Dr. Dobb's Journal August 2003
Britain's first museum dedicated to computing is seeking collections for display. The Museum of Computing (http://www.digitalhistory.org.uk), founded in Swindon in 2000, does not intend to maintain its own permanent collections. Instead, the museum hopes to "act as a showcase for outside exhibitors." Individuals or companies in possession of historic technology are encouraged to contact the museum. The museum is interested in hardware, software, the evolution of the telecommunications and computer industries, and the life histories of important figures in the development of computers. Between June and August, the displays focus on the history of home computers. Featured systems range from the Apple II Plus to the Sanyo MPC-100.
The IETF's Anti-Spam Research Group (http://www.irtf.org/charters/asrg.html) says that standards governing "consent-based communications" will be in place within two years. The group believes that any feasible plan for dealing with spam involves three components: The "consent expression component" allows individuals to define the types of e-mail they will accept, thereby freeing the ASRG from defining "spam." The "policy enforcement component" involves rules-based or collaborative filtering, ensuring that only acceptable e-mail reaches addressees. And the "source tracking component" identifies senders of unwanted e-mail and imposes penalties. To implement this framework, the ASRG is looking into lightweight authentication mechanisms, reputation tracking systems, tools individuals can use to report spam, challenge-response systems, and micropayment schemes.
Market analysis firm Evans Data says that 52 percent of software developers today use Visual Basic, but that 43 percent of them are planning to move to other languages. The firm's North American Development Survey (http://www.evansdata.com/n2/surveys/northamerican_toc_03_1 .shtml), completed in April, gathered information from 600 developers. One third of current Visual Basic users plan to move directly to VB.NET, but most of the developers with plans to move away from Visual Basic were interested in Java or C#. The survey also found that specialized, in-house development methodologies continue to dominate the software industry. Only 16 percent of developers use RAD tools, and only 9 percent use Extreme Programming methodologies.
Carnegie Mellon University has announced a Robot Hall of Fame "to honor noteworthy robots, both real and fictional, along with their creators." Induction of the first robots will take place this fall. Nominations for inductees can be sent to James Morris at Carnegie Mellon (james.morris@cmu.edu) until August 31: The university says nominations "should include a short paragraph justifying the case and can include videotapes and other material." A different panel of judges will select the inductees each year. This year's panel consists of 10 judges, including science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke; Minoru Asada, a founder of the International Robocup Federation; and Ray Jarvis, director of Australia's Intelligent Robotics Research Centre.
The Robot Hall of Fame will initially be located in the School of Computer Science on Carnegie Mellon's campus, though an exhibition is planned at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center. The Robot Hall of Fame will ask inductees for the robots themselves or replicas provided by the creators, as well as video materials. Funding for the exhibition comes from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science and Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center, and the Pennsylvania Departments of Tourism and Economic Development.
The ACM's Paris 2002 Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award has been given to Dr. Peter Franaszek, "for contributions to the theory and practice of constrained channel coding, creating a revolution in the encoding of digital data for transmission and storage." As a researcher at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Franaszek invented the (2,7) RLL code, the first sliding-block run-length limited code, which is used in magnetic and optical recording. He is also the coinventor of the 8B/10B code, which is incorporated into Gigabit Ethernet, Infiniband, the Fiber Channel Standard, IBM's ESCON architecture, and Hitachi's channel extender. The Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award (http://www.acm.org/awards/kan.html) recognizes "specific theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant and demonstrable effect on the practice of computing."