An end-of-year, end-of-decade Xconomy article by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska.
“‘Exponentials R Us’ – Seven Computer Science Game-Changers from the 2000’s, and Seven More to Come
“Forty years ago, in 1969, Neil Armstrong left footprints on the surface of the moon. It was an extraordinary accomplishment.
“Also in 1969, with much less fanfare and at much less expense, Len Kleinrock’s programmer Charley Kline sent the first message over ARPANET. (The message was “lo” – the first two letters of… Read more →
“How budget cuts short-changed the UW”
An adaptation by Crosscut of Ed Lazowska’s analysis of how the University of Washington fared in the 2009-11 biennial state budget.
“There can be room for honest debate about whether the decisions that were made by the legislature and the governor were smart in terms of the future of the state, but there shouldn’t be any confusion regarding the facts. As we enter another difficult budget session, it’s important to think about where those decisions put the university and what… Read more →
“New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs”
A wonderful New York Times article on careers in computing profiles UW CSE alumna Kira Lehtomaki, and quotes UW CSE friends Jan Cuny and Alfred Spector.
“’We need to gain an understanding in the population that education in computer science is both extraordinarily important and extraordinarily interesting,’ said Alfred Spector, vice president for research and special initiatives at Google. ‘The fear is that if you pursue computer science, you will be stuck in a basement, writing code. That is absolutely… Read more →
“Google Takes Search Real-Time”
UW CSE’s Dan Weld is quoted in this Technology Review article.
“Gradually, over the past decade, Google has compressed the gap between fresh indexing of the Web from months to mere minutes. On Monday the search giant upped the ante … saying that … it will offer search results … that are just seconds old.
“At the same press event, the company unveiled new search features for mobile devices. These include a prototype visual search technology, which allows snapshots of… Read more →
“Lighten your footprint by sharing”
This lovely article in Pacific Magazine describes the relationship between UW CSE alum Damon Danieli and Sara Denis, a stranger who donated her kidney to him.
“Sara Denis, a 35-year-old medical-office scheduler, shared something even more rare than a neurologist — her ‘extra’ kidney.
“She knows it sounds crazy. Her husband thought so, too. So did most of her friends. ‘They were like, ‘Oooh, no! What are you thinking???!!’ ‘ …
“At matchingdonors.com, where people who need kidneys pay for… Read more →
“Is Big Brother watching your ORCA card?”
The Seattle Times reports on privacy concerns related to the ORCA card.
“The ORCA network offers the convenience of using a single card to pay for rides on buses, trains, boats, streetcars and vans … But what thousands of commuters might not realize is that their movements also could be checked by their bosses.”
UW CSE has for several years raised concerns about this technology, at the University of Washington and statewide, in the context of the RFID Ecosystem Project… Read more →
“A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing”
The New York Times on eScience:
“In a speech given just a few weeks before he was lost at sea off the California coast in January 2007, Jim Gray, a database software pioneer and a Microsoft researcher, sketched out an argument that computing was fundamentally transforming the practice of science …
“In computing circles, Dr. Gray’s crusade was described as, ‘It’s the data, stupid.’ It was a point of view that caused him to break ranks with the supercomputing nobility,… Read more →
Straight Talk about the UW State Budget
Confused about how the University of Washington fared in the 2009-11 biennial budget? There can be room for honest debate about whether the decisions that were made were smart in terms of the future of the state. But there should not be any confusion concerning the facts. Here they are!… Read more →
“‘One keypad per child’ lets schoolchildren share screen to learn math”
While it will be long time before “one laptop per child” is true everywhere in the world, UW CSE undergraduates have developed a system that lets up to four students share a single computer to do interactive math problems.
UW undergraduate students Clint Tseng, Heather Underwood, and Sunil Garg, who participated in Joyojeet Pal‘s computer science project course, decided to try building a system for a numeric keypad similar to Microsoft MultiPoint platform, which connects multiple mice to… Read more →
“Mind-controlled robot works while you wait”
Even though James Cameron’s movie Avatar is still a few weeks away from opening, there already exist real-life systems for controlling another body remotely. UW CSE’s Raj Rao has developed an elegant mind-controlled robot that takes care of the boring, low-level stuff so the controller can concentrate on more interesting, higher level goals. The little humanoid bot is controlled by the human brain. By measuring electric signals through the surface of the skull (no surgery required), you can command the… Read more →