Lego Enterprise - D

Alright, Im a dork. By sticking this project out on the Web Im coming out of the closet, so to speak. Im a classically trained geek-boy who has only enjoyed the company of women by the sheer grace of God. I might not be willing to touch a sci-fi convention with a 10-foot pole, but this work of dork-art more than makes up for it. But Im not here to tell you about my psychological issues. Im here cause of this beauty. The Concept Having perused LUGnet and Brickshelf many times in the past, I was very, very surprised to find that not a single person has ever completed a project quite like this. Legos? Star Trek? Hell, it was a matter of time. I guess I was the chosen one. The idea itself was not all that revolutionary. One day, bored, I asked myself: "If every floor of the Enterprise were one Lego-plate high, how big would that model get?" The answer was Pretty big, though as fate would have it, not so big that I was deterred from attempting the feat.
http://homepage.mac.com/happywaffle/enterprise.html

Test Your PC For Parasites

There are a lot of dodgy programs out there that may get installed on users computers without their knowledge or consent. Many applications described as "freeware" come infested with parasitic software that latches onto the web browser, provides little or no benefit to the user and can:

plague the user with unwanted advertising (adware);

add advertising links to web pages, for which the author does not get paid, and hijack affiliate-program payments (scumware);

watch everything the user does on-line and send information back to marketing companies (spyware);

leave security holes whereby arbitrary code can be executed on the users computer (typically this is used to allow the program to update itself);

if the software does not make proper use of cryptographic authentication, it could be possible for hackers as well as the responsible company to execute arbitrary code;

degrade system performance and cause errors thanks to being badly-written.
So be careful what you install - you may be getting more than you bargained for!
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/

Financial Trends For Next 5 Years - Maybe

Weve talked to some of the worlds brightest economists and forecasters to isolate the trends that can make you money ? or save you money ? over the next five years. Forecasting, of course, is a notoriously tricky business (who, back in 1997, could have foreseen the rocket-like ascent of the Nasdaq or its subsequent sickening plunge?) and we dont pretend our crystal ball is infallible. But what this five-year outlook can do is to provide you with a way of thinking through some of the major themes of the years ahead.
http://www.moneysense.ca/investing/stocks_markets/article.jsp;jsessionid=MNFGMEHFPJGI?content=20021111_132331_3296

File-Swapping Will Rule

In essence, say the researchers, file-swapping systems have already won. The only way for music companies to compete is on the same terms by making music easy to get hold of and cheap to buy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2502399.stm

Fractal Nature Of DNA

The second stunner was how much human genetic material -- more than 90 percent -- is made up of what scientists were calling "junk DNA." The term was coined to describe similar but not completely identical repetitive sequences of nucleotides (the same substances that make genes), which appeared to have no function or purpose. The main theory at the time was that these apparently non-working sections of DNA were just evolutionary leftovers, much like our earlobes.
But if biophysicist Andras Pellionisz is correct, genetic science may be on the verge of yielding its third -- and by far biggest -- surprise...
...Rather than being useless evolutionary debris, he says, the mysteriously repetitive but not identical strands of genetic material are in reality building instructions organized in a special type of pattern known as a fractal. Its this pattern of fractal instructions, he says, that tells genes what they must do in order to form living tissue, everything from the wings of a fly to the entire body of a full-grown human.
Another way to describe the idea: The genes we know about today, Pellionisz says, can be thought of as something similar to machines that make bricks (proteins, in the case of genes), with certain junk-DNA sections providing a blueprint for the different ways those proteins are assembled.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/11/21/jnkdna.DTL

Nemisis Preview Online

iFilm has a preview of Star Trek Nemesis in WMP, Real and Quicktime formats, it is also recommended you view with a broadband connection. [ed. snip] All in all a nice piece of eye candy until the films release on December 13th." This is a long trailer with lots of spoilers - youve been warned.
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_multimedia/0,4470,2446644,00.html

Test Your Retro-knowledge

How good is your retro videogame knowledge? Ive taken screen captures of portions of classic arcade games. Some are easy, some are pretty obscure. If you can name all of these, you are a super videogame genius! Mail you answers to me at gamechallenge@retrocrush.com! And Ill mail the answer sheet back to you so you can see if youre right!
http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2/arcadepix/index.html

Good Pic Of The ISS

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0211/iss_sts112_big.jpg

Solaris Review

"(Soderbergh is) on the cusp of making the most provocative science-fiction film since 2001: A Space Odyssey," wrote a columnist at Aint It Cool News. But many purists dread the new Solaris, which stars George Clooney and will be released Nov. 27. They worry that Soderbergh will trample on two sacred sci-fi texts: the 1961 novel by Stanislaw Lem and the 1971 film by Andrei Tarkovsky.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56393,00.html

Brilliant Strong Bad Email

Farking hilarious!
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html

God Is The Machine

At todays rates of compression, you could download the entire 3 billion digits of your DNA onto about four CDs. That 3-gigabyte genome sequence represents the prime coding information of a human body ? your life as numbers. Biology, that pulsating mass of plant and animal flesh, is conceived by science today as an information process. As computers keep shrinking, we can imagine our complex bodies being numerically condensed to the size of two tiny cells. These micro-memory devices are called the egg and sperm. They are packed with information. That life might be information, as biologists propose, is far more intuitive than the corresponding idea that hard matter is information as well. When we bang a knee against a table leg, it sure doesnt feel like we knocked into information. But thats the idea many physicists are formulating. The spooky nature of material things is not new. Once science examined matter below the level of fleeting quarks and muons, it knew the world was incorporeal. What could be less substantial than a realm built out of waves of quantum probabilities? And what could be weirder? Digital physics is both. It suggests that those strange and insubstantial quantum wavicles, along with everything else in the universe, are themselves made of nothing but 1s and 0s. The physical world itself is digital.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/holytech.html

Lost Douglas Adams Dr Who Revived

A legendary Doctor Who episode written by the late cult author Douglas Adams is to get its first showing next year - 24 years after it was shelved. The episode, called Shada, was described as "the greatest Doctor Who story never shown" and began filming in 1979 but production was halted by industrial action. Following several false starts in attempting to bring it back, the drama will finally be premiered in a webcast on BBCi in the spring.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2477373.stm

Mirror Matter?

Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System. Dr Robert Foot and Dr Saibal Mitra, of the University of Melbourne, report that close-up observations of the asteroid Eros by the Near-Shoemaker probe indicate it has been splattered by so-called "mirror matter". Mirror matter is not anti-matter, it is altogether weirder. It is somehow a "reflection" of normal matter, a sort of parallel series of particles required to restore the balance of the Universe. Sounds far-fetched - some believe so. However, experiments are underway to confirm or deny the existence of this strange, potentially significant but as yet undetected component of the cosmos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2463143.stm

Great Quotes Site

"The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all." In other words, - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporations Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
-Douglas Adams"
http://www.faisal.com/quotes/a.html

US To Stimulate Terrorist Activity -- So They Can Respond To It

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sundays Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came the revelation of Rumsfelds plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html

Spyware In Bearshare & Others

"OnFlow - Installed by BearShare among others. The company that makes this beastie describes its purpose fairly well on its own :) It is a browser plug-in designed specifically to display advertising, usually of the large, loud and flashing variety. SaveNow (WhenUShop) - Installed by BearShare among others. Put quickly, an advertising toolbar that monitors what sites you visit and pops up sponsored "deals" when products/shopping/etc. appears on those sites. Microsoft provides removal instructions."
http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm

The Economics Of Spam

The sun was setting on Laura Betterlys six-bedroom house as she reviewed a pair of outgoing e-mail messages one last time. Satisfied, she moved her cursor to the "send" icon and clicked."Its that simple," Ms. Betterly said triumphantly, swiping her palms. She had just dispatched e-mail messages to 500,000 strangers. Half saw the subject line: "Dont miss your chance to win 2002 Lexus RX300." The other half saw: "Win a trip to Nascar!"Ms. Betterlys messages joined the roughly two billion other unsolicited commercial e-mails that hit in-boxes around the world every day. The company she runs from her home, Data Resource Consulting Inc., sends out as many as 60 million such messages a month. That puts the 41-year-old single mother in the most hated breed on the Internet. She sends spam."Im just trying to make a living like everyone else," says Ms. Betterly. Her e-mail marketing operation, she says, allows her to raise her children, Chris, 10, and Craig, 11, and to spend quality time with them. "You can call me spam queen, I dont really care. As long as Im not breaking any laws, you dont have to love me or like what I do for a living."
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB1037138679220447148,00.html

Classic Computing Mags Archive Online

The Classic Computer Magazine Archive serves up the full text from old compter mags: three years of Creative Computing plus every issue of Antic, STart, and Hi-Res. Theres also a bit of text from Compute! and Compute!s Gazette. Everything is there with permission from the publishers.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/

How Online Broadcasters Are Coping With Streaming Fees

In response to fees that could force webcasters to pay thousands to the recording industry, hundreds of stations have already pulled the plug, and ten thousand more worry they may soon have to follow suit. The DMCA stipulated that online radio would not be governed by same rules as traditional radio, where broadcasters pay a very small portion of their revenue to music publishers, but nothing directly to the recording industry. When no agreement on the new rates could be reached between industry and webcasters, a government copyright panel responsible for the issue set the fees at $1.40 per song heard by one thousand listeners. It seems small, but it adds up to thousands per year for small stations, and well into the five figures for a good many others. Even under amended legislation, now in limbo during the mid-term U.S. elections, webcasters would be stuck paying a percentage of their revenue to the recording industry, with a minimum fee of $500 per year.
http://www.shift.com/content/web/422/1.html

Galileo Shuts Down Due To Radiation

The aging Jupiter probe Galileo has completed its last scientific assignment, making its first flights past a tiny Jovian moon and deep into the planets high-radiation inner magnetosphere.But the harsh radiation it was exposed to as it neared Jupiters surface caused the spacecraft to shut down all its systems and enter a "safe-mode". The unique data gathered will only be retrieved if engineers can determine the necessary commands to revive the battered probe.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993025

Whats So Bad About Microsoft?

"OK, I know a lot of people are saying Microsofts bad, and they were taken to court for something. But, like, why?" If thats you, then you need to read this story right away. After all, not everyone who visits this site knows what makes Microsoft so bad. So we dropped a line to Timothy Macinta, the author of this very informative piece from KMFMS.com, and he delivered. Even if youre a battle-hardened warrior against the Redmond army, youll probably learn things here that you didnt know. Educate yourself.
http://www.fuckmicrosoft.com/

Chandra Captures Martian X-Rays

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured the first images of Mars taken at x-ray wavelengths. The Martian radiation is created in a process similar to the way light is created in fluorescent bulbs. X-rays from the Sun collide with oxygen atoms in the thin Martian atmosphere, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) above the surface. The solar photons excite an oxygen electron, bumping it up to a higher energy level. The excited electron quickly returns to its base energy level, emitting another x-ray in the process, which are what Chandra imaged. Fluorescent lights use ultraviolet radiation instead of x-rays. Images This remarkable Chandra image gave scientists their first look at X-rays from Mars. In the sparse upper atmosphere of Mars, about 120 (75 miles) kilometers above its surface, the observed X-rays are produced by fluorescent radiation from oxygen atoms. CREDIT: NASA/CXC/MPE/K.Dennerl et al. More Stories Mars to Get Closer than Ever in Recorded History in 2003 Where is Mars Now? Why a Mars Rock Hits Earth Every Month Ghosts of Impacts Past: Ancient Hidden Craters on Mars Revealed Solving the Mysteries of Mars Reveals More Chandra also detected x-ray emissions in a 4,350-mile (7,000-kilometer) ring around Mars. Researchers suspect that these photons are created in a similar way as solar x-rays excite electrons in oxygen and hydrogen atoms that have escaped Mars atmosphere.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/chandra_mars_021108.html

Mitnicks Lost Chapter Found

Chapter One appeared only in about 300 unbound galley copies that publishing company Wiley distributed to the media several months before releasing the book, according to a Wiley spokeswoman. The publisher decided to remove the chapter shortly before releasing the book. Wiley representatives were unable to comment immediately on why the chapter was pulled. The chapter contains the first recounting by Mitnick of his life as a hacker and a fugitive, as well as his arrest, trial and life in prison.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56187,00.html

Galactic Center Research

In Natures 17 Oct 2002 issue (get article) we report on having observed 2/3 of a complete orbit of the star currently closest to the enigmatic radio source Sagittarius A*, which is thought to mark the location of our Milky Ways massive central black hole. As explained below, this orbit provides overwhelming evidence that SgrA* is indeed a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses. Figures 1,2, and 4 on this page are taken from the article in Nature. See the star S2 swing around the black hole in this movie.
http://www.mpe.mpg.de/www_ir/GC/intro.html

Play Doom On Your Cell Phone

Play the classic first-person shooter now on your Nokia 7650!Take control of a lone marine in 9 levels of intense arcade action.
http://www.wildpalm.co.uk/Doom7650.html