Computing Research Policy Blog


Posts categorized under: Policy

NY Times OpEd on Foreign Students


Thanks to Moshe Vardi for the head’s up about this Op-Ed from Joseph S. Nye in today’s New York Times concerning the decline in foreign student enrollment in American universities, due in large part to the nightmare that is the current U.S. visa process. It jives well with the Fareed Zakaria piece I linked to […]

Are We Taking NSF for Granted? (no pun…)


Stumbled upon this interesting article from the UK’s Guardian detailing the recognition growing in the EU about the need for an agency similar to the US’ National Science Foundation as a way to help the union “radically improve its knowledge economy.” The article describes a European commission report earlier this month that noted U.S. R&D […]

PITAC Focuses on Computational Science


The President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee met “virtually” today to hear an update on the efforts of the panel’s subcommittee on computational science. Dan Reed, who does just about everything at the University of North Carolina (Chancellor’s Eminient Professor, Vice-Chancellor for IT and CIO, and Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute — not to mention […]

New E-voting Blog


Computer Scientists David Dill, Ed Felten, Joe Hall, Avi Rubin, Barbara Simons, Adam Stubblefield, and Dan Wallach have joined forces at evoting-experts.com to post news and commentary on e-voting issues (just in time for election day). The site has only been up a day or two and already has some good commentary on reports of […]

Business Week Notes DMCA, Induce Act’s Chill on Innovation


Heather Green has a great piece in this week’s issue of Business Week on the chilling effect of copyright legislation on research. Here’s a snippet: Scientists like to probe the unknown and pioneer useful technologies. But in the spring of 2001, Edward W. Felten discovered that such efforts aren’t always welcome. A computer scientist at […]

No Compromise Reached on INDUCE, But Its Still Moving


Thanks to David Padgham (and USACM’s spiffy new blog) for pointing out this Wired story with the latest on sputtering talks to reach a compromise on the Induce Act. It appears the tech community and the entertainment industry are still far apart on consensus language for the bill — originally designed to create a new […]

Senate Poised to Enable Terror Data Mining


Wired reports that the Senate could enable, as part of it’s National Intelligence Reform Act, work on a system “that would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans.” The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force’s December […]

Financial Times Notes US Emphasis on Supercomputing


Thanks to Tom Jones for pointing out this story in the Financial Times on the increasing attention paid to supercomputing in the wake of the Japanese Earth Simulator’s 2 year reign at the top of the Top500. Here’s a bit: Hard drive by lobbyists helps US take supercomputer lead By Simon London An almost audible […]

DHS Cyber Security Chief Abruptly Resigns


Thanks to Rodney Peterson of Educause for pointing this out: U.S. cybersecurity chief abruptly resigns, cites frustration By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) The government’s cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention […]