NIST and NSA: Perfect together

The new director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dr Raymond Kammer, has told the US Senate Subcommittee for Technology and Space that his agency and the National Security Agency (NSA) have worked very closely together in many computer security efforts.     

Pentagon Orders NSA to Monitor US Citizens: DoD panel recommends Echelon be turned on US citizens,increased domestic role for NSA

Although NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden told ABC News in an interview on 10 July that his agency does not target the communications of American citizens, a Pentagon Task Force has recommended that the SIGINT agency do exactly that.     

Taking the copyfight online: Comparing the copyright debate in congressional hearings,in newspapers,and on the web

This article examines the rhetoric around copyright and the regulation of digital rights management (DRM) from 2003 to 2006 in congressional hearings, in major newspapers, and on the most prominent relevant websites. The article describes a new combination of methods for identifying a set of online documents to compare with offline documents via content analysis. These three media present very different views of the copyright debate. Hearings present a rough balance of both coalitions' messages. Newspapers lean slightly toward stronger fair use but have little coverage. The online debate features a deluge of strong fair use arguments. These findings highlight different communication strategies and suggest broader lessons about the changing nature of policy advocacy and the policymaking process.     

Technostress: negative effect on performance and possible mitigations

We investigate the effect of conditions that create technostress, on technology‐enabled innovation, technology‐enabled performance and overall performance. We further look at the role of technology self‐efficacy, organizational mechanisms that inhibit technostress and technology competence as possible mitigations to the effects of technostress creators. Our findings show a negative association between technostress creators and performance. We find that, while traditional effort‐based mechanisms such as building technology competence reduce the impact of technostress creators on technology‐enabled innovation and performance, more empowering mechanisms such as developing technology self‐efficacy and information systems (IS) literacy enhancement and involvement in IS initiatives are required to counter the decrease in overall performance because of technostress creators. Noting that the professional sales context offers increasingly high expectations for technology‐enabled performance in an inherently interpersonal‐oriented and relationship‐oriented environment with regard to overall performance, and high failure rates for IS acceptance/use, the study uses survey data collected from 237 institutional sales professionals.     

The immorality of illegal downloading: The role of anticipated guilt and general emotions

To extend previous cognition-based illegal downloading research, this project postulates that anticipated guilt, general emotions, attitudes, and norms collectively determine intentions to download digital files illegally. Our findings indicate that college students were more likely to download if they had more favorable attitudes, perceived greater social approval, and perceived more control over illegal downloading. More importantly, this study reveals that college students generally felt a low level of anticipated guilt toward illegal downloading. Anticipated guilt was a significant, negative predictor of intentions to download among those who engaged in illegal downloading in the previous 6 months, but not among those did not. General anticipated emotions predicted intentions to download among the whole sample. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Thermal inertia mapping over the Brahmaputra basin,India using NOAA-AVHRR data and its possible geological applications

Thermal inertia is a volume property and shows the resistance power of the material against changes in its temperature. The thermal inertia of a surficial feature of interest cannot be directly measured. Hence, a proper modelling is required for its estimation. The objective of the project is to develop a technique to generate thermal inertia images using available National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite data to detect thermal anomalies and oilfield signature over a known producing basin. The Brahmaputra valley in Upper Assam is selected for this study.

NOAA-Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal data were converted to temperature, based on the look-up table (LUT) given in the NOAA-AVHRR CD and by using split-window atmospheric attenuation correction models. The thermal inertia imagery is constructed with the help of the albedo imagery generated from the daytime and with the knowledge of the surface temperature change between the daytime and night-time data. The thermal inertia values are computed for all pixels common to both daytime and night-time and the thermal inertia imagery generated for the study area. The thermal inertia of a surface cannot be measured directly; so another model is also used to estimate apparent thermal inertia (ATI). The images from both the models have shown similar results.

The geological map when draped over the ATI image shows good correlation of gross lithology and thermal inertia. The metamorphics/basement and the sediments are well differentiated by their tonal and textural characters. The Mikir massif shows conspicuously brighter signature than the featureless darker signatures of the surrounding valley. Within the valley, the river water exhibits bright tone, whereas the present-day sandbars within the river exhibit darker tone than the alluvial plains of the valley. This is in agreement with the available published data. Major thrusts can be mapped as bright linear tone, and their geometry coincides well with those mapped in the field. Exposed cross faults can also be mapped in Arunachal foothills and faults in Mikir massif. The isoneotectonic map when draped over the ATI image shows that the identified isoneotectonic units can be well differentiated in the image on the basis of tonal characters. The prominent lineaments mapped in Mikir massif can be traced in the valley part also.

The producing and dry structures in the valley show very few signatures on the thermal inertia images, possibly due to poor spectral and spatial resolution of the NOAA data. It is planned to use the developed technique to generate thermal inertia maps using higher spatial and spectral resolution satellite data (e.g. Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)), which may provide better oilfield signatures.     

基于进程防火墙与虚拟盘的非法信息流过滤方法

提出一种在虚拟磁盘中对文件映像前后的访问进程进行监控并对非法信息流进行过滤的方法。该方法在关键字或特征信息提取过程中安装各种钩子并对接入主机进行审计,用来提高系统服务器的包转发速率与非法信息的捕捉能力。其目的是阻止病毒或木马程序对文件破坏或数据包劫持,保证信息接入的可控性和安全性。实验测试表明,系统降低了包转发时延,提高了包转发速率和非法信息的识别能力。     

Integrating computers and telephones: Problems and possible solutions

Increasingly businesses and organizations are handling incoming calls with the assistance of a computer system that routes the calls to the appropriate destination. Automation provides some benefits to the companies including reduced labor cost and more efficient telephone use, but callers are not always satisfied with the new technology. Good design of the human-computer interaction is essential in order to satisfy the needs of users and callers. This paper focuses on the problems involved in designing for computer-answered telephone systems. Possible solutions for improvement are offered along with guidelines for setting up a computer-answered system.     

Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Scale-Space and Morphology

International Journal of Computer Vision -     

Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Databases and Crowdsourcing

Distributed and Parallel Databases -