More Signal, Less Noise
Monday, February 21, 2005
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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 11, Issue 07 Monday, February 21, 2005
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NETSURFER LINKS
 BREAKING SURF
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BREAKING SURF There's bad news for creationists and intelligent design proponents coming out of the labs these days. Quietly, over the years, a research team at Michigan State University's Digital Evolution Laboratory (Devolab) has been developing an increasingly sophisticated demonstration of evolution and finding deep insight into just how it works. The organisms the team uses aren't organic, but computer code that can mutate and respond to changes in the environment. The computer program that runs this, Avida, is a test bed of life, one that can crank through generations fast enough for practical study, with each step available for examination. All the hallmarks of life's grand adventure, from simple chemicals to complex organisms, can be examined in minute detail. Perhaps most importantly, the Avida results confirm that complexity can develop step by step from simplicity, and that evolution often provides different and often unexpected adaptations with no predetermined channel or direction. Avida itself is freely available on the Internet and many collaborators are using it to set up their own experiments into the laws of life. Carl Zimmer's Discover cover story on the Avida experiments provides fascinating details about Devolab's ingenious project.Zimmer: http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2005/articles_2005_Avida.html Devolab: http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/ Avida: http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/software/avida/ Size matters - sample size, that is. The Durex condom company undertook the world's biggest ever survey of sex and the results are in. Some 350,000 people in 41 countries answered lots of nosey questions to satisfy the company's prurient interest in sexual practices and experience. We're willing to bet that at least some of the data in the resulting 18-page report will surprise you. Here you can find out not only how you personally stack up but how your country does as well. In terms of sexual frequency, France tops the list, although it's a close race up there in the stratosphere among the world's sexiest countries. The US and Canada occupy the safe middle of the road, well ahead of laggards like Sweden, Japan, and India. The most patient partners in terms of foreplay are, you'd never guess it, the British. The detailed survey is full of additional juicy info about such topics as the popularity and use of sexual turn-ons like watching pornography, props, and spanking. The Durex document also settles at last the vital question of what men prefer: breasts or bottoms, eyes or attitude - or all of the above.... http://www.durex.com/cm/GSS2004Results.asp?intMenuOpen=8 The Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions went into effect this week. The international treaty was worked out during the 1990s as a means to get industrialized countries to commit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990's levels by 2010, give or take two years. With the ratification by Russia late last year, the protocol passed the threshold for global ratification and went into force this week. The Kyoto Protocol does not yet hold any provisions for failure to make the targets and may never have any legal consequences. The BBC has a story and a short Q&A about the treaty, which you can also read for yourself. Mapleleafweb has a superb summary of the entire process. Kyoto Protocol: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html BBC Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4267245.stm BBC Q&A: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4269921.stm Mapleleafweb: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/environment/kyoto/index.html Michael Jackson Grand Jury Transcripts As a tabloid story, the Michael Jackson child-molestation case is kind of on low simmer at the moment with legal maneuvering by prosecutors and the defense setting the stage for the biggest media trial frenzy since the OJ Simpson affair. That is not to say that intrepid reporters are not on the case, trying to unearth everything from the type of porn found in Jackson's house to the nicknames Jackson gave his young Neverland guests (Blowhole and Doo Doo Head, in this case). The Smoking Gun somehow got hold of 1,903 pages of secret transcripts of the grand jury sessions that wound up with Jackson's indictment on child molestation and conspiracy charges. This material is never supposed to see the light of day under US law and it's a fair bet that a massive Justice Department investigation is already on the way, but meanwhile the Smoking Gun has the transcripts and many other documents related to the Jackson case for the enjoyment of tabloid junkies everywhere.http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/021505mjgrandjury.html Lifehacker is a neat little blog from Gawker Media about gadgets, downloads, and services. The blog means to save hackers, even the most casual of hackers, time and effort. Are you the kind of person who downloaded Firefox to escape Internet Explorer? Do you use third-party browser toolbars? Do you research purchases on the Web? If so, Lifehacker, with its pleasant minimalist design, is for you. It claims to point only towards practical and useful items, but keep in mind its business model, which may skew coverage. Sony is reportedly paying $75,000 to be the blog's exclusive sponsor for three months. Dan Gillmor mentions Lifehacker and thinks this sole-sponsorship model will grow. Old friend of NSD, Chris "RageBoy" Locke, has also gone this route, and explains the whys and wherefores in his blog. Of course, by pointing to these sites we help make that business model work, but that's the price we pay for being practical and useful - oh, and entertaining too. Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Lifehacker: http://www.lifehacker.com/ Gillmor: http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/02/serious_ad_mone.html Locke: http://www.chiefbloggingofficer.com/2005_01_30_#110732714087874066 You either love H.P. Lovecraft and his stories or you just can't stand to read the guy. The Library of America has just published a volume of Lovecraft's stories, and Salon offers an article on Lovecraft's style and reputation, which extends far beyond the typical scope of a book review. One of the article's best insights is delivered by Stephen King, who observes that anyone who's uncertain as to their sexual identity should stay away from Lovecraft, who appears to have had a rather intolerant relationship with his own flesh. The Salon piece is not without humor, as it cherry-picks this quote from Lovecraft detractor Edmund Wilson: "Surely one of the primary rules for writing an effective tale of horror is never to use any of these words (hideous, monstrous, blasphemous) - especially if you are going, at the end, to produce an invisible whistling octopus." If you don't want to purchase Library of America's "H.P. Lovecraft: Tales", check out the H.P. Lovecraft Archive and the Works of H.P. Lovecraft for much of his work in digital form. Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/02/12/lovecraft/index_np.html H.P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.hplovecraft.com/ Works of H.P. Lovecraft: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/ Wrapping-conscious artist Christo and wife Jeanne-Claude return to the art scene. While previous work has involved draping a building or a bridge in gaudy fabrics, the target this time is New York's Central Park. Rather than covering the whole place, they've built fabric gates that run above the park's paths - 7,500 of them. The scale of the project is massive. The gates are made of extruded vinyl and steel, which is truer to their proclaimed format of environmental alteration than the wraps and fences they've erected in the past. Unfurling of the gates began Feb. 12. Better get there soon, though - the artwork will only be there for 16 days. Incredibly, the artists use their own money for these installations; they accept no grants or other funding - all funding to pay for the projects and the workforce necessary to erect them comes from the sale of art to private collectors. Flickr has a collection of snaps taken by visitors to the installation. Other cool views include a satellite photo from Space Imaging and QuickTime VR panoramas from Jimi Sweet. Gates: http://christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/thegates/ Space Imaging: http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/spacepics/central_park_12Feb05.jpg Sweet: http://www.jimisweet.com/blog/archives/2005/02/the_gates.tpl Billed as the world's largest gathering of security professionals, the RSA Conference is frequently a preview of technology designed to prevent digital attacks, which can range from phishing to a disgruntled employee walking off with a Mac mini. The conference attracts luminaries like Bill Gates, Cisco's John Chambers, and other major IT industry executives. This year's just ended, but you can register to view free webcasts of the keynote presentations and panels. Wired has a short piece that highlights three innovative products featured at the conference, including a phone-based system to prevent fraudulent online activities. CNET covered the conference with a raft of stories. RSA 2005: http://2005.rsaconference.com/us/ Wired: http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66647,00.html CNET: http://news.com.com/Security+means+business+at+RSA/2009-7355_3-5576160.html Demo is a convention of up and coming tech products, and the Demo@15 conference just ended its run in Scottsdale, Ariz. Motorola, Cloudmark, Jambo Networks, and about 70 other companies known and lesser known showed off their goods of the future. Although you may not have heard of it, Demo's no slouch when it comes to this stuff and not just anybody can get on its stage. Demo saw the launches of ETrade, Palm and Handspring, and many other innovative technologies. It's the pulse of tech innovation. The Demo@15 page has a linked list of exhibitors. Like other Demo bloggers, Microsoft's Robert Scoble expressed admiration for Motorola's iRadio. It should roll out later this year. Demo: http://www.demo.com/ Demo@15: http://www.demo.com/demo2/demonstrators/2005demonstrators.html Scoble: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/02/14.html#a9423 The ACM Turing Awards in computer science are often compared to the Nobel Prizes in importance. This year's winners are Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, who jointly developed TCP/IP, the protocol that underlies all Internet communications. Their work was published in one of the landmark foundation papers of the Internet, "A Protocol for Pocket Network Intercommunication". The Turing Awards site has a press release and a list of all award winners that goes back to 1966. Turing Awards: http://www.acm.org/awards/taward.html "A Protocol for Pocket Network Intercommunication": http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~kartik/cis6930/paper/cerf74protocol.pdf Did you build the computer on which you read NSD? Are you seriously into DIY and know what that means? If so, O'Reilly has a new quarterly magazine aimed right at you. The first issue of Make has hit the newsstand and in it you'll learn how to build really amazing gear like a gauss gun, an electronic card reader, and a video camera stabilizer. We are charter subscribers, and that Gauss gun is incredibly cool. Now if we could only stop breaking windows to test the sucker. If you want a taste of the print edition, visit Make's site and dip into the blog, which as we visit concerns GloFish, GPS fun, and uranium ore. http://makezine.com/ In what has to be a nerve-wracking first for the suits at RIAA, jazz composer Maria Schneider nabbed a Grammy for an album that's never been sold in a record store. Schneider released her winning "Concert in the Garden" CD through ArtistShare, a program of fan-artist collaboration and support. Does the win presage the direction that music creation and distribution will take? It seems like a distinct possibility. Of course, the major music labels took home the lion's share of the Grammy awards, but the fact that somebody was able to snatch one home by relying strictly on the Web and a dedicated fanbase makes it clear that change is in the air. Reuters has more. Schneider: http://www.mariaschneider.com/ ArtistShare: http://www.artistshare.net/ Grammy Awards: http://www.grammy.com/awards/grammy/47winners.aspx Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=7613511 Hacking the New Napster: 252 CDs Worth of Free Music It didn't take long for somebody to find that Napster's new all-the-music-you-can-eat-for-a-single-fee service can be hacked to extract tons of free music. Napster gives you a free 14-day trial period during which you can sample its catalogue to your heart's content. The service uses protected WAV music files, which have digital rights management (DRM). You can freely download the files, but you can only play them with the keys provided by the Napster application. The weakness is that if Napster wants you to hear the music, the app has to allow it to reach your speakers - and that means that your computer can intercept the sound and archive it in a DRM-free format. See Marv on Record for instructions. You can go a step further and automate the process: 14 days equals 252 80-minute CDs of free music. Upon learning of the exploit, AOL removed the required Winamp plug-in, but it's still around on the Web - and other software can be used instead, anyway. Read Slashdot for the generally amused geek reaction to all this.Napster: http://www.napster.com/ Marv on Record: http://blog.kordix.com/marv/archives/000400.html Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/17/0346229 MP3tunes Tries to Cash in on Online Music Tired of digital rights management (DRM) on your digital music player? Check out MP3tunes, the new site from Michael Robertson, former CEO of MP3.com. MP3tunes sells songs for 88 cents and albums for $8.80. In addition to selling music for less than the iTunes Music Store, another difference is that the music at MP3tunes comes with no DRM attached. The site sells simple MP3s - you can play your songs on your iPod or your iRiver or your CD player. You own your music, you don't rent it. The selection at MP3tunes is growing - that's a euphemism that means "is piss-poor right now" - and it can only get better. Well, we hope it can, anyway. See the site's About page for more, and a link to a press release.http://mp3tunes.com/ Intel president Paul Otellini's blog, meant to be read only by employees, has found its way into the hands of the press. Given Intel's near monopoly in the semiconductor business, Otellini's words are of great interest to Intel watchers around the world. SiliconValley.com summarizes some of the blog's candid comments, including Otellini's (self-fulfilling?) prediction in his very first post that the blog would eventually become public. The story places the blog within the context of corporate-executive blogging in general, and offers links to blogs by executives from Sun, General Motors, and Hewlett-Packard. For some inexplicable reason, the usually Web-savvy SiliconValley.com makes Otellini's blog available only as a PDF file. SiliconValley.com: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10904904.htm Blog: http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/mercurynews/mercurynews/archive/KRT_packages/blog0215.pdf SHA-1 Hashing Algorithm Has Weaknesses The crypto research community is abuzz with news that the popular SHA-1 hashing algorithm has been found vulnerable to collisions. Hashing algorithms are used for two main purposes: encoding passwords and signing digital data. Three Chinese researchers have found that they can significantly reduce the number of computing operations required to find a collision in the hash generated by SHA-1. (CNET explains what that means in nearly lay language.) The practical impact of this is not particularly bad; for technical reasons, this does not affect password protection and digital signatures only become marginally more vulnerable to fakery in real-world applications. However, the theoretical impact is significant and is one of the reasons for the crypto community's concern. This kind of attack may signal weaknesses in a whole class of crypto algorithms, which is the sort of thing that will always worry people who need to encrypt data for a living. The paper has the technical details, while Bruce Schneier's weblog has the news and a vigorous discussion of the implications.CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5579881.html Paper: http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~yiqun/shanote.pdf Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.html ONLINE CULTURE A Preliminary Analysis of Eight Years of E-Mail Marc Eisenstadt is a bit of an e-mail pack rat. A dozen years ago, he realized that someday it might make sense to analyze the ups and downs of his e-mail flow, so he kept it all. Talk about prescient. Eisenstadt has been using e-mail since the early ARPANET days of 1972, but he's only for the past 12 years been saving everything as he migrated through different machines, operating systems, and mail programs. He finally got around to analyzing his mountain of mail and, of course, spam. In fact, spam as a percentage of his e-mail rose from 2% of 4,320 messages in 1997 to about 40% of 13,889 messages in 2004. In a typical work week, assuming a ruthlessly efficient rate or dealing with his legitimate e-mail, he'll spend a minimum of 2.5 hours per day doing nothing but dealing with his inbox. That's a typical span for a modern professional - kind of makes you want to give up email, doesn't it?http://www.corante.com/getreal/archives/2005/02/11/eight_years_of_email_stats_pass_1.php Got something on your mind? If you think it's good enough to share with the unwashed masses, then broadcast. Don't have the infrastructure, you say? By gum, you don't need anything more than a computer, a 56-kbps modem, and the free PeerCast software. You're just a download away from turning into the Mouth of the Amazon! PeerCast is software that streams, available in many flavors - Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It relies on peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing to distribute load, reducing the bandwidth a broadcaster would otherwise require. The paranoid will be happy to learn that PeerCast's distribution scheme can also ensure a broadcaster's anonymity, should that be a consideration. What makes it cool and currently untraceable is the fact that, unlike with most P2P schemes, a PeerCast listener downloads no files - all of the material is encoded as streams. http://www.peercast.org/info.php ONLINE TRAVEL Carnivals, Baths, and Other Amusements of San Francisco The San Francisco Public Library's Amusing America Web site (and real-world exhibit) documents the wide range of public entertainment venues available over the city's history. The timeline starts in 1865 or so and ends about 100 years later. Those 100 years formed the century of in-city entertainment. American city-dwellers of the time had no mega-destinations like Disneyland or Six Flags to journey to. A road trip was just a short hop on public transportation to a place like, for example, Coney Island. It should be no surprise that many of the parks and pools and other places of pleasure were created and owned by transportation companies. San Francisco was blessed with a wide range of high-quality amusement and recreation sites and all are well treated here. The oceanfront sites were the gaudiest; their beginnings and history are clearly presented.http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/news/onlineexhibits/amusing/ New York to Paris Race in 1908 There are great vehicle races today. The Indy 500, the Monaco Grand Prix, and the Paris-Dakar rally spring to mind. Can you imagine, however, a 22,000-mile-long race from New York to Paris? That's the long way, heading west. Now, imagine such a race in 1908. Automobiles had only barely been invented, and racers certainly didn't have safety harnesses or experienced pit crews. Yet a few teams competed in such a race, which took almost 200 days to complete in an era when horses were rightly deemed more reliable than automobiles, particularly when struggling to cross Siberia. The triumphant American team arrived in their Thomas Flyer a mere 26 days ahead of the second-place team so it wasn't exactly a close-run thing, but they still deserved their ticker-tape parade through New York City. The Great Auto Race of 1908 site includes contemporary route maps, paintings, and photographs of the cars (which cost $4,000 or so at the time). The racers carried state of the art medical kits with morphine and nitroglycerine, and a sextant and compass for navigation. Who needs GPS?http://www.thegreatautorace.com/ ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT The Best of Photojournalism 2004, a "contest designed by photojournalists for photojournalists", is both a contest and an archive of the best still photography published in the news media in 2004. Here is the world at your fingertips, a cornucopia of beautiful, moving, troubling pictures. The photos are organized into some 30 categories according to subject, format, or technology. The site also offers sections on editing, Web sites, and TV. Best of all, the site doesn't focus only on the winners; visitors can view all the entries, even those from 2002 and 2003. You can spend many happy hours admiring many thousands of images. This is certainly the best online photojournalism archive we've found. Our only complaint is that there ought to be a search feature for finding photos on specific topics. Some of the images can be disturbing, so discretion is advised. The contest is sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association.http://www.nppa.org/competitions/best_of_still_photojournalism/2004/ Those of you who would rather appreciate the methods and techniques of how weather is shown in great art rather than simply complain about it should sail over to Painting the Weather, the BBC's online gallery of over 100 paintings by the great masters of various schools and periods that display various types of weather. We strongly recommend starting with the audio tour by Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, for a better appreciation of just how difficult the portrayal of atmospheric conditions can be. After that enlightening interlude, feel free to browse the pictures by artist, by theme (the elements, rainbows, clouds, etc.), or even by weather type. Painting the Weather includes the work of more than 80 artists, chosen by the National Gallery in London, and features a high-quality zoom facility, biographies of the artists, e-cards you can send, and much more besides. This is another superb online effort by the Beeb. http://www.bbc.co.uk/paintingtheweather/ MoCo Loco is a stunning virtual gateway to contemporary design and architecture. Understated and without the self-indulgent bells and whistles that can be the tiresome fare of design-oriented Web sites, this bloggish site is a feast for the eyes and easy to use. Cool as the site itself is, start browsing the categories and you'll be hooked on the astounding range of high-quality and innovative products that various independent designers and companies have come up with lately. Each entry expands on its own page with enlarged photos and contact and Web site information should you actually want to buy one of these masterpieces. Other features include directories of stores and galleries, an architecture section, and a listing of great design books. Archives go back to September 2003 - the site is updated monthly. We found the audio components section especially mouthwatering but if you're at all concerned about how your home looks - inside or out - there's bound to be something here you'll like. http://www.mocoloco.com/ Charles and Ray Eames, Designers and Communicators Eames chairs are ubiquitous. You may not know who designed the original, but you've probably sat on one, and odds are you didn't dislike the experience. The Eames boys, Charles and Ray, may be best known for their simple, cheap, and comfortable chair designs, but chairs are only a tiny part of their output. This site ties in to the Library of Congress exhibit of the amazing range of material they created. The Eames did most of their work after World War II (although their designs also contributed to the US war effort) and their look and feel very much remind the modern viewer of the 1950s. Well traveled and well known, the Eameses are responsible for a large number of the designs and products we take for granted today. That is their true success.http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/eameshome.html Get yourself a plate of hors d'oeuvres and a plastic beaker of warm Chilean Merlot and check out this online art exhibition with a difference. It's a collection of serial-killer art. It seems that many of the US's most notorious convicted murderers have used the substantial amount of time on their hands to explore a more creative side of themselves. YuppiePunk has posted an example of the artwork of each of the artists together with their bodycount, a fun fact about their crimes, and a short review of the art with a grade. Of course, as with any appreciation of art, it's all subjective, but we did notice a loose correlation between the awarded grades and the bodycount/notoriety of the serial killer. Anyway, judge for yourself. Some of the work here is garbage, some is rather good, and some is the disturbing sort of stuff you might expect from homicidal lunatics - John Wayne Gacy's sample, for example, is a skull made up entirely of naked bodies and genitals (he gets an A). We think that Charles Manson deserves his label, "the Rothko of Serial Killers" (he gets an A, too). http://www.yuppiepunk.org/2005/01/killer-art-serial-killer-art-review.html If you're not familiar with the art of balanced rock art, might we suggest that you surf on over to this site and introduce yourself to a truly amazing display of the craft. The site focuses on rock balancer Bill Dan and showcases his art and teaching in images and video. Dan creates most of his work on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay, where the raw materials provide the perfect means to demonstrate the interaction of gravity and rock. Some of the sequences he builds have to be seen - it's hard to believe there's no glue involved. The site also has photos of examples from other like-minded artists and expands beyond the natural to Dan's "Un-Rock" Balancing Gallery, which shows off the balancing characteristics of glasses, bottles, and aluminum cans. Add a little Zen-like inspiration and inner peace to your day by visiting Dan's site and gazing upon the seemingly impossible made possible. http://rock-on-rock-on.com/ BOOKS & E-ZINES
Stadther: http://www.atreasurestrove.com/ "A Treasure's Trove": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0976061805/netsurferdigest/ "Masquerade": http://www.bunnyears.net/kitwilliams/ Glyn Hughes's Squashed Philosophers site is a gem. It delivers the essence of Aristotle in 40 minutes, Machiavelli in 31 minutes, and Alan Turing in a mere 20. Those are averages, though - high-comprehension speedreaders will do better. The site's individual pages are each devoted to a work of a noted philosopher. The big names are all here, from Plato to Sir Karl Popper. The condensations have been done with great care, and are both readable and complete. The only entry that is not a true condensation is that for Einstein. That entry is a compilation of commentaries that makes Einstein's theories if not transparent, at least clear. Indeed, the casual student of philosophy may find these works more appealing and useful than the originals and thus may delve further into philosophy. Our reviewer also noted en passant that had this site been available 30 years ago, some grades of C might have reached B or A. http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/ When is a blog not a blog? When it's the DocuTicker. When most people think blog, they think of personal opinions or accounts. DocuTicker is more like a newswire. Updated daily by a corps of librarians, it aims to keep folks informed of the latest documents of note in the US. Touching on everything from misplaced bags by airlines to press releases and studies on war on terror, this place is almost guaranteed to touch a nerve ending or two. The presentation has no injected opinion - you get the source, an abstract quote, and a link to the whole enchilada. http://www.docuticker.com/ The "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" Quiz Lynn Truss's "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" surprised many when it became a bestseller around the English-speaking world. It was no surprise, however, to those who realized that there is a closet grammar-fascist within most of us. Having read the book, you have declared your own personal war on the redundant apostrophe, and now's the time to take the book's online punctuation test. The test is split into two sections, the apostrophe and the comma, the two punctuation marks what cause the most unrest. The test is simple: you drag and drop your comma or apostrophe into a series of sentences, and you get a percentage score at the end of it. Try it. The sense of smug satisfaction you get after scoring a perfect 100% might make your day.Quiz: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html "Eats, Shoots and Leaves": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592400876/netsurferdigest SURFING SCIENCE Back in 2003, a group of scientists approached the US Department of Energy (DOE) and asked to revisit the topic of cold fusion. Reports of fusion energy produced in low-energy chemical reactions were all the rage back in 1989, after Pons and Fleishmann announced that they had found a way to make such reactions possible and lead to cheap fusion energy. A rigorous peer review cast cold water on the work, and science marched on. By 2003, it was time to look again at the topic, and at additional research done since the initial reports. The DOE dutifully chartered a group of scientists to review all new experimental evidence of nuclear reactions in cold matter at low energies. The panel found problems with the experimental design of such research and concluded that the evidence was not conclusive but that, yes, there was a scientific case for more research as part of individual peer-reviewed grants, although not as part of any broad cold-fusion research effort. In effect, the panel reached the same conclusion as in 1989. The DOE has the final report and supporting technical material on physics in metal deuterides, while Infinite Energy has links to press coverage.DOE: http://www.er.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/ Infinite Energy: http://www.infinite-energy.com/resources/inthenews.htm Oh, of course you want to build your own lava lamp! Boomer kids remember - or not - spending hours transfixed by the blobs, and naturally their children will want to partake of the experience. Back in the day, you could have bought these things for $50 or so - which was pretty steep, given the currency value of the times. Now, thanks to the Net, you can roll your own. A little mineral oil, a little alcohol - and no, we aren't talking Jack Daniels here, although it couldn't hurt that much - and you can build some decent-looking stuff. Beats the heck out of navel-gazing. For one thing, you don't get neck cramps from looking down all the time. http://www.oozinggoo.com/howto.html SOFTWARE Users Sound off on Upcoming Internet Explorer 7 After Bill Gates made some comments about the upcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 7 at the recent RSA conference (q.v.), Dean Hachamovitch, IE product unit manager at Microsoft, took the opportunity to write a short blurb about the program on the IEBlog. He says that betas of IE 7 will be available by this summer for Windows XP. This is not Earth-shattering news, but is a good excuse for us to point you at the IEBlog, where all sorts of issues related to Microsoft's much storied browser are discussed by the people responsible for maintaining and developing it. This post in particular unleashed a torrent of comments, over 700 at press time, as users got in their two cents about what they would like to see in the new IE. The number one request? Better adherence to standards. The page is a good snapshot of current user expectations for Microsoft's next big IE update.http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/15/373104.aspx Write Software That Will Get You Laid Jamie Zawinski, an original employee of Netscape, has a friend who mentioned his desire to work on a new open-source groupware system. This set Zawinski on a short but pithy rant about what was wrong with that idea, based on his experiences as a former Netscape developer. What makes the short piece worth reading is Zawinski's premise that if you're going to do an open-source project, you should "build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy." He encapsulates the concept in a comment that perfectly summarizes the nature of wildly successful open-source projects of recent years, many of which are really social software in disguise: "Your 'use case' should be, there's a 22-year-old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?" We're fairly sure that this software-design meme has some serious legs on it.http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html |
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