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NIST Advanced Technology Program Awards 73

Posted by michael from the buck-stops-here dept.
An anonymous submitter writes "Look, some research money awarded to all the recent slashdot topics! Printable LCD displays and circuits, high accuracy biometric algorithms, holographic data storage, an overclockers dream, and the DMCA fights back. See all the projects listed for NIST's FY2002 funding."
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NIST Advanced Technology Program Awards More

NIST Advanced Technology Program Awards

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  • Links (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anyone have links to the specific articles here on /.? (Posting Anonymously purely incase someone thinks this is a troll post, it honestly isn't)

  • Doesnt Suprise me (Score:3, Insightful)

    by L33t-Geek ( 614706 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:25PM (#4412278)
    Slashdot is widly seen around the web as a realable source for information. The fact that several stories on this site have been picked up by other news media outlets and have qualified for grants isnt amazing, its pretty obvious when you concider the amount of people that read this sites stories. Just some thoughts. -Geek
    • "Slashdot is widly seen around the web as a realable source for information."

      Reliable... as long as you actually read the article. Sometimes I think the /. presentation of a story should be moderate-able.

      "A user has moderated your story -1, Troll to your article titled "Microsoft Claims Linux is Slow""

      Heh. :)
    • I'm not sure about you but I would not "concider" such posts as "realable"... Good grief...

  • That's a lot of nuts! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:26PM (#4412285) Journal
    Content Specific Camcorder Jamming for Digital Projectors
    Requested ATP funds: $2,000 K
    Cinea plans a two-year project to develop and test prototype technology for distorting unauthorized recordings of digital movies without affecting human visual perception of the original version. Based on a previous feasibility study, the company will modify the timing and modulation of the light used to create the displayed image such that frame-based capture by recording devices is distorted.

    Next year they will probably give a grant to the camera manufacturers to develop technology that will defeat this. Really... where does the NIST get off on taking sides in a political issue like this. Let the movie companies worry about copy protection, and don't spend my tax money on it.
    • Copy protection is everyone's issue. I'd like to find an easy way to prove the artwork on my website were lifted and posted somewhere else. What about freelance photographers selling pictures to news organizations? It's not all corporate evil.
      • You are 100% Right, They should not have taken a Side in this little Battle btw MPAA and the World. And if they did have to take a side I say it appears they have taken the wrong side. On top of that, this is some wasted money here, The people that do this priacy are always adjusting to the MPAA's lame attemps to stop them. So i gues that brings me back to the point that the origional Poster on this thread is right. Rock on dude. -Geek

    • Re:That's a lot of nuts! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:48PM (#4412391) Journal
      They spend your tax money on putting 80-year old medical marijuana growers in jail, forcing everyone to digital tv and cable whether they like it or not, and flying the president and his 80-person entourage all around the country so he can attent fundraisers for his party... why should this be any different?

      Oh, and lets not forget using your tax dollars to build a fake company to entrap two russian hackers ... add on administrative costs, the plane tickets to fly them over here, cost of the trial, cost of keeping them in jail...

      Don't like it? Write your congressman, write your senator, heck, even write your president (or, if Gore isn't available, settle for Bush ((OH, the karma's gonna pay for that one!)) ). Remember, if you have enough time to post on slashdot, then you have enough time to email your government. There is a page somewhere that gives easy access to email links for everyone, but being at work, I don't have it handy. I'm sure it'll pop up shortly.

      • You make some good points, but the whole "get up and do something about it, like email a congressman" thing just doesn't work. They respond to large constituent bases. I realize that no one should criticize the government if he hasn't first taken the time to use his voice and speech to change something.

        In this case, you have to realize the utter futility of the act. I'm not flaming you (though I am peeved at how moderators love "get up and write a letter" posts), but really, the US government is not a monolithic thing--your local congressman won't really have anything to do with this organization. Do you think that this could get floor time? "My constituents have been claiming that another organization's awards are promoting copy propretecting viewpoints, and it's time we stopped that."

        Perhaps copy protection itself could, and I agree a letter for that would be a good idea, but congress has like zero say in overseeing the validity of these awards.

        • I appreciate your viewpoint, and you are correct in that complaining about this particular issue would likely net "0" response. I was, however, referring more to the origional posters comment about "My tax dollars shouldn't go to support this". When it comes to a more basic point like that, then I would fully encourage people to email their congressperson... it may not be quite as effective as a snail-mail or a phone call, but it's a start.

          And I, for one, don't buy the "writing wouldn't do any good" argument, either. I forget how the saying goes in it's entirety, but it starts with something like "With a single step, a journey is forged". Your letter may be ignored... but if 50 people from your area also send a letter about this, maybe that won't. It takes less than you'd think to get noticed.

          Of course, my view on government is skewed, given that I'm Canadian, and as everyone knows, we're ruled over by omnipotent polar-bears and their inuit headhunting henchmen, who will lock us into our igloos with no supper if we ever reveal their presence....

          Awww, CRAP!

    • Agreed. However, this does seem like a middle of the road solution. Non-destructive editing is fine by me--what I don't want is an inferior product. Granted, the method to force the distortion will most likely cripple it (after all, that's the name of the game--get my content on your box, but put a lock on it).

      Still, I would rather this money be used to actually enhance technology than to find ways to hinder it. I understand the situation is more complicated than this, but it just doesn't set right with me.

    • When the news breaks that they have sucessfully done this everyone should start claiming Throbing migranes induced by the Movie. If enough people did this and could convince enough people it happens then the whole technology would be labled as a bust. Who would have the last laugh then? -Geek

    • Easy way to do this (Score:2, Informative)

      by nattt ( 568106 )
      The easiest way to stop someone taping a movie with their camcorder is to use an infra-red lightsource. Camcorders pick up IR - just try pointing your TV zapper at the lens and recording it!

      Perhaps you could place LEDs in the projection screen in the pattern - "Don't Copy Movies" or some other message....
      • You can use a hot mirror filter that will get past that.. Its not cheap but it should work.
        Saw it on this page where a guy tried to take color pictures with a BW gameboy camera, some filters and photoshop.
        http://www.ruleofthirds.com/gameboy/process.html

  • Slashdot pull? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:29PM (#4412300) Journal
    Look, some research money awarded to all the recent slashdot topics

    Some of these might have actually got a pull from /. in getting the award. How about pulling one of these open source challenges [openchallenge.org] as well? There seems to be a lot of interest for a Linux API [openchallenge.org] for the Synaptic cPad [synaptics.com] for example - still it missing.

    • That would be great but all of the challenges suck in my opinion.
      • >That would be great but all of the challenges suck in my opinion

        The good part is that you can submit [openchallenge.org] a better one. You must have a need for some software that you have always wanted but are not capable of producing yourself?

    • Some of these might have actually got a pull from /. in getting the award

      I think we'll soon see a grant to send all those old cell phones into orbit by building a space elevator that uses open source software that runs under Linux because it has a lower TCO.

  • People trying to start companies, get promotions, or earn PhD's have to get inovative ideas somewhere .... and since they all read /., you figure that a couple good ideas might come from here ....

    Lets face it, some people might be very mechanically inclided, but many of those people lack imagination.

    Way to contribute to the advancement of man kind /. !!!!!

  • Why would somebody need almost half a million dollars to develop a set of specifications and a system for encrypting individual database records? Can somebody clarify this? This makes no sense whatsoever to me. Sounds very simple.

  • This is corporate welfare (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:33PM (#4412321) Journal
    It sounds like a good idea to fund technology that will improve our lives, but when the government uses public money to fund research that will eventually lead to large private profits by paying for the financial risk of researching the technology, it is corporate welfare.

    You may like the technology, but corporate welfare is a huge drain on the treasury that only makes the rich richer, borders on socialism, and forces the taxpayer to take the fall for technology that won't work for private businesses.

    More information on corporate welfare can be found here:

    http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-9.html [cato.org]

    http://www.citizen.org/congress/welfare/index.cfm [citizen.org]
    • I'm all for fighting corperate welfare, but you'll have corperate welfare no matter what .. think about how companies profit off the work universities do.

      Corperate welfare in terms of paying for companies to go into new markets (ie, government funds advertising in markets companies want access to) .. worst end of the scale.

      Corperate welfare in terms of taxpayer money being used to spur development of a technology? Current bias in patent laws notwithstanding, some company makes some technology, and we all get to use it. Its not the same as subsidizing the risk of the hyper-growth huge corperate bohemouths are into these days.

      I think alot of the hype around corperate welfare is only an issue when the company is looking for hyper-growth and unreasonable margins or protection of risk/ I certainly don't mind taxpayer money going to private companies if they intend on being responsible participants in the sci/tech community. I'm not sure there is really a hard and fast line in terms of when you stop providing welfare (in the traditional sense .. money to those who need it, ie to spur development) and you start providing silver spoons and beach chairs to companies who've lost sight of any sense of contributing to human progress.
    • It really depends on how you look at it. I'm sure you can find abuses, but there are also major benefits to this type of funding.

      For many projects, the technology developed is at a risk-level that most private companies wouldn't touch otherwise. In many cases, because of the funding source, the gov't also retains a right to use it for themselves. This is arguably the best way for the government to spin off discoveries from basic research in public labs to private companies. The discoveries pay off for the government. Society receives the benefits of the discoveries, and in the long term the IP becomes public. It's not perfect, but I don't think the practice should be abolished.

      Another side benefit is that the technology funding results in a product or range of products needed by the government becoming available at a cheaper cost. The commercial companies produce the project more efficiently than the goverment could produce a good for itself (or hire a company to produce it for gov't use).

    • I disagree (Score:4, Informative)

      by FallLine ( 12211 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @06:00PM (#4412827)
      While I am normally strongly opposed to the various forms of corporate welfare, e.g., subsidies, protectionist policies, etc., the ATP is one government program that I strongly support.

      Firstly, unlike those other programs, aka government welfare, these funds are used to pay for the basic research that will lead to economic production, rather than inefficiency.

      Secondly, this program is primarily about defraying RISK, not the COST per se (as would be the case if they were subsidizing production or what have you). What you fail to realize is that many projects are not viable for but a handful of the largest corporations because the level of risk is so high that they cannot afford to even do the research. Who wants to invest in a company, where before they can do anything or make any money, they need to invest 5m (purely for research) for, say, 5 years, with only a 10% probability of success? Would you? Very few investors are willing to incur this kind of risk, even when the potential payout is multiplies higher whatever the initial investment is. Btw, the venture capital community is generally NOT willign to for a number of reasons. There is a reason why the only successful drug producers are

      Thirdly, the NIST prevents companies from engaging in total crapshots on the governmentsdollar by requiring the company to pay for 50% (and in the case of larger companies 60%) of the research.

      Fourthly, there are many additional costs that the companies must pay for to commercialize the technology.

      Fifthly, working for a company that received a grant from the NIST last year, I can tell you that most of awards are NOT to large companies, so the rich getting richer complaint does not hold water.

      Sixthly, the successful investments will yield additional tax receipts that far exceed the grant amounts, especially when secondary beneficiaries are taken into consideration.

      Seventhly, this is a meritocracy. Although it's not perfect, they select the best of the best, at least in theory. The researchers that hope to essentially live off of perpetual research do not get funded. You really have to convince them that it can and will be commercialized.

      Eightly, the companies sole opportunity to really benefit comes from making it into a commercial success, i.e., they're not allowed to pocket the money.

      Anyways-I support it and that's enough for now, I'm going home.

  • So this is why... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Allaria ( 547479 )
    we have all the duplicate posts. Better marketing. I get it now.

    Something like...

    1. Duplicate postings by /. editors
    2. Get awards
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

  • DMCA Fights Back? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Osiris Ani ( 230116 )
    Hardly.

    This proposal [nist.gov] simply intends to introduce novel new methods by which content providers can their copyrights. They plan to "modify the timing and modulation of the light used to create the displayed image such that frame-based capture by recording devices is distorted," and that certainly doesn't entail the enactment of Draconian legislation like the DMCA.

    Therefore, what in the blue hell does this have to do with the DMCA (at least at this point)? If anything, this will give scientists the opportunity to attempt to overcome a new set of technologies. This is the type of thing they should be doing. It's better than having them take the litigious route, trying to force the government to protect their business model, and as this merely deals with video recording of projected films, it's hardly objectionable.

    • Easy...as soon as you increase the exposure time for your camera(to get a blur instead of nothing at all), or integrate any method where two CCDs start their exposures at slightly different times(To aid interpolation), you get slapped by the DMCA.

      More copyright technology begets more desire for copyright-thwarting technologies (or technologies whos spinoffs include copyright-thwarting). More desire begets more bang-for-the-buck the RIAA gets for paying to get the DMCA passed. (I bet Clinton could be traced to such illicit dealings...but nobody's interested now.)

      That in turn means what the DMCA was for all along: Develop all the copy-protection you want, it's now illegal for anyone to even develop technologies that can be used to break it.

  • the benefits of retarding camcorders? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lurking Grue ( 3963 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @04:41PM (#4412359)
    If the motion picture industry estimates that they "lose" $3 billion each year to "piracy" why don't they cough up the $2 million investment into this technology? It could pay for itself very quickly. (If their numbers are anywhere near accurate, that is.)

    From the NIST website: The ATP views R&D projects from a broader perspective - its bottom line is how the project can benefit the nation. In sharing the relatively high development risks of technologies that potentially make feasible a broad range of new commercial opportunities, the ATP fosters projects with a high payoff for the nation as a whole - in addition to a direct return to the innovators.

    So how exactly does this use of our tax dollars have a "high payoff for the nation as a whole? "

    • It doesn't.

      It's complete crap.

      The Motion Picture Industry has alot of members in congress in their pocket. They make record profits every year and they still complain. They will blow 2 mil making some technique to prevent people from recording movies and then the movie theaters will have to buy new projectors to accomodate the tequinque and then the guys who were recording the movies in the theaters will just wait until the dvd comes out and make a divx rip.

      This doesn't benefit anyone except Valenti and his clan of greedy hollywood cronies.
      Kind of a troll I know but it needed to be said..
    • Because, you see, our nation is 'suffering' due to the movie studios not moving to digital projection until they're sure they can charge for each pair of eyes that gets to view their sacred content.

      I know I can't wait until I see nasty, ugly MPEG compression on the big screen! Now that's a high payoff if I ever saw one. Because you'd have to be high, or paid off, to like compressed digital movies better than analog. Just look at someone's cheek on any sattelite TV or digital cable channel to see what I mean.
  • With placement of articles on the homepage of Slashdot resulting in investment in projects, its no small wonder that companies want to buy a "story" for the homepage.

    I say that Slashdot should let them, as long as the product is good. I mean we get Slashdot without paying, they get product exposure, and a reader or a hundred might find a product that is useful to them.

    However like many forms of advertising, some companies may pay to put crap on Slashdot, and others might abuse the exposure and make false claims to gain a quick profit. Despite this, if the admin of Slashdot is careful everything should work out great.

    Medevo
  • NIST also participates in the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Program, like all the other federal agencies. They all post SBIR topics once or twice a year, and any U.S. based small business can submit proposals for funding.

    Looking for something to do? The DoD and the NSF have their SBIR topics out; you can get more information here [zyn.com]. There's always some interesting software development (and not just a few LAN/WAN) topics to check out.

  • From the website... (Score:2, Informative)

    by lobos ( 88359 )
    of the company that's getting money from the government to protect movies...

    "Cinea, Inc. is the premier provider of security services for the Digital Cinema industry and other high-value entertainment content.

    Founded by the same world class engineering team behind the highly regarded Divx(TM) encrypted DVD system, the Cinea security services are the only digital cinema security solutions developed from the ground up to meet the needs of studios and exhibitors    ."

    Also, from the project website:
    For project information:
    Laurence Roth, (571) 323-0070, x1
    lroth@cinea.com

    ATP Project Manager
    Victoria Franques, (301) 975-8630
    victoria.franques@nist.gov
    Perhaps these people deserve a call and some email?
  • " an overclockers dream"

    ...nooo... nooo... too hot ...
    --mumble--
    --toss--
    --turn--
    --snore--

  • Don't they ever learn? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JohnA ( 131062 ) <johnanderson&gmail,com> on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @05:38PM (#4412694) Homepage
    The team that is using $2,000,000 of your taxpayer dollars to "further digital rights management infastructure" has a deep rooted history in another lovely product... Circuit City's DIVX (not to be confused with the MPEG-4 codec). Take a look at their homepage [cinea.com] or their executive bios page [cinea.com] for more details.

    I guess they couldn't get any private investment after they blew $200 million on DIVX...

  • I've been hearing about this every 3 to 5 years since 1985 when they were considering using it as storage modules for visual recogonition. I imagine it will be another 20 years before a marketable product will be released, if ever.

    On the lighter side of things: If you break an optical storage cell in half, and stick it back in your computer, you will have all of your data, but it will be fuzzy.
  • It seems like a lot of people here think that NIST is using taxpayer money to give out money to corporations. Having worked there for a year and a half now, I understand why they are justified in using taxpayer dollars.


    NIST does the research, and most of the time ends up selling the technology to corporations. This money they're awarding is mostly to start the research, with the idea that the money will be made back once the research can be put into a product. That way the country benefits by having better tech, and NIST doesn't completely drain taxpayer's wallets.

  • Someone at nist may want to check up on giving money to making flexible organic display devices. The people who are supposed to develop the materials at Lucent were recently highlighted in another [slashdot.org] story... for falsifying and fabricating results (About the worst thing a scientist can do professionally). Yes, that's Hendrick Schon and Zenan Bao we are talking about. I'm not saying I don't want this stuff to work, but so far you can't make an organic LED that isn't subject to change in its electronic properties from ambient gases or vapors. (H20 for instance). So watch those screen colors change with humidity... or bad breath. Or passing gas (ew!) Not good.
  • ...just flood the theatres with high intensity infra-red lights. They're invisible to the eye, but camcorders pick them up like daylight. All the camcorders will record is a big white mess. And the soundtrack. Why do they need to throw gobs of money at this problem? fpp
  • From the holographic data storage link [nist.gov]:

    ...the company will build a device to demonstrate recording and recovery of streaming digital video files.

    Why does everything seem to loop back to the DMCA now?

  • The phrase "high accuracy biometric algorithms" struck me as suspicious, and sure enough it's Big-Brother-Ware [nist.gov] using NIST funding because it's "too risky to attract private investments". Face recognition and voice recognition are the primary goals, for "airport security" and "telecommunications applications". Well, the telecommunications world has plenty of development money available for commercially useful applications, and AT&T Labs has been developing technology like that for years, plus the computer business has been developing speech-to-text intensively and finally has enough CPU horsepower to make it much more usable. But this is targeted toward other applications, presumably surveillance.

    I'd rather not have my money spent on this, thank you. It's not that it's wasted pork - it's development that actively reduces my civil liberties.

  • I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source code than
    10 minutes listening to Musak waiting for technical support which isn't.
    -- Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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