CRA and ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Office today urged members of the House and Senate to adopt Senate approved funding levels for NIST Labs as part of the expected negotiation over omnibus appropriations legislation for FY 2005. As we’vecoveredpreviously, NIST finds itself in dire funding straits as a result of decisions made by appropriators to cut $22 million in funding for the Labs in last year’s funding bill.
Both the House and Senate appropriations committees have completed work on their respective bills, with the Senate bill coming closer to addressing the funding shortfall. The Senate bill would funnel more funding to the NIST Labs than the House version, adding $43 million to the FY 2004 number for a total of $384 million for FY 2005. In contrast, the House version would provide $375 million for FY 2005. Both versions are still well short of the Administration’s request of $423 million.
CRA and USACM joined in writing to members of the House and Senate expected to be involved in the negotiations over the FY 05 Omnibus:
October 29, 2004
Dear Conferee:
As representatives of two leading computing societies representing more than two hundred computing research institutions and over 85,000 computing professionals, we write to express our immense concern over the current funding level for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Laboratory Program, and to urge you to support the program at the more appropriate level approved by the Senate in the Commerce, State, Justice and Judiciary Appropriations bill or higher.
The NIST Labs have played an important role in the continuing progress of computing research that has, in turn, enabled the “new” economy. Advances in information technology have driven significant improvements in product design, development, and distribution for American industry, provided instant communications for people worldwide, and led new scientific disciplines like bioinformatics and nanotechnology that show great promise in improving a wide range of health and communications technologies.
Within NIST’s Labs, the Computer Security Division (CSD) has played a crucial role in computer security by conducting research on security issues concerning emerging technologies, by promoting security assessment techniques, by providing security management guidance, and by generating greater awareness of the need for security. In particular, the CSD has demonstrated its ability to meld science and technology with commerce by working with industry and the cryptographic community to develop an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The CSD’s work on AES and its numerous other contributions have assisted the U.S. government, information technology industry, research enterprise, and the overall security of the Internet.
Current work underway at the NIST labs will have profound effects on the nation’s cybersecurity, as many Federal agencies rely on NIST’s expertise and recommendations. Other areas where NIST’s work is crucial to the nation include electronic voting technologies and standards, as well as research into semiconductor manufacturing and nanotechnology that hold the promise for significant advancements in computing.
Unfortunately, this work and NIST’s efforts to recruit talented researchers are in jeopardy as a result of the inadequate funding levels enacted as part of the FY 2004 appropriations process. To avoid jeopardizing NIST’s ability to produce materials trusted by the community, impairing its ability to conduct research, and detracting from some of its vital standards-oriented work, we urge you to make this funding a priority for FY 2005.
As a neutral third party, NIST provides an invaluable setting for industry, academia, and government to work together on crucial technical issues. As a result, NIST and its work have tremendous credibility. The underfunding of NIST will adversely affect this credibility as well as NIST’s ability to function, and will have serious long-term consequences.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) and the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM) stand ready to assist you as you address this important issue. We appreciate your continued support for research and development funding and would be pleased to answer any questions you or your staff might have.
Sincerely,
James D. Foley, CRA Chair
Eugene Spafford, USACM Chair
Herb Lin sends word that the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) is seeking comments and white papers “relevant to the use of electronic voting systems.” Serious comments and white papers need to be received by November 22, 2004.
CALL FOR INPUT — NRC Project on Electronic Voting
A large number of American voters will be using electronic voting systems for the first time in the 2004 election. Many issues and concerns have been raised about their use. Recognizing this, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies (which include the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine) has launched a project to develop a framework for understanding the technology, social, and operational issues relevant to decision-making about electronic voting. Specifically, this project is intended to inform policy makers, election officials, and the interested public about the questions they should be asking about electronic voting systems in order to be better and more informed consumers of such systems.
For purposes of this study, “electronic voting systems” are construed broadly to include any electronic device that plays (or that could play) an important role in any part of the voting system, from voter registration to ballot casting to the final certification of election results.
To facilitate its study, the NRC’s Committee on Electronic Voting seeks white papers and other comments from interested parties on topics relevant to the use of electronic voting systems. The papers received will serve to inform the committee, and will be posted on the project web site for the duration of the project.
At the discretion of the NRC, selected authors may be invited to address the committee about their analysis, findings, and conclusions, and some papers may be included as appendixes to the Committees final report. The Committee may also reference the submitted materials, and include them or portions of them in its report.
Individuals not wishing to submit a paper are invited to send any comments they wish on this subject to EVOTING-INPUT@NAS.EDU. Serious comments will be transmitted to the committee.
CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, recently put a series of technology policy questions to both Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush, who apparently, to their credit, actually answered the questions.
I don’t want to descend too far into the mire of dissecting the answers, but I wanted to highlight two that are particularly relevant to CRA’s interests. The first is What should the federal government do to address the issue of cyber security?:
Bush response:
Given the enormous importance of e-commerce, Internet-based communications, and the use of cyberspace to control portions of our physical infrastructure, cyber security is critical. The investments being made today in securing out Nation’s cyber infrastructure and in cyber security R&D are working to ensure that future generations of network software and hardware are less vulnerable to an attack and can maintain critical operations even when compromised.
I announced the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace in February 2003. This plan, which complements the National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets, depends on both public and private efforts to secure the many elements that comprise the national information infrastructure, including routers, switches, fiber-optic cables, and tens of millions of interconnected computers. The strategy provides five national cyber security priorities: a national security response system; vulnerability reduction program; an awareness and training program; a government cyberspace security program; and national security and international cyberspace security cooperation. Kerry response:
In particular, worms and viruses are causing economic losses of billions of dollars a year. Experts have argued that future worms could allow attackers to rapidly control millions of Internet-connected computers. They could then use those computers to launch “denial of service attacks,” or steal and corrupt large quantities of sensitive information. Moreover, these worms could reach most vulnerable targets in an hour or less. We need a president who is actively supportive of developing technologies that will automatically detect and respond to these kinds of attacks.
We need a president who will devote the energy of the White House to making our networks – our 21st century infrastructure – stronger and more secure. That means supporting a cyber security intelligence system ready to detect these threats. I will implement global standards and best practices so that weak links are strengthened. And we need a real partnership between the public and private sectors. Most of the infrastructure we need to protect doesn’t belong to government – and neither government nor business can fix these problems alone.
Bush response:
America’s economy leads the world because our system of private enterprise rewards innovation. Entrepreneurs, scientists, and skilled workers create and apply the technologies that are changing our world. I believe that government must work to help create a new generation of American innovation and an atmosphere where innovation thrives. That is why it is crucial that we make the R&D tax credit permanent to spur private sector innovation.
Science has always been an important priority in my Administration. My 2005 budget provides a record $132 billion for Federal R&D funding – a 44% increase over 2001 levels. I have committed 13.5% of total discretionary spending to R&D, which is a level of investment not seen since the height of the Apollo Space program in 1968. Basic research is supported with $26.8 billion – a 26% increase from 2001.
I completed the doubling of the budget for the National Institute of Health (NIH) and increased the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) budget by 30%. Since 2001, funding for nanotechnology R&D doubled to $1 billion and funding for information technology R&D is up to $2 billion. My Hydrogen Fuel Initiative provides $228 million for hydrogen energy research in 2005 alone – more than triple what it was in 2001. And contrary to the myth propagated by my opponent, I am the first president to provide Federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. Since 2001, my Administration has provided $35.5 million for stem cell research, and in 2003, the NIH funded $190 million in adult stem cell research. Kerry response:
Federal support for long-term research that is beyond the time horizons of individual companies has played a critical role in creating high-tech products, services, and industries. This is particularly true for basic research at our nation’s universities, where we have the dual benefit of research and advanced training of our future scientists and engineers. The contribution of government-funded university research, however, is often critical for igniting the process of innovation. I want America to be the world leader in innovation and discovery and is committed to increasing the federal government’s investment in research and innovation.
Among other things, I will boost support for the physical sciences and engineering by increasing research investments in agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This funding will help with the broad areas of science and technology that will provide the foundations for economic growth and prosperity in the 21st century, including advancements in nanotechnology, advanced manufacturing, IT, life sciences, clean energy and industrial biotechnology.
I’ll give both candidates credit for voicing support for increased funding at NSF (in the latter answer) and cyber security R&D (in the former). If I’m going to quibble, I’d question the intensity of support for cyber security R&D noted by the President in the first answer by citing the total amount the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology directorate will spend on cyber security R&D in FY 2004 ($18 million out of a total S&T budget of about $1 billion) as well as concerns we’ve raised in the past about the current state of cyber R&D. But it’s easier to quibble with the President because he’s the only one who has actually had to implement his priorities. Sen. Kerry’s answers are cast in the right direction, I think, but lack enough specificity to really know how they’d fare through the budget process.
When it comes down to it, funding for science — especially fundamental research — tends to be a fairly bipartisan endeavor. Just to illustrate, I whipped up this little graph that shows how IT research and development funding has fared through the various administrations (click to make it big enough to see):
I put together the chart from NSF data and using the OMB FY 2004 deflators to get constant dollars. The years indicated are fiscal years, not calendar years, and the administrations are placed on the timeline so they cover the budgets for which they were responsible. For example, Reagan entered office in January, 1981, but his first budget (released in Feb 1981) was for the 1982 fiscal year. Also, the events placed on the chart are just ones that occurred to me as I was plotting this out as possibly relevant to the info on the chart, but are by no means exhaustive. I’d be really interested to hear feedback (harsha [at] cra.org) about other events others might consider relevant.
The numbers beneath the names of the presidents on the graph represent the percentage increase in funding for IT R&D through the presidents’ terms. The graph only goes out to FY 2003, but President Bush’s numbers don’t improve much for FY 2004 — about 3.0 percent, not much higher than the rate of inflation. It’s hard to know if a President Kerry would be able to manage anything different given the current budget constraints — ongoing costs for the war on terror, increased pressure to constrain domestic spending to address the defecit, resistance to increased taxes, and a appropriations process that continues to pit science funding head-to-head with funding for veterans and federal housing programs.
Things have been a bit busy around CRA world headquarters recently, which is why blogging has been a little infrequent. Apologies to those who’ve noticed. 🙂
One of the recent events worth mentioning was the 2004 edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference held two weeks ago in Chicago. This year’s event marked the 10-year anniversary of the Hopper Conferences and was the most well-attended yet — over 800 women in computing came for the talks or the posters or just the chance to meet their colleagues and network.
Both CRA and CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing (CRA-W) used the occasion to present a couple of important awards. CRA recognized the winner of our Outstanding Female Undergraduate award — Anna Cavender, from the University of Oregon — along with the runner-up (Heather Wake, University of South Carolina) and those who received Honorable Mentions. Here’s my poor attempt at capturing the group (the professional photographers photo will be much better, I’m sure): Enlarge (opens in a new window) From left: Kristin Vadas, Georgia Tech; Erika Shehan, Purdue; Arati Kurani, DePaul; Heather Wake; Jan Cuny, CRA-W member; Anna Cavender; Dong Hui-Xu, DePaul; Katrina Ligett, Brown; Jane Tougas, Dalhousie; Andrew Bernat, CRA Executive Director
CRA-W used the occasion to present its Anita Borg Early Career Award for 2004 to University of British Columbia professor Johanna McGrenere.
The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and an inspiration for her commitment in increasing the participation of women in computing research. Dr. McGrenere is the first recipient of this award to be given annually by CRA-W to a woman in computer science and/or engineering who has made significant research contributions and who has contributed to her profession, especially in the outreach to women. This award recognizes work in areas of academia and industrial research labs that has had a positive and significant impact on advancing women in the computing research community and is targeted at women that are relatively early in their careers (no more than 10 years past the Ph.D.).
Dr. McGrenere has made outstanding contributions to the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Particularly relevant to this award is her leadership on the Aphasia Project – a large, multi-disciplinary effort spanning several academic fields, institutions and organizations in participatory technology research and design. Anita Borg, who suffered from aphasia as a result of brain injury from her cancer, was the first participant of McGrenere’s Aphasia project. The technology aided Anita (and now others suffering from aphasia) to continue with daily activities. Two of the ideas that Dr. McGrenere’s group is developing are an icon-based recipe book and a digital planner.
You can read the whole release here. Johanna wasn’t able to attend the conference (she was in the late-term stages of pregnancy), but sent her graduate student Karyn Moffatt: Enlarge Moffatt accepts the Anita Borg Award on behalf of McGrenere from CRA-W member Mary Jane Irwin, while CRA-W co-chair Carla Ellis acts as MC.
It was a great event and I was thrilled to have spent some time chatting with the members of CRA-W at the banquet (thanks for letting me crash your table) and with a number of attendees throughout the conference. (Though as good as the conference was, I hope everyone was able to sneak out a bit and enjoy the amazingfallweather in Chicago. 🙂 )
RSS (Rich Site Summary ) is a way to disseminate information on the Web that is somewhere between the push of email and the pull of browsing web portals. In that sense, it is like the venerable Unix newsgroups, but differs in that anyone can start an RSS channel by putting it on the Web and the content is under your complete control. RSS is viewed as a lightweight tool for the syndication of web site content to be incorporated into web pages, portals, and personalized information sources. As more and more information becomes available via RSS feeds, it is becoming a valuable tool to deal with the overwhelming amount of information available today. How It Works
RSS is a XML standard for publishing summaries of articles or news itemsfor example, a headline, date, short description, and a link to the full item. The full specifications define about 20 metadata fields and the XML encoding supports additional extensibility. Information providers, like the CRA, Slashdot, The New York Times, and bloggers publish RSS feeds or channels as XML files at an advertised URLs. As the original content changes, for example, new stories are posted to Slashdot, the corresponding RSS channel is updated, typically including only the 10 or 15 most recent items. Most blogging systems can automatically update an RSS feed containing the summaries of recent items at the same time as it publishes the regular blog pages. RSS files are also easy to maintain with simple programs or to generate from other sources such as databases….
SiliconValley.com is running an interesting online discussion of e-voting featuring a few of the luminaries in the field, including Avi Rubin and David Dill. I even saw an appearance by Jim Horning, former member of CRA’s board.
Worth a view.
[Via Slashdot.]
As expected, the Senate yesterday passed HR 4516, the High End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which would authorize the creation of a “leadership class” supercomputer at DOE and a “High-end Software Development Center.” The bill is expected to be re-passed in the House during a lame-duck session and signed by the President.
The bill is a melding of the House version of HR 4516, introduced by Reps. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Lincoln Davis (D-TN) and Senate bill S. 2176, introduced by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Both bills are loosely based on the recommendations from the High End Computing Revitalization Task Force Workshop CRA hosted in June, 2003. (We’ve covered both bills hererecently.)
The compromise bill adopts the House’s less prescriptive (and lower) authorized funding amounts ($50 million in FY 05, $55 million in FY 06, $60 million in FY 07), but adds the software development center from the Senate bill and strips language added at the insistence of Rep. Brad Sherman that would have required a study on the implications of artificial intelligence research.
The House Science Committee issued a press release after the Senate passage, which I’ve included after the jump…
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 Princeton University, Felten took part in a contest sponsored by the Recording Industry Association of America to test technology for guarding music against piracy. He and his students quickly found flaws in the new antipiracy software and prepared to publish their results. But when the RIAA learned of the plan, it threatened to sue under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Congress passed it back in 1998 to block hackers from breaking copy protection. And they wisely included a provision designed to let researchers such as Felten carry out their important work. Still, the RIAA deemed Felten’s line of study too sensitive.
Ultimately, faced with Felten’s countersuit, the RIAA backed off. But by that time news of the confrontation had rocked the tech community. The lesson many scientists drew was that copyright protection takes priority over research. “The legal tools that are being used to rein in bad behavior are so blunt that they block a lot of perfectly benign behavior,” Felten says. “That worries me.”
It’s a concern that reverberates broadly in tech circles at a time when Congress is considering tough new antipiracy legislation. Most people agree that the music and film industries have the right to defend themselves against illegal copying. But society needs to consider the potential impact on innovation. Many high-tech business leaders fear that new laws could hobble researchers who are trying to come up with inventions such as next-generation TV systems or even the electronic components for those inventions.
Thanks to David Padgham (and USACM’s spiffy new blog) for pointing out this Wiredstory 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 form of secondary liability for copyright infringement that would hold technology makers and service providers liable for copyright violations by end users even if they never knew, contemplated, or intended to facilitate user infringement. Nevertheless, the Senate Judiciary Committee is still scheduled to consider the legislation at markup this morning.
We’ve covered thisbillpreviously, but we’ll have more details as they emerge. Update:Postponed again. Another Update:Ernest Miller says it’s dead (for now) and has some additional commentary and links….
Wiredreports 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 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system’s specifications and privacy policies.
In contrast to the PR battle surrounding a similar previous effort — DARPA’s Terrorism Information Awareness project — privacy and civil liberties protections are being touted prominently in advance. CMU Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Dave Farber, a member of the Markle Task Force, has posted an open letter (which he authored, along with Esther Dyson and Tara Lemmey) on his influential Interesting People e-mail list endorsing the proposed system provided the recommendations of the Task Force were implemented (“as looks likely”).
During the course of the debate in Congress over the implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations, valid questions have been raised over civil liberty concerns and role of such an information sharing network. We grappled with these same questions as we worked through our recommendations for the Task Force. We also learned important lessons from the problems of other efforts like the Total Information Awareness program (TIA) and MATRIX, both of which have raised serious privacy concerns. We eventually determined that you can achieve a balance between security and privacy if you ensure that strong guidelines, transparency, accountability and oversight are built into the network from the start.
In addition to the approach of building policy into the design of the network, the Task Force also designed the network not as a centralized database, but as a set of pointers and directories that allow only authorized users to gain access to information. The system also calls for regular and robust internal audits of how information is collected and stored and used. Privacy technologies such as anonymization, permission controls, and audit trails are built into the design of the network to prevent abuse. In addition, the Task Force also calls for a phased implementation to allow for appropriate public comment and a strong civil liberties board to oversee the system and ensure that privacy
The SHARE network capability, if implemented properly, would give us the ability to overcome the systematic barriers to information sharing that so seriously constrained our intelligence agencies prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that unfortunately still exist today. It would also provide us with the best opportunity not only to balance security and privacy, but to enhance them both as well.
CRA has argued in the past of the need to move forward with this sort of research and has faulted Congress for taking a heavy-handed approach in prohibiting similar work. Perhaps this new approach will allow some real progress in developing the technologies valuable in the war on terror while at the same time enabling the critical research needed to ensure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are met.
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CRA and USACM Urge Congress to Support NIST Labs
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaCRA and ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Office today urged members of the House and Senate to adopt Senate approved funding levels for NIST Labs as part of the expected negotiation over omnibus appropriations legislation for FY 2005. As we’ve covered previously, NIST finds itself in dire funding straits as a result of decisions made by appropriators to cut $22 million in funding for the Labs in last year’s funding bill.
Both the House and Senate appropriations committees have completed work on their respective bills, with the Senate bill coming closer to addressing the funding shortfall. The Senate bill would funnel more funding to the NIST Labs than the House version, adding $43 million to the FY 2004 number for a total of $384 million for FY 2005. In contrast, the House version would provide $375 million for FY 2005. Both versions are still well short of the Administration’s request of $423 million.
CRA and USACM joined in writing to members of the House and Senate expected to be involved in the negotiations over the FY 05 Omnibus:
Previous CRA/USACM joint letter here.
CSTB Calls for E-Voting White Papers
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaHerb Lin sends word that the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) is seeking comments and white papers “relevant to the use of electronic voting systems.” Serious comments and white papers need to be received by November 22, 2004.
Full details after the jump…
Read more →
Rare Presidential Campaign Post: Presidential Candidates Address Tech Policy
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaCompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, recently put a series of technology policy questions to both Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush, who apparently, to their credit, actually answered the questions.
I don’t want to descend too far into the mire of dissecting the answers, but I wanted to highlight two that are particularly relevant to CRA’s interests. The first is What should the federal government do to address the issue of cyber security?:
The second is: How can the federal government better encourage investment in both basic and applied research and development?
I’ll give both candidates credit for voicing support for increased funding at NSF (in the latter answer) and cyber security R&D (in the former). If I’m going to quibble, I’d question the intensity of support for cyber security R&D noted by the President in the first answer by citing the total amount the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology directorate will spend on cyber security R&D in FY 2004 ($18 million out of a total S&T budget of about $1 billion) as well as concerns we’ve raised in the past about the current state of cyber R&D. But it’s easier to quibble with the President because he’s the only one who has actually had to implement his priorities. Sen. Kerry’s answers are cast in the right direction, I think, but lack enough specificity to really know how they’d fare through the budget process.
![justitrand_sm.jpg](http://archive.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/justitrand_sm.jpg)
When it comes down to it, funding for science — especially fundamental research — tends to be a fairly bipartisan endeavor. Just to illustrate, I whipped up this little graph that shows how IT research and development funding has fared through the various administrations (click to make it big enough to see):
I put together the chart from NSF data and using the OMB FY 2004 deflators to get constant dollars. The years indicated are fiscal years, not calendar years, and the administrations are placed on the timeline so they cover the budgets for which they were responsible. For example, Reagan entered office in January, 1981, but his first budget (released in Feb 1981) was for the 1982 fiscal year. Also, the events placed on the chart are just ones that occurred to me as I was plotting this out as possibly relevant to the info on the chart, but are by no means exhaustive. I’d be really interested to hear feedback (harsha [at] cra.org) about other events others might consider relevant.
The numbers beneath the names of the presidents on the graph represent the percentage increase in funding for IT R&D through the presidents’ terms. The graph only goes out to FY 2003, but President Bush’s numbers don’t improve much for FY 2004 — about 3.0 percent, not much higher than the rate of inflation. It’s hard to know if a President Kerry would be able to manage anything different given the current budget constraints — ongoing costs for the war on terror, increased pressure to constrain domestic spending to address the defecit, resistance to increased taxes, and a appropriations process that continues to pit science funding head-to-head with funding for veterans and federal housing programs.
Catching Up: Hopper Conference
/In: People /by Peter HarshaThings have been a bit busy around CRA world headquarters recently, which is why blogging has been a little infrequent. Apologies to those who’ve noticed. 🙂![undergrad_awards_sm.jpg](http://archive.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/undergrad_awards_sm.jpg)
One of the recent events worth mentioning was the 2004 edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference held two weeks ago in Chicago. This year’s event marked the 10-year anniversary of the Hopper Conferences and was the most well-attended yet — over 800 women in computing came for the talks or the posters or just the chance to meet their colleagues and network.
Both CRA and CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing (CRA-W) used the occasion to present a couple of important awards. CRA recognized the winner of our Outstanding Female Undergraduate award — Anna Cavender, from the University of Oregon — along with the runner-up (Heather Wake, University of South Carolina) and those who received Honorable Mentions. Here’s my poor attempt at capturing the group (the professional photographers photo will be much better, I’m sure):
Enlarge (opens in a new window)
From left: Kristin Vadas, Georgia Tech; Erika Shehan, Purdue; Arati Kurani, DePaul; Heather Wake; Jan Cuny, CRA-W member; Anna Cavender; Dong Hui-Xu, DePaul; Katrina Ligett, Brown; Jane Tougas, Dalhousie; Andrew Bernat, CRA Executive Director
CRA-W used the occasion to present its Anita Borg Early Career Award for 2004 to University of British Columbia professor Johanna McGrenere.
You can read the whole release here. Johanna wasn’t able to attend the conference (she was in the late-term stages of pregnancy), but sent her graduate student Karyn Moffatt:![anitaborg_award_sm.jpg](http://archive.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/anitaborg_award_sm.jpg)
Enlarge
Moffatt accepts the Anita Borg Award on behalf of McGrenere from CRA-W member Mary Jane Irwin, while CRA-W co-chair Carla Ellis acts as MC.
It was a great event and I was thrilled to have spent some time chatting with the members of CRA-W at the banquet (thanks for letting me crash your table) and with a number of attendees throughout the conference. (Though as good as the conference was, I hope everyone was able to sneak out a bit and enjoy the amazing fall weather in Chicago. 🙂 )
RSS Feeds – A Primer
/In: Misc. /by Peter HarshaFrom time to time I get questions about the Syndicate this Site (XML), Atom (XML) and Sub Bloglines links on the left side of this page. All represent various ways of accessing this site via an “RSS” feed. What’s an RSS feed? CRA Board Member Tim Finin at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County put together a handy guide to RSS feeds for the latest Computing Research News which is now available online.
Here’s a sample:
Read the whole thing: CRA Policy Blog Available as an RSS Channel
Interesting Online E-Voting Discussion
/In: Misc. /by Peter HarshaSiliconValley.com is running an interesting online discussion of e-voting featuring a few of the luminaries in the field, including Avi Rubin and David Dill. I even saw an appearance by Jim Horning, former member of CRA’s board.
Worth a view.
[Via Slashdot.]
Senate Passes DOE Supercomputing Bill
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaAs expected, the Senate yesterday passed HR 4516, the High End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which would authorize the creation of a “leadership class” supercomputer at DOE and a “High-end Software Development Center.” The bill is expected to be re-passed in the House during a lame-duck session and signed by the President.
The bill is a melding of the House version of HR 4516, introduced by Reps. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Lincoln Davis (D-TN) and Senate bill S. 2176, introduced by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Both bills are loosely based on the recommendations from the High End Computing Revitalization Task Force Workshop CRA hosted in June, 2003. (We’ve covered both bills here recently.)
The compromise bill adopts the House’s less prescriptive (and lower) authorized funding amounts ($50 million in FY 05, $55 million in FY 06, $60 million in FY 07), but adds the software development center from the Senate bill and strips language added at the insistence of Rep. Brad Sherman that would have required a study on the implications of artificial intelligence research.
The House Science Committee issued a press release after the Senate passage, which I’ve included after the jump…
Read more →
Business Week Notes DMCA, Induce Act’s Chill on Innovation
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaHeather 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:
It’s a good read. Check out the whole thing. Felten has some additional commentary here, too.
No Compromise Reached on INDUCE, But Its Still Moving
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThanks 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 form of secondary liability for copyright infringement that would hold technology makers and service providers liable for copyright violations by end users even if they never knew, contemplated, or intended to facilitate user infringement.
Nevertheless, the Senate Judiciary Committee is still scheduled to consider the legislation at markup this morning.We’ve covered this bill previously, but we’ll have more details as they emerge.
Update: Postponed again.
Another Update: Ernest Miller says it’s dead (for now) and has some additional commentary and links….
Senate Poised to Enable Terror Data Mining
/In: Policy, Research /by Peter HarshaWired 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.”
In contrast to the PR battle surrounding a similar previous effort — DARPA’s Terrorism Information Awareness project — privacy and civil liberties protections are being touted prominently in advance. CMU Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Dave Farber, a member of the Markle Task Force, has posted an open letter (which he authored, along with Esther Dyson and Tara Lemmey) on his influential Interesting People e-mail list endorsing the proposed system provided the recommendations of the Task Force were implemented (“as looks likely”).
CRA has argued in the past of the need to move forward with this sort of research and has faulted Congress for taking a heavy-handed approach in prohibiting similar work. Perhaps this new approach will allow some real progress in developing the technologies valuable in the war on terror while at the same time enabling the critical research needed to ensure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are met.