Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Monday, October 21, 2002
Friday, October 18, 2002
Map Collections Home Page The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted to digital form.
The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection.
Map Collections is organized according to seven major categories. Because a map will be assigned to only one category, unless it is part of more than one core collection, searching Map Collections at this level will provide the most complete results since the indexes for all categories are searched simultaneously. Maps can now be downloaded.
Wired News: Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft? Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing. This assurance was made while he spoke on a panel at the USENIX Symposium.
Skeptical that this was actually the case, fellow panelist Lucky Green quickly filed two patents soon after the conference. The patents described methods for using the Palladium infrastructure to assist in the enforcement of software licensing. Green has a third patent application on the way.
The twist is that Green has no intention of implementing these techniques himself -- and in an interview with Wired News, declared his intention to "aggressively enforce his patents," if granted, to prevent anyone else from doing so.
Green has not disclosed the specifics of his patents. However, even without those details, Dan Burk, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law, says it is perfectly legal to patent any kind of automated technique, such as Amazon's One-Click patent and Priceline's reverse auction patent. Additionally, he says, "Improvements on known technologies are patentable."
Increase in Autism Baffles Scientists As diagnoses of autism have increased throughout the nation, experts and parents have cast about for possible explanations, including genetics, birth injuries and childhood immunizations. The California study found that none of these factors could explain an increase of the magnitude reported there — more than triple from 1987 to 1998.
New Scientist The three-centimetre disc will be the same thickness as a DVD, but the phase-change material that records the data will be a mere 0.1 millimetres thick, compared to 0.6 millimetres for DVDs. Philips says this should mean there is less risk of beam distortion if the disc tilts when the portable device gets jogged. Portable DVD players will not play smoothly if jogged.
This jog-resistance is helped by making the glass and polymer lens that focuses the laser only 1.3 millimetres wide, just one-third the size of the lens in a DVD recorder. This means the optics need be only one-tenth the mass of their counterpart in a DVD, light enough for an electromagnet to keep them steady.
The drive is currently 0.5 centimetres thick, 5.6 centimetres long and 3.4 centimetres wide. The first versions of the disc will store one gigabyte on each side, but the dual-layer coating already used for DVDs will double the capacity to four gigabytes in total.
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
The Free World's Information and Software repository New laws in the USA not only make it illegal for US citizens to use or produce many kinds of useful software or inform/publishing research about such software (that's ok, after all it's their law), but also seek to prevent citizens of other countries from making such software or information available to the US.
Unless special measures are taken, this will make it hard for people in other parts of the world to exercise the rights defended and protected by their respective laws. One obvious special measure would be setting up a hosting service for these kinds of resources with the added extra of access control to make sure US residents and citizens won't be able to download the software or information. This way these resources will stay available for the rest of the world and only those countries who chose to be excluded (by Law) will be deprived of the software or information in question.
If you have any questions, suggestions or would like to help with this site, feel free to email us at: info@thefreeworld.net.
ABCNEWS.com : They Took a Vacation, Now They're Dead Officials estimate that nearly 200 people were killed in Indonesia's worst terrorist attack, many of them Australian citizens enjoying the sapphire beaches, sun-drenched white shores and relatively cheap prices of Bali, a tourist paradise otherwise known as the Island of the Gods.
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
In the last year, I have talked with a friend who owns a Quantum 6. I have also talked with and read the writings of others who have owned Questars or a Q6. And, I own an Intes 6 inch Mak that an experienced observer and telescope reseller considered to be one of the best he had seen for an Intes. I have since come to learn that it is rare to find a Maksutov that passes with a 100 percent perfect star test. None of the other Maksutov scopes I have seen or heard about have passed the star test, they all have some form of spherical aberration or zonal aberrations like a turned edge. So, it is not unrealistic that my Quantum 6 didn't pass with flying colors either. From what I have been told, no Maksutov maker takes the time to properly aspherize the secondary unless he is making the scope for himself; that's enough to eliminate a perfect star test.
Monday, October 14, 2002
ABCNEWS.com : Cleric Targets Dogs in Anti-Corruption Drive "I call on the judiciary to arrest all long-legged, medium- legged and short-legged dogs along with their long-legged owners," the newspaper quoted Gholamreza Hassani, Friday prayer leader in the northwestern city of Urumiyeh, as saying.
"Otherwise I'll do it myself," the Etemad newspaper on Sunday quoted the cleric as saying.
• Key Players in the Plame Affair
