk Solutions Conference, held in conjunction with the conference, Avi Bryant presents Seaside, a Smalltalk-based web application framework.
And speaking of open source:
Checkpointing lets you grab a snapshot of the current state of a program in execution, then save it on disk.
Meanwhile, over in the Windows/.NET department:
In the Java department:
Don't miss Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz's blogs on Architecture and Design in, well, the Architecture & Design department as he examines:
and ponders the question "Should Architects Code?".
Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:07 AM Permalink
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April 25, 2006
Dr. Dobb's Portal Highlights
Jeremy Chan blogs on the LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld Conference & Expo in the AI department:
- In the Security track, Tony Howlett examines open-source tools available for performing network security audits, covering network discovery and mapping, TCP/IP service enumeration, network vulnerability, firewall and router auditing, and wireless security.
- In the Smalltalk Solutions Conference, held in conjunction with the conference, Avi Bryant presents Seaside, a Smalltalk-based web application framework.
Meanwhile, over in the Windows/.NET department:
In the Java department:
Don't miss Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz's blogs on Architecture and Design in, well, the Architecture & Design department as he examines:
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:26 AM Permalink
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April 24, 2006
Videoconferencing on Steroids
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California at Berkeley are keeping in touch via TEEVE, short for "Tele-immersive Environments for EVErybody."
TEEVE is a distributed multi-tier application that captures images using 3-D camera clusters and distributes them over Internet2, compressing/decompressing the 3-D video streams, rendering them into immersive vide, and displaying them on one or multiple large screens.
Most videoconferencing systems currently in use are "jumpy" and really only suited for static presentations--someone setting behind a desk talking into a microphone and looking at a camera. TEEVE, on the other hand, is especially well-suited for conferencing sessions in which physical activities can be smoothly and realistically presented--training sessions, dancing, and the like. In current tests, a dance student in Illinois has been taught by a professor in California. The student stretched and spun about before semi-circular clusters of 3-D cameras on the Urbana-Champaign campus, while the professor executed her moves in Berkeley in a similar environment.
Another thing that sets TEEVE apart from other videoconferencing systems currently is its potential for delivering high-quality images and communications using relatively inexpensive technology and commercial-off-the-shelf products and equipment.
TEEVE is being tested simultaneously the labs of Klara Nahrstedt, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Ruzena Bajcsy, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:19 AM Permalink
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Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance Announced
The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance has been launched by a consortium of hardware, software, and service providers intent on building joint virtual desktop offerings.
Virtual infrastructures provide a layer of abstraction between computing, storage, and networking hardware, and the software that runs on them. With virtual infrastructures, users see resources as if they were dedicated to them. The administrator manages and optimizes resources across the data center.
The goal of the Alliance is to provide an infrastructure for members to quickly develop certified products that enable centrally hosted thin-client desktop technology to replace stand-alone PCs.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance members include more than 20 vendors, including VMWare, IBM, HP, Sun, Citrix, Platform Computing, Check Point Software, ClearCube, and Softricity, among others.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:47 AM Permalink
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April 21, 2006
Report Says High-Tech On the Upswing
The AeA, a trade association representing the high-tech industry, has released its ninth annual Cyberstates report detailing national and state trends in high-tech employment, wages, exports, and other key economic factors.
The report, entitled "Cyberstates 2006: A Complete State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry," covers all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Nationally, the report shows tech industry gains. High-tech employment was up by 61,100 workers in 2005, the first increase in tech jobs in four years. U.S. high-tech exports gained 4 percent, for a total of $199 billion in 2005. In California (generally considered the center of high tech in the U.S.), the number of high-tech workers was pegged at 904,900. These workers earned an average wage of $90,600, or 106 percent more than California's average private sector wage. Compared to 2004, job loss slowed in California, with high tech losing only 10,600 jobs, compared to a loss of 67,800 jobs in 2003.
The report also confirmed that California continues to lead the nation by most high-tech industry metrics. California tech companies report the largest payrolls of technology employers nationwide, and California tech workers had the highest average wage in the United States. In 2005, venture capitalists invested $10.4 billion in California, and tech companies exported $47.8 billion from California to countries around the world.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:06 AM Permalink
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April 20, 2006
Robot Hall of Fame Inductees Announced
Carnegie Mellon University has announced the 2006 inductees into its Robot Hall of Fame. This year's class includes Maria, the art deco star of Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis"; Gort, the metallic giant from an alien world in the 1951 sci-fi thriller "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; David, the boy-like android that stole his adoptive mother's heart in Steven Spielberg's "Artificial Intelligence: AI"; AIBO, Sony's dog-like robot pet that is also a robust research and teaching tool; and the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA), a widely used type of industrial arm with motions especially suited to assembling consumer products. The five robots will be formally inducted at a June 21 ceremony during the third annual RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition.
The hall of fame was founded in 2003 by James H. Morris, former dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. Past inductees include the Mars Pathfinder rover, Honda's ASIMO walking robot and the "Star Wars" duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Inductees are selected by an international jury.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:44 AM Permalink
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April 19, 2006
Internet Mood Swings
Did you wake up this morning, feelin' fine, until someone's blog lit a fire under you? If so, you're not alone, at least according to Dutch researchers Maarten de Rijke, Gilad Mishne, and Krisztian Balog (the "Moodteam"). They've written MoodViews, a program that maps and graphs significant changes in mood patterns on the Internet. All in all, MoodViews tracks the moods of 2 million LiveJournal bloggers from around the world, picking up about 150,000 blog messages daily of which about 80 percent have a mood attached to them.
MoodViews consists of three components: Moodgrapher tracks the global mood levels, Moodteller predicts them, and Moodsignalshelps in understanding the underlying reasons for mood changes.
Moodgrapher does not look at text, but instead focuses on the labels that many LiveJournal bloggers attach to their message. Moodteller uses a small set of words to estimate moods. Moodsignals identifies abnormalities, then finds all words associated with them.
Have a nice day!
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:24 AM Permalink
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April 18, 2006
Software Engineering: It's Job 1
So do you like your job as a software engineer? You should, at least according to an article in Money magazine, which pegs software engineering as the best job in the U.S. these days--even with outsourcing worries, eyestrain, and back, hand, and wrist problems. Demand is high because software engineers are needed in every part of the economy. The total number of software engineering jobs in 2004 was put at 800,050, a number forecasted to grow to 1,168,639 by 2014. And the average pay is $80,427. In particularly high demand are Release Engineers, who are responsible for builds, version control, and defect tracking.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:33 AM Permalink
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April 17, 2006
Google Launches Summer of Code 2006
Google has launched its Summer of Code 2006, a program that offers student developers stipends to create new open source programs or to help currently established projects. (Dr. Dobb's provided extensive coverage of last year's Summer of Code 2005, including an introduction by Google's Chris DiBona.) This year, Google again will be working with open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three-month period, and hopes to have more than last year's 400+ projects.
According to Google, the program's goals are to inspire young developers and provide students in Computer Science and related fields the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer, and to support existing open source projects and organizations. Google is looking for both student participants and mentoring organizations. So far, more than 50 organizations have committed to be mentors.
Students have until May 1, 2006, to apply for participation. Accepted student projects are due to be submitted on August 21. Good luck--and good coding.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:11 AM Permalink
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April 14, 2006
Programming Contest: Good News, Bad News
Yesterday's note about the results of the 2006 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest which pitted against each other more than 5600 teams representing 1733 universities from 84 countries is a classic good news/ bad news story. The good news is that MIT placed 7th in the competition. The bad news is that, you guessed it, MIT placed 7th in the competition. Moreover, MIT was the only U.S. university to finish in the top 20. Princeton University came in at 28th and DePaul University at 29th.
How does the ACM feel about this? In a statement released in response to the results, ACM president David Patterson pointed to the urgent need to attract talented students to the IT field, and to prepare them for the growing demand for IT jobs in the U.S. He cited improvements in the computer science curriculum and teacher preparation, as well as increased investment in basic research and development if the U.S. hopes to keep its technological edge in the global economy.
“On the 30 th anniversary of ACM’s association with this international competition, the results show that educational policy and R&D investment are more important than ever for countries to stay competitive,” said Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and founding director of the recently announced Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems Laboratory (RAD Lab) at Berkeley.
Patterson also noted that despite a significant increase in offshoring over the past five years, more IT jobs are available today in the U.S. than at the height of the dot com boom. In addition, he said the growing demand for computer skills makes it imperative that the U.S. attract the best and the brightest to the computing field.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:17 AM Permalink
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April 13, 2006
ACM Programming Collegiate Programming Contest Wraps Up
Congratulations to the winners and participants of this year's ACM Collegiate Programming Contest. Competing this year were more than 80 teams from universities around the world who were given five hours to solve 10 problems. Among the problems to solve were those that included writing a program that figures out how gears of a clock can be connected under certain conditions, writing a program that finds the maximun degrees of separation for a network of individuals, and create an interconnected system of nodes in the least expensive way.
The results placed Russia's Saratov State University as the winner, followed by Altai State Technical University, the University of Twente in the Netherlands, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Warsaw University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology came in 7th, the University of Waterloo 9th, and my alma mater (drum roll please) the University of Alberta 11th.
The first-place prize is a $10,000 scholarship for each team member, along with computer equipment from IBM , the main sponsor of the event.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:12 AM Permalink
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April 12, 2006
Antisocial Networks
It needs to be said at the outset that even my mother claims I'm "antisocial." Which probably explains why I'm usually elsewhere when family get-togethers get together. But maybe my various aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews would see more of me if they'd consider an online social network akin to those provided by Facebook or MySpace.
The explosion of membership at social networks such as Facebook and MySpace--MySpace boasts more than 20 million members, and Facebook more than 7 million--helps people make friends online, but is problematic, particularly for universities concerned about students posting intimate details on the Internet. Member profiles and photos, for instance, can be accessed by anyone--including stalkers.
A recent symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, attended by some 150 student advisers and counselors, explored this problem. Keynote speaker Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, praised the practical virtues of Internet communities, but warned of the consequences of documenting unlawful activity on the Web. "People should not be posting pictures of themselves doing illegal things, anywhere" said Zuckerberg, who started Facebook when he was a student at Harvard University as a way to get to know more about his fellow students and make friends.
According to Yasmin Anwar, a member of UC Berkeley's public affairs office, advisers and counselors at the "Social Networking and Online Communities: What Student Affairs Professionals Should Know" event expressed concern about the potential abuses of social networking technology. But student panelists said that while young people should be made aware of the risks, the dangers are overblown. They also asked that their schools not snoop on them.
It is hard to say how many students belong to online social networking communities, but it's clear the number is growing exponentially, particularly among high-school students. Facebook has members from all 4-year colleges and universities in the country--85 percent of the undergraduate population--and receives 1.5 million photos a day. Zuckerberg said that, on average, members log in 18 minutes a day.
And, I'm willing to bet, most of these prople are related to me.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:43 AM Permalink
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April 11, 2006
Wireless Networks Bridge Bridges
Anyone who witnessed what the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake did to San Francisco Bay Area bridges in 1989 knows why Lehigh University professor Yunfeng Zhang's research is important.
Zhang is fitting bridges with networks of tiny sensors with built-in computer chips that monitor the stability and safety of highway bridges and overpasses. According to Zhang, who recently received a a five-year, $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation for his project which is entitled "Integrated Research and Education in Smart Sensing and Intelligent Structures Technology" wireless sensor networks avoid many of the problems that hamper wired sensors.
To improve data transmission and management, he is developing high-performance sensor data compression algorithms for structural health monitoring applications. His algorithms incorporate structural system information to remove redundancies from sensor data and thus maximize the compression rates for sensor network data. Zhang also uses data-mining techniques to extract key information more efficiently from data.
As part of his NSF project, Zhang plans to implement a wireless sensor network on a cable-stayed bridge in eastern China. For details, see http://www.lehigh.edu/~yuz8/.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:00 AM Permalink
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