March 30 2003 -
Invisibility Cloak an Illusion - Associated Press, WiredNews,
TOKYO -- Kazutoshi Obana's gray, hooded coat doesn't just keep him dry
in a downpour. It can also make him seem invisible. On a clear day at
Tokyo University, Obana stands outside and dons the coat. Viewed through
a special projector lens, the people behind him appear as images in a
fuzzy, greenish tint on his coat -- as if he were see-through. "This is
a kind of augmented reality," said Susumu Tachi, a Tokyo University
professor of computer science and physics, during the recent
demonstration of his invention...
March 03 2003 -
Microsoft Posts Windows Server 2003
Pricing - By Peter Galli, eWeek,
Microsoft Corp. on Monday finally
released the licensing and pricing options
for its upcoming Windows Server 2003
family, which is slated for shipment in
late April. The licensing model consists
of a server operating system license and
incremental Client Access Licenses (CALs)
"and is designed to allow for complete
scalability of your cost in relation to
your usage," Microsoft said...
March 04 2003 -
Google: Net Hacker Tool du Jour By
Christopher Null - WiredNews,
Why bother pounding at a website in search
of obscure holes when you can simply waltz
in through the front door? Hackers have
recently done just that, turning to Google
to help simplify the task of honing in on
their targets. "Google, properly
leveraged, has more intrusion potential
than any hacking tool," said hacker Adrian
Lamo, who recently sounded the alarm. The
hacks are made possible by Web-enabled
databases. Because database-management
tools use canned templates to present data
on the Web, typing specific phrases into
Internet search tools often leads a user
directly to those templated pages. For
example, typing the phrase "Select a
database to view" -- a common phrase in
the FileMaker Pro database interface --
into Google recently yielded about 200
links, almost all of which led to
FileMaker databases accessible online...
March 28 2003 -
ET fails to 'phone home' - By
Helen Briggs, BBC News Online science
reporter, A search for intelligent
life in space has drawn a blank.
Scientists have found no signs of alien
beings after analyzing radio signals
collected in the world's biggest
distributed computing project. More than
150 candidates selected by the Seti@home
project have been examined using the giant
Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico...
March 2003 -
Better, Stronger, Faster, etc. -
Once reserved for $6 million megababes,
bionics for the rest of us are finally
here. By John Paczkowski, March 2003
Issue, Business 2.0, Bionics used to
be the stuff of TV fantasy -- a 1970s plot
device about humans who received
mechanical implants to become, well,
Lindsay Wagner with reverb sound effects.
It took three decades, but today we really
do have the technology. Case in point:
Optobionics of Naperville, Ill., whose
bionic retina is designed to help the
blind see. Just 2 millimeters in diameter,
the tiny artificial retina can be
surgically implanted in damaged eye
tissue, where it converts light into
signals that travel to the brain along the
optic nerve. Though the resulting image is
blurry and diffuse, the technology enables
patients to discern shapes, light, and
shadows. Just as impressive, the retinal
chip is powered by the light that enters
the patient's eye...
March 31, 2003 -
Why you really, really need a firewall
(or two) - Robert Vamosi,
Senior Associate Editor, CNET/ZDNet
Reviews, I've been covering computer
security long enough to see that, given
time, security technologies employed on
big corporate systems eventually trickle
down to individual desktop users like
you and me. Case in point: A few years
ago, almost nobody talked about
firewalls for desktops, though firewalls
were being used by most corporations.
Now they're the latest must-have item.
Personal firewalls probably weren't
talked about much before because few
thought a single, slow PC would ever be
worth a hacker's time...
March 12, 2003 -
The Great Dark Spot - NASA, The
Cassini spacecraft has photographed an
extraordinary dark cloud on Jupiter
twice as big as Earth itself. NASA.com,
March 12, 2003: For more than a century
astronomers thought that the Great Red
Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter.
Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini
spacecraft have revealed something at
least as large. The Great Dark Spot. "I
was totally blown away when I saw it--a
dark cloud twice as big as Earth
swirling around Jupiter's north pole,"
says Bob West, a planetary scientist at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory...
March, 2003 -
The New Nature vs. Nurture
- Issue 11.03, WiredMag,
Science is pulling the
long-standing debate in strange
directions. By Steven Johnson,
Ever since Hobbes and Rousseau
started riffing on the state of
nature and the noble savage a
few centuries back, the nature
versus nurture debate has been
as much about politics as
empirical research. Sure,
scientists have their genome
projects and their twin studies,
and they talk a nice game about
how extroversion or smoking is
"20 percent heritable." But most
people don't choose sides
because the data convinced them;
they lean one way or the other
because their political views
led them there - the patina of
science just makes the biases
easier to hide...
March, 2003 -
Silent But Deadly -
Skunk Works quietly created
killer tech. And paved the way
for Enron., By Bruce Sterling,
WiredMag, Issue 11.03 If you
want to see technology roar in
glorious flight, the rules are
simple. Clarence L. "Kelly"
Johnson, the legendary boss of
Lockheed Skunk Works, boiled
them down to a simple motto: "Be
quick, be quiet, and be on
time." These three principles
guided Johnson's operation to a
spectacular aeronautical
breakthrough. The Skunk Works'
U-2 spy plane outdistanced the
best Russian MiGs in the '50s;
the D-21 surveillance drone hit
Mach 3 in the mid-1960s; and the
'70s-vintage SR-71 Blackbird set
air speed records still
unbroken. Indeed, speed,
secrecy, and split-second timing
can make for spectacular success
well beyond the
military-industrial complex -
they're a tempting recipe for
any company. But they can be
powerfully dangerous when mixed
with greed and shortsightedness.
Handled badly, they can make a
corporation crash and burn,
spewing shrapnel through the
business pages...
March, 2003 -
The Real Shopping-Cart
Revolution - Five
hundred years of progress packed
into a sack of flour., By J.
Bradford DeLong, Issue 11.03
WiredMag, A smart shopper
can buy a 5-pound bag of Gold
Medal flour for 69 cents. That's
enough to feed three people for
a day - 7,500 easy-to-digest,
relatively nutritious, and
potentially tasty calories. All
for less than 0.7 percent of an
average American's income.
Compare this American to one of
our ancestors half a millennium
ago, a typical person living in
the span between 1400 and 1600.
Back in those days, less than
one-tenth of humanity lived in
cities. The most basic problem
of material life - the fight to
put food on the table - took up
the majority of everyone's
working time and energy:
Three-quarters of human economic
production consisted of growing
or procuring foodstuffs.
Well-nourished preindustrial
populations with abundant land
double in size every generation,
but our ancestors were lucky to
see their population grow by 10
percent in 30 years. Back then
people were hungry,
malnourished, and
disease-ridden...
March 17, 2003 -
The Best Spyware Stopper - By Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier,
NewsFactor Network, After years of worrying about viruses and
trojans, users have a new nemesis: spyware. This term refers to any
program that distributes information from a user's computer without that
user's knowledge. To be sure, most of this software is more annoying
than harmful. However, as Jamie Garrison, co-owner of Aluria Software,
which produces the spyware stopper, put it, "Some spyware can ruin your
life. It's that invasive." So, what can a user do to avoid the onslaught
of underhanded tracking programs?
