Dr. Dobb's Journal February 2004
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has opened its ranks to programmers, via a special "CyberLodge" union for high-tech workers (http://www.cyberlodge.org/). CyberLodge is still in its early stages—its organization and leadership have not yet been formalized—but as an affiliate of the IAW, it can offer its members health insurance and other traditional union benefits. Perhaps more importantly, CyberLodge can use the political resources of the IAW to affect policy on hot-button issues like outsourcing or Internet taxes.
Ian Lurie, one of CyberLodge's founders, stresses that CyberLodge isn't a traditional union; he likens it more to a craftsman's guild. Since programmers are often itinerant in their jobs, the IAM decided it made little sense to attempt to unionize around particular "shops" such as Microsoft or Intel. Instead, Cyberlodge assumes a widely distributed membership that communicates primarily through the Internet. "Consider us SourceForge.net for the labor movement," the web site advises. "Open source software gets its strength from the combined efforts of many developers. CyberLodge.org hopes to accomplish the same thing."
The National Medal of Technology is awarded yearly "to recognize technological innovators who have made lasting contributions to enhancing America's competitiveness and standard of living." This year's laureates are Calvin H. Carter for his work on silicon carbide semiconductor materials; Haren S. Gandhi for researching eco-friendly automotive technologies; and Carver A. Mead for "spearheading the development of tools and techniques for modern integrated-circuit design." Past laureates are listed at http://www.technology.gov/medal/.
In what has become an annual chess showdown between man and machine, Garry Kasparov and the chess-playing program X3D Fritz played four games over a week in New York City. Kasparov has been the world's top-ranked chess player since 1985; X3D Fritz is the latest version of a program that has been winning computer chess championships since 1991. For this year's match, the organizers programmed the "board" to be displayed in 3D virtual reality goggles, with moves executed by voice command.
Kasparov and Fritz drew the first game. A blunder by Kasparov lost him the second game, but he crushed Fritz in the third game by playing towards a position beyond the machine's search depth. The fourth game—and with it the match—ended in a draw.
X3D Fritz is not an heir to IBM's celebrated Deep Blue, the machine that famously beat Kasparov in 1997 (though chess analysts have since pointed out that Deep Blue was given several advantages, perhaps the most significant being that Kasparov was not allowed to study the computer's style of play beforehand, while the IBM team had access to all of the grandmaster's prior games). Deep Blue ran on specialized hardware and relied primarily on its brute-force search abilities; it could analyze 200 million board positions per second. X3D Fritz, running on an Intel Xeon server with four 2.8-GHz processors, has less search power but better pattern-recognition algorithms. In fact, the Fritz program beat a prototype version of Deep Blue back in 1995—but that was before Deep Blue had achieved its full processing power. It's unclear which machine would be stronger today.
The Miss Digital World competition is "the first ever virtual beauty contest, strictly for the most beautiful and intriguing virtual models made using the most advanced 3D graphics tools," according to http://www.missdigitalworld.com/. The contest is, of course, virtual: All the "contestants" will be shown parading along a 3D catwalk in streaming video, and the winner will be chosen by Internet viewers in what the contest's organizers promise will be "a breathtaking, tear-jerking ceremony." A real-life ceremony to honor the model's creator will be held as part of the Virtuality 2004 conference in Turin, Italy, where the contest's $5000 prize will be awarded.
Submissions must include five JPEG images and a QuickTime or AVI video of the model, as well as a list of her "vital statistics." Like real-life beauty pageants, the Miss Digital World competition disqualifies any contestants who have appeared in pornography or found to be "in any way not in tone with the moral spirit of the Competition." Entries will be accepted until August 31, 2004. Unfortunately, there's no word on when an equal-opportunity Mr. Digital Universe competition might be held.