Slashdot Mirror

grasshopper69 writes: "At Rice University, a group of researchers have make a ground-breaking step towards more knowledge about absolute zero. One group of the atomic particles shrank and the other stabilized during the cooling, a quantum condition that simulates the same process that keeps dense cold stars from completely collapsing under their own intense gravity, according to this article at cnn.com."

grasshopper69 writes: "At Rice University, a group of researchers have make a ground-breaking step towards more knowledge about absolute zero. One group of the atomic particles shrank and the other stabilized during the cooling, a quantum condition that simulates the same process that keeps dense cold stars from completely collapsing under their own intense gravity, according to this article at cnn.com."

FatHogByTheAss writes "The ability of local governments to collect sales and use taxes from Internet transactions was argued strenuously during a lengthy Senate hearing Wednesday, as time runs out on the existing federal moratorium on Internet taxation."

mashy writes "Sunday, astronauts on Space Shuttle Discovery set the record for the longest space walk in history, at nearly nine hours, according to this article at CNN. On the walk, the crew made room for a cargo carrier on the space station, among other things."

CNN has a story on an innovative transportation concept, a cross between a car and a train. It's an electric car which can also ride on elevated railways for long-distance, automated travel. The company website has some more information and pictures of their prototype.

ackthpt writes "The Chandra X-ray telescope has captured images of HCG 62 (at Harvard's Chandra Page), a compact group of galaxies. (see the related CNN article). Too bright for optical telescopes, but right up Chandra's resume, the formation is described as an early stage of galactic development. The Milky Way, Andromeda and the Magellanic Clouds, known as the Local Group are an older formation."

willmc writes "I just caught an article on CNN.com talking about a genetically revised moth that will be tested in a controlled outdoor environment this summer, and is expected to be released into the wild in the not-too-distant future. The insect is a pink bollworm moth that is a pest to cotton fields. The change that they're testing first is the addition of a luminosity gene from a jellyfish, and later an alteration that will make them sterile so they can mate with non-altered moths and create sterile offspring, thus reducing or eliminating the moths' population. This sort of thing tends to make me very nervous..." Don't worry. We can always release killer bats to get the moths, and giant carnivorous hedgehogs to kill the bats.

GB Fanatic was one of many people to send this: "I've seen Game Boy Advance news here before so I thought perhaps some of you would be interested in this. Nintendo has announced the full line-up and price range for the launch of Game Boy Advance. GBStation.com has the details. Oh, GBStation.com also has a list of classic SNES and N64 titles that will be released for Game Boy Advance, including Super Mario Bros. 3." There's also a CNN article which has a bit more information. I don't know, I think I've outgrown the Gameboy, but judging from the number of people I've seen playing the snake game on their cellphones, handheld games are still pretty popular.

Adam Attarian writes: "Some really cool stuff is coming out of that telescope in the sky. Take a look at this. That's Galaxy NGC 4013, as never seen before. CNN has the story here. Viewing the galaxy from the side showed a large density of intersteller dust, resulting in a large black lateral band. Quite the site!" This is an amazing picture.

Adam Attarian writes: "Some really cool stuff is coming out of that telescope in the sky. Take a look at this. That's Galaxy NGC 4013, as never seen before. CNN has the story here. Viewing the galaxy from the side showed a large density of intersteller dust, resulting in a large black lateral band. Quite the site!" This is an amazing picture.

Adam Attarian writes: "Some really cool stuff is coming out of that telescope in the sky. Take a look at this. That's Galaxy NGC 4013, as never seen before. CNN has the story here. Viewing the galaxy from the side showed a large density of intersteller dust, resulting in a large black lateral band. Quite the site!" This is an amazing picture.

An anonymous reader noted a CNN story about a Gnutella "Virus" floating around. It only affects windows, and its actually more of a trojan then a virus, but once infected, it hijaacks your gnutella node to serve itself to other unsuspecting gnutella users. I'm sure this is only the beginning.

Skynet writes "CNN has a really cool interview with Chad Edwards, manager of the Mars Network Office, about NASA's desire to improve telecommunications to and from Mars. They plan to get a 1MBps link up by 2007. They also discuss the possibility of multiple Internets spread throughout solar system, all interconnected. Very interesting discussion."

mashy writes "CNN is running a story about AdCops, an internet ad fraud patrol group, who recently opened a museum of internet scams. Its mission is to educate its members of the latest scams, but its $99 membership fee may make it an unpopular choice with so many similar services already available for free." By the way, if anyone needs to MAKE MONEY FAST, just lemme know I have tons of easy ways to do it in my spam folder ;)

mashy writes "CNN is running a story about AdCops, an internet ad fraud patrol group, who recently opened a museum of internet scams. Its mission is to educate its members of the latest scams, but its $99 membership fee may make it an unpopular choice with so many similar services already available for free." By the way, if anyone needs to MAKE MONEY FAST, just lemme know I have tons of easy ways to do it in my spam folder ;)

One year ago, we ran a story about the effects of Napster on the RIAA's 1999 profits, which Michael gave the great title: "Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry." It's a year later, the new numbers are out, and the RIAA is lying through their pointy little teeth about them. The AP wire story's second paragraph says "Sales of music compact discs fell by 39% last year," which they would have quickly seen was a blatant lie if they'd bothered to look at the numbers. Fortunately, Slashdot is here to bust up the spin. Keep reading, if you aren't afraid of numbers.

(Update one hour later by J : The story was on the AP wire, e.g. here, so it's not the BBC's fault. It was unfair of me to single out the Beeb when they just happened to be the source the submittor submitted this morning.)

The RIAA's figures were released last week, but the AP story was delayed until Monday, when the story would get the most exposure.

CD sales plummeted last year in the U.S. and record industry officials say the figures prove that Napster, the Internet music-sharing service, has harmed their business.

Sales of music compact discs fell by 39% last year according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"Napster hurt record sales," said RIAA president Hilary Rosen.

This article reads like it might have been ghost-written by someone from the record industry. It isn't until paragraph ten that journalistic integrity kicks in enough for the AP to quietly mention what they're actually talking about:

Some experts say [sic] the drop of CD singles as being part of an industry-wide slump, due to economic factors and a weak year musically. (Emphasis mine.)

That's right, CD singles. Unit sales for the singles were down 39%, revenue down 36% (they raised prices, of course).

And CD singles account for how much of the RIAA's profits?

Not quite one percent.

Yes, that's right: they lost 36% of 1% of their profits.

And the news media is reporting it as a 39% loss.

The facts are that their "CD sales" are up this year, even over last year's stunning performance. The RIAA increased the average price of a full-length CD from $13.65 to $14.02, and still managed to sell 3,600,000 more of them.

Total profit increase on this, the core of their business, was 3.1%, or just shy of an extra $400,000,000.

But full-length CDs only account for 92% of the RIAA's revenue. They did have weak performance in the other 8%. CD singles, as already noted, dropped revenue by 36%. But the real casualty percentage-wise was cassingles, which lost over 90% of its revenue from last year.

Gee, why could that be? Maybe because nobody wants them?

In fact, the RIAA's only real money-losing format of any significance was cassettes, which, along with music videos, were the only format actually cut in price. Cassette revenue dropped $436 million.

Wait a minute, what am I saying? "Money-losing"? They aren't losing money on cassettes -- they're just not raking it in this year as fast as last year. And gee, why might that be? Again, because nobody wants them?

And it's not like the RIAA is struggling to get by on slim profits. The big picture is that, in the last nine years, they have tripled their annual income.

But they are desperate to spin this as a loss. The actual fact is that their total revenue is down 1.8% from 1999. Last year, they made $14,584,500,000. This year, they made $14,323,000,000.

But how could they blame Napster if they told the truth? What would they say? "Napster is killing us! Our income is down almost two whole percent! We are only pulling in $14,323,000,000 this year!"

That probably wouldn't fly.

Especially because in the three categories which Napster has precisely zero effect on -- cassettes, vinyl, and music videos -- their combined year-to-year loss was $579.5 million.

That's right. In the digital formats which Napster can trade, they are making more money: $318,500,000 more revenue. In the analog and video formats where Napster is irrelevant, they are making less money: $579,500,000 less revenue.

That's the real story here.

But don't trust the press to report this one fairly. Don't trust the RIAA's press release. Go read the RIAA's numbers yourself.

(Hell, don't even trust those numbers -- they don't add up. I was silly enough to type them into a spreadsheet, and someone over there has some problems doing simple arithmetic. Their 1998 total revenue includes the DVDs twice.)

The RIAA is desperately trying to spin this so that they won't look like greedy bastards for turning down Napster's offer of a billion dollars over the next five years.

If they just took that generous offer, then -- in a year that the AP wire suggests might be an "industry-wide slump, due to economic factors and a weak year musically," and in a year for which Bertlesmann admits "we didn't put that much good stuff out" -- their revenue would only be down $111,000,000 from last year. And that would have been $750,000,000 more than they made in 1998.

But that isn't enough for them.

Why would anyone think the RIAA is greedy? They just want what's coming to them.

(Update one hour later by J : Mea culpa. Three paragraphs up, I originally calculated the numbers as if the billion dollars was all applied in one year; that isn't so. The billion would have been applied equally over the next five years. Actually it probably wouldn't have been applied to year-2000 revenue at all, so it's more of a rhetorical point than anything. Thanks to dachshund for pointing out that it wasn't a lump-sum payment.)

(Update four hours later by J : The AP wire seems to have updated its story, now stating explicitly that it's CD singles, not "CDs," which dropped 39%. I see factually correct versions now at CNN, Salon, Yahoo, and wire.ap.org (search on Napster). The BBC version is still incorrect. In my opinion, the new versions are still misleading. Focusing on a large percentage drop within a subcategory which is a tiny percentage of the whole is a classic example of how to lie with statistics. But compare this to the RIAA's press release, claiming that CD singles had "flat growth in '98 and '99," though 1998 revenue actually dropped 22% -- that's just plain lying.)

Rix writes "CNN has another story about NEAR. Apparently, they've extended the mission again - until Feb 28th - to gather even more data. They also have a simulation of NEAR's descent. Unfortunately in QT, so I can't comment on it." And a short update to the balloon story posted just few hours ago: it popped.

hohosforbreakfast writes "According to CNN, NASA launched the largest single-cell, fully-sealed balloon ever from Australia. This thing is supposed to be as large as a football (American) stadium once it's fully inflated, and flies 20 miles high. It'll circumnavigate the globe and then be landed by remote control in Australia. It looks like this flight is a proof-of-concept, but more flights, lasting 100 days each, are planned. Looks like an interesting alternative to satellites for certain observations. The official site is here."

Delphis writes "CNN has an article regarding domain names world wide 'Francis Gurry, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) assistant director-general, told a news conference the effort was aimed at preventing people using different country codes, or ccTLDs, to corner sites, often of prominent figures or businesses. ' .. Could be interesting to see a reform of the current DNS system. How many people will be the winners and losers of this though I wonder?"

Delphis writes "CNN has an article regarding domain names world wide 'Francis Gurry, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) assistant director-general, told a news conference the effort was aimed at preventing people using different country codes, or ccTLDs, to corner sites, often of prominent figures or businesses. ' .. Could be interesting to see a reform of the current DNS system. How many people will be the winners and losers of this though I wonder?"

xpccx writes "Here is a very interesting article at MSNBC by Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He states that "The genome reveals, indisputably and beyond any serious doubt, that Darwin was right - mankind evolved over a long period of time from primitive animal ancestors. Our genes show that scientific creationism cannot be true." This is arguable but should spark quite a debate." Even Kansas agrees.

grasshopper69 writes: "This CNN article talks about how the sun has recently reversed its polarity, which apparently is an occurence every 11 years. This flipping indicates a time of 'solar max' during which the sun will incur more frequent sun spots and eruptions, causing solar flares, which could mean trouble for planet Earth." No one is sure why Earthly magnetic flips are so less regular, either, but all those migrating birds on the sun must be used to it already.

tuiterwyk writes "CNN is running a story here about the re-introduction of a bill designed to place more control on spam and spammers. A lot more spam seems to be coming from off shore (from a U.S. perspective of course), so how much would some of these remedies help?"

ethereal writes "This article from CNN science/technology describes Karl Auerbach's testimony before a Senate subcommittee. He says the problems which existed when he ran for office remain, especially the lack of open processes and accountability to the internet community at large."

ardiri writes: "CNN is reporting that the Russian space station MIR's dumping is to be delayed until mid March, adding approximately 2 weeks to the original dumping date of March 6. Maybe the /. saga of MIR postings will stop once the leftover "chunks" (weighing up to 700kg/1500lb) hit the bottom of the ocean halfway between New Zealand and Chile. Make a mental note, stay away from that area in mid march." Okay, I'm tired of this. It's time to settle Mir's fate once and for all - with a contest.

Guess When Mir Will Come Down

I've been irritated with Mir for a while. It's up. It's down. It's up. It's down. It's saved. It's dead. It's broken. It's fixed. It's broken again. It's fixed again. Weeks ago, I started putting notes on Mir story submissions that came in, which said, "No more Mir stories until pieces start falling!". I even promised that we wouldn't post any more about Mir's troubles. But here I am, breaking that promise. Mir needs to be put down.

Guess when Mir hits the water and win a t-shirt from yours truly. Here are the rules:

1) Use ISO format in a comment submitted to this story - don't e-mail me. ISO format is 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'. Thus, a prediction for the afternoon of March 13 would be '2001-03-13 14:23:07'. All times are Eastern Standard Time in the United States, unless Mir makes it until we go on Daylight Savings Time. Your time prediction can be anywhere in a comment submitted to this story. Note that Slashdot stops allowing new comments on a story a few days after it is posted, so if you don't make your guess now, you won't get a chance later. Use ISO format so I can find it with my browser's find function later on. Closest guess wins.

2) Mir's splash time will be judged by reading the first reports submitted by the major fast-response news networks - CNN, AP and Reuters, in that order. I'm looking for a sentence like, "The first pieces of Mir hit the water at [time]." If none of them mentions a time when the first chunks of Mir hit the water (or land, as the case may be) I'll look for a time mentioned when Mir enters the atmosphere. If we still don't have a time (unlikely, I think) I'll resort to other major news sources, NASA, etc.

3) Cunning readers will note that Mir's ephemeris is publicly available and limits the likely splashdown times to various windows. You could probably substantially improve your chances of winning by doing a lot of research and calculations, not that that would be very time-efficient for a $15 t-shirt.

4) One entry per person, please. I'll contact you through the e-mail address you used when you signed up for an account.

5) Winners will be judged as soon as possible after Mir splashes. I'm the sole judge. There is no appeal. Void where prohibited. If you know me you can't win. However, if you have influence over Mir's trajectory and can influence the thing to come down at the time you picked, you win two t-shirts. No cash value. Contest prize consists of a t-shirt from Thinkgeek or Copyleft, winner's choice, provided by me and not Slashdot, VA Linux or anyone else.

Snot Locker writes "As a followup to a SlashDot article posted last February, one of the picosats launched by students last year is still alive and well. Here is the article. What is even cooler is the link therein to the story on Coke-can satellites launched with amateur rockets!! My favorite CanSat story is at the end of the article where the prof caught the can before it landed." And we have the sad duty of reporting that NEAR won't be flying again after all. There's a great quote from one of the scientists about NEAR's current fuel level.

yfarren sent us this: "According to this(free reg required, or try here)new york times article European copyright holders are trying to force consumers to pay them whenever they buy any equipment that might be used to copy music. What I want to know is, if I do pay somone when I buy equipment that enables me to copy copyrighted Items, do I gain rights to do so? If not, what am I paying for?" That's a good question - wish there was an answer. CNN has a very bland article about changes in European copyright law which seem to parallel the DMCA, but I haven't been able to find a good write-up in English - please post below if you have one.

Every once in a while NASA does something amazing. Today they took a probe that was just supposed to orbit a rock the size of Manhattan, guided it down to the surface, reoriented the dish, and sent back a hello from ground zero. The NEAR Shoemaker mission site and its mirror are a little busy at the moment, but CNN's coverage is good, with simulated video, and actual photos from two hundred million miles up. Some engineers, and the operators at Johns Hopkins, must be awfully proud right about now.

adebater asks: "With all of the recent layoffs in the EE field, including today's announcement of Motorola's 4000 person layoff, what does the future hold for graduating EE majors? I am about to graduate, and I was wondering if there was any chance I might have job stability, or even a job. I was wondering what /. people would tell the newly graduating CS and EE majors and what their immediate futures held in store for them." Yes, the market is slowing down. But you must realize that this is only a temporary situation. It may get worse before it gets better but it WILL get better (barring a catastrophe that sends us back into the Stone Age). Hang in there.

SEWilco writes: "The Minneapolis Star Tribune points out there's a high-tech snowplow being road tested around the country. It uses differential GPS, radar, joystick-controlled plow, rumble seat, and a heads-up display for zero-visibility driving. CNN and Nando/AP had related reports. I wonder if they'll automate a plow conga line." These will still be useful for a few more years as global warming advances...

Fervent writes "I think most of us don't totally realize what dangerous and costly things our astronauts have to do. Saturday morning the ISS (International Space Station) will be connected to the bus-sized science lab. The mission is so dangerous, that there is only 2 inches on either side of the shuttle doors to maneuver the lab out. So costly that NASA literally couldn't build a spare, so this is only a one shot deal. They either get it right or they go home hanging their heads. CNN has the article on this particularly tricky maneuver."

Fervent writes "I think most of us don't totally realize what dangerous and costly things our astronauts have to do. Saturday morning the ISS (International Space Station) will be connected to the bus-sized science lab. The mission is so dangerous, that there is only 2 inches on either side of the shuttle doors to maneuver the lab out. So costly that NASA literally couldn't build a spare, so this is only a one shot deal. They either get it right or they go home hanging their heads. CNN has the article on this particularly tricky maneuver."

Believe writes: "CNN has this article about how recent advances in nano technology could be used in consumer appliances (CRTs, Hard drives, etc) as soon as next year. It's nice to see some nanotech applications that could be seen in the real world sooner than the '5-10' year range." What's most intriguing here to me (besides Weija Wen's "white powder of tiny particles") is the establishment of an Institute of Nanoscience and Technology at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. One million dollars though, seems like, well -- like nanofunding.

jaydub99 writes: "It looks like India will continue to explore new markets for their low-cost, high-tech people. Their next arena could be deploying satellites in high-earth (geostationary) orbit. I wonder how much of the resistance from the U.S. is military-based and how much is economically motivated?"

ruebarb writes: "It appears that Osama Bin Laden and the majority of the Slashdot community have something in common - they love that free encryption! Bin Laden has been using chat rooms, bulletin boards, email, and (presumably) PGP to plan his terrorist activities. The article is available at cnn.com -- Expect the usual political outcry and demands for restriction of encryption technology to follow shortly hereafter" And an unnamed correspondent writes: "USA Today has this report about how terrorists are using encryption to distribute secret mayhem instructions via the internet. Gee, you think? What do you think -- is this part of a PR campaign to show John Q. Public how dangerous encryption is in any hands other than gov?" In related news, several of the major news networks are reporting that innocent-looking newspapers and circulars have been employed to form the ransom notes used by notorious kidnappers; calls to ban newspapers on that ground may face some opposition from extremists, but will no doubt soon reach the legislature.

avandesande writes "CNN is reporting on a new ant-shaped nebula that has been discovered. The story is short, but I think that this nebula belongs in the 'top 20 cool looking things in space' list."

avandesande writes "CNN is reporting on a new ant-shaped nebula that has been discovered. The story is short, but I think that this nebula belongs in the 'top 20 cool looking things in space' list."

zonker writes "A U.S. Air Force Delta 2 rocket launched a new GPS satellite today to add to the collection of 27 up there. This new GPS satellite is one of seven now in orbit as a replacement for an earlier generation of GPS. May be of interest to the GPS folks out there."

Masem writes "Senator John Edwards (NC) is introducing a strong privacy bill to Congress, as reported by CNN. While CNN's details are sketchy, the bill would require commercial web sites to ask permission from the user before a cookie can be set or personal information collected. Needless to say, this is an ideal time to snail-mail your representative or senator and ask them to vote in favor of this bill. Of interest that I cannot locate is if this allows 'grandfather' protection of existing data, or will all commercial sites have to start anew by erasing their databases and recollecting the information."

Quite a number of people have been writing the news that Akira is coming back to the US soon. The proposed release is "sometime this Spring". Akira ^[?] is one of the biggies in anime movies - and was a darn fine comic book series as well.

A group called Consumers International has released a report about online privacy in the U.S. and Europe. The report's sound-byte conclusions - "U.S. beats Europe in online privacy protection" - have been widely reported in tech media, but I'd like to take issue with the report in a brief analysis below.

A lot of the blame for the misreporting falls on the authors of the study. They described their study as "An international comparative study of consumer privacy on the internet", when in fact it was nothing of the kind.

One of the major problems facing pro-privacy activists today is a certain type of corporate spin. Major advertisers in the U.S. have created a PR campaign whose goal is convincing people that notice about how your privacy is being violated (typically buried in a dozen pages of fine legal print) is more important than actually having privacy. The PR campaign is designed to push the idea that a privacy policy is what is really needed, not actual privacy. Of course, the privacy policy can say anything: "You have no privacy when dealing with this website" is a perfectly valid privacy policy. A privacy policy which says, "We keep all your information private", when in fact the company sells everything it knows about you to the highest bidder, is also a perfectly valid (though untruthful) privacy policy. So the existence of a privacy policy says absolutely nothing about the actual privacy afforded. Indeed, since privacy policies are written to protect the company, not you, the existence of a privacy policy is a good clue that this is a company which intends to violate your privacy. If you don't collect information from visitors to your site, you have no need for a privacy policy.

So it's embarrassing to see "consumer" organizations take a study of privacy policies and call it a study of privacy. It says to me that either they're strapped for resources (studying privacy is much harder than studying privacy policies) or that they're being dishonest. Occam's Razor suggests the first. But the results are harmful to their cause I think - they end up promoting the idea that privacy policies = privacy. This roughly similar to the idea that good brochures equal good vacation spots, or that good signage on the outside of a hospital equals good medical care inside.

Honestly: if someone did a study of hospitals by walking around them and examining the posted signs, and called it "An international comparative study of medical care", it would immediately be seen for a fraud.

Methodology is important. No study is useful without the proper methodology to support its conclusions, and in this case few methods to study privacy were actually employed. The researchers didn't, for example, actually audit any companies, actually going on-site and interviewing people to see what was actually done to data that was collected. The only useful conclusion drawn out of the study is that the large popular European sites were less likely than large popular U.S. sites to have posted privacy policies - quite possibly because, due to the fairly strict European rules covering the use of personal data, those European sites do much less privacy-violating than U.S. sites and therefore have much less need to post privacy policies. (And the European sites aren't involved in the U.S. PR campaign run by U.S. advertisers, either.)

The study is not awful. The researchers actually did some minimal verification - checking to see whether "do not mail" actually results in not getting spam mail from a company, for instance. (They encountered several cases where they received advertisements even though they had indicated they didn't want any - Ebay users will be familiar with this practice.) But most of the study was based on examining privacy policies.

Possibly the best way I can describe the study is this way: If a company did not collect any information from visitors, did not sell it to marketers, and in general respected its visitors' privacy - but didn't have a privacy policy spelling that out, in great detail - it would receive a poor grade from this study. This is fundamentally wrong - the organizations intending to protect privacy have forgotten the forest for the trees.

gmr2048 writes "CNN is reporting that scientists have named a dinosaur species the "Masiakasaurus knopfleri". I dont know about you, but I'd have voted for a "KeithRichards-o-saurus" before a knopfleri."

arkansas writes "CNN has a report about a new program in a few Pennsylvania schools in which students' fingerprints are used to pay for school lunches. The system's manufacturers claim the info can't be used to identify students, but the ACLU has some complaints."

kubla2000 writes: "As CNN dutifully reports, January 23 marks the anniversary of the first long distance radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi thereby crediting him as the inventor of the radio. I spend a fair bit of time in Poland and was surprised to hear on a children's television quiz show that there were two correct answers to the question, "Who is the father of radio". The other correct answer, was Alexander Popov. Still others would argue that the true father of radio was Nikola Tesla. So in fact, we're witnessing something between the 100th and the 107th anniversary of the birth of radio. Whichever it is, I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP. Quite something."

kubla2000 writes: "As CNN dutifully reports, January 23 marks the anniversary of the first long distance radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi thereby crediting him as the inventor of the radio. I spend a fair bit of time in Poland and was surprised to hear on a children's television quiz show that there were two correct answers to the question, "Who is the father of radio". The other correct answer, was Alexander Popov. Still others would argue that the true father of radio was Nikola Tesla. So in fact, we're witnessing something between the 100th and the 107th anniversary of the birth of radio. Whichever it is, I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP. Quite something."

dlkf writes "CNN reports that Hartwell, Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute used to transmit TV signals over the phone line. With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."

dlkf writes "CNN reports that Hartwell, Georgia is the test site for a new technology developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute used to transmit TV signals over the phone line. With the addition of a set top box, users get 60 channels along with their DSL and phone line."

LtFiend writes "Evidently, some astronomers believe that SETI is searching the skies for the wrong type of signal. This new telescope built by Harvard will search for laser light and can detect pulses " as short as a billionth of a second." Looks like we'll need a new version of SETI at home so we can help with this one."

Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has a story (free reg req) on the latest twist in the battles over High Definition Television. The FCC has concluded that cable companies can not be compelled to carry both the digital and analog versions of a broadcast station's signal. This will definitely make the transition period to full digital even more turbulent, since in individual markets people who have or have not updated their viewing equipment may end up watching different channels." deebaine points also to this CNN story on same; all this HDTV is going to get worse before it gets better.

Adam Attarian writes "CNN's Miles O'Brien (no relation to the dude on Star Trek) has an excellent column on NASA's reflection of the Challenger explosion 15 years ago, and how they are guarding against "go-fever" as much as possible. The article also talks about how detailed and precise NASA engineers are now, and how mathmatical statistics mean hardly anything anymore. This is an excellent read. Hopefully Dubya won't cut NASA's budget more than it all ready has. Those guys are all ready pretty much running on fumes."