WikiScanner’s flair for uncovering unseemly and biased edits will very likely make it the most discussed Wikipedia-related tool of the year. But check out WikiDashboard, another project that sheds light on the encyclopedia’s editing process.

The tool, designed by a research group at the Palo Alto Research Center, is basically an overlay of Wikipedia, as techPresident points out. For every article, WikiDashboard generates a series of graphs detailing peaks and valleys in editing frequency and showing which contributors have returned, time and time again, to make changes.

The charts are not easy to read, at least at first glance. But the researchers who created WikiDashboard have written a guide, and as techPresident notes, there’s plenty of useful data to be had: “The cues provided by the visualization might tell us to be skeptical of the article if a new editor is currently contributing...

When Microsoft released its long-awaited new operating system, Vista, early this year, some colleges sensibly decided to hold off on supporting the software. But now that a new academic year has arrived, Vista is starting to make inroads on campus computers, Computerworld reports.

A number of colleges have already struck deals with Microsoft that will let students upgrade to Vista for about $10 a pop. And institutions like Indiana University have started offering tech support to professors and other employees who switch to the new software.

Computerworld notes that colleges have been quicker to adopt Vista than many businesses, and it suggests a simple reason for that: Students are clamoring for the new operating system, but corporate employees aren’t. —Brock Read

Folks following Google’s ambitious book-scanning project might want to check out First Monday’s interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, a strong critic of the “Googlization” of libraries and copyright law. (The interview is available as a podcast and as a written transcript.)

Mr. Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, argues that Google’s library-scanning project could cause a copyright catastrophe by casting doubt on fair-use doctrine. Fair use is typically threshed out on a case-by-case basis, the scholar says, but Google is asking courts to issue broad rulings on the doctrine: But to lay this huge experiment, this many millions of books on a rather rickety and unpredictable system like fair use, is actually very unfair to fair use. And what I¹m afraid of is that Google will certainly lose in court, and what will happen is courts will...

Two and a half years ago, a hacker broke into a server at Boston College, exposing personal information on a large group of alumni. That incident was “probably the low point of my career,” says David Escalante, the institution’s director of computer policy and security.

But that low point has turned out all right. Within two weeks of discovering the breach, Boston College managed to mail warnings to about 100,000 people, and the institution earned plaudits for its quick response. This week Mr. Escalante spoke at the Security Standard Conference in Chicago, advising other network administrators on how to deal with hacking attacks.

The conference is not focused specifically on colleges, but since so many institutions have suffered from security breaches, it makes sense to have a campus official discuss the topic. Mr. Escalante’s tips could be helpful to both colleges and corporations:...

Although supercomputers have the potential to make significant discoveries in a variety of subject areas, they are often limited in their application because of computer scientists’ ignorance of subjects other than computer science, presenters at the National Science Foundation supercomputer symposium said on Thursday.

Russ Miller, a professor of computer science and engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said university computer-science departments need to recruit graduate students who have undergraduate degrees in diverse fields, such as biology, physics, and humanities. Currently, most computer-science students know a lot about computer science, he said, but not much else.

“They don’t have a broad enough worldview of what they’re doing computer science for,” he said. “So they’re just interested in building the next best computer-science widget and hope somebody is...

The complexities of medicine and biology provide a perfect chance for supercomputers to shine, said presenters at the National Science Foundation symposium on supercomputing on Thursday. But too little attention has been paid to that kind of research so far.

Stem cells, for instance, are hard to come by and are expensive, said Badri Roysam, a professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — not to mention the political controversy that surrounds them. Plugging their properties into a supercomputer can help researchers experiment with some aspects of stem cells without touching sensitive matter.

Typical three-dimensional renderings of stem cells by computers use maybe four different colors to identify different components of the cells, Mr. Roysam said. But there are over 10,000 different types of proteins that make up the cell, he said. Most...

At the National Science Foundation symposium on “Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation,” participants are talking less about the speed of new supercomputers and showing more interest in improving algorithms those computers can use to solve the world’s ills. The event is being held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y.

Clas A. Jacobson, chief scientist of controls at United Technologies Corporation, a technology company, said Thursday that even with the growth of computing power recently, computers can only tackle so much information at one time. Plus, he said, supercomputers are not available to everyone who needs them.

That leads to researchers taking short cuts, perhaps by focusing on small samples of data instead of looking at the big picture. For combing through data on, say, human behavior on a wide scale, supercomputers could come up short, as they would eventually...

What ever happened to Net neutrality? Last year it seemed the phrase was on everyone’s lips, and activists supporting the principle — which would prohibit broadband carriers from favoring certain network traffic with fast-lane delivery — had built up a good bit of momentum.

But now the debate over Net neutrality has devolved into “a third-rate performance with no budget and slumping attendance,” writes Declan McCullagh of CNET News. He offers a list of 10 factors that conspired to kill the topic, including a fragmenting coalition of activists, partisan gridlock, and the less-than-receptive Bush administration.

When Net neutrality was still a hot topic, campus researchers helped stoke the flames. Has their attention drifted elsewhere? Could the concept make a comeback? —Brock Read

If e-books are ever going to catch on with a broader audience, this fall might be a good time for them to start winning people over. As The New York Times points out, a pair of high-profile digital-book projects will test the public’s willingness to swap hardbound volumes for downloadable files.

Until now, Google’s ambitious book-scanning project has made only excerpts available for books under copyright. But soon the search engine will start charging users for unfettered online access to some of the digital texts it has collected.

And in the meantime, Amazon is planning on wading into the market for e-book readers. In October the online retailer will release the Kindle, a reader that will wirelessly connect to Amazon’s own e-book store. The Kindle won’t need to hooked up to a computer to download books, but will its price tag — expected to be between $400 and $500 — scare people off? And ...

A student at Texas A&M University has been charged with masterminding a hack attack that prompted the institution to tell more than 90,000 campus-network users to change their passwords.

Louis Castillo, a graduate student in computer science, could face five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 if he is found guilty of charges of breaking into a database that contained network log-in names and passwords of current and former students, faculty members, and other university employees. The incident took place in February, and campus officials said then that they might have caught the intruder before he absconded with any personal information. But the attack still caused more than $5,000 in damages, as Pierce Cantrell, the university’s vice president and associate provost for information technology, told The Bryan-College Station Eagle. —Brock Read