 November
21, 2001 -
2001 Inventions of the Year - Time Magazine,
Inventions come in all shapes and sizes. Some are as simple as purple
catsup. Others push the limits of quantum physics. The real measure of
an invention is not just how well it works or how impressively it is
engineered, but how it changes our lives. To gauge the impact of the
AbioCor artificial heart, you don't have to look much further than
Robert Tools. The 59-year-old grandfather and retired technical
librarian had suffered from congestive heart failure for two years; by
last June he was getting ready to die. His liver and kidneys had
nearly quit, and he could hardly muster the strength to lift his head
off the pillow. His doctors ruled that he was too ill for a heart
transplant. They gave him less than one month to live...
November 19, 2001 -
Apple: Forget XP, try the Mac - By Joe Wilcox
Special to ZDNet News, Apple Computer has a message for
Windows users considering an upgrade to XP: Come back to the
Mac. In the wake of a $1 billion Windows XP marketing
campaign, all eyes would appear to be turned away from Mac OS
X 10.1.1, the new operating system Apple significantly
upgraded in September. But the Cupertino, Calif.-based company
is convinced that Windows XP's endorsement of technologies
that first appeared on Macs--802.11b wireless networking, CD
burning, DVD playback, movie making, and easy retrieval of
digital camera images, among others--will help Apple system
and software sales...
November 26, 2001 -
Intel paves way for 'Terahertz' - By Michael
Kanellos, Special to ZDNet News, Transistors, the
microscopic circuits that animate semiconductors, are going to
be flipping off and on a trillion times a second in a few
years, a prospect that is forcing Intel back to the drawing
board. In a presentation at the International Electron Devices
meeting next week in Washington, D.C., the Santa Clara,
Calif.-based chip giant will shed light on a series of major
changes coming to the design of its transistors--culminating
in the "Terahertz" transistor in the second half of the
decade--that ideally will keep a lid on the growing problem of
power consumption...
November 23, 2001 -
Linux gets spruced-up desktop - By Matthew Broersma,
ZDNet (UK), The K Desktop Environment Project has released
a new version of KDE. The software is a desktop environment
running on top of Linux, the open-source operating system
favored by software developers and many Web sites. KDE 2.2.2
fixes bugs and security glitches and adds a few new features
over 2.2.1, released last month, but the main advantage to
users will be speed improvements. The new desktop speeds up
icon loading and some dialog boxes. Some developers feel that
KDE's performance -- which has been criticized as slow -- is
now the main issue developers should focus on...
November 27, 2001 -
Alien Atmospheres - NASA News, NASA's Hubble
Space Telescope has detected the atmosphere of a planet
circling a distant Sun-like star. Astronomers using the
orbiting Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct
detection and chemical analysis of the atmosphere of a planet
outside our solar system. Their unique observations show it is
possible to measure the chemical makeup of extra-solar
planetary atmospheres -- and potentially to search for
chemical markers of life far beyond Earth...
November 01, 2001 -
FBI's "Trojan horse" program to grab passwords -
Will Knight, New Scientist, The US Federal Bureau of
Investigation is developing a computer program that can steal
the passwords that suspected criminals use to lock encrypted
messages, according to a source cited by MSNBC. The "Trojan
horse" program, known as Magic Lantern, could be sent to a
suspect attached to a seemingly innocent email message. After
the program has installed itself using a known software bug,
it would capture the passwords used to encrypt messages and
send these to FBI officers...
November 21, 2001 -
New gravity map released - By BBC News Online
science editor Dr David Whitehouse, A new gravity map of
the Earth suggests that if you want to lose weight you should
go to India, where the pull of gravity is slightly less than
it is elsewhere on the planet. You would be slightly less than
1% lighter there...
November
23, 2001 -
Star Trek Tech Is Not So Bold - By Erik Baard, Wired News,
Much has
been made of the technology imagined in Star Trek, and where the
roots of the show's fictional innovations may be found in today's
research laboratories. But what technologies exist today, or are in
development, that haven't made it onto the screen at all?
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