Thursday, February 28, 2002

Taxonomy on the Web Guide to Internet Resources for
Biological Taxonomy & Classification**

The Precambrian The Divisions of Precambrian Time


ZDNet: Tech Update: It's high noon for US v. MS, and the stakes are enormous


If you ask the proverbial "man-on-the-street," casual industry observers, or even those who claim to be industry pundits about what's happening in the case of the United States v. Microsoft, most will say the case is pretty much over--the Department of Justice settled and the outcome will be generally favorable to Microsoft. But that could not be further from the truth.
The case is far from over. The U.S. Appellate Court's June 2001 opinion variously upheld, remanded, and overturned a long list of Sherman Act violations, and then went on to vacate the District Court's restructuring remedy. In that opinion's wake, we have reached a defining moment for both U.S. business and information technology. Not only could this case determine the future ability of governments to regulate "technopolies" (technology-oriented monopolies), but it will impact businesses that continually reconsider their strategic IT plans in the context of which technologies and technology providers they think will prevail. The severity of the final remedy could determine, for some time to come, how many choices are available to business technologists, and how much innovation will flourish.

Healing Power of Obnoxiousness - Science


"A Quick and Slightly Irreverent Look At the Burgess Shale of British Columbia"
by Paul T. Riddell
Originally published in Science Fiction Eye

Precambrian to Cambrian


The Precambrian to Cambrian Fossil Record and Transitional Forms
Keith B. Miller*
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66502

Life Life's Early Glimmers
Fossils aren't very colorful. But some of them used to be: A zoologist has found that some Cambrian creatures that roamed the sea floor 515 million years ago were iridescent, a development he believes was one of many triggered by the emergence of vision. The find, described in the 7 June Proceedings: Biological Sciences of the Royal Society, comes from the fossil-rich Burgess Shale of British Columbia.

Unable to Change a Resource Setting in Device Manager

Unable to Change a Resource Setting in Device Manager (Q269491)


The information in this article applies to:


Microsoft Windows 2000 , Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 , Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 , Server

Network Vizualization Research - GnutellaNet Laboratory for Networks and Applied Graph Theory

MS Thesis Project: Analyzing and Modeling of P2P Networks -
Case Study on Gnutella
Mihajlo A. Jovanovic

U.S. v. Microsoft: Main Index United States v. Microsoft
(Current Case)

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

10-Accretion of Mass 1,000 tons/day (300,000 metric tons/yr, Dubin and McCracken, 1962) to 55,000 tons/day (20,000,000 tons/yr, Fiocco and Colombo, 1964). However, a more recent estimate puts the accreting dust volume at approximately 78,000 tons/yr, or 214 tons/day.

Kapili.com:Mass

Mass Extinction Underway: Biodiversity Crisis, Species Loss

Earth's Interior & Plate Tectonics

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

CCALMR PROJECTS Scientific findings of the last several years have shown that the Oregon coast is vulnerable to great (M 8-9) earthquakes that can occur on the offshore Cascadia sudbuction zone (CSZ) fault system. CSZ earthquakes are rare events: the last has occurred about 300 years ago, and they are believed to occur every 200 to 600 years. While rare, these events can be highly destructive. A major manifestation of CSZ earthquakes are tsunamis, large water waves generated by the seismic deformation of the sea floor. As these waves reach the coast, severe flooding can occur, resulting in loss of life and property.

Cascadia Subduction Zone: Two Contrasting Models of Lithospheric Structure The subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath North America changes markedly along the length of the subduction zone, notably in the angle of subduction, distribution of earthquakes, volcanism, geologic and seismic structure of the upper plate, and regional horizontal stress. To investigate these characteristics, we conducted detailed density modeling experiments of the crust and mantle along two transects across the Cascadia subduction zone. One crosses Vancouver Island and the Canadian margin, and the other crosses the margin of central Oregon. Both density models were constructed independently to a depth of approximately 50 km. We gathered all possible geologic, geophysical, and borehole data to constrain the density calculations. The final densities for the Oregon and Vancouver lithosphere models were obtained from gravity inversions.

NYPOST.COM National News: CONDIT IS HEADED FOR GRAND-JURY HOT SEAT By NILES LATHEM February 26, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Embattled Rep. Gary Condit is expected to be summoned soon to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the disappearance of Chandra Levy, law-enforcement officials said last night.
Sources told The Post that Condit, whose clumsy efforts to cover up his affair with the missing D.C. intern put him in heaps of legal and political trouble, is likely to be called to testify sometime this spring, along with other members of his staff

New Scientist Astronauts ready for risky Hubble overhaul

12:38 26 February 02

Space shuttle Comlumbia will launch at 1148 GMT on Thursday on a risky mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope.
This will involve the first shutdown of the space telescope's power supply during orbit. NASA is confident, but not certain, that it will come back on.
"It kind of violates a long standing policy in the space business that if something's working well, you don't turn it off and just hope it comes back on," said Ed Weiler, NASA's head of space science.
The 12-year-old telescope's imaging systems are functioning well, but its power generation unit is not working at full capacity.

ScienceDaily Magazine -- Homing In On A Receptor For The Fifth Taste Homing In On A Receptor For The Fifth Taste
Humans can recognize five tastes: bitter, salty, sour, sweet and umami. Of the five, however, umami is the most difficult to describe — it’s the flavor associated with monosodium glutamate (MSG). Now, researchers have identified a taste receptor that responds to amino acids, including umami, and they hope to develop a more precise description of the molecular events that allow the brain to perceive the five different tastes.

ScienceDaily Magazine -- Gene Therapy To Treat Angina Appears Safe Gene Therapy To Treat Angina Appears Safe
DALLAS, Feb. 26 – Transferring growth factor genes into the heart appears safe and shows promise for treating the debilitating chest pain known as angina, according to a report in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The Angiogenic GENe Therapy (AGENT) trial is the first placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of the therapy in humans and tested the safety and effectiveness of injecting a growth factor gene into the heart. Researchers found unexpected but significant improvements in exercise times for the sickest group of patients who received the gene therapy.

Daria

The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the web defined and linked in a way, that it can be used by machines - not just for display purposes, but for using it in various applications.
Examples are: E-commerce requires much richer data. Retailers require this data to flow from wholesalers and wholesalers requires data to flow from producers. Data-exchange of this kind is currently very limited, consisting of tab-delimited dumps or product-specific tables. Specific XML formats for each exchange task improves the situation, but ones misses the network effect of being able to share 90% of the processing software, because the XML data model is too low-level.
But this is only the most basic application: the Semantic Web will change the way we work. E.g. creating software will be just a matter of finding the right components on the Web and a specification document linking to these components. The new software is again just a resource available on the Web.

Indeed, we have the technology available for realizing the Semantic Web, we know how to built terminologies and how to use metadata.
The whole vision depends on agreeing on common standards - something that is used and extended everywhere. Currently worldwide which will help to create the Semantic Web.
Work is going on to realize tools and techniques, which will help to create the Semantic Web.
This site is dedicated to collect these approaches, to explain them and to be a forum for people intere

SemanticWeb.org The Semantic Web Community Portal
Together Towards a Web Of Knowledge...

W3C Semantic Web "The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web

Scientific American: Feature Article: The Semantic Web: May 2001 The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control. His sister, Lucy, was on the line from the doctor's office: "Mom needs to see a specialist and then has to have a series of physical therapy sessions. Biweekly or something. I'm going to have my agent set up the appointments." Pete immediately agreed to share the chauffeuring.

Scientific American: News In Brief: Centuries Later, Chinese Lotus Seeds Still Sprout: February 26, 2002 Nearly 500 years after forming in their parent plant, lotus seeds from a Chinese lakebed have sprouted seedlings of their own, researchers say. According to the lead author of a study detailing the findings, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Botany, the cultivation of offspring from seeds this ancient is "a first in plant biology."

The File Room Censorship Archive home page

Monday, February 25, 2002

Unit 731 War Crimes Against Humanity
Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 killed thousands of Chinese and Russians held prisoner in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, in experiments to develop chemical and biological weapons.
In the autumn of 1945, MacArthur acceded to granting immunity to members of Unit 731 in exchange for data of research on biological warfare. "The value to the U.S. of Japanese BW data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war crimes' prosecution." The BW information obtained from Japanese sources should be retained in 'top secret' intelligence channels and not be employed as war crimes evidence and not be fallen into the Soviet hands. The State Department disagreed over a two year period and the topic simply disappeared.
Why did the US lose interest in pursuing the issue of war criminals? China became communist, Japan was a required base for operations in Korea and became a major trading partner and economic power in the East.

History of Biological Warfare

Biological Warfare and BioTerrorist Attacks: Need for Counter-Measures Biological Warfare
Biological Warfare Program of Japan Before and During the Second World War
In 1931 the Japanese Army occupied Manchuria. The next year the Japanese Army established a biological warfare facility in the Manchurian city of Harbin under the leadership of Army Surgeon Shiro Ishii. The laboratory studied many diseases that could be used as biological weapons, including anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia. The virulence of the biological agents was determined by experiments on more than 3000 live prisoners including some Americans. None of the prisoners survived. A staff of 300, including 50 medical doctors, injected prisoners with disease, forced them to eat contaminated food, or tied them to stakes and subjected them to clouds of anthrax or plague aerosols.
Ishii designed a small bomb consisted of a porcelain shell, filled with cotton wadding, wheat, rice, and live human fleas infected with bubonic plague. On October 4, 1940, a Japanese plane dropped flea bombs on Chü Hsien in Chikiang Province, resulting in 21 deaths. On October 27, 1940 plague bombs were dropped on Ningpo, a city south of Shanghai. The raid was led by Lt. General Ishii and recorded in a documentary film. There were 99 fatalities. On November 4, 1941, Japanese planes dropped plague bombs on Changteh City near Lake Tung Ting, causing an epidemic with 24 deaths.

Feature Article Introduction
In this new millennium, there is a convergence of technologies into a digital format. Cassette tape players have been replaced with the CD. VHS players have been replaced with the DVD. The Sony Walkman® has been replaced with the MP3 portable. This rapid development of digital technology has the average consumer replacing functional equipment with newer technologies. The "in with the new and out with the old" attitude can be quite costly for the consumer. In this discussion, I have focused on Home Theater and HDTV; specifically the Media Industry’s application of Commercial Content Protection (CCP). Their involvement will force you to buy a new TV in two years.

Friday, February 22, 2002

The solution for your Hobby Tool needs. Widget Supply Catalog

Fuel cell to replace rechargeable batteries?
Posted 2/21/2002 - 9:17PM, by zAmboni
Can you imagine two day talk time and two week standby time for your cell phone? Lawrence Livermore National Labs have developed and demonstrated a fuel cell which may deliver that type of power. Their fuel cell provides at least 3 times more operating time and is designed to be half the cost and 30 percent of the weight of existing rechargeable power sources.
The heart of this miniature power source utilizes a thin layer of electrolyte material sandwiched between electrode materials containing appropriately proportioned catalyst materials. Microfluidic control elements distribute methyl alcohol fuel mixtures through a silicon chip over one electrode surface while air is simultaneously distributed over the other electrode. Integrated resistive heaters allow heating of the electrolyte-electrode layers, thereby increasing the conduction of catalytically generated protons from the fuel supply across the electrolyte to the air breathing electrode, where they combine with oxygen to generate electrical current.
They estimate the fuel cell price would be in the $1.50-$3/watt-hour range. Optimizations to the fuel cell may even give a charge lifetime up to 15(!) times longer than current rechargeables. The fuel cell can be recharged by just slapping in a new methyl alcohol cartridge, no need to be tied down to an electrical outlet.
One more advantage of this fuel cell would be increased energy capacity which c

Thursday, February 21, 2002

Yahoo - AMD Unveils Groundbreaking Platform Design for Its Next Generation Microprocessors AMD Unveils Groundbreaking Platform Design for Its Next Generation Microprocessors
The AMD-8000 Series of Chipsets to Provide Evolutionary Building Blocks for Future Computing Platforms

Investor Relations Welcome to AMD Investor Relations. This is where you’ll find up-to-date corporate financial information

The Register Small MS DVD privacy invasion, not many dead
By John Lettice
Posted: 21/02/2002 at 12:59 GMT


Windows Media Player 'phones home' when you're watching DVDs, but whether or not this is either a surprise or a serious privacy issues kind of depends on your point of view. Security consultant Richard Smith thinks it is, and documents what WMP does, and the data it sends.

It contacts a Microsoft server to get title and chapter information about the DVD, which is snooping if you look at it one way, and a mechanism for delivering handy context-based services if you look at it another.

It also (and this is the first serious bit, if there is one) identifies your player uniquely, so Microsoft knows who you are, and what you like to watch. The other serious bit is that the relevant Microsoft privacy policy did not actually mention this until the matter was drawn to Microsoft's attention. So not only was Microsoft snooping on you, but it was also being sneaky about it.

Solarbotics - Your BEAM Robotics Resource

New Scientist Antimatter atoms captured for the first time

09:45 21 February 02

Antimatter atoms, among the most elusive matter in the Universe, have been captured for the first time.
According to the standard model of particle physics, every particle has a corresponding antiparticle with the same mass and opposite charge. The pair annihilate each other on contact, releasing a burst of energy.
Scientists have wondered if they can harness this energy, but they have found it difficult to make and control antiatoms. In the late 1990s, up to nine antihydrogen atoms were detected in particle accelerators at CERN and at Fermilab near Chicago. But they were moving at almost the speed of light - much too fast to be stored or studied.
Now researchers on the ATRAP experiment at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, think they have made and stored thousands of antiatoms indefinitely in a particle trap.

BEAM Robotics Philosophy BEAM Robotics Philosophy
The idea is to improve robo-genetic stock through stratified competition and have an interesting time in the process. The science behind the idea stems from current concepts in artificial intelligence (AI), artificial life (ALife), evolutionary biology, and genetic algorithms. It seems that building large complex robots hasn't worked well, so why not try to evolve them from a lesser to a greater ability as mother nature has done with biologics? The problem is that such a concept requires self-reproducing robots which won't be possible to build (if at all) for years to come. A solution, however, is to view a human being as a robot's way of making another robot, to have an annual venue where experimenters can let their creations interact in real situations, and then watch as machine evolution occurs.

Scientific American: News In Brief: Study Suggests Supernova Snuffed out Marine Life Two Million Years Ago: February 13, 2002


The phrase mass extinction often calls to mind such potential culprits as asteroid impacts and volcanism. But new research suggests that in the case of a die-off of marine creatures that occurred two million years ago, at the interface of the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs, a different phenomenon was to blame. According to a report appearing in the February 25 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, cosmic rays from the explosion of a nearby supernova may have done these animals in.

NEUROSCIENCE
Brain Study Casts Doubt on Theory of How Human Intelligence Evolved
Of all the characteristics that distinguish humans from other primates, those related to intelligence hold special interest for scholars and laypeople alike. It's an appropriate enough fascination. After all, what could be more uniquely human than the desire to understand how our big, curious, narcissistic brains evolved? That said, a lot of the story is entirely unknown, and the results of a new study suggest that some of what scientists thought they knew may actually require revision.
According to a popular view of human cognitive capabilities, much of what sets our species apart from the other primates can be attributed to a disproportionate enlargement of a part of the brain known as the frontal cortex that occurred at some point in human evolution. But the evidence traditionally used to support that argument, say Katerina Semendeferi of the University of California at San Diego and her colleagues, comes from small studies that in many cases did not include data from apes, our closest relatives. Furthermore, the studies varied in the way they defined the region of the cortex.
The team's own findings, detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, led to a rather different conclusion. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers obtained brain scans of 15 living great apes, four lesser apes, five monkeys and 10 humans—a sample larger than any used in the prev

freshmeat.net: Project details for bnetd bnetd
by Hakan Tandogan - Saturday, August 1st 1998 05:47 EST
About:
Bnetd is a program that emulates a Battle.Net server. It was originally written for the Linux platform, but has since been reported to work on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, HP/UX, and Irix. It supports many Blizzard clients including StarCraft, Brood Wars, and Diablo.
Author:
Hakan Tandogan

This site has been shutdown. we are down right now. However, this time it isn't because of technical reasons but for legal issues.

This site has been disabled as requested by Blizzard Entertainment and it will remain closed as we have no legal recourse other than to fight a long protracted lawsuit against a large corporation. This is due to 17 USC Section 512(c)(1)(C) (AKA DMCA, supposedly required to be passed by WIPO treaties). Blizzard claims bnetd is in violation of 17 USC Section 1201(b), though we do not agree with their interpretation. Blizzard refused to specify a specific list of files on this site so the whole thing must be blocked. We are very sorry for the inconvenience but there is nothing we can do.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Untitled Document "Our large range of SPUR GEARS and HELICAL GEARS (crossed and parallel axis) are now available to order on-line - click on the 'Enter Secure On-line Order Zone' button at the top of the page. Be sure to re-visit as more products become available."

New Page 1 In September 1999, faced with rising fuel prices and the fact that most of my journeys are less than 40 miles round trip, I decided that perhaps an Electrically Powered Vehicle would be worthwhile. I searched the web for anyone doing anything similar, and although I found a few sites for golf buggies and electrically assisted bicycles, there was nothing that I felt met my requirements.

Recumbent Cycle Component Design & Construction

Recumbent Cycle Projects This is Timothy Smith's Home Page
of (mostly) Recumbent Cycle Projects.

International Human Powered Vehicle Association (IHPVA)Website The International Human Powered Vehicle Association is an association of national associations and organizations, dedicated to promoting improvement, innovation and creativity in the use of human power, especially in the design and development of human-powered vehicles. The HPVA is the former IHPVA and now the association for USA, Canada & Mexico, and still for anyone, worldwide, who does not have a national association.
The IHPVA and HPVA publish the journal Human Power and operate this Internet site, which is sponsored by Brian Wilson. Click to JOIN the HPVA.

Sheldon Brown's Home Page

Togoparts.com - Bike parts made to-go!

Durchsichtig: Panzerkachel schützt vor Geschossen - Wissenschaft - SPIEGEL ONLINE Amerikas Waffentechniker zeigen Interesse an einer Panzerkachel aus Dresden. Im dortigen Fraunhofer-Institut für Keramische Technologien ist es gelungen, feinkörniges Aluminiumoxid bei 1200 Grad Celsius so im Ofen zu verbacken, dass ein extrem hartes, durchsichtiges Material entsteht.
Eine 10 mal 10 Zentimeter große Platte (Stärke: 1,0 cm) wiegt nur etwa 400 Gramm, ist aber dreimal härter als gehärteter Stahl. Bei Schusstests im Auftrag des Bundeswehrbeschaffungsamtes in Koblenz seien "hervorragende Ergebnisse" erzielt worden, berichtet der Forscher Andreas Krell.
Auch im US-Staat Idaho wurden die Fliesen untersucht: Das Pentagon ist von der Transparenz des Werkstoffs fasziniert, mit dem sich schussfeste Visiere oder große Fenster von Panzerspähwagen bauen lassen.

Stela 10, Copan, Honduras When looking through the window of Temple 22 toward the western horizon at Copan, Honduras, in the Spring, the sun sets behind Stela 10 sixteen days after Vernal Equinox at an orientation of 276*45'00". Four days later, the sun reaches the mid-line of the window at an orientation of 278*25'00. This second day always falls 20 days after Vernal Equinox and 20 days before solar zenith passage, when the sun is directly overhead at noon, and so precisely, in fact, that vertical objects do not cast a visible shadow at that time. This same sequence, but in reverse order, also occurs in the Fall, when the sun returns to these same orientations relative to solar zenith passage and Autumnal Equinox then.
During the Classic period, specifically when the ruler who built Temple 22 at Copan (18-Rabbit) was acknowledged as guardian of the World Tree for the people there, the relevant events for the sun's motion along the western horizon occurred in the following sequence in the Maya calendar

One of the worldwide three existing mayan codices (plus the Grolier fragment) to survive the book burnings by the Spanish clergy in 1521 turned up in Dresden in 1739. How it got to Vienna, where Johann Christian Goetze, director of the Royal Library at the court of Saxony purchased it from a private owner, is unknown, but it was probably sent by Hernán Cortés as a tribute to the king of Spain, who was also the king of Austria during the Conquest.
The Dresden Codex is considered the most beautiful and complete. It is made from Amatl paper( "kopó", tree bark that has been flattened and covered with a lime paste) , folded accordion-style and written and painted on both sides. It totals 74 pages in length, painted with extraordinary care and clarity using a very fine brush. The artist used both sides of all but four of the pages of the codices. Its basic colors are red, black and the so-called Mayan blue.
The codex was written by eight different scribes, each with their own distinctive style, type of glyphs and subject matter. It is linked to the Yucatecan Maya in Chichén Itzá, the extraordinary ancient Mayan city situated in the north of the Yucatán Peninsula. It was made between A.D. 1200-1250, and was still possibly in use when the conquistadors arrived. The "Codex Dresdensis" as one of the few pre-Columbian Mayan hieroglyphic writings (most of them on stelas found in Palenque, one of the ancient cities of Yucatán) contains ast

Dartboard IP We built a parallel port onto a dartboard. We connected the dartboard to an old laptop, which we call the dartboard server. The dartboard server has a wireless network card. The end result is a dartboard with its own IP address and a wireless connection to the Internet. We wrote a dart daemon to poll for dart hits. The daemon accepts multiple simultaneous TCP connections and sends the dart hits to all connected clients. We wrote a game managing client, which runs on a desktop near the dart toe-line, connects to the dart server and manages matches. The results of the matches are uploaded to the dartboard server when the matches are over. The dartboard server then compiles several statistics on all matches and uploads them to the Dworkin Darts web page.

Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo THE DEMO
On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

TechTV | Flash Advance Linker Visoly's Flash Advance Linker lets you copy homemade Game Boy Advance games from your computer to a cartridge. You can also download other people's homemade games to your computer, then copy them to the cartridge. The Flash Advance Linker also allows you to take existing GBA games, copy them to your computer to play in a GBA emulator, then copy them to a blank cartridge

EAGB Advance Hardware Previews & Reviews - Flash Advance Linker Kit Review - Flash Advance Linker & Flash Advance 64M Card
( Added June 24nd 2001 - By Eric)
Introduction
The Flash Advance Linker & Flash Advance 64M Card although recently released, is probably old news to hobbyist and programmers involved in the GBA emulation scene. If you don't already know, the Linker is a GBA hardware development and back-up kit, which GBA programmers use to test their compiled game codes.

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

He Who Controls the Bootloader He Who Controls the Bootloader

(He Who Controls the Bootloader: Page 1 of 1 )

By Scot Hacker

August 27, 2001


The day before I submitted this column, news hit the Net that the other shoe had finally dropped. After months of waiting and wondering what was to become of Be, we learned that Palm, Inc. will be purchasing Be's technology, intellectual property, and assets. While we don't yet know exactly what Palm plans to do with Be, my guess is that the company intends to beef up and extend its product line — make palm-sized devices more media-friendly, and possibly build appliance-like units for the home. As analyst William Crawford recently said, "Where they have to go, Be already is." Be's lightweight footprint and excellent media handing capabilities make the technology a good fit. Be will receive $11 million in Palm stock, which they intend to liquidate to pay off debts. Considering that Apple allegedly once considered paying $125 million for Be, Palm got Be for a song — a fire-sale blowout.

Be Inc sues Microsoft
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 20/02/2002 at 00:48 GMT


Be Inc is suing Microsoft for the destruction of its business. A damages figure isn't enumerated, but Be points out that at one stage the company was valued at over $1 billion.

The company is now a shell, with the assets including BeOS and BeIA, and some 46 staff, having been transferred to Palm Inc in the Fall for $11 million.

But BeOS as a desktop system effectively ceased to compete for OEM attention in the New Year 2000.

The main focus of the suit is on the boot-loader question, which Gassee aired in Byte last year.

Hitachi had agreed to license BeOS, and ship a dual-boot system using Be's boot loader and an icon on the desktop that enabled a Windows user to reboot into BeOS with one click.

"Microsoft sent two U.S. managers to Japan who expressed their 'anger' with Hitachi over its arrangement with Be, and 'reminded' Hitachi of the terms of its Windows license," according to the claim. "

Hitachi eventually shipped a system with BeOS loaded, but with no sign that Be was loaded on the system the PC booted directly into Windows and users were required to create boot floppies and install the bootloader themselves.

Compaq and Gateway declined to market dual-boot 'Creativity PC' systems Be had co-developed with Intel, citing the Windows license. Even when Be offered the OEMs the op

How does a light-mill work?

DOJ/Antitrust Re: United States v. Microsoft Corp. & State of New York v.
Microsoft Corp., United States District Court for the
District of Columbia, Case Nos. 98-1232, 98-1233

The Register Web wife jilted on the auction block
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 19/02/2002 at 15:41 GMT


It is with great sadness that El Reg informs its readers that Kay Hammond - the 24-year-old blonde internet entrepreneuress from Birmingham, England, who tried to find a husband by auctioning herself online – will not be getting married. Well not in the short term, anyhow.

It seems that Ben Webb – the chap who bid more £250,000 for her hand – can't be found.

One "Ben Webb" was traced, but when confronted, he knew nothing of the auction. Apparently, he's just returned penniless from travelling overseas.

A spokesman for Miss Hammond told The Register that it seems the bid appears to have been a cruel hoax.

It is unlikely that Miss Hammond will place herself up for auction again, he said.

FiringSquad A Surprising Result

So here I am, all tidied up and looking good on the desktop. I pop into Links 2001 to check things out and am poking around for video information and the like when what should happen? I notice that now, resolutions above 1280x1024 are listed! Odd... So, I fire up Unreal Tournament (where the same problem occurred) and I find that I can now see every single resolution above 1280x1024 that my card can manage!

Just to be sure of things, I went ahead and did a clean install of Windows 98 SE on my formatted hard drive (after backing up of course) and then the only thing I added was the Geforce drivers and the two games. If I left things as is, neither game would allow selection above 1280x1024. If I went into the registry and deleted the extra resolutions that I did not like and rebooted the machine, suddenly both of those games had no trouble going to 1600x1200. Looks like I tripped over a solution here to a problem I've been messing with for a long time, so I thought I would share it with the kind folks who read the articles I push out of my brain. Hope it helps!

Spam busters : ICON : News Possibly the most significant list of late is Spam Prevention Early Warning System. Despite its rather unappealing acronym, SPEWS is proving to be a considerable force. "We don't know who SPEWS is. We think it's made up of a number of senior system administrators who are powerful enough to have gained the authority to cut down the traffic. They're powerful but we don't know who they are," Barry says.

BBC News | NEW MEDIA | Next generation DVD born The "next generation" of DVDs, able to hold almost six times as much information as current discs, has been unveiled by major technology companies.
The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes,

News Release | National/Panasonic


Large Capacity Optical Disc Video Recording Format "Blu-ray Disc" Established
The Blu-ray Disc using blue-violet laser achieves over 2-hour digital high definition video recording on a 12cm diameter CD/DVD size phase change optical disc

Friday, February 08, 2002

US National Virtual Observatory Framework for the National Virtual Observatory

Digital Sky The Digital Sky
Federating the Sky Surveys
Large-area digital sky surveys are a recent and exciting development in astronomical research. The combination of terabyte/teraflops computational resources with the recent large-area surveys in optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths will provide unprecedented capability for astronomical research. With these capabilities, astronomers will have access to a multi-wavelength digital library covering a significant fraction of the real sky. The Digital Sky and the tools for its exploration will help revolutionize multi-wavelength astronomical studies, both by the sheer increase of the data available, and by providing faster and more sophisticated methods for its analysis. The Digital Sky offers a perspective of the universe which is statistical and data-focused, in contrast to traditional work with individual stellar objects. The Digital Sky is funded through the NPACI (National Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure) program of the NSF (National Science Foundation). More?

Technology and The National Virtual Observatory Standards mean that however complex the task, you only have to do it once for everyone to share and profit. This is why so many people worry about fragmentation or proprietary standards on the Web, which could force people to use several costly tools instead of just one low-cost web browser.

Technology and The National Virtual Observatory (Technology and The National Virtual Observatory: Page 1 of 1 )

By Bill Nicholls

December 24, 2001


The NVO, the National Virtual Observatory, has just received a $10 million NSF grant. While this is not enough for the whole job, it is enough to establish a prototype and prove the concept in real use.
Just how challenging is the NVO? Very. Extremely. Mind boggling complex. The NVO will advance both science and technology by significant strides. I say this both as a physicist with a long-time interest in space and astronomy, and as a senior IT professional. "So what?", I hear you say. So what indeed.

A Forest of Kernel Trees

Active-Hardware.com, main page...

WJiMages Jukebox - Tunes

Another Time's Movie MIDI's (O-Z)

Thursday, February 07, 2002

Introduction to First Edition

A Guide to Fantasy, Part 4

Adbusters: Corporate Flag

New Scientist Teleporting larger objects becomes real possibility

19:00 06 February 02
Anil Ananthaswamy

The dream of teleporting atoms and molecules - and maybe even larger objects - has become a real possibility for the first time. The advance is thanks to physicists who have suggested a method that in theory could be used to "entangle" absolutely any kind of particle.

Wednesday, February 06, 2002

OTECnews

How to deal with spam from China [rec.humor.funny] How to deal with spam from China

Sigma Designs Inc. - Video On Demand for Broadband Set-top Appliances

THE THREE LIVES OF SUPERMAN

Review: The Trouble Twisters The Trouble Twisters by Poul Anderson
X141 / Berkley Medallion Paperback June 1967 / Review by Ernest Lilley
Back in the mid 60's, about the time Trek was airing with its vision of utopian humanity reaching for the stars, Poul Anderson introduced a character with no less charisma than James Kirk, but rather than a dashing starship commander, David Falkayn was an explorer merchant. It's easy to say that Anderson maintained that greed and need would remain constants in the human expansion to the stars, but the truth is rather that he recognized that where man goes, so goes trade. Trek itself only accepted this in recent years, and begrudgingly at that, characterizing the greedy Ferengi as vile creatures. And yet, there was one episode where Quark, DS9's oft derided bar owner, had to sit a Vulcan down and explain the economics of war to him. And offer him peace at a fraction of the cost.

Tangent Online

Theological Themes in Science Fiction, essay by Anitra L. Freeman

Remembering Poul Anderson

Locus: Poul Anderson interview P O U L A N D E R S O N :
Fifty Years of Science Fiction

AllSciFi.com Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews and Commentary! Zany Sci-Fi discussion coupled with very detailed reviews.
Submit a review and get listed as a scholar on our site!
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The Templeton Gate - Authors - Poul Anderson


His scientific literacy is probably exceeded in the genre by only Asimov and Clarke, whereas the traditions of his ancestral heritage embues much of his work with a profound humanistic and libertarian philosophy, reminiscent of the best of vintage Heinlein. I would rank him higher in the SF heirarchy if not for what I consider his one shortcoming; the inability to create (with just a couple of exceptions) well-rounded, distinctively identifiable and believable characters. Even with that, I would still have to say that his galaxy-spanning narratives and hard-SF scenarios never overlook or overshadow the personal and emotional impact on his protagonists.

Belated Reviews #27: Poul Anderson

Guardian Unlimited Books | News Obituary: Poul Anderson


Poul Anderson, who has died aged 74 from prostate cancer, published his first short story in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1947, and went on to produce more than 100 books, most of them novels. One of the last writers from science fiction's golden age, he was in the generation that followed authors like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Frederik Pohl.

Telzey's Homepage I'm Telzey!
I'm a character on FurryMUCK. FurryMUCK is the largest and longest-standing MUCK on the Internet. When I'm online, you'll usually find me there. I also appear on FurToonia, but not as often. I've been active on FurryMUCK since April of 1994. I've had a web site of my own since summer of the same year.

Membership LIBERTARIAN FUTURIST SOCIETY LEADERS

Poul Anderson Poul Anderson (1926- )
US writer born in Pennsylvania of Scandinavian parents; he lived in Denmark briefly before the outbreak of WWII. In 1948 PA gained a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota. His knowledge of Scandinavian languages and literature and his scientific literacy have fed each other fruitfully through a long and successful career. He is Greg BEAR's father-in-law.

poul anderson

Ex Libris Archives: Poul Anderson


Poul Anderson was one of the pulp science fiction masters of the '50's and '60's. He's been eclipsed in recent years, and hasn't maintained his popularity the way, say, Robert A. Heinlein has....but he's still written some very good stuff. I've never attempted to build a complete collection of Anderson's books, but there are a few titles I cherish, and pull out periodically when I need a lift.

Science Fiction and Fantasy World - sffworld.com


Discussion forums - Authors - Interviews - News - Reviews - Articles - Short stories - Excerpts - Synopses - Free Newsletter - Voting

SF REVIEWS.NET: Ensign Flandry Starkad is a distant world inhabited by two sentient species--the aquatic Zletovar and the land-borne Tigeries--that has become a pawn in the chess game of interstellar expansion and power between imperial Earth and the alien Merseians. Dominic Flandry, a brash 19-year-old ensign in the Imperial Naval Flight Corps, finds himself caught in the middle of escalating conflicts on Starkad when it becomes apparent that the Merseians may well be engineering hostilities between the two species. But why the Merseians might try to aggravate a situation on this remote world that could lead to interstellar war--indeed, why they might be interested in Starkad in the first place--is more than a little mysterious.

Religion in the fiction of Poul Anderson Much of Poul Anderson's fiction is set in his "Technic Civilization" universe. Nicholas van Rijn and his associates are important characters in many of these stories. One of his contemporaries, and perhaps a competitor, is Martin Schuster, the master trader in "The Three-cornered Wheel" (the first part of The Trouble Twisters). Schuster knows and respects Jewish traditions. He uses his knowledge of the Kabbalah to deal with the theocracy that the protagonists confront.

sfbooks/catalogue/a

SciFan: Series pages

Friday, February 01, 2002

FS CryptoCorner: Background to Exmoor Beast

Mystery Big Cats

Detailed information on the characteristics of the tiger: Genetics.



IKIP Homepage The International Kuril Island Project is an international collaboration of American, Russian, and Japanese scientists to survey the plants, insects, spiders, freshwater and terrestrial mollusks, freshwater fishes, amphibians, and reptiles of the Kuril Archipelago. Participating institutions include the University of Washington (Fish Collection, Burke Museum, and Herbarium), the Russian Academy of Sciences, Far East Branch, and Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan.

Secret of Sakhalin Island (Karafuto) Secret of Sakhalin Island (Karafuto)

Hominids A Look at Modern Human Origins.

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