Overclocker Creates Rift in Space-Time Continuum

A rift in the space-time continuum was created today when overclocker Jamie Aperman ran a 750 MHz Coppermine Pentium III at 1.6 GHz. Overclocking has long been blamed for causing global warming, but this is the first occasion that the fabric of space-time has been damaged.MIT Professor George Greznowski said, "It appears that the CPU was operating so fast that it began to execute instructions before they arrived. This execution of future instructions created a small tear in the fabric of space-time itself through which part of the motherboard passed into a parallel universe."
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2000/5/clock_rift.html

Russians Launching Solar Sail

Preparations and testing in advance of the Planetary Societys orbital solar sail mission called Cosmos 1 are making progress in Russia, officials report. The first-ever solar sail is scheduled for launch no earlier than September aboard a Russian submarine-launched Volna rocket. Cosmos 1s recent milestones have included the engineering models completion of launch vibration tests that simulate the environment the spacecraft will endure during the launch and other critical phases of the flight.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0204/29cosmos1/

Microsofts Stash O Cash

At the end of last year, according to the companys most recent filings, its cash (and short-term investments that can be converted to cash in less than a year) totaled a whopping $38.2 billion. The Microsoft juggernaut continues to generate another $1 billion a month, putting the total cash today well above $40 billion. This is a mind-bogglingly large pile of dough. No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal, and only a handful of banks do. Its more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech company with the next largest cash balance. It is enough to buy the entire airline industry -- twice. Or all the gold in Fort Knox, four times over. It is enough to buy 23 space shuttles or every major professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey team in America. It is an enviable stash. Who wouldnt love to have a bank account like that?
http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/12/pf/agenda_msft/index.htm

Hilarious... But Spookily True Onion Article

JERUSALEM?The Mideast peace process was once again derailed Monday, when U.S.-brokered talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders careened off their tracks into an embankment and burst into flames, burning with intensity for nearly an hour until the smoking remains were shoveled over with dirt. Above: Powell and Sharon meet shortly before talks broke down and collapsed, belching thick plumes of smoke. "The goal was to establish a substantive, mutually respectful dialogue between the two sides that would lay the foundation for a lasting settlement," said Secretary of State Colin Powell upon returning from his failed diplomatic mission. "Unfortunately, at an early stage of the negotiation process, these efforts ran into obstacles. More specifically, they violently slammed into the obstacles at 190 mph, bursting into flames upon impact."
http://www.theonion.com/onion3815/mideast_peace_process.html

Current Read: William Gibsons All Tomorrows Parties

All the heroes in All Tomorrows Parties wield knives. Chevette, the onetime bike messenger and second-best thing in William Gibsons 1993 Virtual Light, has one hammered from a motorcycle drive chain. Rydell, former cop, night watchman, and now convenience store security guy, sports a lightweight ceramic knife, although he doesnt much like its balance. And the mysterious Konrad, the man who kills without fuss or muss, brandishes the deadliest blade, the one "that sleeps head down, like a vampire bat." So many sharp knives slice elegantly through the virtual realities and nanotechnological macguffins that populates Gibsons latest novel. And appropriately so. When Gibson, one of science fictions greatest literary stylists, is at his best, he offers visceral detail ("helicopters swarming like dragonflies") even when promising transcendent change ("the mother of all nodal points" -- a moment in the near future when the fabric of daily life will twist profoundly). Gibson wouldnt be Gibson if he spelled it out, if he eliminated all the ambiguity. His specialty is hanging on to that fractal edge without ever going over the brink.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0441007554/reviews/qid=1019619783/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_67_1/002-2054680-7939230

Good Pic of the Space Station

What does the developing International Space Station (ISS) look like now? After delivering and deploying a crucial first backbone-like component last week, the Space Shuttle Atlantis took an inspection lap around the space station. The newly installed truss is visible toward the center of the above image. Also visible are many different types of modules, a robotic arm, several wing-like solar panels, and a supply ship. Construction began on the ISS in 1998 and the core structure should be in place before 2005.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020423.html

/. Thread on Finding the Programming Zone

"Most importantly, the problem has to be interesting to me. I cant enter The Zone unless I truly am determined to solve the problem. Sometimes even boring problems can be made interesting once you spend a couple hours tackling them, but typically youll get better results if the problem is genuinely interesting. (This is why the scratch-the-itch motivation of free software works so well.) I dont hack on coffee; I hack on diet coke. Lots of it. My musical mood changes from hour to hour, so I dont ordinarily set up playlists for more than 45-75 minutes, but I do normally listen to music the whole time Im in the zone. Agreed: big monitor and many terminal windows are a must. If you cant have at least 6 terms on screen at once, youll get distracted by toggling between virtual desktops. Sometimes I have up to 12 windows on screen. You just need a fast computer. No one wants to wait long for compiling simple changes. Lighting for me has to be dim, but not dark. I prefer a single, tungsten 60W bulb with a lamp shade on my desk. It provides a nice, cozy warm light and offsets the light from my monitor to prevent eye strain. Everyone has certain things they do when theyre thinking about a solution to a particular tough problem (or sub-problem). Maybe you lie down for a few minutes; maybe you pace around the room; maybe you go to the gym and work out. Me? I take a long, hot shower. This yields very excellent results for me. And I have come up with some pretty damn clever solutions under the nearly-scaulding hot water. :)"
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/22/1638256&mode=thread&tid=156

The Gospel According to Phillip K. Dick

the gospel according to philip k. dick by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - April 19, 2002 Afterlife Out of JointPhilip K. Dick has enjoyed a strange kind of afterlife. The public first discovered him through the films Blade Runner (1982) and Total Recall (1990). Major publishing houses reprinted his books. Cultural theorists invoked his name, during the postmodern 1990s, when discussing truth claims about realities and cyborg consciousness. The Gnostic rebel gradually eclipsed the truth-seeking human.Filmmakers Andy Massagli and Mark Steensland have chronicled why many people consider Dick to be the seminal science fiction author of the late 21st century. Their feature-length documentary The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2000) combines animation, interviews and visits to key locales: offering viewers insight into Dicks life and motivations. The core of Massagli and Steenslands film are interviews with collaborators Robert Anton Wilson and Ray Nelson, biographer Paul Williams, critics D. Scott Apel and Jay Kinney, friend Miriam Lloyd, fans Jason Koornick and Duncan Watson, and librarian Sharon Perry. Their anecdotes give firsthand accounts of Dick as a human being (not just as a media celebrity or counterculture hero). Their narratives offer multiple interpretations of Dicks 1974 encounter with a Vast Active Living Intelligent System (VALIS) and its philosophical aftermath.
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/review/id2188/pg1/

Kurzweils Singularity

Today its an axiom that life is changing and that technology is affecting the nature of society. But whats not fully understood is that the pace of change is itself accelerating, and the last 20 years are not a good guide to the next 20 years. Were doubling the paradigm shift rate, the rate of progress, every decade. This will actually match the amount of progress we made in the whole 20th century, because weve been accelerating up to this point. The 20th century was like 25 years of change at todays rate of change. In the next 25 years well make four times the progress you saw in the 20th century. And well make 20,000 years of progress in the 21st century, which is almost a thousand times more technical change than we saw in the 20th century.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge99.html

Bush and Bin Laden Action Figures

Action figures of President George W. Bush and Islamic militant Osama bin Laden are part of a group of new action figure designs by Herobuilders. The Connecticut toy maker is selling life-like action figures based on major figures tied to the Sept. 11 attacks, including Bush, bin Laden, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020418/161/1f4t9.html

New Curve Album On Its Way

The new record has been recorded and mixed, Alan is busy mastering editing and compiling and should have finished masters by the end of this week. The Album is called The New Adventures of Curve and features 7 new songs along with two new re recordings of Superblaster and Recovery both of which are very different from the originals, and a very cool remix from Deepsky...
The New Adventures will be available as a limited edition web release exclusively from MNS. there will only be a small number pressed so be sure to get your order in. We will be setting up a retail release in the coming months so if you miss the web release you will be able to get a copy in the shops both in the UK and US hopefully later this year. The web release should be available in 6 weeks time possibly sooner depending on turnaround times at the pressing plant. onward we go!
http://www.curve.co.uk/news.htm

Get A Job With The FBI

Serves as project manager, and/or performs research, test and evaluation, and/or developmental engineering studies on projects in the field of advanced telephony, encryption, intercept capabilities and wireline digital voice/data communications. Research, develop, test and evaluate new innovative software and hardware, not commercially available, to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the interception of Wireline data communications and encryption areas of telecommunications and computer networks. Performs engineering analysis and evaluations of existing technologies to include the use of a wide variety of public switch telephone network (wireline), cellular and personal communications services (PCS) networks (wireless) and/or data networking and communications networks. Designs and develops techniques, methods and equipment to enhance, modify or compromise existing or developing technology within the field of telephony, specifically, wireline or wireless networks, data networks and digital communications. Isolates and defines specific engineering problems and possible modifications and solutions.
http://cryptome.org/fbi-spy-jobs.htm

Current Re-read: Einsteins Dreams

This stange little book exists simultaneously on scientifc, theological, social, mental, emotional and psychological levels. It is very nearly sureal in its playground of time. Alan Lightman has succeeding in creating a unique world, which happens to be set in the landscape of Einsteins mind. The chronology can be jumbeld to create different effects and the idea of time as you read becomes a factor, as each chapter heading is a date. Have you been reading for an hour or for 11 days? There is just not enough to say about this book. The closest thing I can relate it to is Lao-Tzus Tao-te-Jing and Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 years of solitude. This book is one wild trip.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0446670111/customer-reviews/ref=cm_rev_all_1/002-9324367-2643249

Songs in the Key of F12

Most mainstream music production relegates the computer to a behind-the-scenes player. The digital processes that help create the sense of presence and authenticity are smoothed out and kept in check. The Share crowd wants to let those techniques loose. For them, the PC is no longer simply a playback device or an inexpensive home studio. It has become an instrument in its own right. An explosion of scattershot beats emerges from the next room. The sounds belong to Geoff Matters, a slight 24-year-old who sports a wispy Fu Manchu, earrings, and long blond hair stuffed inside a beige stocking cap. Besides helping to organize Share, Matters is one of the lead programmers for GDAM, which stands for Geoff and Daves Audio Mixer. An open source digital DJ rig thats "perpetually in beta," GDAM cuts and mixes MP3s like a vinyl DJ gone cyborg.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/laptop.html

Six Machines That Changed The Music World

Ever since Sam Phillips stuffed some wads of paper into an amplifier, inadvertently creating the fuzzed-up, overdriven electric guitar sound on Ike Turners 1951 rave-up "Rocket 88," pop musicians and producers have turned happy accidents into great records. But the history of house and techno, in particular, is underpinned with fits of serendipity and creative perversions of recording technology.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/blackbox.html

Everquest Online Coming To PS2

Sony Computer Entertainment of America announced last month that by August it would start selling a PS2 network adapter with an Ethernet port for broadband Internet connections and a modem for dial-up access. Sony executives said there was widespread support among game developers who are planning to add online components to their PS2 game, but it offered no specifics. In Tuesdays announcement, Sony Online Entertainment, a division of the media and electronics conglomerate, said it would release "EverQuest Online Adventure," based on the series of PC online games, for the PS2 next spring. The game will consist of packaged software and a subscription-based online service.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-878576.html

Life On The Net In 2004

Hmm... 231 new emails but your filters say that 217 of those are likely to be spam. Even though theyve been dropped into another folder youll still have to wade through them to make sure that you dont miss an important message that might have been accidentally sidetracked by the less-than-perfect software. Damn, it looks as if youve also received 5 new virus/trojan attachments as well and one of them was 20MB in size -- thats another $4 on your DSL bill. Suddenly a pop-up dialog box appears advising you that there are 2 new Windows Security updates that should be downloaded, totalling some 60MB in size (another $12 worth of traffic). You just know that downloading these updates will require you to reboot your PC and youre in a hurry so you hit the "cancel" button and fire up your web-browser to check the latest news headlines.
http://aardvark.co.nz/daily/2002/0409.shtml

Chlorophyll on Mars?

An analysis of data obtained by the Pathfinder mission to the Red Planet in 1997 suggests there could be chlorophyll - the molecule used by plants and other organisms on Earth to extract energy from sunlight - in the soil close to the landing site. Researchers stress their work is in a very preliminary state and they are far from making definite claims.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1913000/1913228.stm

Asteroids 101

Although Eros does not come close enough to Earth for a collision, other asteroids in different orbits might. Indeed, many space rocks have struck Earth in the distant past. Even now 40 to 100 tons of smaller interplanetary debris and dust fall into Earths atmosphere daily. If a rock larger than two-thirds of a mile in diameter should slam into Earth, tidal waves, firestorms, and other traumas could spell disaster for civilization and possibly even for all of life on the planet. In early 2000, after nearly four years en route, NEAR had a year to examine the curious object from all angles, both in darkness and in sunlight, and from distances ranging from 200 miles down to as close as 22 miles. In a four-hour finale Feb. 14, 2001, NEAR settled onto the surface of Eros at merely walking speed, to rest on the tips of two solar panels and the bottom edge of the spacecrafts body.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space04080203.html

Sartres Nausea

If you like warm, fuzzy literature, this story isnt for you. If you prefer to read fiction that agrees with what you already think, or helps you sleep at night, this story isnt for you. However, if you enjoy engaging, incredibly well-written, (and superbly translated), literature, you will enjoy this book. "Nausea", like "Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe, is not an easy or comfortable story to plow through, but it is a fascinating and superb story. Also, dont pass this book if you are intimidated by all the high falutin philosophy talk; enjoy this book as the remarkable, if disturbing story, that it is. Excellent reading.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811201880/qid=1083876820/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/102-3394161-3320161

Sartres Being And Nothingness

ean-Paul Sartre, the seminal smarty-pants of mid-century thinking, launched the existentialist fleet with the publication of Being and Nothingness in 1943. Though the book is thick, dense, and unfriendly to careless readers, it is indispensable to those interested in the philosophy of consciousness and free will. Some of his arguments are fallacious, others are unclear, but for the most part Sartres thoughts penetrate deeply into fundamental philosophical territory. Basing his conception of self-consciousness loosely on Heideggers "being," Sartre proceeds to sharply delineate between conscious actions ("for themselves") and unconscious ("in themselves"). It is a conscious choice, he claims, to live ones life "authentically" and in a unified fashion, or not--this is the fundamental freedom of our lives.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671867806/qid=1083876820/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/102-3394161-3320161

Quantum Vortices in Bose-Einstien Condensates

Ketterle and his colleagues at MIT decided to spin a BEC and see what would happen. Ketterle said he didnt have neutron stars in mind when he did the experiment: "BECs are a new form of matter, and we wanted to learn more about them. By rotating BECs, we force them to reveal their properties." Simulating the inside of a weird star was to be an unintended spin-off. Ketterles team shined a rotating laser beam on the condensate, which was held in place by magnets. He compared the process to "stroking a ping-pong ball with a feather until it starts spinning." Suddenly, a regular array of whirlpools appeared. "It was a breathtaking experience when we saw those vortices," Ketterle recalled.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space04050206.html

Gene Therapy Cures Bubble Boy

To treat the boys, the Great Ormond Street team took the stem cells that give rise to immune cells from the two boys bone marrow. Then they used a modified form of a retrovirus found in gibbons to add a normal copy of the faulty gene to the stem cells. The virus has altered spikes on its surface which may mean it binds better to stem cells and transfers the gene to them more efficiently, team leader Adrian Thrasher told New Scientist. The engineered stem cells were then returned to the boys bodies. Rhys Evans is now back at home, with normal T cell levels, seven months after treatment. The second child, treated just three months ago, continues to improve at home. The Great Ormond Street researchers say they are planning to treat another four boys over the next two years.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992124

iGlass Knows When You Need Another Beer

Developed by a Japanese electronics company, the intelligent glass is fitted with a radio-frequency coil in its base and emits a signal to a receiver set in the table when its empty, New Scientist magazine reported Thursday. The iGlassware system works by coating each glass with a clear, conducting material, enabling it to measure exactly how much liquid has been sipped or guzzled.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020404/tc_nm/britain_glass_dc_1&cid=581

Kurzweil Bets $10K AI Will Pass Turing Test By 2029

"Scientists have already reverse-engineered two dozen of the several hundred regions of the human brain; well understand its principles of operation and be in a position to re-create its powers in synthetic substrates well within 30 years. But we wont program human intelligence link by link in some massive expert system. Nor will we simply set up a single genetic algorithm and have intelligence at human levels automatically evolve itself. Rather, we will set up an intricate hierarchy of self-organizing systems, based largely on the reverse-engineering of the human brain, and then provide the computer entity with an education, which, given the increasing power of machines, can proceed hundreds if not thousands of times faster than the comparable process for humans."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/longbets.html?pg=5

Geo-Encryption

Working with a Hollywood movie executive and an Internet entrepreneur, Denning has invented a way to keep information scrambled until it reaches a precise location, as determined by GPS satellites. Armed with Dennings geo-encryption system, which she co-patented in 1998, only people in specified locations, such as movie theaters, living rooms or corporate conference rooms, would be able to unscramble the data. But the idea also has drawn interest from the Pentagon. Coded messages that the Defense Department sends its commanders in the field, for example, could be deciphered only in a certain room of a certain building in, say, Kandahar?greatly reducing the risk of malicious interception. Business intelligence, such as a private meeting among corporate directors, could be scrambled and uploaded to a satellite from a conference room, and downloaded and decoded in a conference room 1,000 miles away. Medical records could be sent from a doctor in Peoria for a second opinion to a doctor in Manhattan?and all without the usual worries over privacy leaks to insurers or investigators along the way. In addition, she says, "If someone hacked into your system, youd know exactly where he came from."
http://www.cioinsight.com/article/0,3658,s=303&a=24831,00.asp

Jesus and Mary Chain Greatest Hits Album Coming!

Three years after their mid-concert breakup, the Jesus and Mary Chain will release the aptly titled 21 Singles compilation on June 4th. The collection spans the Scottish bands six-album, fifteen-year career, anchored by stalwarts such as "You Trip Me Up", "Just Like Honey" and "Sometimes Always," a duet with former Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval.Also included are "I Love Rock & Roll" and "I Hate Rock & Roll," which neatly sum up singer Jim Reid and his brother William Reids polar opposite viewpoints. "That particular song was a reply to Williams," Jim Reid told Rolling Stone of "I Love Rock & Roll." "He wrote "I Hate Rock & Roll," which is about all the kind of uncomfortable stuff you have to do when youre in a band, stuff that you might not want to do. It doesnt feel good, and its sort of the business end of what you have to do. It was a great song, and I just thought, Yeah, but its kind of incomplete. So, I sort of made a flip side, a reply to it. He wrote hate, I wrote love."
http://music.yahoo.com/launch/news/rolling_stone/story.html?a=n/music/launch/news/rolling_stone/rock/20020402/11/p1&b=n/music/launch/news/rolling_stone/rock/20020402/11/p2

Carnivore is Alive and Well

Its name may have changed from Carnivore to DCS-1000, but the controversial cybersnooping software used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still on the hunt for information, and likely is scouring vast amounts of Internet communication. In fact, Carnivore probably is chomping on more data than ever as a result of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States. Following those events, it was widely reported that the FBI (news - web sites) installed its e-mail snooping program on several Internet service provider (ISP) networks around the nation. But a recent court order may mean that more information will be revealed about how Carnivore works and what it is being used for, according to privacy advocates.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=75&u=/nf/20020401/tc_nf/17009

Other Current Read: The Whole Shebang : A State-Of-The-Universe(s) Report Reviewed

Ferris explicates the shape of space, black holes, the origin of the elements and the evolution of galaxies and stars. As if encapsulating the cosmos werent enough, he plunges cheerfully into an account of quantum physics and its relationship to the study of the universe. The subtitle of The Whole Shebang is A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, and indeed, one of the intriguing theories presented in this book is that our universe is but one of many, each with physical laws and the potential for life. The Whole Shebang is a book that even those of us who hated science in school will love.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0684838613/reviews/qid=1017764959/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-8085201-6844705

Current Read: Connexity Reviewed

Many books have been written about the implications of a globalized and interconnected civilization. But few have the range and depth of Geoff Mulgans Connexity. The central issue Connexity addresses is the fundamental conflict that exists between the freedoms enjoyed by many, mainly in the Western world, and the growing economic interdependence of so many more worldwide. Mulgan, who is the founder of Demos, a liberal think tank based in London, and a member of Tony Blairs Policy Unit, writes, "Our problem is that freedom to behave as we would wish, without regard for our effects on others, runs directly counter to the other striking fact of the contemporary world: our growing dependence on other people. The world may never have been freer, but it has also never been so interdependent and interconnected. Only a small proportion of the worlds population could now be self-sufficient. The rest of us depend on complex systems to deliver us water, food, justice, energy and health." Mulgan probes the nature of the conflict between freedom and interdependence by examining everything from the nature of markets in a free society to the role of governments in a shrinking world and problems posed by economies which tend to ignore national boundaries. The author argues that reciprocity, or the golden rule, "is the most important idea for a developed democratic society." Whether you agree with Mulgan politics or not, you will find this book to be thought-provoking and timely. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0875848508/reviews/qid=1017764694/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_67_1/104-8085201-6844705

READ NOW: Kazaa Has Another Piggyback Stealth Ware Embedded

A California company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn on" peoples PCs, welding them into a new network of its own. Brilliant Digital Entertainment, a California-based digital advertising technology company, has been distributing its 3D ad technology along with the Kazaa software since late last fall. But in a federal securities filing Monday, the company revealed it also has been installing more ambitious technology that could turn every computer running Kazaa into a node in a new network controlled by Brilliant Digital. The company plans to wake up the millions of computers that have installed its software in as soon as four weeks. It plans to use the machines--with their owners permission--to host and distribute other companies content, such as advertising or music. Alternatively, it might borrow peoples unused processing power to help with other companies complicated computing tasks. Brilliant Digital CEO Kevin Bermeister says computers or Internet connections wont be used without their owners permission. But the company will nevertheless have access to millions of computers at once, almost as easily as turning on a light switch.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-873181.html

A Collection of Discards.com

It was one thing to have your embarrassing love letter read aloud to the class in elementary school. Its a far different situation when its published on the Internet without your knowledge or consent. Yet that is the premise of a growing number of online "found object" websites, whose amateur creators are mining the worlds gutters for intriguing scraps of paper and strange discarded photographs. Their discoveries are posted online, sometimes with commentary; other times, simply bagged like evidence and labeled "artifact."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51307,00.html