Genral Web Comments
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Bigelow's Gamble
Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Bigelow's Gamble: "Bigelow's Gamble
PUBLISHED IN AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY
RE-PRINTED HERE WITH PERMISSION
Posted: September 27, 2004
It's a high-stakes game to develop commercial inflatable space modules while proposing a $50-million prize for a new piloted spacecraft to service them
BY CRAIG COVAULT/LAS VEGAS
The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company's heavily guarded facilities here."
nintendojo ~ a site to see
nintendojo ~ a site to see
DS Network & Warp Pipe Project
Since the dawn of this week, Chad Paulson and his Warp Pipe team, best known for their work tunneling GameCube games that feature LAN support, have been posting a deluge of cryptic images that hint at a big announcement to come in regards to a Nintendo DS project the team has been working on since early this year.
To get a better sense of what was going on, we conducted a brief interview with Chad this past Monday, though some other sites have since then done the same. Aside from the parties mentioned just below, we were, for a brief period, the only venue with any sort of timeline specifics. And though the cat may be ever so slightly “out of the bag”, we were able to supplement said “buzz” with a bit more than what we had on Monday. Moving right along...
Wired News: MP3 Creator Warns on Format Wars
Wired News: MP3 Creator Warns on Format Wars: "BERLIN -- Rival technologies that baffle consumers will run more companies out of business in the nascent music download market than will head-to-head competition, one of the lead creators of MP3 playback technology warned Wednesday.
'It has slowed the download business for sure, and it's doing the same for the gadget makers,' said Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of electronic media technologies at the Fraunhofer Institut in Ilemenau, Germany."
Wired News: Bush Team Prepares Net Assault
Wired News: Bush Team Prepares Net Assault: "For the millions of television viewers who tune in to the first presidential debate in Miami Thursday night, the event will probably seem scripted, familiar and maybe even cordial. And for good reason. The Republican and Democratic parties worked out detailed ground rules, all but promising that the televised debates will be uneventful.
But both campaigns plan to take off their gloves on the internet. In some respects, the real debate, or a better semblance of one, will take place in cyberspace."
Wired News: Diebold Loses Key Copyright Case
Wired News: Diebold Loses Key Copyright Case: "Students who sued Diebold Election Systems won their case against the voting machine maker on Thursday after a judge ruled that the company had misused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ordered the company to pay damages and fees. Lawyers for the students call the move a victory for free speech.
A judge for the California district court ruled that the company knowingly misrepresented that the students had infringed the company's copyright and ordered the company to pay damages and fees to two students and a nonprofit internet service provider, Online Policy Group."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - A page stolen more than 500 years ago from a celebrated Italian book of prayers has finally been recovered, the British Library says.
The illuminated page depicting the occupations of the month of October comes from the Sforza Book of Hours, one of the most lavish books of the Italian Renaissance and a treasured item in the national library's collection."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Britons have little interest in becoming famous or rich, with over half wishing instead for happiness for their children and world peace, according to a survey.
The poll of 1,000 people, commissioned by Disney, concluded that just four percent of Britons would choose fame as one of their top three wishes."
Wired News: Arnold Vetoes Privacy Bill
Wired News: Arnold Vetoes Privacy Bill: "A California bill protecting the privacy of internet and e-mail usage at work met the red veto pen of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday.
The would-be law, SB 1841, would have required the state's employers to provide 'clear and conspicuous' notice before electronically monitoring the e-mail or internet usage of employees. Not doing so would have become a misdemeanor in the California penal code."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research suggests that all patients who undergo angioplasty should receive cholesterol-lowering 'statin' drugs, such as Zocor and Lipitor.
The findings, which appear in the medical journal Heart, indicate that such therapy is equally beneficial for patients with stable angina or unstable angina. Both types of angina involve chest pain caused by a temporary drop in blood flow to the heart, but the symptoms are more predictable with the former."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - British and French pharmaceutical companies are racing ahead of their U.S. counterparts to develop new drugs containing marijuana to relieve pain and treat a wide range of illnesses because marijuana is illegal in the United States, scientific researchers said on Wednesday.
'The plant that nature gave us has significant potential therapeutic effects,' said Dr. Donald Abrams, professor of clinical medicine at the University of California-San Francisco and a marijuana researcher."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's children are getting fatter and need help from parents, schools, the government, advertisers and the food industry to get back in shape, a panel of experts said Thursday.
The report on childhood obesity from the Institute of Medicine paints a picture of children awash in a society that makes it difficult to exercise and eat right, from suburbs with no sidewalks to schools that sell sugary snacks in vending machines."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drugs in the same category as Merck & Co. Inc.'s withdrawn Vioxx painkiller will get close scrutiny to see if they also can cause heart attacks, U.S. regulators said on Thursday.
Vioxx is a COX-2 inhibitor, part of a family of drugs that were heralded as safer options to older medicines such as aspirin that can cause dangerous stomach bleeding. Some had even dubbed them 'super-aspirin.'"
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Changes to a gene involved in the regulation of body weight may contribute to weight gain in a very small number of obese individuals, new research reports.
Investigators found that people with these changes, or mutations, to the gene encoding the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) were much heavier than people who did not carry a mutation."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "ATLANTA (Reuters) - Most gay and bisexual men infected with HIV in the United States are taking steps to reduce the chances of passing on the deadly virus to their sex partners, according to a federal study released on Thursday.
A survey of 1,923 men who have sex with men found that 31 percent had abstained from sex with men in the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an article in its weekly morbidity and mortality report."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A mutation in the tiny channels that control calcium levels in a cell appears to be responsible for Timothy syndrome -- a rare disorder characterized by irregular heartbeats and autism, new research suggests.
The mutation results in continuous inward flow of calcium, suggesting that it may be possible to treat the syndrome with certain heart drugs that block calcium channels, lead author Dr. Igor Splawski, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues note in the scientific journal Cell."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although NebuChamber, a metal inhaler device, may deliver more aerosolized drug to children with asthma, it is no more effective than Aerochamber, a plastic device, at controlling asthma symptoms, new research shows.
The NebuChamber 'has gained wide acceptance among children with asthma,' Dr. Israel Amirav, of Seiff Hospital Safed, Israel, and colleagues write in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Moreover, NebuChamber has been shown to deliver a 'greater mass of aerosol' to the mouth compared with AeroChamber."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of people take them to stay healthy but scientists said on Friday that vitamin supplements do not protect against stomach and other cancers and may even make them worse.
An analysis of 14 trials of vitamins, or antioxidant, supplements involving more than 170,000 people showed no benefit against cancer of the stomach, esophagus, large bowel and pancreas."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Australian scientists have invented an electronic driver's assistant system, similar to the back-seat driver who forever points out road signs and warns against speeding.
'The Australian invention is part of a global effort to make drivers more aware of road signs, especially those concerned with safety,' New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "SEATTLE (Reuters) - An unusually large toxic bloom of algae, which could poison humans and taint shellfish, has been detected in the ocean off the northwest coast of Washington state, oceanographers said on Wednesday.
The algae, called pseudo-nitzschia, produce domoic acid, which can damage the areas of the brain used for memory and learning, causing permanent short-term memory loss. The toxin is lethal in higher doses."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Charles Darwin would have had to wait decades for his own 'natural selection' as a Nobel prize winner and Stephen Hawking might never get one, if his physics theories are not proved or widely accepted in his lifetime.
Scientists impatient for elevation to the ranks of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein should bear in mind next week, when the Nobel science prizes are announced, that it is often a theory worked out two or three decades earlier that earns the award worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.36 million)."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - An acne-like rash is good news for colon cancer patients because it shows that a targeted therapy for the disease is working, Belgian scientists said on Thursday.
They found that the severity of the rash corresponded to the patient's response to ImClone Systems Inc's drug Erbitux and to the length of their survival."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fossils from extinct dogs show why bigger is not better -- giant meat-eating animals died out because they relied too heavily on hunting other big animals, scientists reported on Thursday.
Smaller, quicker carnivores could vary their diet more, hunting small rodents and mixing in berries, roots and other food sources, said Blaire van Valkenburgh and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "SEATTLE (Reuters) - The number of small earthquakes at Mount St. Helens increased on Thursday while the volcano's lava crust shifted further, government scientists said, keeping the volcano's alert status at the second-highest level.
There is a 70 percent chance of an eruption or explosion of the volcano's lava crust within the next few days, said Willie Scott, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)."
Wired News: ID Rule Exists, But Can't Be Seen
Wired News: ID Rule Exists, But Can't Be Seen: "Government lawyers defending the identification requirement at the nation's airports from a lawsuit by privacy activist John Gilmore admitted in a new filing Wednesday that the requirement exists, but argued it cannot be challenged or seen in full because it is a law enforcement technique, not a law.
The lawsuit revolves around whether a rule exists that says passengers must show their ID to airline agents before boarding a plane. Gilmore is also trying to get the government to state exactly what the rule, if it exists, says. The government has refused to confirm that the requirement exists or show the exact wording. Justice Department lawyers offered in an earlier filing to show the rule to an appeals court judge in secret without Gilmore's lawyers present."
Wired News: Can't We All Just Get Along?
Wired News: Can't We All Just Get Along?: "CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The inventor of the World Wide Web told a technology conference on Wednesday that making the web more useful hinges on a familiar challenge: Getting the players behind the technology to agree on standards governing how computers communicate with one another.
That obstacle, which confronted the initial development of the web, looms large again in the nascent stages of what Tim Berners-Lee calls the 'Semantic Web,' an evolutionary process to make more kinds of data easier for computers to locate and process."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BERLIN (Reuters) - German Defence Minister Peter Struck has urged his British counterpart Geoffrey Hoon to commit the country to a second tranche of Eurofighter jets, a letter obtained by Reuters shows.
Struck said in the letter to Hoon, dated September 24, that with further delays German budget provisions for project could be lost."
Wired News: Stem Cell Debate Hits Senate
Wired News: Stem Cell Debate Hits Senate: "A U.S. senator tried unsuccessfully Wednesday at a Senate hearing to force a stem cell scientist to define when he believed a human embryo gained moral value.
The exchange came during a Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee hearing called by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to debate the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research."
Wired News: Bandwidth Glut Lives On
Wired News: Bandwidth Glut Lives On: "For those who thought the excesses of the dot-com boom all got washed away in the subsequent bust, the fiber-optic telecommunications industry has some disappointing news.
Prices for access along the vast expanses of long-haul fiber-optic networks built in the late 1990s and 2000 haven't finished falling to earth."
Wired News: Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections
Wired News: Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections: "An influential employee of voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems left the company recently to take a job as elections manager for a California county.
Deborah Seiler, a sales representative for the beleaguered voting company, was hired a week ago and started Monday in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco in California's wine country. The position puts her second in command of elections in the county, under the registrar of voters."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Women could be faster 100-metre sprinters than men by the 2156 Olympics, according to a study.
By the middle of the next century women may be leaving men in the dust and could, for the first time, beat them in the 100 metres.
If projections by scientists at Oxford University in England are correct, women will close the gender gap by clocking 8.079 seconds in the 100 metres, ahead of the best male time of 8.098 seconds. The current world record stands at 9.78 seconds."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Microsoft has told a judge that the European Commission must be stopped from ordering it to give up secret technology to competitors.
The software giant is seeking the suspension of penalties imposed on it for violating antitrust law by using its Windows operating system monopoly to hurt competitors."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BERLIN (Reuters) - Overpeer, an anti-piracy technology firm best known for flooding Internet file-sharing networks with bogus music and movie files, is expanding into Europe.
Overpeer said it will begin selling its content-spoofing services to European music companies through a venture with British music technology firm OD2. Overpeer and OD2 were acquired earlier this year by Seattle-based Loudeye."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - DVD recorders are getting cheaper and easier to use, but that may not be enough to spark demand for the sluggish selling devices.
Part of the problem is that customers have not yet been convinced of the value of the devices in relation to products like digital video recorders or even their home computers."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "MILAN (Reuters) - For Italian fashion guru Giorgio Armani, it's no crime for a woman to wear a burka.
'It's a question of respect for the convictions and culture of others. We need to live with these ideas, we need to learn how to do it,' Armani was quoted as saying by Italian newspapers on Tuesday."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BEIJING (Reuters) - Paternity tests are becoming increasingly common in China along with casual sex as suspicious husbands check on their wives' fidelity, a news agency says.
Applications for the DNA test, which in the West can cost hundreds of dollars, had risen 20 percent a year in one Beijing hospital, the state-run China News Service said."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "SPRING GREEN, Wisconsin (Reuters) - When it comes to presidential debates, it seems size does matter.
John Kerry, a 6-foot-4-inch Democrat, poked fun on Monday at George W. Bush, the 5-foot-11-inch Republican president for reportedly insisting that podiums be set far apart to offset his opponent's five-inch height advantage."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's state railway PKP is claiming compensation from a man who caused delays to its services by being run over by a train -- but said it may forgive the debt after learning the man's house had burned down.
'We are acting in accordance with article 415 of the Civil Code, seeking damages from a person who caused delays in rail traffic,' PKP spokesman Krzysztof Lancucki said on Monday."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Living in the suburbs may have once been part of the American dream but it can lead to nightmares such as high blood pressure, arthritis and headaches, researchers have reported."
The Daily Press - Ashland, Wisconsin
The Daily Press - Ashland, Wisconsin: "The U.S. Navy has announced that it will shut down the controversial Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) Communications System on September 30, ending operations at the Two ELF transmitter facilities located near Clam Lake and Michigan's Escanaba State Forest.
The announcement came Friday afternoon in a news release from the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. "
Tom's Hardware Guide: Tom's Hard News
Tom's Hardware Guide: Tom's Hard News: "Chicago (IL) - And you thought Google's 1-GByte Gmail was big: Hellacious Riders, an online motorcycle magazine, announced that it launched a 100-GByte Email service to its users. The firm extended its offer with a challenge to THG readers for a 1000 GByte account."
XYZ Computing- Slashdot Edition
XYZ Computing- Slashdot Edition: "In retrospect, this letter should be of no surprise to you. For years now I have stood by you despite the terrible things people have said. We have always managed to work through our serious problems but too many things have been swept under the table. I do not think I can stand (idly) by you any longer. "(PDF)
Welcome to Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg
Welcome to Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg: "Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or etexts) on the Internet. Our collection of more than 12.000 eBooks was produced by hundreds of volunteers. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works that are in the public domain in the United States. All may be freely downloaded and read, and redistributed for non-commercial use (for complete details, see the license page)."
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Filmfodder: Mel Brooks: Spaceballs Will Return
Filmfodder: Mel Brooks: Spaceballs Will Return: "It's been 17 years since 'Spaceballs' took aim at 'Star Wars,' but the Schwarts is still strong with writer/director Mel Brooks. Strong enough, in fact, that Brooks is penning a 'Spaceballs' sequel."
Filmfodder: Mel Brooks: Spaceballs Will Return
Filmfodder: Mel Brooks: Spaceballs Will Return: "It's been 17 years since 'Spaceballs' took aim at 'Star Wars,' but the Schwarts is still strong with writer/director Mel Brooks. Strong enough, in fact, that Brooks is penning a 'Spaceballs' sequel."
Monday, September 27, 2004
Technology Review: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Technology Review: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Creating the world wide web didn’t make Tim Berners-Lee instantly rich or famous. In part, that’s because the Web sprang from relatively humble technologies. Berners-Lee’s invention was based on an information retrieval program called Enquire (named after a Victorian book, Enquire Within upon Everything), which he wrote in 1980 as a contract programmer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. In part, it’s because Berners-Lee did the unthinkable when, more than a decade later, he finished writing the tools that defined the Web’s basic structure: he gave them away, with CERN’s blessing, no strings attached. While others made millions off his invention, the soft-spoken programmer went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT, which he still directs, to promote global Web standards and development.
USATODAY.com - Spy imagery agency watching inside U.S.
USATODAY.com - Spy imagery agency watching inside U.S.
BETHESDA, Md. — In the name of homeland security, America's spy imagery agency is keeping a close eye, close to home. It's watching America. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, about 100 employees of a little-known branch of the Defense Department called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency — and some of the country's most sophisticated aerial imaging equipment — have focused on observing what's going on in the United States.
Telegraph | News | British firm finds the nuclear industry's 'holy grail'
Telegraph | News | British firm finds the nuclear industry's 'holy grail': "A British company claims to have found the 'holy grail' of the nuclear energy industry - a solution to the problem of radioactive waste disposal.
Travel
Amec, the London company that cleaned up Ground Zero in New York and rebuilt the Pentagon after the September 11 attacks, says that its latest process will enable nuclear waste to be stored safely for 200,000 years - longer than the radioactivity will last."
The Case for Open Source/Closed Standards
The Case for Open Source/Closed Standards: "There's been some debate recently on the license-discuss list hosted by the OSI on how to release code as open source while still requiring that it be compatible with a test suite that must be distributed as part of the code."
Sunday, September 26, 2004
The View From Symantec's Security Central (washingtonpost.com)
The View From Symantec's Security Central (washingtonpost.com): "The View From Symantec's Security Central
By Leslie Walker
Thursday, January 9, 2003; Page E01
An ordinary office building on Route 1 in Alexandria offers a rare window into the Internet hacker wars and a few clues to why Uncle Sam wants more monitoring capabilities in cyberspace."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Suddenly the darkened room seemed intensely cold, some people felt a sense of presence and others were so terrified they had to leave.
But then, nothing.
Four reconstructions of Victorian era seances, with people sitting around a table holding hands in the dark, at the Dana Centre of the Science Museum failed to produce a single paranormal experience, a leading psychologist said on Friday."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Foreign prostitutes in the Netherlands are to be excluded from new rules that allow foreigners who are specialists in their fields to work in the country without a permit, the government says."
NSLU2
: "In my previous article, I showed how to get a command prompt on the NSLU2 by using a hidden option and editing the password file in an external system. In this article, we'll continue exploring the box with the goal of adding new functions to make it even more useful."
TomsNetworking
TomsNetworking: "When I first read the review of the new Linksys Network Storage Unit device (NSLU2) I was definitely interested. It looked to be small, silent, inexpensive and flexible enough to provide backup and file storage to my network."
Linksys: NSLU2 - Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives
Linksys: NSLU2 - Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives: "Now you can quickly and easily add gigabytes of storage space onto your network with the Network Storage Link from Linksys. This tiny network appliance connects USB 2.0 hard drives directly to your Ethernet network. You can connect up to two stand-alone USB disk drives of any size, and access them from anywhere on your network. You can even plug a USB flash disk into the Network Storage Link, for a convenient way of accessing your portable data files. The Network Storage Link can also be set up so that your storage devices are accessible from the Internet -- files can be easily downloaded via your web browser. Your files can be available publicly, or create password-protected accounts for authorized users."
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail: "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project.
The project, which is believed to the first of its kind in North America, could be cooling significant parts of the downtown by the time the heat and humidity hits Toronto next summer."
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail: "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project.
The project, which is believed to the first of its kind in North America, could be cooling significant parts of the downtown by the time the heat and humidity hits Toronto next summer."
GPSTk, the GPS Toolkit
GPSTk, the GPS Toolkit: "The GPSTk provides both fundamental and advanced GPS processing algorithms to the open source community. A wide array of functions are provided by the GPSTk library, notably: RINEX I/O, ephemeris calculation, atmospheric refraction models, and positioning algorithms. GPSTk applications provided more concrete benefits to the user, including: cycle slip detection and removal, calculation of the Total Electron Content (TEC) of the ionosphere, and RINEX file manipulation."
Yahoo clamps down on Claria adware | CNET News.com
Yahoo clamps down on Claria adware | CNET News.com: "Yahoo strengthened its new anti-spyware application to detect pop-up advertising software, including that of its longtime partner Claria, formerly known as Gator."
Bloom Filters - the math
Bloom Filters - the math: "A Bloom filter is a method for representing a set $A = \{a_1, a_2, \ldots, a_n\}$ of n elements (also called keys) to support membership queries. It was invented by Burton Bloom in 1970 [6] and was proposed for use in the web context by Marais and Bharat [37] as a mechani sm for identifying which pages have associated comments stored within a CommonKnowledge server."
The New York Times> Search> Abstract
The New York Times> Search> Abstract: "DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF WORDS - At 89, Paul A. Samuelson, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, still seems to have plenty of intellectual edge and the ability to antagonize and amuse. ... His dissent from the mainstream economic consensus about outsourcing and globalization will appear later this month..."
TomsNetworking
TomsNetworking: "In my previous article, I showed how to get a command prompt on the NSLU2 by using a hidden option and editing the password file in an external system. In this article, we'll continue exploring the box with the goal of adding new functions to make it even more useful."
Deep Lake Water Cooling System
Deep Lake Water Cooling System
Enwave and the City of Toronto have created an innovative cooling system that brings an alternative to conventional air conditioning to cool Toronto's downtown core — one that is clean, price competitive and energy efficient. A permanent layer of icy-cold (4°C) water 83 meters below the surface of Lake Ontario provides naturally cold water. This water is the renewable source of energy that Enwave's leading-edge technology uses to cool office towers, sports & entertainment complexes and proposed waterfront developments.
Linux on the NSLU2
Linux on the NSLU2: "I'm using this page is to collect information on the Linksys NSLU2. It's a tiny Linux-based network storage device that can be had for less than $100. This device appears to have a lot more potential than the stock firmware allows. Let's see what we can do with it."
RPOW - Reusable Proofs of Work
RPOW - Reusable Proofs of Work: "I'd like to invite members of this list to try out my new hashcash-based server, rpow.net. This system receives hashcash as a Proof of Work (POW) token, and in exchange creates RSA-signed tokens which I call Reusable Proof of Work (RPOW) tokens. RPOWs can then be transferred from person to person and exchanged for new RPOWs at each step. Each RPOW or POW token can only be used once but since it gives birth to a new one, it is as though the same token can be handed from person to person."
ELEVATOR PITCH
ELEVATOR PITCH: "LOAF is a simple extension to email that lets you append your entire address book to outgoing mail message without compromising your privacy. Correspondents can use this information to prioritize their mail, and learn more about their social networks. The LOAF home page is at http://loaf.cantbedone.org."
ELEVATOR PITCH
ELEVATOR PITCH: "LOAF is a simple extension to email that lets you append your entire address book to outgoing mail message without compromising your privacy. Correspondents can use this information to prioritize their mail, and learn more about their social networks. The LOAF home page is at http://loaf.cantbedone.org."
Black Magic - Americas Cup 2003
Black Magic - Americas Cup 2003: "
BlackMagic
The BlackMagic experience is a virtual reality history lesson that comes to life out of the pages of real book. When users look at book pages through a handheld display they see virtual yachting content that tells the America's Cup story. New technology is used so that computer graphics can appear overlaid on video of the real world. As the picture below shows users can see virtual boats popping out of real book pages in front of them."
The New York Times > Magazine > Going Way Off-Road
The New York Times > Magazine > Going Way Off-Road: "The world has never been kind to flying-car dreamers like Henry Smolinski, who died in 1973 when his Ford Pinto with the welded-on Cessna wings crashed; or Paul Moller, who balances work on his multiengine Batmobile with life-extension experiments so he will still be alive when Skycars fill the skies over Los Angeles; or Rafi Yoeli, who built CityHawk in the living room of his second-floor apartment and had to remove a wall to get it out."
Saturday, September 25, 2004
PhysicsWeb - News - Law-breaking liquid defies the rules (September 2004)
PhysicsWeb - News - Law-breaking liquid defies the rules (September 2004): "Physicists in France have discovered a liquid that 'freezes' when it is heated. Marie Plazanet and colleagues at the Universit� Joseph Fourier and the Institut Laue-Langevin, both in Grenoble, found that a simple solution composed of two organic compounds becomes a solid when it is heated to temperatures between 45 and 75�C, and becomes a liquid when cooled again. The team says that hydrogen bonds are responsible for this novel behaviour (M Plazanet et al. 2004 J. Chem. Phys 121 5031)."
Thursday, September 23, 2004
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > From Storage, a New Fashion
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > From Storage, a New Fashion: "TOWARD the end of the latest Tom Cruise thriller, 'Collateral,' the story's action turns on the performance of a player new to most movie audiences. For a suspense-charged moment Mr. Cruise and his co-star, Jamie Foxx, are upstaged by a silvery finger of portable storage technology."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Some Mexican churches are using state-of-the-art technology developed by Israeli electronic warfare experts to silence cell phones that ring during mass, church officials said on Tuesday.
Four churches in the northern city of Monterrey, which lies some two hours by car south of the Texas border, are using equipment made by Israeli telecoms equipment firm Netline Communications Technologies to block incoming calls during services."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium's Option OPIN.BR said on Wednesday it would launch a new wireless data card targeted at the U.S. market in November.
Option, whose products allow laptop computers to connect to the Internet through mobile telephone networks, said the new card accessed EDGE/GPRS networks common in the United States."
Wired News: Hack Attack Gums Up Authorize.Net
Wired News: Hack Attack Gums Up Authorize.Net: "Hackers have crippled one of the internet's biggest credit card processors, and tens of thousands of online merchants are losing business while the company struggles to recover.
Since last Wednesday, Authorize.Net has been relentlessly pounded by distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks. The massive, coordinated waves of internet traffic have repeatedly overwhelmed the company's servers. Authorize.Net's customers have had to improvise: Some are confirming their credit card orders over the phone, others have gone with little or no sales for nearly a week."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Glaciers once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica are now sliding off into the sea -- and they are going fast, scientists said on Tuesday.
Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA show the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Australian scientists have discovered how a naturally morphine-free poppy blocks production of the narcotic, in a finding that could lead to the development of more effective drugs.
The opium poppy is the source of codeine, morphine and other analgesics, as well as opium and heroin. But the mutant poppy known as top1 produces neither morphine nor codeine."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BERLIN (Reuters) - A German telecommunications company says it is developing the first mobile phone that will alert users when their breath is bad or if they are giving off offensive smells.
The phone will use a tiny chip measuring less than one millimetre to detect unpleasant odours, a spokeswoman for Siemens Mobile said on Tuesday. A research team in the southern city of Munich is developing the device using new sensor technology."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Sniffer rescue dogs trained to find explosives or earthquake survivors buried in rubble may soon have some competition -- rats.
The rodents can crawl into the tiniest spaces and have a strong sense of smell.
'This combination makes them ideal candidates for sniffing out buried survivors,' New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "BERLIN (Reuters) - Trains on a busy German route were delayed for four hours after a train driver hit the emergency brake fearing a man next to the tracks was trying to kill himself -- but he was only picking blackberries."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "One of Britain's leading psychologists will be recreating Victorian-era seances on Thursday in a bid to unlock the secrets of the physic world.
Members of the public can participate in the event at the Dana Centre at the Science Museum in London and decide for themselves if it is based on fear, trickery or if a real contact with the spirit world is made."
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
IBM Research | Resources | News | IBM scientists demonstrate single-atom magnetic measurements
IBM Research | Resources | News | IBM scientists demonstrate single-atom magnetic measurements: "SAN JOSE, Calif. (Sept. 9, 2004) -- IBM scientists have measured a fundamental magnetic property of a single atom -- the energy required to flip its magnetic orientation. This is the first result by a promising new technique they developed to study the properties of nanometer-scale magnetic structures that are expected to revolutionize future information technologies."
MP3 Insider: The Secret Behind the iPod's Scrollwheel
MP3 Insider: The Secret Behind the iPod's Scrollwheel: "There are many reasons to like the iPod, but to me, the most compelling one is the scrollwheel. There's never been anything better for negotiating the prodigious amounts of music that we're lucky enough to be able to fit into our pockets these days. The scrollwheel has been through three iterations. The first one actually rotated; then there was the touch-sensitive one; and finally there's the clickable one found on the iPod Mini and fourth-generation iPod. I'd always assumed that this bit of design genius sprung from Apple's R&D labs, but, in fact, I discovered that a company called Synaptics, which primarily makes touchpads for laptops, actually perfected this little piece of navigational heaven, in accordance with Apple's stringent design requirements."
BBspot - Which OS Are You?
BBspot - Which OS Are You?: "Take this quiz to find out which OS most matches your personality. You need to answer all the questions to get an accurate result."
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Wired News: Quick Read on Your Genetics
Wired News: Quick Read on Your Genetics
TAGCTAAGTCGGATT … the readout tells the story of your genetic makeup, and it will soon tell you what genes you carry, what mutations there are and whether you should be worried. Right now, you’re worried.
Each letter represents one of the genetic bases -– adenine (A), thymine (T) cytosine (C) and guanine (G). Add the letters together and, eventually, you get the story of your genetic life. You can’t skip to the last chapter to find out how it ends, but this test will give you a peek at some of the characters -- the genes -- that may play a role.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Wired News: What to Eat on the Way to Mars
Wired News: What to Eat on the Way to Mars: "Thirty-five years ago on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin busted open one small meal for man -- foil packets containing roasted turkey and all the trimmings -- while kids at home slurped Tang in solidarity.
That mission lasted only nine days. Now, food scientists are working out ways to feed astronauts on a mission to Mars that will last years."
Wired News: TB May Be Global Threat Again
Wired News: TB May Be Global Threat Again: "WASHINGTON -- Super drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis are at the tipping point of a global epidemic, and only small changes are needed to help them spread quickly, U.S. researchers predicted Sunday.
Two separate studies show that multiple-drug-resistant TB, which can only be cured with a carefully monitored cocktail of drugs taken for months on end, could easily start spreading more commonly."
Wired News: Back to School and Gaming, Kids
Wired News: Back to School and Gaming, Kids: "LOS ANGELES -- Back to school for many kids means 'back to internet access' in classes where the best of filtering software is not foolproof, particularly against seemingly harmless websites used for invasive marketing.
Internet-ready schools generally provide an 'acceptable use policy' to parents and students that outlines net etiquette and safeguards against access to inappropriate websites. But little is formally being done to shield kids in school or at home from 'immersive advertising' or corporate-sponsored 'advergames' such as the Neopets website, which contains loads of embedded advertising messages and links to merchandise."
Wired News: Nothing Robotic About Robo-Art
Wired News: Nothing Robotic About Robo-Art: "NEW YORK -- For 18 hours, robots invaded Harlem, but they came in peace.
The third annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show was held in New York City this past weekend, and showcased some of the best and most creative applications of modern robotics that make or are themselves art."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Police said on Monday they have arrested a 20-year-old British man on suspicion of stealing Cisco Systems CSCO.O source code, the basic instructions for the machines that direct Internet traffic across the globe.
The man, who was not identified, was arrested on Sept. 3 following raids on two houses in the Greater Manchester region and Derbyshire in central England, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said on Monday.
"
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Video game giant Electronic Arts expects to sell 2 million units of the 'Sims 2' video game this year in Europe, proving skeptics wrong that you can't build a market around female gamers.
EA's head of European publishing, Gerhard Florin, told Reuters on Monday that it sold 25 percent of the 1.3 million 'Sims 2' units it started shipping in Europe last week, with supplies available to meet expected strong demand this Christmas season."
Wired News: Papers Defend Classified Turf
Wired News: Papers Defend Classified Turf: "Last year, more than $24 billion in goods were sold on eBay. While that signifies that more people have an easy way to sell all manner of goods, newspapers are watching their classifieds business get slowly eaten away."
Wired News: Papers Defend Classified Turf
Wired News: Papers Defend Classified Turf: "Last year, more than $24 billion in goods were sold on eBay. While that signifies that more people have an easy way to sell all manner of goods, newspapers are watching their classifieds business get slowly eaten away."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "PARIS (Reuters) - French director Claude Lelouch says he is 150,000 euros (102,000 pounds) out of pocket after footing the bill for an evening of free screenings of his latest film.
But he said on Monday the film had won standing ovations and that he had achieved the aim he set when agreeing to pay for anyone across France who went to watch 'Les Parisiens' (The Parisians) last Friday -- proving wrong critics who have panned the film."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - The creator of one of the world's most famous guns, the AK-47 assault rifle, has launched another weapon -- Kalashnikov vodka."
Make Home Page
Make Home Page: "Make brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will."
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Old computers good as new in Linux labs - The Honolulu Advertiser - Hawaii's Newspaper
Old computers good as new in Linux labs - The Honolulu Advertiser - Hawaii's Newspaper: "As pressure mounts to meet state-mandated educational technology standards, some Hawai'i schools with limited budgets are getting updated computer labs at a fraction of the typical costs. "
Technology can help fight the growing cyberextortion threat, but experts say not enough companies are prepared
It's the kind of E-mail that grabs you by the collar and doesn't let go. On a Saturday afternoon last January, a message hit the in-box of BetCBSports.com, threatening to knock the online gambling site offline in prime sports-betting season if the company didn't pay up.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Wired News: Five Fired at Los Alamos Lab
Wired News: Five Fired at Los Alamos Lab: "ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Five workers have been fired for their roles in a security and safety scandal at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the lab's director said Wednesday.
The fired workers were among 23 suspended this summer after two computer disks containing classified information went missing. The discovery July 7 prompted a virtual shutdown of the nuclear lab, idling roughly 12,000 workers."
Wired News: Don't Mess With Librarians
Wired News: Don't Mess With Librarians: "Jessamyn West is a 36-year-old librarian living in central Vermont. But she's not your stereotypical bespectacled research maven toiling behind a reference desk and offering expert advice on microfiche.
She's a 'radical librarian' who has embraced the hacker credo that 'information wants to be free.' As a result, West and many of her colleagues are on the front lines in battling the USA Patriot Act, which a harried Congress passed a month after 9/11 even though most representatives hadn't even read the 300-page bill. It gave the government sweeping powers to pursue the 'war on terror' but at a price: the loss of certain types of privacy we have long taken for granted."
Wired News: Another Patch Job From Microsoft
Wired News: Another Patch Job From Microsoft: "SEATTLE -- Microsoft released a patch for its latest 'critical' rated security flaw affecting its Windows, Office and developer tools software programs, the company said Tuesday.
Separately, the world's largest software maker was dealt a setback after the Internet Engineering Task Force decided not to adopt Microsoft's e-mail sender ID standard that would make it easier for internet service providers to block unwanted junk e-mail."
Wired News: Pentagon Revives Memory Project
Wired News: Pentagon Revives Memory Project: "It's been seven months since the Pentagon pulled the plug on LifeLog, its controversial project to archive almost everything about a person. But now, the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program under a new name.
Using a series of sensors embedded in a GI's gear, the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology, or ASSIST, project aims to collect what a soldier sees, says and does in a combat zone -- and then to weave those events into digital memories, so commanders can have a better sense of how the fight unfolded."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "OSLO (Reuters) - The world should crack down further on the use of the pesticide methyl bromide which is damaging the ozone layer, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said on Thursday.
UNEP chief Klaus Toepfer said in a statement that there were 'significant knowledge gaps' on the worldwide usage of methyl bromide, which is meant to be phased out in farming under a U.N. pact to help repair the ozone layer."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "OSLO (Reuters) - Mussels have been found growing on the seabed just 800 miles from the North Pole in a likely sign of global warming, scientists said on Friday.
The blue mussels, which normally favor warmer waters like off France or the eastern United States, were discovered last month off Norway's Svalbard archipelago in waters that are covered with ice most of the year."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deaf children thrown together in a school in Nicaragua without any type of formal instruction invented their own sign language -- a sophisticated system that has evolved and grown, researchers reported on Friday.
Their observations show that children, not adults, are key to the evolution and development of language, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "NARRABRI Australia (Reuters) - Australia has started battling its biggest plague of locusts in decades as billions of the insects hatch along a wide front covering much of the country's central east region.
Ground spraying will be stepped up from next week as dusty, scrubby fields crawl with the quarter-inch hopping baby insects, New South Wales Plague Locust Commissioner Graeme Eggleston told Reuters."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Friday they have invented an antenna that captures visible light in much the same way that radio antennas capture radio waves.
They say the device, using tiny carbon nanotubes, might serve as the basis for an optical television or for converting solar energy into electricity once properly developed."
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Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish man tried to have his wife charged with domestic abuse because she refused to have sex with him on five consecutive days, Spanish newspaper El Sur has reported.
The middle-aged man from Seville -- the city of Don Juan and Carmen -- said her refusals amounted to 'degrading treatment' and domestic abuse, a term used more often to describe wife-battering."
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "
LONDON (Reuters) - Whether it's ice cream and chips, garlic on crackers or brown sauce on everything, nearly 60 percent of pregnant women admit to having weird cravings.
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