Comments from one of the actual "Winners" (Score 1)

All,

Let me set some misconceptions right. I'm disheartened to note that present day journalism is still very much a grapevine. The author of the original article added a bit of sensationalism by comparing a scholarly competition to "American Idol" probably to get the attention of the reader. I can level with that. But it goes downhill from there. In the case of my project TALC, everything other than the name is pretty much off target. TALC combines Awareness, using techniques like Ambient displays; Learning, using appropriate metaphors and other non-invasive means and Control that lets the user take appropriate action to mitigate the threat. From a security perspective, I believe TALC adds value in terms of bringing awareness to existing tools like HijackThis, Nessus, National Vulnerability Database (NIST) etc., educating users of their security actions/in-actions and a few more in an effort to harden the home user security. These are hard problems and we intend to tackle them with innovative ideas. For those interested in the nitty-gritty details checkout the original proposal at http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/kandha/doc /TALC.pdf The project has undergone a lot of changes since then but it gives a fair idea of where we are heading. In the end, like they say, "Any press is good press!"

As for the discussion about the funding, some of the slashdoters have already put it in the right context. To quote Bob Dylan,
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do"
We are doing this for the challenge involved in tackling hard research problems and in our case to extend security to a grass root level in a usable manner. The fact that we get a stipend and a tuition waiver comes at a distant third.

These comments are my own personal opinion