Slashdot Mirror
Domain: acmqueue.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to acmqueue.com.
Stories · 100
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What VoIP Is Actually Good For
gManZboy writes "One of the things that's bothered me about VoIP is that other than so-so quality phone service at a cheap price, what's the big deal? I mean so you can now deliver voice mail into e-mail because it's all IP packets, does that mean I should ditch my telecom investment. Well in part 3 of Queue's special report on VoIP (here's part 1, part 2) two authors from Bell Labs help explain actually useful things you might do. Now I get it." -
What VoIP Is Actually Good For
gManZboy writes "One of the things that's bothered me about VoIP is that other than so-so quality phone service at a cheap price, what's the big deal? I mean so you can now deliver voice mail into e-mail because it's all IP packets, does that mean I should ditch my telecom investment. Well in part 3 of Queue's special report on VoIP (here's part 1, part 2) two authors from Bell Labs help explain actually useful things you might do. Now I get it." -
Will VoIP Kill the PBX?
gManZboy writes "Following up on their last VoIP article, Queue just posted "Not Your Father's PBX?" from Jim Coffman at Avaya Labs. Looks like the PBX may survive, but it's going to have to evolve considerably. I guess eventually corporate telecom goes away as a kind of island in the MIS dept? Maybe that's already happened?" -
Will VoIP Kill the PBX?
gManZboy writes "Following up on their last VoIP article, Queue just posted "Not Your Father's PBX?" from Jim Coffman at Avaya Labs. Looks like the PBX may survive, but it's going to have to evolve considerably. I guess eventually corporate telecom goes away as a kind of island in the MIS dept? Maybe that's already happened?" -
You Don't Know Jack about VoIP
gManZboy writes "Phil Sherburne and Cary Fitzgerald, two senior technologists over at Cisco, have written an in-depth overview of VoIP for developers and the like (not for everyone who's ever used a phone). Like Queue's earlier You Don't Know Jack about Disks, this article covers the history, the basic technologies, how they work, and where they're headed. If you found the blog post yesterday lacking, check this one out." -
You Don't Know Jack about VoIP
gManZboy writes "Phil Sherburne and Cary Fitzgerald, two senior technologists over at Cisco, have written an in-depth overview of VoIP for developers and the like (not for everyone who's ever used a phone). Like Queue's earlier You Don't Know Jack about Disks, this article covers the history, the basic technologies, how they work, and where they're headed. If you found the blog post yesterday lacking, check this one out." -
On Moving Toward Software Rentals
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article about the emergence of a service-oriented model of software delivery, supported by the W3C, IBM, HP, and Microsoft. They already have their acronyms down: WSDL (Web Services Description Language), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and WSFL (Web Services Flow Language). The article primarily covers the three phases of negotiating, ending with actual service delivery." -
Outsourcing is Good for You
gManZboy writes "Catherine Mann, from the Institute for International Economics, has a look at What Global Outsourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers up over at Queue. She's got an interesting argument: outsourcing means cheaper IT products, meaning businesses will buy more, meaning more products to make & manage = net gain of IT jobs in the US. Ummm, did you follow that?" -
Outsourcing is Good for You
gManZboy writes "Catherine Mann, from the Institute for International Economics, has a look at What Global Outsourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers up over at Queue. She's got an interesting argument: outsourcing means cheaper IT products, meaning businesses will buy more, meaning more products to make & manage = net gain of IT jobs in the US. Ummm, did you follow that?" -
Gosling on Computing
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has Eric Allman (creator of Sendmail) interviewing James Gosling (creator of Java) and the conversation covers many aspects of computing today, including the state of security, comparisons of languages and OSs, and the future of virtual machines. 'At the lowest level, you have to know that the boundaries around the piece of software are completely known and contained. So, for example, in Java, you can't go outside the bounds of an array. Ever. Period. Turning off array subscripting is not an option.'" -
Don't Nurse Old Hardware - Emulate It
gManZboy writes "Bob Supnik, former team lead for DEC's VAX microprossesor, has an article up on Queue about his Computer History Simulation Project and how emulating old servers may be a better way to keep them running that servicing the physical machines. So how many PDP-11's can you run on a Pentium 4 anyhow?" -
Don't Nurse Old Hardware - Emulate It
gManZboy writes "Bob Supnik, former team lead for DEC's VAX microprossesor, has an article up on Queue about his Computer History Simulation Project and how emulating old servers may be a better way to keep them running that servicing the physical machines. So how many PDP-11's can you run on a Pentium 4 anyhow?" -
BSD Jails, a Better Virtual Server?
gManZboy writes "Poul-Henning Kamp, a FreeBSD committer, has an article up about BSD Jails as part of Queue's special report on virtual machines. He describes BSD's interesting 'semi-permeable' approach to VMs, and the importance of security in VM architectures. The article is co-written by Robert Watson, a DARPA principal investigator in the Host Intrusion Protection (HIP) Research Group at McAfee Research." -
BSD Jails, a Better Virtual Server?
gManZboy writes "Poul-Henning Kamp, a FreeBSD committer, has an article up about BSD Jails as part of Queue's special report on virtual machines. He describes BSD's interesting 'semi-permeable' approach to VMs, and the importance of security in VM architectures. The article is co-written by Robert Watson, a DARPA principal investigator in the Host Intrusion Protection (HIP) Research Group at McAfee Research." -
Biomorphic Software
CowboyRobot writes "From the molecular structure of spiders' silk to the efficient use of energy by insects and fish, we can learn many things from Nature and apply them to our engineering tasks. One thing that nature is particularly good at is the development of dynamic, self-organizing systems. Ken Lodding is a software engineer at NASA and is currently developing 'swarm algorithms for groups of wind-driven, remote exploratory vehicles'. He has a six-page article at Queue on 'biologically inspired computing', how to develop 'algorithmic design concepts distilled from biological systems, or processes.'" -
Blame Bad Security on Sloppy Programming
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article that blames security flaws on poor programming, rather than any inherent problems with particular languages. From the article: 'Remember Ada? ... we tried getting everyone to switch to a 'sandboxed' environment with Java in the late 1990s... Java worked so well, Microsoft responded with ActiveX, which bypasses security entirely by making it easy to blame the user for authorizing bad code to execute.'" -
Lessons Learned From Blaster
CowboyRobot writes "It's been nearly a year since Blaster struck, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in fixes and lost revenue. Jim Morrison of Symantec goes step-by-step in looking at how the Blaster worm got out of control so quickly, and what lessons can be learned from that event, by studying how one utility company dealt with it." The story is written as a fun, technothriller narrative; here's an snippet: "The laptops, usually out in the field, were always a hit-and-miss proposition to find on the network and deliver a patch or to have the user take the machine to a field office. That meant that on the 16th they could see a flood of traffic launched against Microsoft. The second phase of Blaster, launching a DoS (denial of service) attack against windowsupdate.com, was imminent." -
Evaluating Open Source
CowboyRobot writes "Jordan Hubbard cofounded FreeBSD and now oversees the Darwin implementation of BSD for Apple. He describes open source as 'finally being openly acknowledged as a commercial engineering force-multiplier and important option for avoiding significant software development costs.' And thus, companies need to know how to evaluate open source engineering as an option for them. In a new article titled Open Source to the Core, Hubbard goes through a typical open source adoption process." -
FTC Porn Spam Regulation Now in Effect
gManZboy writes "The AP (through Yahoo) is reporting that the FTC is now requiring that all sexually explicit spam carry the wholly original 'SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:' moniker in the subject line. I don't know why the porn industry is complaining about this, it seems like now everyone who really wants porn spam (not I!) can finally create a filter that delivers it to their inbox, highlighted, and bolded!" The FTC's regulation is available, and so is Slashdot's earlier story. -
Cinematic Game Graphics
CowboyRobot writes "LucasArts engineer Nick Porcino has an article detailing what to expect from graphics in the next generation of game systems including the "influence of cinematic realtime rendering, the promise of advanced lighting techniques and high-dynamic range images, the uses of the rendering pipeline, and the future of multiprocessor-based rendering and advanced geometry." These will allow run-time rendering of high quality backgrounds and characters, ultimately resulting in games that are closer to full-blown Pixar animations, allowing better narratives and more immersive user experiences." -
How to Build a Search Engine
CowboyRobot writes "Three years ago, former Infoseek developer Matt Wells decided to go solo and build his own search engine, Gigablast. In this article, Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch interviews his former employee about the process and challenges of creating a modern, scalable search engine. From the article: 'Search is a fiercely competitive arena, even though there are really only five Web search companies today: Google, Yahoo (Altavista/AlltheWeb/Inktomi), Looksmart (Wisenut), AskJeeves (Teoma), and Gigablast. It's a tight little community, and a lot of the people know and watch each other. Microsoft is also coming to the party, and everyone's a little bit nervous to see what it's bringing.'" -
UML Fever
CowboyRobot writes "Queue has a couple of articles about UML: Death by UML Fever by Boeing software architect Alex Bell describes the problems that can result from over-reliance on modeling tools, with lighthearted lessons for the software development process in general and numerous illuminating quotations, such as: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. - Jim Horning." Then, one of the developers of UML, Grady Booch of IBM, follows with The Fever is Real, in which he explains the motivations for creating the language, how it's used today, and where he expects it to go soon." -
UML Fever
CowboyRobot writes "Queue has a couple of articles about UML: Death by UML Fever by Boeing software architect Alex Bell describes the problems that can result from over-reliance on modeling tools, with lighthearted lessons for the software development process in general and numerous illuminating quotations, such as: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. - Jim Horning." Then, one of the developers of UML, Grady Booch of IBM, follows with The Fever is Real, in which he explains the motivations for creating the language, how it's used today, and where he expects it to go soon." -
The State of OpenGL
CowboyRobot writes "No longer vapor, but a true 3D-embedded engine, OpenGL is on the move. Pixar and others would love to be able to render their movies in realtime, and that desire has prompted the intended release of OpenGL 2.0, due in a few months. Khronos is now in charge of further extending OpenGL to cellphones and handheld gaming devices." -
Epic Cracking Down On UT2K4 Cheaters Already
qasimodo writes "Gamespot.com is reporting that Epic has banned the first cheater from Unreal Tournament 2004. You can read the thread explaining this on the official Atari forums for the game. DrSin, one of Epic's programmers started the thread as a warning to fellow users, and so far everybody seems to be happy. I agree with that, we need to stop the cheaters before they ruin every game out there. But the question remains: How can they stop them completely? Surely, script kiddies will just stop and go somewhere else, but how about the guys who write all the tools? They won't stop so easily." Elsewhere, nerdb0t points to an ACM Queue editorial on the subject of cheating in online games, arguing: "Perhaps game developers don't realize they're enabling roving gangs of sociopaths who are effectively destroying the virtual world the developers have worked so hard to create." -
Localizing High-End Games for Low-End Machines
CowboyRobot writes "Intel engineer Dean Macri has an article at ACM Queue listing the challenges in designing PC games that will run on very different processors. PCs vary widely in their performance, and if game developers design only for the high-end, they limit their market. The article lists specific tips on how to guarantee that even old slow machine can run new games, such as 'the number of triangles used to create the trunks and branches could vary based on the available processor and graphics hardware performance', 'replace the clothing on characters in a game with actual geometry that separates the clothes from the underlying character model', and for simulating ocean waves, having low-end systems rely on basic sine waves while higher-end machines use more sophisticated methods." -
The State of AI In Games
CowboyRobot writes "Carnegie Mellon researcher Alexander Nareyek has an article at ACM Queue describing how the role of graphics as the leading technology in gaming is being replaced by advancements in artificial intelligence. The author targets some game AI: 'Early milestone demonstrations for the publisher, press presentations, and other hype-generating events do not promote inclusion of a globally/consistently good AI, but instead focus on one or two 'absolutely unexpected but genius outcomes of revolutionary new and complex AI procedures' (did you spot the ironic tone?) that provide the necessary 'wows'.' He concludes by suggesting: 'we need to see more effort to make AI functionality available for the designers/artists.'" -
Building Scaleable Middleware for MMORPGs
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article exploring the challenges of developing a reliable platform for an MMORPG, specifically looking at Wish by Mutable Realms. From the article: 'A common scalability problem for distributed multiplayer games relates to managing distributed sets of objects... A player may not be a member of more than one guild, or a guild may have at most one level-5 mage (magician). In computing terms, implementing such behavior boils down to performing membership tests on sets of distributed objects.'" -
Anatomy of Game Development
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article titled Game Development: Harder Than You Think that looks at the complexities of creating a modern game, in comparison with the relative simplicity of doing so ten years ago. My understanding of the industry is that they have too many designers and not enough programmers. From the article: 'Now the primary technical challenge is simply getting the code to work to produce an end result that bears some semblance to the desired functionality... There's such a wide variety of algorithms to know about, so much experience required to implement them in a useful way, and so much work overall that just needs to be done, that we have a perpetual shortage of qualified people in the industry.'" -
Will Harvey On Virtual Worlds, Technology Curves
CowboyRobot writes "Slashdot's former editor Chris DiBona has an interview with videogame creator Will Harvey over at ACMQueue. Harvey has had a hand in lots of stuff you've used, from Zany Golf to Adobe AfterEffects, and now runs There, a kind of online 3D 'virtual world' game. Their conversation covers games in general, as well as specifics of the challenges that There is facing. From the article: 'You have to project the curves: the rendering curve; the CPU speed curve; the money spent on the Internet on online games curve; the number of people who play online games curve. I think we guessed right on almost everything, but we underestimated Moore's Law and we overestimated the low-end graphics capability'." -
In (Sort Of) Defense of Spammers
CowboyRobot writes "Eric Allman of Sendmail has a rant in which he looks at the economic forces that have led to the spam problem: 'The sad point of all of this is that I'm going to (sort of) defend the spammers and point out that they are responding to basic economic forces that we all respond to at one level or another. As long as spammers can take in more money than it costs them, they will continue to spam. This is "rational" behavior in the economic sense.'" Otherwise known as the Willie Sutton principle. -
East vs. West: Culture and Distributed Development
CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue has an article entitled, Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams that reviews differences in cultures and explores the impact they have on distributed software development teams. From the article: "In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision." Some stereotypes and some common sense, but I recognized myself in the descriptions of the 'typical American'." -
East vs. West: Culture and Distributed Development
CowboyRobot writes "ACM's Queue has an article entitled, Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams that reviews differences in cultures and explores the impact they have on distributed software development teams. From the article: "In Western societies, decisions are made on the basis of input from those involved. In cultures with greater hierarchies, group members assume an authority will decide and they are only to enact the decision." Some stereotypes and some common sense, but I recognized myself in the descriptions of the 'typical American'." -
Knock, Knock: Information Pollution Is Here
CowboyRobot writes ""Information Pollution" is one of the newer buzz-phrases, appearing in various media to describe unwanted phone calls, faxes, emails, etc. Jakob Nielsen, known for his critiques of user interfaces has an article about the problems of unwanted instant messaging interruptions. Nielsen is respectable not only because of the clarity of his arguments but because he also cites empirical evidence, rather than just complaining. In the article he describes the current problem, then proposes a 'control panel' as a centralized interface to manage all the communications one would make via the computer." -
Sentient Data Access
CowboyRobot writes "From Queue comes a piece subtitled Why doesn't your data know more about you? From the article: 'It has been more than ten years since such information appliances as ATMs and grocery store UPC checkout counters were introduced. ... A common language for these devices has not been standardized, nor have current database solutions sufficiently captured the complexities involved in correctly expressing multifaceted data. ... As computing devices expand from the status-quo keyboard and desktop to a variety of form factors and scales, we can imagine workplaces configured to have a society of devices, each designed for a very specific task. As a whole, the collection of devices may act much like a workshop in the physical world, where the data moves among the specialized digital stations. For our society of devices to operate seamlessly, a mechanism will be required to (a) transport data between devices and (b) have it appear at each workstation, or tool, in the appropriate representation.'" -
IM Usage & Awareness Services
CowboyRobot writes "Queue has two related articles on Instant Messaging. The first, written by two Sun Labs researchers, looks at the lack of standards in IM protocols, as well as the preception that the distracting nature of IM precludes it from being a more useful communications medium. Their solutions involve new 'Awareness Services' and they summarize three research prototypes: 'Awarenex', 'Rhythm Awareness', and 'Lilsys'. The second includes the results of an AT&T Labs study of IM use. Among the findings, "Despite the perception that IM is commonly used for social purposes in the workplace, we found that was rarely the case. Only 13 percent of the conversations we monitored included any personal topics whatsoever, and only 6.4 percent were exclusively personal."" -
IM Usage & Awareness Services
CowboyRobot writes "Queue has two related articles on Instant Messaging. The first, written by two Sun Labs researchers, looks at the lack of standards in IM protocols, as well as the preception that the distracting nature of IM precludes it from being a more useful communications medium. Their solutions involve new 'Awareness Services' and they summarize three research prototypes: 'Awarenex', 'Rhythm Awareness', and 'Lilsys'. The second includes the results of an AT&T Labs study of IM use. Among the findings, "Despite the perception that IM is commonly used for social purposes in the workplace, we found that was rarely the case. Only 13 percent of the conversations we monitored included any personal topics whatsoever, and only 6.4 percent were exclusively personal."" -
Microsoft Messenger Architect On The Future Of IM
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Peter Ford, chief architect for MSN Messenger, by Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail. They discuss the present and future states of IM, the current big players as industry shuffles toward standardization, some of the social implications of IM versus email or telephone, and technical issues such as using SIP as opposed to XMPP (Microsoft is pushing for SIP, everyone else seems to favor XMPP). They don't bring up Wallop, Microsoft's community application that will be built into Longhorn, but that's surely part of the long-term discussion." -
Microsoft Messenger Architect On The Future Of IM
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Peter Ford, chief architect for MSN Messenger, by Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail. They discuss the present and future states of IM, the current big players as industry shuffles toward standardization, some of the social implications of IM versus email or telephone, and technical issues such as using SIP as opposed to XMPP (Microsoft is pushing for SIP, everyone else seems to favor XMPP). They don't bring up Wallop, Microsoft's community application that will be built into Longhorn, but that's surely part of the long-term discussion." -
Efficient Supercomputing with Green Destiny
gManZboy writes: "Is it an oxymoron to have an efficient supercomputer? Wu-Chun Feng (Los Alamos National Laboratory) doesn't believe so - Green Destiny and its children are Transmeta-based supercomputers that Wu thinks are fast enough, at a fraction of the heat/energy/cost, according to ACM Queue." 240 processors running under 5.2kW (or less!) is nothing to sneeze at. The article offers up this question: might there be other metrics that might be important to supercomputing, rather than relying solely on processing speed? -
Efficient Supercomputing with Green Destiny
gManZboy writes: "Is it an oxymoron to have an efficient supercomputer? Wu-Chun Feng (Los Alamos National Laboratory) doesn't believe so - Green Destiny and its children are Transmeta-based supercomputers that Wu thinks are fast enough, at a fraction of the heat/energy/cost, according to ACM Queue." 240 processors running under 5.2kW (or less!) is nothing to sneeze at. The article offers up this question: might there be other metrics that might be important to supercomputing, rather than relying solely on processing speed? -
Transmeta Founder Talks Chips
gManZboy writes "Dave Ditzel, CTO and Founder of Transmeta (you remember Transmeta? weren't they supposed to kick some Intel booty?) sits down and speaks with Alpha and StrongARM chip designer Dan Dobberpuhl about the history of CPUs, where they're heading, and how the heck we'll keep up Moore's Law (if we can)." -
Transmeta Founder Talks Chips
gManZboy writes "Dave Ditzel, CTO and Founder of Transmeta (you remember Transmeta? weren't they supposed to kick some Intel booty?) sits down and speaks with Alpha and StrongARM chip designer Dan Dobberpuhl about the history of CPUs, where they're heading, and how the heck we'll keep up Moore's Law (if we can)." -
Intel: Metal in Future Chips = Less Leakage (updated)
securitas writes "Intel is contemplating using metal instead of silicon in future chips for the 'transistor gate, which controls whether a transistor is on or off' and the 'dielectric, an insulating layer below the gate,' which are respectively made of silicon atoms and silicon dioxide. 'Millions of minuscule switches that make up silicon chips leak electricity when they're supposed to be shut off. To compensate, engineers have increased the current, driving up power consumption, decreasing battery life for portable devices and generating more heat.' AMD has also experimented with metal instead of silicon. By moving to metal AMD and Intel expect to reduce electricity leakage. More from AP via SeattlePI and the Miami Herald." Update: 11/05 15:25 GMT by T : Read on below for some information from Intel on why this is a good thing.gManZboy writes "Following up on the Intel news that about using metal in chips -- here's an explanation from Shekhar Borkar (Intel Research Fellow) about why heat, power, and sub-threshold leakage, not transistor size, are the real challenges to Moore's law. Apparently, in order to make chips much faster, we're going to have to pump more electricity in then anything else in our houses -- and they'll soon be as hot as a nuclear reactor -- no, really."
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SendMail CTO Sounds Off On Spam and FTC
CowboyRobot writes "Eric Allman takes his well-deserved turn in commenting on the state of spam, the dark future, and the need for intervention. He calls spam an "arms race" where "in the long run everyone loses (except the arms dealers)." As you might imagine, he's on our side, and he does a good job of clearly describing the current state of spam, and the possible solutions." -
Porting Games From Binary
CowboyRobot writes "My favorite Slashdot links are those that inspire me to embark on meaningless and time-consuming quests. This is one of them. Two Canadian game developers at Digital Eclipse have a thorough explanation of how to port a game using nothing but the binary stream coming out of the cartridge. They use the TRS-80 and Phantasy Star III as examples." -
MS vs. Open Source Office Suite Compatibility
Anonymous Coward writes "Though Microsoft may soon be blocking Office suite compatability with open source productivity tools, in the mean time Hal Varian (of Berkeley) has conducted the Microsoft Office-Linux Interoperability Experiment which shows a surprising amount of interoperability. Hey, another reason NOT to upgrade to the new version!" -
MS vs. Open Source Office Suite Compatibility
Anonymous Coward writes "Though Microsoft may soon be blocking Office suite compatability with open source productivity tools, in the mean time Hal Varian (of Berkeley) has conducted the Microsoft Office-Linux Interoperability Experiment which shows a surprising amount of interoperability. Hey, another reason NOT to upgrade to the new version!" -
Disk Drives Explained
CowboyRobot writes "Magnetic disk drives are one of those things I usually take for granted without thinking about, but I recently realized how little I understood about how they really work. ACM Queue has an article from their 'Storage' issue titled, 'You Don't Know Jack About Disks', which does a very good job of explaining exactly how magnetic disks have evolved since the 70s and how they work today." -
Linux's Future As The Next Embedded OS
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Jim Ready about how embedded systems differ from desktops and servers, and how they will help shape the future of Linux. From the article: Your car, for instance, now has telematics -- mapping, navigation, and entertainment systems -- that clearly present a very sophisticated user interface... The neat part for me now is that embedded systems can consist of Linux applications with beautiful graphical interfaces."