Dr. Dobb's Journal February 2002
The second graduating class from the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation's School of Adaptive Computer Training has recently joined the IT workforce. SACT, located in Wichita, Kansas, has certified a total of 24 graduates in various technical fields. The school's adaptive equipment includes one-handed keyboards, head-based mouses, screen magnification software, and voice recognition systems.
The most basic level of certification SACT offers is the local "computer operator" certificate. But most graduates participate in one of the programs leading to national certification, such as the Microsoft Office User Specialist or the Certified Help Desk Professional programs. The school also provides a mentoring program to help with job placement. Last year, about one third of SACT graduates had found jobs within a month of graduation.
SACT is accredited through Cowley County Community College (http://www.cowley.cc.ks.us/) and supported by industry donations — Microsoft and Boeing are both sponsors of the school — and by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. For more information, see http://www.cprf.org/sact.html.
The first web site in the United States was launched 10 years ago, an event celebrated at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Of course, the first web server was set up by World Wide Web inventors Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Upon learning about the Web during a September 1991 visit to CERN, SLAC physicist Paul Kunz built the first web server in North America in December 1991. SLAC physicist Tony Johnson subsequently developed Midas, a graphical browser that influenced Marc Andreessen's development of the Mosaic browser. The two-day symposium at SLAC featured speakers such as Cailliau, Kunz, Johnson, and others. For more information, see http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/webanniv/.
IBM researchers have developed a "double-gate" transistor that can carry twice the electrical current, operate at up to twice the speed, and be reduced in size below that of conventional transistors. As transistors have become smaller, it becomes more difficult for traditional single-gate transistors to control switching. With IBM's double-gate transistor, the channel is surrounded by two gates, doubling control of the current and enabling significantly smaller, faster, and lower-power circuits. Design techniques such as the double-gate will be needed in the coming years, as transistors shrink so small that it becomes difficult to shut them off.
After months of argument and deadlock, the IEEE 802.11 Task Group G has approved the first draft of the 802.11g protocol, which will allow Ethernet data transmission at speeds of up to 54 Mbps in the 2.4-GHz band.
The current generation of 802 wireless networking, 802.11b, also uses the unlicensed 2.4-GHz band, but only supports speeds of 11 Mbps. 802.11b uses the Complementary Code Keying (CCK) modulation scheme, and is licensed for use in Europe, Asia, and North America. In 1999, the IEEE also approved the 802.11a specification, which uses Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and a separate portion of the spectrum to achieve high-speed wireless transmission. Some 802.11a chipsets have already appeared. However, the 802.11a protocol is only accepted in North America and does not interoperate with 802.11b.
Although the 1.0 draft is still restricted to members of the IEEE, the Task Group reports that 802.11g "is based on CCK, OFDM, and PBCC technologies," and that it will be backward compatible with 802.11b. The draft is now expected to undergo some "editorial changes." It will then go before the full 802.11 Working Group, and the final standard is scheduled to be published in the second half of 2002. The task force's progress updates are available at http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/tgg_update.htm.
Intel's historic 4004 microprocessor — or "microcomputer set," as it was known at the time — turned 30 years old at the end of 2001. The chip was originally designed for a Busicom programmable calculator but, realizing the versatility of a central processing unit, Intel returned Busicom's investment and kept the rights to the 4004. At the time, it was thought that the microprocessor would drive up the sales of memory chips (initially Intel's core business).
The 4-bit processor had a 45 command instruction set, held 2100 P-MOS transistors, and executed about 60,000 operations per second. It was comparable in power to the 1946 ENIAC, but where ENIAC required 3000 cubic feet, the 4004 was only about three square millimeters. It sold for $200 and was marketed as "a microprogrammable computer-on-a-chip." Among its other applications, the 4004 was used in the Pioneer 10 spacecraft.
Credit for the design of the 4004 is generally given to Intel engineers Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, and Stan Mazor, along with Busicom engineer Masatoshi Shima. For more information, see http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/backgrnd/cn71898a.htm.
The idea that code can be a form of personal expression is gaining support in the U.S. judicial system. But the courts still vary considerably in their willingness to apply First Amendment protections to source code.
In DVDCCA v. Bunner, a California appellate court reversed an injunction against publication of Jon Johansen's DeCSS DVD descrambler, saying, "Although the social value of DeCSS may be questionable, it is nonetheless pure speech." However, in a separate case concerning the same material (Universal v. Reimerdes), a federal appeals court upheld the ban against publication of the DeCSS code.
"Communication does not lose constitutional protection as 'speech' simply because it is expressed in the language of computer code," acknowledged the federal court. But the decision went on to conclude: "The scope of protection for speech generally depends on whether the restriction is imposed because of the content of the speech...content-neutral restriction is permissible. According to the judge's ruling, the ban against DeCSS is "content-neutral" and satisfies the given requirements.
The DVDCCA v. Bunner decision can be read at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/H021153.PDF. Universal v. Reimerdes decision is available at http://www.eff.org/Cases/MPAA_DVD_cases/20011128_ny_appeal_decision.html.