- Could 'loose nukes' go to Mafia? Scholars worry
- Glenn finds space 'beautiful' after 36 years away
- Internet providers to give away PCs to new customers?
- Age Discrimination (in real audio)
- October 30, 1998 Countdown to Elections
- Glenn's Missions Then and Now
- John Glenn's Countdown begins...
- STARTUP OFFERS FREE INTERNET ACCESS
- The secret mission of the first computer programmers
- MAJOR SCREW-UP AT AOL
- Search engine failures by John Dvorak
- Glenn ready for return to space
- Americans win Nobel in Medicine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Organized criminal syndicates such as the Italian Mafia could be building a global distribution network for smuggled nuclear material from Russia, scholars said Thursday. At the State of the World Forum a panel of U.S. nuclear experts said there was disturbing evidence organized crime may be getting into the nuclear game. "Criminal drug syndicates are known to be seeking nuclear weapons, and have vast resources," said former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston. William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said economic crisis had left Russia with lax controls over its estimated 30,000 nuclear weapons and stockpiles of radioactive material.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronaut and American legend John Glenn journeyed into space again Thursday at the age of 77 aboard the shuttle Discovery, 36 years after his first, history-making mission.  Cheered on by an enthralled nation, Glenn blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 2:19 p.m. EST to become the oldest person to fly in space - more than twice the age of the youngest of his six fellow crew members. "It's beautiful up here," Glenn enthused in his first call back to mission control about three hours and 20 minutes into the launch. A door panel ripped from the tail of the Discovery as it blasted off, but NASA officials said the mishap should not affect the mission.

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PCs are getting so cheap that soon they may be given away free by Internet service providers (ISPs) as incentives to drum up more online subscribers, analysts and executives forecasted Thursday.

What could make that possible are the quickly falling prices and profit margins of the basic personal computer.  Think cell phones. Providers of wireless phone service give away phones that once cost hundreds of dollars in order to sign up subscribers. "When PCs reach $300 and $400, they become like cell phones," said Lou Mazzucchelli, senior PC analyst for investment house Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. Inc. "They will give you the PC and bundle the service with it."  That may be the only way for PC makers -- now competing for ever-thinner margins in the sub-$1,000 PC space -- to actually make a profit as consumers keep demanding ever-lower price points.   "Someday you may get a free PC with two years of Internet service -- kind of like the cellular phone model," said Steve Dukkar, president and CEO of cheap PC maker E-machines.

Walking the thin line
On Thursday, computers continued to get cheaper when IBM Corp. unveiled its newest machine, the Aptiva E Series DN1. Price? $599. It's the first time a machine from one of the five largest PC makers has dipped that low.   "The margins on the products are thin," said Andrew Hayden, spokesman for IBM's (NYSE:IBM) consumer division. "You have to be able to not only get the box out fast, but through the channel quickly, in order to make the low-cost business work."  The Aptiva has a 300MHz-equivalent MMX processor with 32MB of RAM, a 3.2GB hard drive, 32X CD-ROM and a 56Kbps modem. The monitor is sold separately.  The company joins Packard Bell NEC Inc. in the low, low price arena. In May, Packard Bell unveiled a $699 computer with 233MHz-equivalent MMX processor from Cyrix Corp., 24MB of RAM and a 2.1GB hard drive.   To help sell its computers, Packard Bell has inked a deal with Internet service provider EarthLink Networks Inc. (Nasdaq:ELNK) in mid-October to rebate $100 to each Packard Bell customer that signs up for EarthLink during the busy holiday season.  In exchange, EarthLink will receive preferred placement on the desktop of Packard Bell computers.

ISPs inside?
Seeing a chance to get customers on board, other ISPs are clamoring to do deals with PC makers.  Englewood, Colo.-based ICG Communications Inc. is testing the market with two different strategies.  With refurbished-computer seller Recompute Corp. of Austin, Texas, the company is packaging a year's worth of ICG Netcom Internet service with a Pentium-class computer for $569 and up.    "We are going after the late-adopter market of 17 million potential customers," said spokeswoman Laura Crowley. "They want an inexpensive Internet solution."  While the computer is no powerhouse, the 90MHz Pentium processor, 24MB of RAM and 1GB hard drive are enough to display Web pages.  And for those users looking for a bit more power, ICG Netcom has another offer. The company has signed a co-marketing agreement with E-machines Inc. -- the newest company to enter the low-cost market.

In return for helping E-machines market its eTower 266 -- a $499 computer plus monitor package -- ICG will have its service sign-up integrated into eTower's registration process.   The deal helps to offset the costs of selling the computers. "For now, the [ICG] Netcom deal helps us get the word out without affecting our bottom line," said Dukkar of E-machines, who affectionately refers to his company as the "pricing antichrist."  E-machines will be shipping more than 200,000 machines during the holiday season, and dealers have snapped them up. The company hopes to sell another 250,000 in the first quarter of next year.

Great price, but is it usable?
Still, price is only half of the equation needed to woo consumers.   "Lower cost just gives people the ability to purchase one. You have to make them want one," said Greg Blatnik, vice president and principal analyst with Internet watcher Zona Research Inc. "If they are easy enough to use, they will become appliances -- then they will proliferate."

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In Tuesday's midterm elections, voters will cast their ballots for 36 governorships, 34 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The airwaves are full of last minute ads as campaigns focus on getting out the vote. With fewer than 40% of all registered voters expected to go to the polls, voter turnout is one of the key factors in many close races. Listen as NPR's National Political Correspondent Elizabeth Arnold reports.  Morning Edition host Bob Edwards talks with Stuart Rothenberg, of the Rothenberg Political Report about what to expect Tuesday.

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Weather permitting, on Thursday the Space Shuttle Discovery begins a nine day mission with Senator John Glenn and six other crew members on board. The astronauts are currently undergoing medical tests and checking over their equipment; the countdown has already begun. Glenn's return to space is getting a lot of attention --- so did his mission 36 years ago when he was the first American to orbit the earth. While many things will seem familiar to the 77 year-old astronaut, a lot will be very different. Listen as Morning Edition Commentator Andrew Chaikin compares Glenn's missions then and now.

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The clocks at NASA's Kennedy Space Center have begun counting down for the space shuttle Discovery's scheduled blast-off Thursday afternoon. U.S. Senator John Glenn, at 77 years, will be the oldest astronaut to fly aboard the shuttle. He was the first American to orbit Earth back in 1962. The mission is receiving a tremendous amount of attention -- about 3,000 journalists, including 700 camera crews, have requested credentials for the lift-off. For a look at what's known -- and unknown -- about aging and space travel, listen as NPR's Richard Harris reports for All Things Considered.

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NetZero launched a free, advertising-driven Internet access service that offers users a local dial-up account and an email account -- for free. But there is a catch: To subscribe, users must complete a profile with interests and demographic data. NetZero uses the data to build a subscribe profile, which helps advertisers target their marketing pitches. When a NetZero subscriber logs on, a personalized ad banner opens on the screen. (It can be moved, but not closed or diminished.) It comes down to a personal decision: Is the annoyance of ads worth saving $240 a year on Net access? Click for more.

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A software glitch that disrupted email for an undetermined number of America Online's 13 million subscribers -- and kept others from accessing the service at all -- is being blamed on hackers. They apparently forged a message to InterNIC requesting a change to AOL's DNS address, which rerouted mail intended for AOL users elsewhere. How easy was it? There are reports AOL had designated the lowest security clearance for changing its InterNIC records. Click for more. By the way, have you ever wondered if someone you know -- your own kid, for instance -- is a hacker? Family PC reveals how to tell. And what to do if your gut feeling turns out to be true. Click for more

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JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas (Reuters) - The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, said Thursday he was eager for his return to space aboard the shuttle Discovery later this month. The 77-year-old outgoing Senator from Ohio said there was just one thing on his mind as he was strapped into the spacecraft last week for a countdown rehearsal, 36 years after he last prepared for liftoff. "I just wanted to go, (but) we didn't have any propellant in the tank," he told a packed news conference at NASA's astronaut training base in Houston. Glenn, who will be the oldest person ever to go into space, mounted a vigorous two-year campaign to secure his seat on Discovery.

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Three Americans have won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine.  Robert Furchgott, Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad were recognized for discovering new properties for nitric oxide. This discovery has broad applications from treating heart disease to the creating anti-impotency drugs like Viagra. Furchgott works at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, Ignarro at the University of California-Los Angeles, and Murad is at the University of Texas Medical School, Houston. The three will share the nearly one million dollar prize.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Sen. John Glenn, training for a return to space this month after a 36-year absence, scolded reporters Thursday for focusing on him rather than the science of his mission. The 77-year-old former Mercury astronaut said, "Too often you get into the human aspects of this and you don't get into the scientific stuff." Glenn and his crewmates were at the launch pad Thursday for some final training before the space shuttle Discovery's planned Oct. 29 liftoff on a nine-day research flight. More than 100 reporters and photographers covered a launch pad news conference, an event that normally attracts about a dozen members of the news media.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Hubble Space Telescope has peered farther back in space and time than ever before, spotting galaxies that could be 12 billion years old, astronomers said Thursday. The galaxies would have been formed just after the birth of the universe. They are so far away it has taken their light 12 billion years to reach the telescope, which orbits the Earth. "These images are the deepest images of distant galaxies that have ever been obtained," Rodger Thompson of the University of Arizona, who led the study, told a news conference. 

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From Cold War to Cyber War? A ZDNN News special.  It's entirely possible the battles of the future may well be fought on the Internet. Inter@ctive Week's Will Rodger examines the issues on the table, talks to the military and government officials who will be in the center of the digital war effort, and looks at the fall-out for companies and consumers.

U.S. Cyberdefense Structure

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - John Glenn and his space shuttle crew flew to NASA's Kennedy Space Center Tuesday for a countdown rehearsal, part of final preparations for the 77-year-old senator's return to space later this month. The seven-member crew arrived at the Florida space port at sunset. It is their last training session at the launch site before the planned Oct. 29 blastoff of shuttle Discovery. Glenn, who made history in 1962 when he became the first American to orbit the earth, persuaded NASA to let him fly in space again to conduct geriatric research. At 77 he will become the world's oldest astronaut.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Roddy McDowall, the British-born actor who starred as a child in "Lassie Come Home" and as an adult in "Planet of the Apes," died Saturday at his home of cancer, associates said. Gene Autry, the original singing cowboy, who went from yodeling and strumming a guitar to becoming one of America's richest men, died Friday of cancer. The news that McDowall, 70, had been terminally ill with cancer shocked Hollywood when it became public two weeks ago. Autry, whose fortune was estimated at more than $350 million, was 91 and died at his home in North Hollywood. He was bedridden for a month.

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Conventional wisdom divides the online world into two camps: there's the Internet -- and then there's America Online.   Even if AOL users only occasionally visited the Internet, they would make up a significant part of the online population. In fact, one in five Net users are AOL subscribers, according to analysts' estimates.

Web metering firm RelevantKnowledge Inc. puts the entire online population, ages 12 and up, at 53.4 million, and America Online now counts over 13 million subscribers. New AOL users accounted for a significant portion of Internet growth over the last few months, according to Relevant Knowledge. See the full report on ZDNET here

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LEGO Mindstorms Ships The newest in LEGO brands, LEGO Mindstorms, began shipping to retail stores in extremely limited quantities during the first week of September, according to a LEGO press release issued on Friday.

Unfortunately the Mindstorms units will be very limited through the rest of the year, with only 12,000 units shipping currently and an additional 75,000 units scheduled to ship by Christmas. According to LEGO, the company's received more than 100,000 inquiries about the system and demand will more than likely be extremely high.

Briefly, the LEGO Mindstorms set is a robotics system that lets owners build and program robots utilizing LEGO bricks, motors, sensors, and so forth.

The kit will sell for about $200 retail and will be available at several store chains on or before October 1, including the Discovery Channel stores, FAO Schwarz, Fry's, LEGO Imagination Centers, Media Play, and select Toys "R" Us and Target locations.

"The clamor for our new LEGO Mindstorms robots is far beyond even our expectations," said Linda Dalton, director of LEGO Mindstorms. "Thousands of LEGO lovers of all ages have sent us requests to be the first to own the Robotics Invention System. We are already redoubling our efforts to  produce enough product to handle the demand."  Also, see LEGO's website...