OZ Optical SETI Program

Technology already exists that can produce extremely short laser pulses of petaWatts (1015 Watts). If one couples this to a large optical telescope like the 10-meter Keck, which is used like a searchlight mirror, there is an efficient system of directing nanosecond laser pulses at other interstellar civilizations. Laser light produced like this and directed toward the solar system would easily outshine the light from the star from which the light originated. According to Bhathal, the nanosecond laser pulse would appear about 5,000-7,000 times brighter than the background light from the ETI star. This fact is independent of distance, since both the laser light and the light from the ETI star will diminish at about the same rate with distance.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space03010201.html

Slashdot Thread on 40 Years of Video Games

...This month marks the 40th anniversary of Spacewars, the very first video game ever created! Its very interesting to consider how quickly the popularity of video games grew, because, essentially, Spacewars was spontaneously generated. I guess there is something about blinking lights, flashing colors, and tinny sound effects that just appeals to the soul.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/28/136217&mode=thread&tid=127

Another El Nino On The Way

Nations worldwide are bracing for climatic havoc again in 2002 just five years after a devastating El Nino weather pattern engulfed the globe, killing more than 20,000 people and wreaking some $34 billion in damage.In recent weeks, the worlds top metereological centers have said that the odds are shortening for a recurrence of El Nino, where unusual warming of Pacific waters off South America triggers far-flung drought, ice storms, floods and fires.Forecasters at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) kicked off the new year saying El Nino would likely return in spring though its intensity was unclear.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/020228/5/ka0n.html

Hacker says he saw Social Security numbers inside New York Times network

The New York Times is investigating a hackers claim that he found security lapses in the newspapers computer network that exposed contributors Social Security numbers and other sensitive files.Adrian Lamo, 21, a part-time Internet security consultant from San Francisco, said Tuesday he hacked the newspapers Web site and snooped around numerous times about 10 days earlier.He said he found at least seven misconfigured servers that would allow hackers to enter the newspapers private network through its public Web site. He said he browsed through names and Social Security numbers of the papers employees, home delivery customers orders and contact information used by writers and editors on the Metro and Business desks.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/020228/6/k8uv.html

Contacting Pioneer 10 After 30 Years

Launched March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10, built by TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., is now 7.4 billion miles from Earth. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt and the first to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. During the passage by Jupiter, Pioneer 10 also charted Jupiters intense radiation belts, located the planets magnetic field, and established that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet.In 1983, it became the first man-made object to leave the solar system when it passed the orbit of Pluto, the most distant planet. The spacecraft continued to make valuable scientific investigations in the outer regions of the solar system until its science mission ended March 31, 1997. Pioneer 10s weak signal continues to be tracked by DSN as part of an advanced concept study of communications technology. Pioneer 10 is headed toward the constellation Taurus, where it will pass the nearest star in the constellation in about two million years.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space02280201.html

Hack a PC, Get Life in Jail

"If we are to protect American consumers, businesses and government, federal laws against cyber-crime must be strengthened," said Robert Cresanti, vice president of the Business Software Alliance. "The Cyber Security Enhancement Act will provide law enforcement with needed digital age tools and impose tougher sentencing on those who would threaten our security."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50708,00.html

The Developers Dilemma

By the end of the year, two platforms--J2EE and .Net--will essentially control the programming languages market. J2EE already commands large market share, while Microsoft has moved all of its languages over to .Net. However, unlike five years ago, the differences between platforms is no longer that they are language-specific, as .Net and J2EE each represent more than one language. Interestingly enough, most people think that being language-specific is at issue. This is because Microsoft introduced the concept of the CLR, or common language runtime. What that means is two of the languages offered by Microsoft, VB.Net and C#, both share the same runtime.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-842922.html

The Great Mystery of our Galactic Center

NASAs Chandra Observatory has observed a suspected black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but that discovery has only raised new questions."Theres no other way we can think of that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) could put out so much energy," said Donald Kniffen, Chandra program scientist at NASAs Office of Space Science.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space02220204.html

Antimatter Atoms Captured For The First Time

Antimatter atoms, among the most elusive matter in the Universe, have been captured for the first time. According to the standard model of particle physics, every particle has a corresponding antiparticle with the same mass and opposite charge. The pair annihilate each other on contact, releasing a burst of energy. Scientists have wondered if they can harness this energy, but they have found it difficult to make and control antiatoms. In the late 1990s, up to nine antihydrogen atoms were detected in particle accelerators at CERN and at Fermilab near Chicago. But they were moving at almost the speed of light - much too fast to be stored or studied. Now researchers on the ATRAP experiment at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, think they have made and stored thousands of antiatoms indefinitely in a particle trap.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991957

Anthrax Suspect is US Scientist

The FBI has a suspect for last years anthrax attacks, but is "dragging its heels" because he is a former government scientist familiar with secret state-sponsored research, a leading American expert on biological warfare said yesterday. The man also sent a hoax letter to the US Senate from Britain and may once have worked in the laboratory to which his letters were sent for testing, said Barbara Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists chemical and biological weapons working group. Quoted in the Trenton Times of New Jersey - based in the town to which most of the genuine anthrax mailings have been traced - Professor Rosenberg said that investigators had interrogated the suspect twice since October.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,653034,00.html

John Ralston Saul: Canadas Social Philosophe

"Most of Sauls non-fiction examines the loss of active citizenship and the role of personal judgment in modern Western cultures. Saul posits a lack of linear history as an important component of how laissez-faire mercantilism and technocratic bureaucracy have become rampant. He believes that the Western socio-economic system, with its current priorities, has become irrational: the system celebrates administration and process above and beyond the goals that necessitated organization in the first place. This mindset is ananthema to Saul and he shows great wit and humour in debasing its tenets. Saul linguistically disarms the ideologies of efficiency, reason and the power elite, across numerous publications and in a sweeping manner."
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id2050/pg1/

Next Gen DVD Standard Released

The "next generation" of DVDs, able to hold almost six times as much information as current discs, has been unveiled by major technology companies. The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes. It is expected to come into its own as more viewers become able to record TV shows on DVD machines.Nine electronics manufacturers have developed the discs, which they hope they will become the standard format, getting rid of the differences between those currently made by individual companies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/new_media/newsid_1829000/1829241.stm

Cat Cloned - Dogs Next

Researchers in Texas say they have cloned a cat - an advance that moves cloning from the barnyard to the living room and is likely to spark interest among pet owners.The female domestic short hair, called cc for copycat, was born Dec. 22 and is now healthy and frisky, researcher Duane Kraemer of Texas A and M University in College Station said Thursday.Headed up by Dr. Mark Westhusin of A and Ms veterinary medicine school, the project is the first reported success in cloning dogs or cats, which has been long discussed for pet owners.Many people have already stored cells from their pets in anticipation of cloning in the future, said Kraemer.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/020215/6/j9b5.html

States Wants Micro$ofts Source Code

The state attorneys general still pursuing the antitrust case against Microsoft have asked a federal judge to force the company to show them the inner workings of the Windows operating system. In a bid to pry open one of the worlds most valuable pieces of intellectual property, the states argued they need to see the Windows source code in order to verify Microsofts claim that it is not technically feasible for the company to offer a stripped-down version of the operating system. "Microsoft cannot base its defense on the design of its source code and simultaneously deny the litigating states the opportunity to test those arguments by interrogating the code," the states said in their filing.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-836421.html

New Janes Addiction Album?

Most bands cut a record, release it and then go on tour. But not Janes Addiction: Following a successful string of live shows last fall, the band is talking seriously about putting together the long-awaited follow-up to 1990s Ritual de lo Habitual.
http://music.yahoo.com/launch/news/rolling_stone/story.html?a=n/music/launch/news/rolling_stone/rock/20020212/13/p1&b=n/music/launch/news/rolling_stone/rock/20020212/13/p2

Reflections on Modern Terrorism

Most 20th-century discussions on terrorism seem to me to have missed the point that, short of an unlikely act of international will, we have passed irreversibly through an historic transition... To understand the potential of this form, one must not stop with a prognosis of likely technical means. The new technological capabilities in the present context ? e.g., nuclear and other spectacularly destructive physical means, or biological and chemical (binary) weapons ? form only one part of the context. Neotechnic means can vastly increase the scale of damage, and through television can almost instantly and repeatedly spread the news and imagery of the act; but by themselves they need not coerce a determined people. One should be equally concerned with the other components that are essential to the successful act of terror. For whether it is carried out by individuals, a group, a state, or a coalition of these, terror succeeds or fails on a "stage" that has four components, each of which is subject, in our time, to the enlargements of opportunity or scope...
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/holton/holton_p2.html

The World Wide Computer

an Internet-scale operating system does not yet exist--developers have already produced a number of Internet-scale, or peer-to-peer, applications that attempt to tap the vast array of underutilized machines available through the Internet [see box]. These applications accomplish goals that would be difficult, unaffordable or impossible to attain using dedicated computers. Further, todays systems are just the beginning: we can easily conceive of archival services that could be relied on for hundreds of years and intelligent search engines for tomorrows Semantic Web [see "The Semantic Web," by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila; Scientific American, May 2001]. Unfortunately, the creation of Internet-scale applications remains an imposing challenge. Developers must build each new application from the ground up, with much effort spent on technical matters, such as maintaining a database of users, that have little to do with the application itself. If Internet-scale applications are to become mainstream, these infrastructure issues must be dealt with once and for all.We can gain inspiration for eliminating this duplicate effort from operating systems such as Unix and Microsoft Windows. An operating system provides a virtual computing environment in which programs operate as if they were in sole possession of the computer. It shields programmers from the painful details of memory and disk allocation, communication protocols, scheduling of myriad processes, and interfaces to devices for data input and output. An operating system greatly simplifies the development of new computer programs. Similarly, an Internet-scale operating system would simplify the development of new distributed applications.
http://www.sciam.com/2002/0302issue/0302anderson.html

A Recycled Universe?

Drawing on some cutting-edge but unproved notions in particle physics, the challengers interpret the big bang as a violent clash between higher-dimensional objects. In the latest installment to the saga, the authors of this interpretation have found a way to turn that single clash into a never-ending struggle that rears its fiery head every trillion years or so, making our universe just one phase in an infinite cycle of birth and rebirth.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/explorations/2002/021102cyclic/

The Luxury of Anger

Some of these movements I had been doing regularly for more than a year or two, and suddenly, to my tremendous frustration, they were gone, vanished from my brain. My body would stop as if my nerves and muscles had short-circuited. It was maddening. It was especially hard to bear for someone like me who has a pathetically low frustration level. It was even worse because when I stalled, Sensei, who was acting as my opponent in the kata, would simply stand there, expressionless, waiting for me to execute a technique I could not for the life of me produce."Shimatta zo!" I finally snapped in exasperation at my own stupidity.Senseis response was so fast it was completed, over, long before I realized it had started, in less time than it took me to complete the interjection. He snapped his wooden sword against mine and flicked it over, using the powerful force of his hips, in an action that took my weapon right out of my hands. My sword wheeled over in the air a few times and bounced off the ground. Simultaneously, I was left with the distinct sensation that my wrists had just been yanked off of my forearms."Anger is a luxury," he said quietly. "One that you cannot afford."

http://koryu.com/library/dlowry9.html

Facing Ones Demons

Budo training involves violence. Yes, even aikido. There is little more violent in this world than being hit with, well, this world.Budo training is also about learning to step into that place and confront the violence, accept it, deal with it and learn to overcome it. Unless we come to terms with our own capacity for violence, we can never control it. We might deny it, hide it, run from it, but can never control it.
http://www.aikiweb.com/training/gordon4.html

Dinosaur Puke Discovered

Scientists believe the vomit, estimated to be 160 million years old, gives vital clues to the feeding habits of ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Detailed analysis has revealed the remains of dozens of belemnites - an ancient sea creature - within the fossilised substance. Professor Peter Doyle, of the University of Greenwich, believes the belemnite shells contained in the vomit indicate that they were regurgitated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_1814000/1814559.stm

Release of Documents Relating to 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg Meeting

Dear Heisenberg.I have long been meaning to write to you on a matter about which I am constantly being asked from many different quarters. It concerns the visit by you and Weizsäcker to Copenhagen in the autumn of 1941. As you know from our conversations in the first years after the war, we here got quite a different impression of what happened during this visit than the one you expressed in Jungk?s book. The particular reason that I write to you is that the whole question of the atomic energy projects during the war has been made the subject of thorough studies in England based on access to government archives, including material held by the intelligence service. In this connection, I have had detailed conversations about my affiliation with the whole project, during which questions about your visit in 1941 were also brought up. I have therefore thought it most proper to try to give you as accurate an impression as possible of how we perceived the visit here.Although we realized that behind the visit there was a wish to see how we were faring in Copenhagen in dangerous situation during the German occupation, who lived only on the hope of defeat for German Nazism, a difficult situation to meet and talk to someone who expressed as strongly as you and Weizsäcker your certain conviction of a German victory and confidence in what it would bring . Naturally, we understand that it may be difficult for you to keep track of how you thought and expressed yourselves at the various stages of the war, the course of which changed as time passed so that the conviction of German victory gradually had to weaken and finally end with the certainty of defeat.
http://www.nba.nbi.dk/papers/introduction.htm

Hyperlinks are Patented?

Imagine if one company held the right to collect a fee each time an Internet user clicked on a website link and jumped to another Web page. It may sound far-fetched, but a U.S. federal court will hear preliminary arguments next week to determine if this most elemental of Internet activities is the business property of a lone company, protected in the form of a patent. BT Group Plc believes it holds such a patent covering hypertext links and on Monday, BT will go to court to try to cash in on it.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,50283,00.html

The Big Blue Marble

The 1-kilometer per pixel resolution of these data reveals surprising details of the Earth?s surface, from the diversity of color in the Great Salt Lake to deforestation in the Amazon and the glaciers of the Himalaya.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_Closeup.html

Two Nukes Missing From Former Soviet Union Found - In the Bush

The cylinders, which are believed to have been left over from a Soviet-era generator, were discovered by three men gathering wood from a forest in December in Georgias breakaway region of Abkhazia. Seeing the objects had melted the surrounding snow, the men dragged them back to their camp for warmth. Initial exposure to the cylinders high levels of the radioactive element, strontium-90, left the men nauseous, and within a week they were suffering from radiation burns. One of them is now in a very serious condition, and may be transferred to a specialist hospital in France.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1795000/1795792.stm

Graham Hancock Interview

Whereas archaeologists start with objects, Hancock starts with ideas - in this case, the idea of the flood. "We have 600 flood myths around the world," he says. "Archaeologists tell us these are meaningless; all they represent are psychological archetypes - memories of birth, in the case of the flood - or exaggerations of local river floods. I thought, OK, we can say that, but suppose they are true - that they are our memory of what happened at the end of the Ice Age? "The other thing that almost always goes with these myths is the notion of an antediluvian civilisation - something which existed before the flood and was destroyed by it. I couldnt see any good reason why these universal myths shouldnt be a memory of that event, yet I found that this idea hadnt been explored."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4350493,00.html

Unrippable Music CD? Impossible, Experts Say

Leigh pointed out that the best copy protection on a CD would not matter anyway, because numerous programs exist to allow consumers to translate their vinyl and cassette tape formatted music to digital files. "Any sound that comes out of a speaker is recordable, so an unrippable CD is impossible," he said. According to Leigh, money - or the lack of it - is the only factor that will motivate the record labels to embrace online distribution of music. "If CD sales continue to decline, and they did from 2000 to 2001, then music has nowhere to go but on the Internet," he said. So what is the delay? Miller said the current crop of music company executives is hurting themselves with their myopia. "They just want to protect their large pay checks, and make sure the crown jewels dont get stolen," Miller said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174254.html

Robot Wars For Real

Robots are being let loose in a colony of machines in an attempt to find out whether they can learn from their experiences. The scientists behind this unusual experiment describe it as an evolutionary arms race for robots, with the machines struggling to collect energy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1801000/1801985.stm

Hiding Behind the User

There is another factor that drives the usability movement: the cult of the user. Users are all things to all people in the world of usability - they can be customers who will take their customer loyalty to another website with one mouse click, individuals suffering at the hands of big businesses that refuse to display their prices clearly on their websites, or less able people suffering from everything from visual impairment to ignorance of basic browser functionality. Users provide an excellent means of winning an argument when participating in a web design discussion - the slightest suggestion that you have not got the users needs foremost in your mind can trump your case. Steve Krugs book Dont Make Me Think exemplifies the diminished view of the user, who is characterised in the book as being an impatient, harassed imbecile unable to cope with the slightest cognitive stress. The book is full of passages such as: [the user] should be able to "get it" - what it is and how to use it - without expending any effort thinking about it (7). This is fair enough, from a web design perspective, except when it is used to justify reducing interface design to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately much of the usability literature, including Krugs book, capitalises on a highly conservative view of how technology can be taken forward. The widespread adoption of the arguments of Krug and Nielsen must be seen in this context.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3DE.htm

Meat is Good: the Paleo - Diet

"Over the past several decades, numerous studies have found that indigenous populations have low serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels," Cordain says. This comes in spite of the fact that many modern nutritionists would likely not approve their diets. "Previous studies by myself and colleagues had found that nearly all - 97 percent - of the worlds hunter-gatherer societies would have exceeded recommended guidelines for fat," Cordain says. Watkins says that even though this may be surprising to many people, it fits exactly with what research is showing about the importance of specific types of fat in the diet. "Current research is showing that, with the decline of fat in the diet, the amount of fat isnt as important as the relative amounts, or ratio, of specific fats in your diet. Its a qualitative issue, not a quantitative issue," he says.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/science02050203.html

Phillips Fighting Copy Protected CDs

"Those are silver discs with music data that resemble CDs, but arent," Philips representative Klaus Petri told Financial Times Deutschland. Gerry Wirtz, general manager of the Philips copyright office that administers the CD logo, told Reuters that not only would Philips yank the logo from copy-protected discs, it would force the major labels to add warning stickers for consumers. Most controversially, he claimed future models of Philips players would both read and burn the copy-protected discs. Thats no small threat, given the popularity of Philips current $399 twin-tray CD-ROM recorder, sold on Amazon under the slogan "CD Burning: Simpler than Ever." Both Philips and the big five record labels have declined to comment further on the matter, but independent label owners and industry veterans say the silence means neither side plans to shift course away from their inevitable collision.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50101,00.html