Monday, March 31, 2003
Bridging The Gap Between Computer And Stereo
Bridging The Gap Between Computer And Stereo Turtle Beach's AudioTron-100 ($299) comes to the rescue. This device looks like a normal stereo system component, but hooks into a home Ethernet network to play your tunes. It connects to your computer via the network, scans the hard drive for up to 30,000 MP3 files and also plays Internet radio stations. If you have a wireless network (802.11b or Wi-fi), you can purchase a wireless Ethernet bridge for about $100 to $130 and connect the whole setup together sans wires. The coolness factor is off the charts.
The AudioTron is a good choice because it doesn't store the files on its own hard drive but instead streams them from the computer, leaving your music files in a centralized place. Create playlists on your computer and play them through the device's remote control or front panel.
Saturday, March 29, 2003
Life Made to Order
Life Made to OrderEfforts to create custom-made organisms—one DNA letter at a time—could yield new sources of energy or novel drugs.
By Alexandra M. Goho
April 2003
Life Made to Order
Life Made to Order "We’ve removed a billion-year-old constraint on what we can do with proteins," says a Scripps chemist, Peter Schultz. "And so we’re taking the point of view that if God had worked on Sunday, and he had more amino acids to work with, what would have been the outcome?" Would an organism with an expanded genetic code and amino acid inventory have an evolutionary advantage?
If scientists could answer such big theoretical questions, says Stephen Freeland, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Maryland, it might be possible one day to discover on other planets life that might not otherwise be recognizable. And if the synthetic-genome technologies in the works at Scripps, Egea, Venter’s institute, and elsewhere pan out, life right here on Earth could soon look a little less familiar -- and a lot more diverse.
Friday, March 28, 2003
News from the Washington File
News from the Washington File U.S. Marines on March 26 found more than 3,000 chemical protective suits, gas masks, nerve agent antidotes and a tank at a hospital near An Nasiriyah that was being used by Iraqi irregular forces as a base of operations. Brooks said the discovery by British forces of several thousand more chemical protective suits in the Ar Rumaylah oil fields in southern Iraq strongly indicate "a certain knowledge in the Iraqi forces that chemical weapons will be used." Since coalition forces do not have chemical weapons, Brooks said, there may already have been an Iraqi decision to use banned weapons at some point.
Mirror.co.uk - Basra civilians fired on by own troops
Mirror.co.uk - Basra civilians fired on by own troops Iraqi paramilitary forces in Basra have fired mortars and machine guns at a "couple of thousand" civilians trying to flee the city.
Members of Britain's Desert Rats 7th Armoured Brigade were trying to neutralise the fire.
Lt Col Ronnie McCourt, a spokesman for British forces in the Gulf, said UK troops were trying to evacuate the civilians and treat the wounded.
He said a "couple of thousand" Iraqi civilians had tried to break out from the north and west of the besieged city, but came under fire from Iraqi paramilitary forces inside.
Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim - War on Iraq - smh.com.au
Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim - War on Iraq - smh.com.au At least a dozen members of Osama bin Laden's network are in the town of Az Zubayr where they are coordinating grenade and gun attacks on coalition positions, according to the Iraqi prisoners of war.
It was believed that last night (Thursday) British forces were preparing a military strike on the base where the al-Qaeda unit was understood to be holed up.
A senior British military source inside Iraq said: "The information we have received from PoWs today is that an al-Qaeda cell may be operating in Az Zubayr. There are possibly around a dozen of them and that is obviously a matter of concern to us."
If terrorists are found, it would be the first proof of a direct link between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.
The connection would give credibility to the argument that Tony Blair used to justify war against Saddam - a "nightmare scenario" in which he might eventually pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Experts: Northwest quake under way _ taking weeks, not seconds
Experts: Northwest quake under way _ taking weeks, not seconds Recently discovered silent quakes, which can only be detected with sensitive instruments, aren't as harmless as they may seem.
Scientists say they may be adding to the tremendous pressure in an area where the brittle rocks of two tectonic plates are locked offshore.
Evidence shows that every few hundred years, the jammed plates release that stress in huge magnitude 8 or 9 earthquakes that can rattle the entire Northwest coast and generate lethal tsunamis. The last such powerful subduction-zone quake occurred about 300 years ago.
"These slow slips aren't reducing the stress on the locked zone," said Herb Dragert, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada in Sidney, British Columbia. "They're actually, in little pulses, adding a tiny bit of stress to the locked zone."
About every 14 to 15 months, the slow-motion earthquakes are generated about 15 to 30 miles deep at the interface of the lower Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and the upper North American plate.
Experts: Northwest quake under way _ taking weeks, not seconds
Experts: Northwest quake under way _ taking weeks, not seconds Recently discovered silent quakes, which can only be detected with sensitive instruments, aren't as harmless as they may seem.
Scientists say they may be adding to the tremendous pressure in an area where the brittle rocks of two tectonic plates are locked offshore.
Evidence shows that every few hundred years, the jammed plates release that stress in huge magnitude 8 or 9 earthquakes that can rattle the entire Northwest coast and generate lethal tsunamis. The last such powerful subduction-zone quake occurred about 300 years ago.
"These slow slips aren't reducing the stress on the locked zone," said Herb Dragert, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada in Sidney, British Columbia. "They're actually, in little pulses, adding a tiny bit of stress to the locked zone."
About every 14 to 15 months, the slow-motion earthquakes are generated about 15 to 30 miles deep at the interface of the lower Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and the upper North American plate.
Mystery Illness's Mortality Rate 4%, WHO Official Says (washingtonpost.com)
Mystery Illness's Mortality Rate 4%, WHO Official Says (washingtonpost.com) SARS, which emerged in southern China in November, has spread to at least 13 countries in Asia, Europe and North America, sickening more than 1,300 people and killing at least 49. U.S. health officials are investigating 45 possible cases in 20 states, including three in Virginia.
A distinctive pattern of symptoms has become clear, Salter said. Two to seven days after being exposed, patients suddenly develop a high fever -- 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher -- start shaking and experience chills, shortness of breath and a dry cough. Some also experience headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, malaise, confusion, rash and diarrhea.
Laboratory tests show that white blood cell and platelet counts drop in some patients. Chest X-rays usually reveal a distinctive pattern in which a cloudy area appears in one part of a lung and then spreads across both lungs.
After about six or seven days, about 80 percent to 90 percent of patients begin to improve. The remaining 10 percent to 20 percent deteriorate and require intensive care, with many needing a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe.
About 40 percent to 50 percent of those patients die, making the overall mortality rate for the disease about 4 percent.
Plasmon shows off Blu-Ray CDR
Plasmon shows off Blu-Ray CDR A WORKING VERSION OFa 30GB Blu-Ray CDR was shown at CeBIT this year. We missed this ourselves, but luckily CDR-Info had its eyes peeled a bit better than ours.
According to the web site, which has pictures and specs of the drive, the machine will use 405 nanometer blue-violet laser and phase change technology and will have a data transfer rate of up to 8MB/s. And the site adds that future generations of the technology will manage to support 60MB cartridges.
GNU Linux, SCO, IBM, IP, UNIX, UnitedLinux - MozillaQuest Magazine - SCO-Caldera v IBM: IBM Replies to Some SCO Allegations but Hides Lots Too - Page
GNU Linux, SCO, IBM, IP, UNIX, UnitedLinux - MozillaQuest Magazine - SCO-Caldera v IBM: IBM Replies to Some SCO Allegations but Hides Lots Too - Page 1 Has IBM Contaminated Linux Kernel or GNU/Linux Source Code with SCO-Owned Unix Code?
SCO-Caldera v IBM:
IBM Replies to Some SCO Allegations but Hides Lots Too
Linux and the SCO-Caldera v IBM Lawsuit
By Mike Angelo -- 26 March 2003 (C)
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
India Hits Out at Pakistan; Missile Tests Held (washingtonpost.com)
India Hits Out at Pakistan; Missile Tests Held (washingtonpost.com) NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India called Pakistan the "epicenter of international terrorism" on Wednesday and accused Washington of double standards in leading a war against Iraq while urging restraint between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
It was India's strongest language against Pakistan since the two countries pulled back from the brink of war last year and coincided with tit-for-tat missile tests held by both countries.
The Indian Foreign Ministry blamed Pakistan for an attack by suspected Muslim militants last Sunday on Hindus in Indian Kashmir in which 11 men, 11 women and two children died.
"The epicenter of international terrorism that exists in our neighborhood and the infrastructure of support and sponsorship of cross-border terrorism must be completely dismantled," it said in a written statement.
"We are determined to face this challenge with strength, determination and resolve," it said.
India accuses Pakistan of supporting "cross-border terrorism" by helping militants fighting against Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in mostly Hindu India.
The Japan Times Online
The Japan Times Online n fact, the U.S. is spending more in total on defense than the next 11 highest-spending nations put together, and will soon outspend all other countries combined, according to Newsweek (March 24).
Clearly, the U.S. budget is large enough to ensure military readiness and fully protect America's air, water and wildlife -- after all, who would lament the production of 100 fewer cruise missiles? Not to mention the hypocrisy of adorning warplanes with pictures of the hawks and eagles whose natural habitat they're degrading.
But a closer look reveals a hypocrisy that runs much deeper. The controversy centers on the "Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative" -- Section 316 of the proposed act, which would apply to lands managed by the DoD, as well as surrounding ambient air and open-water marine ecosystems.
Here's a taste of the bill's Orwellian double-speak (italics added): "The purpose of this chapter is to: "(1) protect the lives and well-being of citizens of the United States and preserve their freedoms, economic prosperity, and environmental heritage by ensuring military readiness; . . . "(6) to re-establish the appropriate balance between military readiness and environmental stewardship; . . .
Apparently, despite its massive budget, the Pentagon fears "environmental stewardship" is getting the upper hand on "military readiness." More incredibly, the Bush administration believes that to protect the lives and well-being of American citizens and to preserve their freedoms, economic prosperity and environmental heritage, the military must have the freedom to degrade the environment.
Confusing, yes, but don't start asking questions. War is a time for patriotism, and today's brand of patriotism in the U.S. means placing blind trust in the country's leaders.
Humongous fungus a new kind of individual
Humongous fungus a new kind of individual The world's biggest fungus, discovered in Oregon's Blue Mountains in 2001, is challenging traditional notions of what constitutes an individual. The underground fungus--estimated to be between 2000 and 8500 years old--is also deepening our understanding of the ecosystem, with possible implications for the management of Canadian forests, according to a paper by the discoverers (B.A. Ferguson, T.A. Dreisbach, C.G. Parks, G.M. Filip, and C.L. Schmitt) published March 17 on the Web site of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research (http://cjfr.nrc.ca).
The clone of Armillaria ostoyae--the tree-killing fungus that causes Armillaria root disease--covers an area of 9.65 square kilometres, about the size of 6000 hockey rinks or 1600 football fields.
Scientists debate meaning of 40-million-year-old primate fossils in Nature
Scientists debate meaning of 40-million-year-old primate fossils in Nature CHICAGO--Fossils recently discovered in Egypt fill one of the gaps in the evolutionary tree of primates and double the known age of one of its main branches. Because there are still so many gaps in the tree, statistical calculations push the origin of primates, including the earliest ancestors of humans, back to about 90 million years ago
Software breaks data-transfer record
Software breaks data-transfer record If it detects many errors, the TCP deduces that the network is congested. It halves the sending rate, and begins edging back up towards the maximum.
This worked fine for the Internet of the late 1980s, when the TCP was invented. But it copes less well with powerful twenty-first-century networks. "The adaptation is too drastic," Low explains. "The speed jumps around from too high to too low."
It's like driving a car by flooring the accelerator for as long as you can, and then stamping on the brake when you hit traffic.
FAST talker
Caltech's alternative is called FAST, for Fast Active queue-management Scalable TCP. It detects congestion by measuring the delay between sending a packet of data and receiving an acknowledgement. As this delay increases, it eases off - just a little.
This deals with congestion before the error rate rises. "It allows you to adapt more smoothly," says Low. In tests using existing hardware and networks, FAST has run the international links between labs at more than 95% efficiency.
Software breaks data-transfer record
Software breaks data-transfer record If it detects many errors, the TCP deduces that the network is congested. It halves the sending rate, and begins edging back up towards the maximum.
This worked fine for the Internet of the late 1980s, when the TCP was invented. But it copes less well with powerful twenty-first-century networks. "The adaptation is too drastic," Low explains. "The speed jumps around from too high to too low."
It's like driving a car by flooring the accelerator for as long as you can, and then stamping on the brake when you hit traffic.
FAST talker
Caltech's alternative is called FAST, for Fast Active queue-management Scalable TCP. It detects congestion by measuring the delay between sending a packet of data and receiving an acknowledgement. As this delay increases, it eases off - just a little.
This deals with congestion before the error rate rises. "It allows you to adapt more smoothly," says Low. In tests using existing hardware and networks, FAST has run the international links between labs at more than 95% efficiency.
Software breaks data-transfer record
Software breaks data-transfer record If it detects many errors, the TCP deduces that the network is congested. It halves the sending rate, and begins edging back up towards the maximum.
This worked fine for the Internet of the late 1980s, when the TCP was invented. But it copes less well with powerful twenty-first-century networks. "The adaptation is too drastic," Low explains. "The speed jumps around from too high to too low."
It's like driving a car by flooring the accelerator for as long as you can, and then stamping on the brake when you hit traffic.
FAST talker
Caltech's alternative is called FAST, for Fast Active queue-management Scalable TCP. It detects congestion by measuring the delay between sending a packet of data and receiving an acknowledgement. As this delay increases, it eases off - just a little.
This deals with congestion before the error rate rises. "It allows you to adapt more smoothly," says Low. In tests using existing hardware and networks, FAST has run the international links between labs at more than 95% efficiency.
Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Stunning Hubble images of mysterious erupting star
Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Stunning Hubble images of mysterious erupting star In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy.
The mysterious star has long since faded back to obscurity, but observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Monday, March 24, 2003
The New Yorker: Fact
The New Yorker: Fact: "WHO LIED TO WHOM?
Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2003-03-31
Posted 2003-03-24
Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability."
Friday, March 21, 2003
ABCNEWS.com : Google Web Search Adds Human Researchers
ABCNEWS.com : Google Web Search Adds Human Researchers Enter Google Answers.
The small, little-publicized service
Thursday, March 20, 2003
The Japan Times Online
The Japan Times Online The soft-spoken grandmother who took our bath tickets with a lilting "oide yasu" kept an eye on us from her perch that looked down on both the women's and men's changing rooms. After getting used to conversing with this lady while completely naked and dripping wet, I soon felt part of the community she watched over. She treated us all like family. On sumo days she would even bring in hand-formed onigiri rice balls, filled with sansho pepper-seasoned little jako fish for the starving students. She taught us that sumo is really just another excuse to get together with friends and eat.
Lindows promises better revenue stream than Windows
Lindows promises better revenue stream than Windows Now Lindows.com is offering system builders something more. It calls it RevShare. The idea is that system builders also get to collect up to 20% of the profits from the software and services. So, if the system builder sells a LindowsOS PC to one of its customers and that customer then buys StarOffice from Lindows.com, the system builder gets a cut.
New Scientist
New Scientist Delicate threads of spider's silk are about to solve a major problem in photonics: how to make hollow optical fibres narrow enough to carry light beams around the fastest nanoscale optical circuits.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
University of Toronto study charts new realm of physics
University of Toronto study charts new realm of physics The team works in the rapidly emerging field of metamaterials - artificially created substances with properties not found in nature. Under normal electromagnetic conditions, light passing through a flat lens will diverge; light passing through a lens made of metamaterials, however, will bend the "wrong" way and become focused.
Their study reveals that when evanescent waves - weak but important waves that lose strength quickly after leaving their source - are directed through their flat metamaterial lens, these waves are amplified. At the same time, the lens corrects the phase of the waves by focusing the diverging waves into a beam. Metamaterial lenses, when constructed at optical frequencies, could be used to engineer the next generation of electronic devices at the nanometre scale, says Eleftheriades.
The Casper Star-Tribune
The Casper Star-Tribune Denver International Airport was shut down, stranding about 3,700 travelers, and a seam in the tent-like roof began to tear under the weight of the snow. Gov. Bill Owens called out the National Guard to rescue stranded motorists, and officials warned residents to stay home unless travel was absolutely necessary.
The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison - OSNews.com
The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison - OSNews.com BeOS clearly wins on UI responsiveness because of its extreme multi-threaded nature and its fantastic kernel scheduler (which plays very well with the app_server). Everything is just snappy. I run BeOS on a 1.6 GHz machine and it is simply overkill. No matter what I do, there is always CPU left for other things. I primarily run BeOS on a dual Celeron 533 and it is also extremely snappy. You click a window and while this application might have another window doing something else, nothing gets paused to wait for the other window to finish what it's doing. Everything is just readily available immediately. Make no mistake, BeOS is not a fast OS when it comes to server operations (except if you have installed the BONE networking stack), or when you do heavy compilations, and despite popular belief, its SMP scaling could be much better. But being a "multimedia OS", the engineers over at Be had special-cased a lot of things, making latency and UI a snap. BeOS "feels" fast to the user perspective, even though some under-the-hood operations are not really as fast as Linux or Windows XP. Check out this very recent YellowTAB Zeta DivX video from CeBIT, showing what BeOS can do and how fast it can do it.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Monday, March 17, 2003
smugmug - photo sharing at its best. easy to use, unlimited photos, gorgeous galleries.
smugmug - photo sharing at its best. easy to use, unlimited photos, gorgeous galleries. Thanks to Mark Von Striver and the V-Strom Yahoo group I had the chance to spend one of my best riding weekends! Patrick, John, Ben, Clark and obviously Mark were the ones showing up at the meeting point to go camping at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. 6 riders (5 V-Strom, 1 1150 GS) was a perfect group size and the pace was both steady and fast. Good size also for a great evening and the best food I ever had while camping! Overall it was: 3 days and 930 miles including around 120 in the dirt.
Yahoo! News - Heightened Alert as Killer Bug Cases Rise
Yahoo! News - Heightened Alert as Killer Bug Cases Rise
Health ministries and airport authorities around the globe were on high alert as Hong Kong's Health Minister Yeoh Eng-kiong announced the number of people infected with the illness there had nearly doubled.
Although he said it was too early to talk of an epidemic, he confirmed that nearly 100 people in Hong Kong, most of them medical staff, had fallen ill.
Hours later Britain reported its first suspected case.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued a global health alert, the first in a decade, about the unusual strain, which does not respond to treatment and has no known cause.
Arizona Daily Sun
Arizona Daily Sun The good news is that precipitation in northern Arizona this winter may be just enough to give many relatively healthy ponderosa pines a fighting chance against fatal bark beetle attacks, forestry experts say.
The bad news is that it takes "several years" of normal rainfall before drought-stressed pines can fully recover and produce beetle-fighting pitch, they add.
But the really bad news is the forecast of dead and dying trees for 2003 may skyrocket and current forest conditions promise a bark beetle outbreak in just a few weeks at least as bad as last year's, when 2 million trees in Arizona were killed.
"The traditional date for them to start flying is April 1 and that's coming up pretty soon," said Tom DeGomez, of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Service in Flagstaff.
STUFF: WORLD NEWS - STORY : New Zealand's leading news and information website
STUFF: WORLD NEWS - STORY : New Zealand's leading news and information website Twenty-three-year-old Rachel Corrie was, according to a witness, lying on the ground in front of an Israeli army bulldozer demolishing a house in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when she was killed.
"The American girl was lying in front of the bulldozer when the bulldozer took sand and put it over her," Ali al-Shaar, a witness to the incident, told Reuters on Sunday.
The Israeli army called the incident a "regrettable accident", but said Corey and other protesters had been acting irresponsibly by "intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone". The army said it was investigating the incident.
Tucson reservist loses job when Navy calls
Tucson reservist loses job when Navy calls Automotive supply chain Pep Boys fired a Tucson store manager because his military Reserve duties took him away from work, according to a federal lawsuit filed here.
The Japan Times Online
The Japan Times Online Such are the concerns of a modern-day swordsmith. While Yoshihara's techniques date back to 12th-century Japan, his workshop in Katsushika Ward, northern Tokyo, is hardly in a feudal rut. Yoshihara's fleece-clad son, age 36, like to have the radio blaring as he works, while one of Yoshihara's three disciples enlivens his corner of the studio with a Takanohana poster. Then there's the wall of Yoshihara's living room filled with his grandchildren's crayon drawings.
Yoshihara is a 10th-generation swordsmith. His grandfather produced katana (long swords) for the Showa emperor, and his brother, Shoji, plays a swordsmith in Tom Cruise's upcoming movie "The Last Samurai."
ABCNEWS.com : Suicide Bomber Dies in N. Iraq Blast
ABCNEWS.com : Suicide Bomber Dies in N. Iraq Blast On March 16, 1988, Iraqi airplanes dropped a mixture of mustard, VX and nerve gas on Halabja, a town located about 60 miles east of Sulaimaniah. An estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians were killed in the attack.
Hundreds subsequently have died of cancer and other ailments associated with that chemical bombardment.
The Halabja attack has been cited repeatedly by the Bush administration as a justification for the looming war against Iraq.
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Friday, March 14, 2003
ABCNEWS.com : Saddam Could Launch First Strike
ABCNEWS.com : Saddam Could Launch First Strike Specific new evidence indicates that Iraqi activity in the Western desert shows the strong likelihood Scud missiles are hidden there. These missiles could easily reach Israel carrying chemical or biological warheads which could draw Israel into any war.
Detailed new intelligence from the southern Iraqi oil fields shows that many of the 700 wells have now been wired with explosives. These explosives appear to be connected to a central command post, so Saddam could easily set the wells ablaze.
Near the border with Kuwait, where 135,000 U.S. troops are now stationed, recent surveillance indicates Iraqi artillery batteries have been moved dangerously close. The artillery is capable of firing shells filled with poison gas.
Serbian PM assassinated - Jane's International Security News
Serbian PM assassinated - Jane's International Security News The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, was shot in central Belgrade at 1200 GMT on 12 March and subsequently died in hospital of his wounds.
The Serbian media has reported that two men have been arrested for the killing, in which Djindjic was hit in the back and stomach by two heavy-calibre sniper rounds.
On 21 February Djindjic survived an earlier assassination attempt involving one, or possibly two, lorries driving into his convoy
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Diamond in the rough
Diamond in the rough The sensor being developed will be about the size of a postage stamp and could be placed or sprinkled anywhere, acting like a "bio-cell phone," the developers say. These new sensors would detect biological molecules of interest and also take advantage of the signal amplification and processing properties of microelectronics. And, they would have a credible lifetime.
Washington University - News & Information
Washington University - News & Information During two field seasons in the Goualougo Triangle (February-December 1999 and June 2000-June 2001), Morgan and Sanz encountered chimpanzees on 218 different occasions, totaling 365 hours of direct observation. Their goal, as with other researchers at various field sites in Africa, was to directly observe the full repertoire of chimpanzee behavior, which includes eating meat, sharing food, grooming, mating and using tools, such as large pounding sticks to break open bee hives and leaf sponges to gather water.
During Morgan and Sanz's first five minutes observing individual chimpanzees at their field site, curiosity was the most common response the researchers recorded from 84 percent of the chimpanzees. The curious responses from the chimpanzees included staring at the human observers, crouching and moving closer to get a better view of them, slapping tree trunks or throwing branches down to elicit a response, and making inquisitive vocalizations.
"Such an overwhelmingly curious response to the arrival of researchers had never been reported from another chimpanzee study site," says Sanz. "
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org Our mission is to create an open and ubiquitous XML-based file format for office documents and to provide an open reference implementation for this format.
OASIS - News - 11_20_2002
OASIS - News - 11_20_2002 Boston, MA, USA; 20 November 2002 -- Members of the OASIS standards consortium have formed a technical committee to advance an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications. The new OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee brings together representatives throughout the industry committed to establishing standard data interoperability for office applications. Their work will be suitable for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphs and will retain high-level information for editing.
Although the initial work of the technical committee will focus on standardizing data for content creation and management applications, subsequent phases will address simplifying the exchange of data between any application that utilizes XML, which may include business processes, Web services, databases, search engines, and other applications.
"Our goal is to achieve consensus on an open standard that will protect content--whether it is a 800-page airplane specification or a legal contract--from being locked into a proprietary file format," explained Michael Brauer of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee. "A standard method for processing and interchanging office documents will enable companies to own their data and freely choose tools to view and edit information long after originating applications have come and gone."
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Friday, March 07, 2003
World of Ends
The Nutshell
1.
The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its
value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its
edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of
ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have
so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already
Thursday, March 06, 2003
BW Online | March 6, 2003 | AMD: Too Smart for Its Own Good?
BW Online | March 6, 2003 | AMD: Too Smart for Its Own Good? AMD, the world's second-largest maker of computer chips, continues to face huge challenges. The economic downturn and pressure from its bigger rival, No. 1 Intel (INTC ), are still taking their toll. In AMD's fourth quarter, ended Dec. 29, sales declined 28%, to $686.4 million, vs. the same quarter in 2001, but they were still up over the previous quarter. AMD (AMD ) also posted a net loss of $854.7 million, including restructuring and other charges, for the fourth quarter. Long in the red, it hopes to see profits by the fourth quarter of 2003. Most analysts say that hope is increasingly unlikely.
ABCNEWS.com : Israel Arrests a Hamas Founder in Raid Israeli troops arrested reclusive Hamas ideologue Mohammed Taha on Monday in a deadly raid, signaling a change in Israeli strategy that until now had not targeted the Islamic militant group's leadership.
Backed by attack helicopters and tanks, troops blew up Taha's home and three others in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Eight people died in the raid, and besides the 65-year-old Hamas co-founder, his five sons all Hamas activists were arrested.
The arrests, part of a two-week-old offensive in Gaza, marked the first attack on a Hamas leader since the latest Israel-Palestinian conflict erupted in September 2000. Israel had focused its efforts on rank-and-file militants and on the security forces of the Palestinian Authority itself.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
BeOS rises from the dead in Zeta incarnation
BeOS rises from the dead in Zeta incarnation THE LATE LAMENTED BeOS, loved and cherished by many, is not as dead as a dodo, it appears.
A firm called Yellowtab will exhibit an updated version of code it licensed from BeOS and is set to show it at mammoth computer fair, CeBIT, which starts in Hannover Germany on the 12th of March.
The updated version of its software is called Zeta and the firm will show working examples at CeBIT. There's no clear indication when Zeta will be finally released, but it's got to be not long after that, we reckon.
Mirror.co.uk - 3am
Mirror.co.uk - 3am WHAT is Tom Cruise implying by starring in a film called I Married A Witch? The movie, to be released next year, is a remake of the 1942 comedy and will be directed by Danny DeVito.
The project has been in the pipeline for five years, and Cruise, 40, planned on having his then-wife, Nicole Kidman, play opposite him. Since then, the couple have gone through a bitter divorce and Cruise is currently seeing his Vanilla Sky co-star, Spanish siren Penelope Cruz.
Top General Sees Plan to Shock Iraq Into Surrendering
Top General Sees Plan to Shock Iraq Into Surrendering With 200,000 American military personnel in the Persian Gulf and 60,000 more on their way, General Myers declined to give a timetable for war other than to say that the military was ready to attack on President Bush's order.
But several diplomatic and military issues remained to be resolved, including the possibility of a second resolution on Iraq from the United Nations Security Council. Officials said the United States was likely to call for a vote next week.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that he was "increasingly optimistic" about securing a majority of nine or more votes on the Council. "We don't know whether we have nine votes or 10 votes, or more," he said.
The White House was also trying to keep pressure on Turkey, saying that Turkey would not receive $15 billion in grants and loans now that its Parliament had turned down a request for tens of thousands of American troops to use the country as a base to attack Iraq.
New Scientist
New Scientist he latest Ebola outbreak in the Republic of Congo has reached 108 cases, with the death toll rising to 88, according to the country's ministry of health. The outbreak of the deadly fever is in the country's Cuvette-Ouest province, near the border with Gabon, and was first detected on 4 January.
It is thought to have been transmitted to humans via the eating of infected gorilla meat. However scientists do not know the identity of the reservoir of the disease from which the gorillas contracted the virus.
NEWS.com.au | Bombers cover N Korea (March 06, 2003)
NEWS.com.au | Bombers cover N Korea (March 06, 2003) THE US is moving two dozen heavy bombers to within striking distance of North Korea, as George W. Bush has for the first time explicitly canvassed military action to resolve the row over Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons.
News of the deployment of heavy US firepower to Guam came as Washington deplored North Korea's "reckless and provocative" use of four fighter jets to harass and target a US spy plane over the Sea of Japan at the weekend.
And in a significant ratcheting-up of Washington's rhetoric, Mr Bush said that although he believed there would be a diplomatic solution to the row: "If they don't work diplomatically, they'll have to work militarily."
"Military option is our last choice," Mr Bush told provincial US newspaper reporters this week.
"Options are on the table, but I believe we can deal with this diplomatically, I truly do."
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Haifa bus explosion kills eight
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Haifa bus explosion kills eight A suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded bus in the northern Israeli city of Haifa today, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens, officials said.
Police said the suicide bomber detonated explosives that were strapped to his body.
The bus driver, Marwan Damouni, told Israeli army radio that the bus exploded as he stopped at a station and opened the doors to let passengers off.
"I suddenly heard an explosion," said Mr Damouni, who was being treated at Carmel hospital. "I tried to move, to see if there were wounded ... I couldn't hear anything because of the force of the blast."
MegaPrime Home Page
MegaPrime Home Page MegaPrime is a new prime focus environment
for the 3.6-m Canada France Hawaii Telescope.
A new upper end (with a new wide field corrector, an image stabilizing unit and a guiding/focusing unit) will receive a new camera, MegaCam, offering a 1 degree x 1 degree field with a resolution of 0.18"/pixel.
Mauna Kea telescope gets world's biggest camera
Mauna Kea telescope gets world's biggest camera A massive new camera on the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope on Mauna Kea likely will lead to the discovery of more new moons around the planets in our solar system.
University of Hawai'i planetary astronomers have been rendering science textbooks obsolete every few months with a series of discoveries. Several months ago, UH Institute for Astronomy experts found a previously unknown moon orbiting Jupiter, bringing the giant planet's total to 40 moons. The same team found 11 Jupiter moons earlier last year, and 11 others the year before that.
A few weeks ago, three new moons around Neptune were announced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics using a telescope in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope atop Mauna Kea.
The research will be further aided by the French-built Megacam, part of a larger instrument called Megaprime, that can take images with 350 million pixels. That's more than 100 times more powerful than some of the better digital cameras on the market, which take images that max out at about 3 million pixels. (A pixel is the smallest possible element of an image.)
The Megacam is the biggest camera in the world and will be able to capture immense swaths of sky at one time, said astronomer Jean-Charles Cuillandre. He said Megaprime, which is in final testing and should begin regular astronomy within a few days, can view an area of sky that is one degree square
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ABCNEWS.com : Woman Lost Best/Pal Sister in Bali Bombing
ABCNEWS.com : Woman Lost Best/Pal Sister in Bali Bombing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda commander who was captured in Pakistan over the weekend, is believed to be behind the nightclub bombing in Bali that took Karri's life. But his arrest doesn't change anything for Karri's sister.
• Key Players in the Plame Affair