The cars used systems like those already in consumer vehicles: GPS, lane guidance, calibrated braking.
Eventually, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the F.B.I. also used systems that electronically took 10 fingerprints and met global standards.
In the 1990's, when Mr. Wertheimer first researched fare searches, many airlines and travel agents still used systems developed in the 1950's.
In the first presidential election, in 1789, four states (Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia) used systems based on popular election.
More recently, attention has focused on tests that run efficiently on a computer, because such tests are part of the underlying mathematics of several widely used systems for encrypting data on computers.
At No Boundaries and elsewhere, the talk was about forming clusters of like-structured organisations, saving money by sharing staff and having jointly used systems, as this will ensure the arts' survival in a harsh climate.
The test, called the Face Recognition Vendor Test, used systems from ten leading firms and a database of 121,589 images of 37,437 people.
Every year at Black Hat, hackers disclose vulnerabilities they have discovered in widely used systems like batteries and Wi-Fi networks.
Still, the differences are stark: Brooklyn's central library is a three-million-volume, column-adorned temple at Grand Army Plaza on the edge of Prospect Park, and the main Queens library, in Jamaica, has 76 professional librarians and is the center of one of the country's most heavily used systems.
Composers have always used systems and technologies to extend their musical thinking, from Bach's canons to Boulez's serialism, from John Cage's chance operations to Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronics, but it's always the quality of the material you put in and the questions you ask that determine the quality of the musical result.
And: universities and other academic locations are prime stepping stones for hackers looking to get into bigger, better protected systems: the Chinese hackers used systems at the universities of North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nex Mexico, as well as a number of smaller companies.
