Slashdot Mirror

steveha writes "The cover story for this month's Discover magazine tells of a recently discovered gigantic virus, Mimivirus, that has blurred the lines between viruses and bacteria, and spurred speculation that viruses could be the reason life evolved past single-celled organisms." From the article: "This is striking news, especially at a moment when the basic facts of origins and evolution seem to have fallen under a shroud. In the discussions of intelligent design, one hears a yearning for an old-fashioned creation story, in which some singular, inchoate entity stepped in to give rise to complex life-forms--humans in particular. "

Justin Blanton writes "Discover magazine is running an article about a clock designed to run accurately for 10,000 years. It's essentially a "future-proof" clock that blurs the line between art and functionality through advanced engineering. From the article: 'Everything about this clock is deeply unusual. For example, while nearly every mechanical clock made in the last millennium consists of a series of propelled gears, this one uses a stack of mechanical binary computers capable of singling out one moment in 3.65 million days. Like other clocks, this one can track seconds, hours, days, and years. Unlike any other clock, this one is being constructed to keep track of leap centuries, the orbits of the six innermost planets in our solar system, even the ultraslow wobbles of Earth's axis.'"

thelastguardian writes "With 400,000 American construction workers injured each year, and a typical American house takeing at least six months to complete, house building had been the same tiring gritty job for 20,000 years. For this problem, Behrokh Khoshnevis has a solution: A Robotic House Builder. An eight feet tall and six feet wide phototype house building machine, with ceramic mixing ability/computer control back-end, is currently building solid walls inside University of Southern California. To add to the excitement, even NASA is evaluating the machine as a builder on Moon using moondust- Who said moondust is useless?"

naoursla writes "Researchers at the University of Chicago think they have identified 15 mutations in a gene responsible for brain development that gave humans abilities of abstract thought and planning. The article is at Discover. They plan to insert the gene into mice to 'to see what affect it has on brain development.'"

Saige writes "Every night, as darkness descends, countless street lamps and lights turn on to keep the darkness at bay, bathing countless square feet of the planet in light that sometimes rivals daytime. But has anyone stopped to consider what effect all this light may have on people and animals that have evolved to fit an environment where a significant part of the 24 hour day is spent in lightless conditions? Some scientists have, and they are claiming that all this light is causing numerous problems."

meltoast writes "We send lab mice through a maze to see their reactions and then take that information and apply it to our knowledge of the human psyche. Well, what if those mice are completely out of their minds? Discover recently ran an article showing that mice kept in a standard laboratory environment may be crazy. 'In one sequence, a mouse climbs the stainless-steel walls of its cage, hangs from the ceiling by its forelegs while gnawing on the bars, then drops to the floor, only to repeat the process endlessly. On the other side of the cage, a second mouse performs backflips, one per second, for up to 30 minutes at a time.'"

Weird_one writes "Discover magazine's current issue has an intriguing article involving using genetic algorithims to evolve an animation of a walking individual."

JoeCotellese writes "There is an article in Discover magazine about computer scientist/musician Tim Blackwell and his Swarm Music software. This software creates improvisational music based on models of swarming and flocking. The observation was made that interaction among musicians is interdependent and yet independent and this dynamic parallels flock dynamics. Computer generated music has been around for a while but according to his web site, this project was the first application of swarm theory to music. Sample MP3s are available on his website."

An anonymous reader sends in this: "In honor of upcoming V-day, here are some geek guides for help in finding your geeky match: Guy's Guide to Geek Girls, Girl's Guide to Geek Guys, advice from a she-geek, Engineer Your Love Life and Bart's Dating Guide for Geeks. And for those of you who are absolutely hopeless, well, there is always Coincidence Designs... It's not too late, so good luck!" Another reader has some good news: "An article in Discover magazine reports on research done by scientists at the University of Toronto about how males attract mates. The cited article claims that when males are young, the show offs are actually the ones who are least likely to succeed later on. This causes a "revenge of the nerds effect:" the football players burn out but the nerds become sexy!" And if all else fails, you can try a Valentine's Day Form Letter.

Milican writes "'It's easy to have a complicated idea," Carver Mead used to tell his students at Caltech. "It's very, very hard to have a simple idea...And now one of Mead's simplest ideas--a digital camera should see color the way the human eye does--is poised to change everything about photography. Its first embodiment is a sensor - called the X3 - that produces images as good as or better than what can be achieved with film.'" We had a previous story about Foveon last February.

prostoalex writes "Discover magazine provides an interesting insight into the future technologies that will emulate the human brain. While artificial intelligence supporters always considered direct emulation of brain functions too complex and preferred the top-down approach, some people are researching the ways human brain processes data. One of the interesting discoveries, mentioned in the article, is ability of the brain to re-architect the links as new information is added."

ceejayoz writes "MSNBC/Newsweek is running a story about a 'Hypersonic Sound System' that can 'can take an audio signal from virtually any source and convert it to an ultrasonic frequency that can be directed like a beam of light toward a target up to 100 yards away.' Sounds like something that advertisers will love - Minority Report just got a little closer." These guys (and the Audio Spotlight guys) have been hyping this technology for years with nothing much to show from it. But now, Newsweek promises, it's going to change the world as we hear it.

Whitney Wyatt writes: "Discover magazine outlines the first successful laser photon communication utilizing Quantum Cryptography. Called 'Perfect Encryption,' quantum encryption sends the key with the message, however it is impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept the message without changing it. One can only wonder what the FBI will do."

Whitney Wyatt writes: "Discover magazine outlines the first successful laser photon communication utilizing Quantum Cryptography. Called 'Perfect Encryption,' quantum encryption sends the key with the message, however it is impossible for an eavesdropper to intercept the message without changing it. One can only wonder what the FBI will do."

Adn writes: "Discover magzine has a cover story on the "..11 Greatest Unanswered Questions of Physics" and why answering these might lead to a new age of science.... the full article can be found at The National Academy Site. Almost brings to mind Hilbert's 11 questions on Mathematics which if solved were supposed to usher in a new era of logic and formalism."

PhReaKyDMoNKeY writes "Discover Magazine's latest issue has a story about powered exoskeletons and how they aren't terribly far off. Sounds pretty damn cool, except maybe for the centaur flatbed model. Screw a Segway, gimme one of these babies."

PhReaKyDMoNKeY writes "Discover Magazine's latest issue has a story about powered exoskeletons and how they aren't terribly far off. Sounds pretty damn cool, except maybe for the centaur flatbed model. Screw a Segway, gimme one of these babies."

PhReaKyDMoNKeY writes "Discover Magazine's latest issue has a story about powered exoskeletons and how they aren't terribly far off. Sounds pretty damn cool, except maybe for the centaur flatbed model. Screw a Segway, gimme one of these babies."

Sponge! writes: "The stuff that turns oil into margarine. The stuff that made the Hindenburg float. The stuff that combines with oxygen to make water and with carbon to make methane. The stuff that sends the space shuttle skyward and could someday power your car, office building, house, cell phone, even your hearing aid. That "Stuff" is hydrogen, and according to Amory Lovins, it is the future of energy. Here is an interesting article on Lovins and his view of hydrogen as the number one fuel."

hyehye writes: "Discover magazine's current issue has a fascinating look at the first astrophysics experiments. By 'experiment,' they mean that actual experiments are being conducted in a lab, rather than just taking observations. What's basically occuring is a ton of lasers are being fired at very tiny objects, producing heat, pressure, and shock waves very similar to the ones produced when stars explode, i.e. go supernova. This is exciting stuff -- producing miniature supernovae in a lab! Take a look!"

hyehye writes: "Discover magazine's current issue has a fascinating look at the first astrophysics experiments. By 'experiment,' they mean that actual experiments are being conducted in a lab, rather than just taking observations. What's basically occuring is a ton of lasers are being fired at very tiny objects, producing heat, pressure, and shock waves very similar to the ones produced when stars explode, i.e. go supernova. This is exciting stuff -- producing miniature supernovae in a lab! Take a look!"

addaon writes: "Every once and in while, it's nice to have a bold look at the future of computing. A recent article over at Discover Magazine shares James Martin's latest ruminations. While, on one level, this is just another discussion of ubiquitous computing, it's well-presented and insightful." Martin has some big ideas (though ones many people born after 1980 may think simply obvious). This piece also mentions the very interesting experiments in evolutionary computing carried out by Adrian Thompson of the University of Sussex.

addaon writes: "Every once and in while, it's nice to have a bold look at the future of computing. A recent article over at Discover Magazine shares James Martin's latest ruminations. While, on one level, this is just another discussion of ubiquitous computing, it's well-presented and insightful." Martin has some big ideas (though ones many people born after 1980 may think simply obvious). This piece also mentions the very interesting experiments in evolutionary computing carried out by Adrian Thompson of the University of Sussex.

Saige writes "There's an interesting article in this month's Discover magazine about a lone inventor who's managed to develop a new method of wireless transmission that he was told was impossible - using "time-coded ultra-wideband electromagnetic pulses" - something that apparently can offer vast amounts of spectrum, allowing ways around the billion-dollar bidding going on now, with the bonus of better transmission through walls, higher speed/capacity, and higher resolution."

An unnamed correspondent writes: "Ever wanted your own dinosaur? Well slap some skin on this baby and you could." This beast looks like a steel elephant, features unusual motor-less joints, and takes a 700Mhz CPU to control each leg.

CyberLeader writes: "Discover Magazine has an article in both their print and online editions by musician and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in which he conducts a thought experiment on the logical consequences over the current content control battles. A chilling excerpt: 'By 2005, every stream of sound had to present the right documentation to a pair of headphones or speakers- or the music couldn't be played. Before long people were hoarding old analog speakers. In 2006, the recording industry persuaded eBay to refuse to list them.'"

CyberLeader writes: "Discover Magazine has an article in both their print and online editions by musician and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in which he conducts a thought experiment on the logical consequences over the current content control battles. A chilling excerpt: 'By 2005, every stream of sound had to present the right documentation to a pair of headphones or speakers- or the music couldn't be played. Before long people were hoarding old analog speakers. In 2006, the recording industry persuaded eBay to refuse to list them.'"

LostScorp88 writes: "An engineer at Cornell University, Mr. Chris Ober, has developed a new glue for computer parts (mainly mobos/circuit boards) that allows them to be recycled. Previously, the glue used was too strong to be easily separated. The new glue allows the parts to be separated at high temperatures. Read the article [here]." Considering the problems (and expense) of properly and legally disposing of computer equipment, this small advance could have a big impact.

Let's start this off with some violence! BigBlockMopar answered the age-old question: what happens when a tank runs over a hard drive. NeoCode sent the The Illustrated Guide To Breaking Your Computer, and finally, matticus discovered The Overclockerz Store is selling burnt-up athlons/durons made into keychains. Now that we've got that out of our system, lets get some schoolin' by learning about the facts of life: spankweasel sent in the invisible condom. Now math: Jonathan Hayward sent us A four-dimensional maze. And some history: John Willemin sent us a nostalgia inducing Microsoft Ad from the days of yore. After a hard day of education, why not travel home on your lawn mower powered hoverboard at a cool 15mph? (thanks LenZ) Then we can play some dot-com monopoly (thanks to gmag3) and see what's on TV. MTO sent us Trailers for the Dune miniseries, and David Hume sent an abc article about Vinyl Video which attempts to generate images from your records. Finally, we better check the weather channel to find out what the weather is gonna be like ... on Mars (thanks noctis).

The country that helped invent the most technologically advanced information network in world history can't eliminate bureaucratic lines, create simple ballots, or tally up the votes that will determine the future of its own government. We need technological reforms, not merely political ones. Government has failed to use technology to deal with issues such as fund-raising and civic information in the Information Age, and citizens are paying the price.

Our system for electing presidents takes too long, has grown outrageously expensive, and remains technologically primitive. Most ironic of all, the country that helped give birth to the Net administers its political system in an inconvenient, mish-mashed network of ancient and inconvenient systems, confusing methodology and out-of-touch bureaucracies, all right out of the 18th century.

That means it's time to begin moving towards a digital voting system. New electoral technologies don't have to be -- shouldn't be -- rammed down anybody's throat. People who don't want to drive long distances, ponder complex ballots or wait in long lines shouldn't have to. Those who want to use the Net to register and vote ought to be able to do so; those who prefer the current system could keep on using it. Inevitably, the country and it's political processes will become fully wired, as they should be. Science and technology -- however far from infallible -- could also help address some of the other problems surfacing in last week's election fiasco.

Our political media has suddenly discovered voting procedures, and the challenges that have long faced the average voter. We are hearing about poorly-designed ballots, suspicious tabulation delays, endless lines, possible vote fraud. And that's just out of Palm Beach County in Florida, one of the richest communities in the nation. Imagine the potential scandals and sloppiness still lying uncovered in the rest of the country.

It's easy to be cyncical about votes from Chicago cemeteries, but the primary problem may not be political corruption, but technological incompetence. From local municipalities to state legistrators, government has lagged way behind the rest of the country and private industry when it comes to using digital technology to gather and tabulate information. All kinds of institutions, from retailers to universities, can gather certain kinds of information rapidly with at least passable accuracy. Networked digital systems are far from flawless, but they're far more highly evolved than our lumbering electoral process.

It's time -- past time -- to start considering national online registration, voting and tabulation. For safety and accuracy as well as cost, new technologies can be backed up by software, paper and human beings, in much the same way companies like Amazon, L.L. Bean, or for that matter, Microsoft, deal with consumers and online ordering, and double-check identities to confirm purchase and identity.

In an odd way, this election debacle is about voting theory and primitive balloting systems as well as politics. Even the sophisticated predictive polling operations hired by the networks broke down under the strain of a voting operation out of Jefferson's time, not ours.

As badly as we may need campaign finance reform to keep corporate money from polluting politics, we may need technological reform even more. Those punch-a-hole ballots in Florida are ludicrous (19,000 people were disqualified in Broward County alone because they filled out their ballots improperty), and anyone involved in politics knows hundreds of stories all over the country that are as or more horrifying. There are no uniform standards or procedures for collecting and tabulating votes. It's astounding to track reported voting precincts online on sites like Votes.com and Cnn.com, only to be reminded they are dependent on ancient and unreliable tabulation systems in many parts of the country, in this supposed Information Age. Where's that bridge to the 21st century when you need it? If he ends up winning, maybe the Net's Daddy will remember how he almost lost it.

Shouldn't Americans be able to register from their computers at home or work, as well as at government agencies, post offices and other public facilities? With ISPs and now as cheap as cable television service (which reaches the vast majority of Americans), there would be almost no reason not to vote, and tens of millions of citizens could begin participating in the political system. Polling places could be computerized, machines made available to those who can't afford or don't want home computers (much as voting booths are). The results could be tabulated, stored and archived instantly, replacing a patchwork system of paper, punch, machine, computer and mail balloting.

Registrars could e-mail or snail-mail confirmation of registration, and of voting, in the same way many online commercial sites confirm that orders have been placed. If Amazon can do it, can't the federal government?

There are serious about digital politics and online voting, and plenty of technical problems. One of the biggest would be political zealots, crackers and vandals, people breaking into a political system for fun or for uglier motives. It would definitely happen. But hacking a federal election is different from breaking into Microsoft or the New York Yankees' website. Tampering with elections is a felony with serious jail time. There are serious design issues relating to ballots, bond issues and referendums. Aside from that, only about half of the country is yet wired. Millions of people don't yet have computers or know how to use them.

Possibilities of fraud also exist in any system, including the present one. But perhaps voting records could be cross-checked by independent polling entities, or even by official spot-surveys. If irregularities surfaced, officials would investigate.

The system doesn't have to be completely digital, and can be backstopped in various ways . Voters could receive paper registration and voting receipts, either at the polls or by mail. Human beings could spot-check voting patterns, as software programs check for fraud. Teams of programmers and techs could be trained to monitor the system. Computers could randomly check for fraud a lot quicker than elderly volunteers screening neighborhood address lists.

Naturally, there are plenty of questions about e-voting reform. We might examine the experiences of other countries where digital voting technology works, as in some of the Scandanavian or South American countries, who have been experimenting with it for years.

There are also privacy and authentication issues. In many states, citizens simply affirm their identities in order to register. Digital registrants may need passwords, social security numbers, addresses or pseudonyms to protect their voting choices, techniques most Netizens use when they buy things online or access their local paper's Web version. We may need other means of assuring phobic voters that they aren't being monitored improperly. But the truth is, evil-doers could get their hands on paper or machine ballots now if they really wanted to. It's a serious felony, as would be the case with e-voting.

Most Americans have voluntarily agreed to give up some measure of privacy for retailing convenience. Will they be willing to take some risks to use technology to reform voting? Or should citizens be given a choice of digital and paper voting? As more and more functions, from filing for divorce to renewing licenses, become digitized, online voting and registration seem more feasible. Web-page design and architecture has evolved to the point where election choices might be clearer than on those Palm Beach or other confusing ballots. Write-in votes and absentee ballots can also be transmitted online or, when computers aren't available, by paper or e-mail. A new system doesn't have to be absolute. It can simply take advance of new technology to organize a process that seems tailor-made for the Net, which is all about moving point-to-point information quickly.

There's no question there's potential for mistakes and abuse, for manifold technical difficulties. But that possibility clearly exists now, as "Decision 2000" showed, or in any system devised by human beings. Certainly digital polling would work better than those Palm Beach ballot cards.

Beyond the nuts and bolts of counting votes, the larger question of what a vote should consiste of is also up for grabs. The Internet, mathemeticians Donald Saari and Steven Brams argue in a Discover magazine piece, is a natural laboratory for testing alternative voting methods. Six scientific societies in America use a method called "approval voting," they report, most notably the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Approval voting, which Brams favors, dates to the 13th Century, when Venetians used it to help elect leaders. In an approval vote, Saari explains, a person casts one vote for every candidate he or she considers qualified for the office, rather than just one. The voting is conducted much like a survey or an opinion poll, except the results are calculated to determine the winner. If this year's election had been decided by an approval vote in February, John McCain would be president, by a comfortable margin, since for much of the year more Americans approved of him than the two candidates who eventually led their tickets.

Saari advocates an election method called the Borda count election, in which each voter ranks all of the candidates from top to bottom. If there are five candidates, then a voter's leading candidate gets 5 points, his second-ranked candidate gets 4, etc. In the end, the points are added up to determine the winner. The Borda count, once used in the Roman Senate, was named after a French physicist and American Revolutionary War hero named Jean-Charles deBorda. This method is used to rank college football and basketball teams.

Neither one is likely to take root in the U.S. anytime soon, but in the wake of the current outcry about the role of the electoral college, perhaps systems like these deserve greater consideration.

It's increasingly likely that the uncertainty and confusion over this election will go on for weeks, even months. It's ironic and appalling that the country which has produced the most sophisticated information technology network in world history can't even count up the votes that will determine its most important asset, its own political system.

There's a widespread belief in the tech world, inspired perhaps by the growing interaction between technology and politics, that citizens ought to vote, even in an elitist, irrational system they feel disconnected from. This point has been made to me lots of times this past week. Yet two-thirds of Americans disenfranchised themselves four years ago. Since non-voters never get on Washington talk shows, we aren't sure what they think, but their messages may be the most important ones. If you've got such a message, here's a place to put it, and check out an inspiring e-mail from a tech-spawned pol of the future.

There's a strong and historic impulse -- a reflex maybe -- that insists that citizens ought to vote, because it's an important duty (which is true), because it might make a difference (less clear), because it's simply the right thing.

"Just wanted to drop my 2 cents in and say that maybe those who are thinking of sitting out the election should vote Nader," e-mailed Wade."If enough people vote for another party, maybe, just maybe, someone might take notice, and in the next election things could be different. Seems vaguely familiar to me. I think I went through this when I switched OSes...."

Byron Albert wrote that "in the next four years 3 Supreme Court justices will retire. This means that the new president will get to appoint them. These justices will be a major factor in the upcoming years when most of the intellectual property laws and many other things that will impact us (the open source and free software community)."

Scott wrote that he used to think that the individual voter didn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. "But then I realized that the grand scheme of things was made up of individual voters. It is imperative that every single person vote. If none of the candidates appeal to your personal politics, then write someone -- anyone -- in. If you don't vote, you aren't counted. If you do vote, then you are counted."

But obviously it isn't that simple for me (and others), for reasons relating primarily to integrity, technology and culture. I have growing problems with the idea that the only way for me to be counted is to vote for "someone" or "anyone." Maybe it's time -- to be metaphoric -- to switch political OSes.

Not voting can be as distinctly a political statement as voting. Elections shouldn't be about choosing which candidate we dislike least, or symbolic and pointless exercises in voting for people who can't possibly win, especially in the Corporate Republic's most corporate election. People would truly count if their political system offered them real choices and options, and gave them genuine ways to participate -- if their views were actually heard.

Democracy can be much more than our current incarnation of it. It was supposed to be much more. It deserves better than we're giving it.

Our two-party political system, no longer representative or legitimate, functions as a closed and proprietary system in an increasingly open culture. It represents the interests of three groups (corporations, politicians and journalists) while individual citizens have little role to play. They are merely asked to offer themselves for manipulation, then to support an unsupportable system by voting.

In the last presidential election, only one-third of eligible voters voted. Pundits tell us the non-voters are morally oblivious, stupid or apathetic, though since we rarely hear from them, we can only guess. The people who run politics and media have succeeded in trivializing non-voters, making them appear repugnant and irresponsible, the opposite of moral and idealistic. They are democracy's ghosts, invisible people.

Perhaps the non-voters are acting more consciously than that, their decisions worthy of more respect and more careful consideration. Gore and Bush will often urge people to vote in this election, but they won't talk much about why so many people don't. They don't dare.

Being a free-thinking individual doesn't mean taking a single position -- like the belief that voting is a moral imperative -- and always adhering to it. In part, it means recommitting to decisions, considering them anew each time.

The current political system doesn't promote democracy by encouraging debate and diversity. It stifles debate and diversity by limiting the participants to two people from two parties who espouse only slightly different versions of two ideologies: liberalism and conservatism, both to my mind equally discredited and outdated.

It operates by character assassination; it uses technology to promote negative and distorted imagery. Its elemental ideology is marketing, not morals. It's become possible to discuss ideas and solutions in the mediasphere. One day, perhaps, the Net will offer a new kind of space for a different brand of politics. I believe it will. But it doesn't yet.

People e-mail me that they'll vote for one candidate or another because of particular issues like abortion, gun control or legislation affecting the environment. That makes perfect sense, but that rationale is a far cry from the original ideas of the people who created the political process. Jefferson would have thrown himself into the Potomac if he thought that this would be the justification for participating in participatory democracy.

This election especially highlights an ugly truth about American politics, argue mathematicians and voting theorists Donald Saari of the University of California at Irvine and Steven Brams of New York University. In a Discover Magazine article called "May The Best Man Lose," Saari and Brams contend that the voting protocol used in America is fundamentally flawed.

The problem, the mathematicians say, lies in the voting system itself, and the way it thwarts the popular will. Voting theorists have recognized the weakness of the plurality system for centuries, argue the authors. Although few Americans learn this in their high school civics classes, there are many alternative voting systems in the world. And they tend to attract a much higher percentage of voters.

In our system, the winner often amasses only a plurality, not a majority, of the votes. Bill Clinton, for example, won the presidency with 43% of the vote; Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governorship with 37%. The plurality winner could be everybody else's least favorite candidate. As Saari puts it, "the plurality vote is the only procedure that will elect someone who's despised by almost two thirds of the voters."

This may explain why so many people feel it's pointless to vote. A majority of Americans, for example, have repeatedly supported abortion rights, yet their popular will is continually challenged. The system doesn't, in fact, respond to the majority will, often permitting a plurality to supplant it.

The current process personalizes civics, reducing it to an image-spinning contest between two camps who apparently have few coherent or consistent values, whose candidates' public personae change almost weekly to reflect the latest polls.

Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.

It would also be admirable if non-voters found alternative means to support a democratic political system -- running for office, supporting a better crop of candidates, founding and supporting alternative political parties, using technology perhaps to do all of the above. The Net certainly offers some new machinery for that, perhaps a real chance to re-democratize democracy. That won't be easy, though. The alienating nature of our politics is deep and destructive.

What's clear is that the two major candidates manipulate a handful of issues -- abortion, the environment and the judiciary come to mind -- to promote the idea that they have substantial differences when, in fact, they have few. Since both parties are dependent on the same sources of funding, read the same market research, both edge closer to the same positions all the time, at least in public.

Mass political marketers, using the latest polling technologies, and dependent on televised and other images, have driven ugly, fat or odd-looking people out of national politics.If you're not blow-dried, you don't make the cut. That means the prettiest people get to run for president, not the smartest or most idealistic. American political candidates all wind up as militant moderates, hewing close to the center. Neither party offers a radically different approach or vision of the future. Neither has any appetite for addressing expensive or complicated social problems, apart from pandering to parental fears about technology or the fears of the vulnerable elderly. What remains is a media popularity contest that focuses on two issues: Is George Bush intellectually unprepared for the job? Is Al Gore smarmy and obnoxious? So far, the answer to all those questions seems to be yes, but that's hardly a rallying cry for democracy. Or a persuasive argument for voting.

Both candidates continually exploit fears about children and promote ignorant, Luddite views about technology and culture. Both candidates and their running mates advance the dishonest idea that technology and culture are endangering the young, undermining values and education. Lieberman is demanding that Hollywood alter the nature of filmmaking and marketing. Gore is advancing the idea of "cultural pollution." Bush has lamented that the Net can turn the heart of a child dark and murderous. Cheney has criticized Lieberman for not being rabid enough in his attacks on popular culture. No one has made an intelligent or coherent statement about a single one of the many increasingly significant issues that revolve around technology. Their economic and other visions and policies and politics seem ill-suited to a virtual, hyper-connected world, the one that's coming.

I once loved going to my neighborhood polling place. I look forward to the day when I will have the chance to vote for a candidate who speaks honestly, who grasps the centrality of technology and culture in our time, and is willing to raise those important issues in a rational way. That person is unlikely to come out of Washington, or the existing political structure, and is more likely to have grown up reading a site like this.

This fantasy candidate will be neither a "liberal" nor a "conservative" but an original thinker, perhaps one who has used technology all his or her life to test ideas, and take advantage of all that liberated information. He will be an enthusiastic free-marketeer, championing environments that reward opportunity, individuality and creativity. He will offer sane and fair-minded solutions, resist religious and political dogma. He wll fight for the equitable distribution of technology and use it to re-democratize democracy. Instead of branding them stupid and offensive, he or she will fight for the mostly younger people who are building the Net and the Web. He will not be in thrall to corporate contributors.

Actually, I think that such a person will pop up, and pretty soon. When he does, he will generate a tide of money and support, and begin to transform politics into something people want to participate in, rather than a dreary duty. Maybe a person like Tristan Eversole, a college student, who e-mailed me his idea about using the Net to re-invent politics:

"In my opinion, the most amazing thing about the Open Source Movement is the fact that a whole bunch of people came together from different locales and voluntarily created something. No profit motive, no political support. The end product is superior. This is unprecedented. That people actually submit code, that that code can be integrated into a cohesive whole, that people voluntarily debug it ... I can't think of any historical parallel."

"People have many ideas about how a fair and just society can come to exist and govern itself. Your articles [and the responses] prove that. There is no good reason why we can't integrate, test, and argue these ideas into a coherent political system or public policy ... it should be possible to create a similar site [to Slashdot and other open source sites] dedicated to providing a forum for political debate, distilling the most important news about global problems, putting interested people in contact with experts on particular problems, providing an accurate and objective picture of the state of the world, and slowly creating an archive of really good ideas on how major problems should be dealt with. Many care enough to make such a site viable.

Tristan seems to have an intuitive grasp for big political ideas. He said he'd divide politics into two aspects: the ethical (what should we do about a particular issue in the moral sense), and the technical (how should we implement a rational policy?) This kind of thinking is in shocking contrast to the closed-minded and manipulative posturing that passes for politics in the other world.

"I'd love for there to be a site dedicated to finding the truth about the real state of the world; I'm considering creating one eventually," Tristan wrote.

If he runs, he's got my vote.

There's a widespread belief in the tech world, inspired perhaps by the growing interaction between technology and politics, that citizens ought to vote, even in an elitist, irrational system they feel disconnected from. This point has been made to me lots of times this past week. Yet two-thirds of Americans disenfranchised themselves four years ago. Since non-voters never get on Washington talk shows, we aren't sure what they think, but their messages may be the most important ones. If you've got such a message, here's a place to put it, and check out an inspiring e-mail from a tech-spawned pol of the future.

There's a strong and historic impulse -- a reflex maybe -- that insists that citizens ought to vote, because it's an important duty (which is true), because it might make a difference (less clear), because it's simply the right thing.

"Just wanted to drop my 2 cents in and say that maybe those who are thinking of sitting out the election should vote Nader," e-mailed Wade."If enough people vote for another party, maybe, just maybe, someone might take notice, and in the next election things could be different. Seems vaguely familiar to me. I think I went through this when I switched OSes...."

Byron Albert wrote that "in the next four years 3 Supreme Court justices will retire. This means that the new president will get to appoint them. These justices will be a major factor in the upcoming years when most of the intellectual property laws and many other things that will impact us (the open source and free software community)."

Scott wrote that he used to think that the individual voter didn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. "But then I realized that the grand scheme of things was made up of individual voters. It is imperative that every single person vote. If none of the candidates appeal to your personal politics, then write someone -- anyone -- in. If you don't vote, you aren't counted. If you do vote, then you are counted."

But obviously it isn't that simple for me (and others), for reasons relating primarily to integrity, technology and culture. I have growing problems with the idea that the only way for me to be counted is to vote for "someone" or "anyone." Maybe it's time -- to be metaphoric -- to switch political OSes.

Not voting can be as distinctly a political statement as voting. Elections shouldn't be about choosing which candidate we dislike least, or symbolic and pointless exercises in voting for people who can't possibly win, especially in the Corporate Republic's most corporate election. People would truly count if their political system offered them real choices and options, and gave them genuine ways to participate -- if their views were actually heard.

Democracy can be much more than our current incarnation of it. It was supposed to be much more. It deserves better than we're giving it.

Our two-party political system, no longer representative or legitimate, functions as a closed and proprietary system in an increasingly open culture. It represents the interests of three groups (corporations, politicians and journalists) while individual citizens have little role to play. They are merely asked to offer themselves for manipulation, then to support an unsupportable system by voting.

In the last presidential election, only one-third of eligible voters voted. Pundits tell us the non-voters are morally oblivious, stupid or apathetic, though since we rarely hear from them, we can only guess. The people who run politics and media have succeeded in trivializing non-voters, making them appear repugnant and irresponsible, the opposite of moral and idealistic. They are democracy's ghosts, invisible people.

Perhaps the non-voters are acting more consciously than that, their decisions worthy of more respect and more careful consideration. Gore and Bush will often urge people to vote in this election, but they won't talk much about why so many people don't. They don't dare.

Being a free-thinking individual doesn't mean taking a single position -- like the belief that voting is a moral imperative -- and always adhering to it. In part, it means recommitting to decisions, considering them anew each time.

The current political system doesn't promote democracy by encouraging debate and diversity. It stifles debate and diversity by limiting the participants to two people from two parties who espouse only slightly different versions of two ideologies: liberalism and conservatism, both to my mind equally discredited and outdated.

It operates by character assassination; it uses technology to promote negative and distorted imagery. Its elemental ideology is marketing, not morals. It's become possible to discuss ideas and solutions in the mediasphere. One day, perhaps, the Net will offer a new kind of space for a different brand of politics. I believe it will. But it doesn't yet.

People e-mail me that they'll vote for one candidate or another because of particular issues like abortion, gun control or legislation affecting the environment. That makes perfect sense, but that rationale is a far cry from the original ideas of the people who created the political process. Jefferson would have thrown himself into the Potomac if he thought that this would be the justification for participating in participatory democracy.

This election especially highlights an ugly truth about American politics, argue mathematicians and voting theorists Donald Saari of the University of California at Irvine and Steven Brams of New York University. In a Discover Magazine article called "May The Best Man Lose," Saari and Brams contend that the voting protocol used in America is fundamentally flawed.

The problem, the mathematicians say, lies in the voting system itself, and the way it thwarts the popular will. Voting theorists have recognized the weakness of the plurality system for centuries, argue the authors. Although few Americans learn this in their high school civics classes, there are many alternative voting systems in the world. And they tend to attract a much higher percentage of voters.

In our system, the winner often amasses only a plurality, not a majority, of the votes. Bill Clinton, for example, won the presidency with 43% of the vote; Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governorship with 37%. The plurality winner could be everybody else's least favorite candidate. As Saari puts it, "the plurality vote is the only procedure that will elect someone who's despised by almost two thirds of the voters."

This may explain why so many people feel it's pointless to vote. A majority of Americans, for example, have repeatedly supported abortion rights, yet their popular will is continually challenged. The system doesn't, in fact, respond to the majority will, often permitting a plurality to supplant it.

The current process personalizes civics, reducing it to an image-spinning contest between two camps who apparently have few coherent or consistent values, whose candidates' public personae change almost weekly to reflect the latest polls.

Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.

It would also be admirable if non-voters found alternative means to support a democratic political system -- running for office, supporting a better crop of candidates, founding and supporting alternative political parties, using technology perhaps to do all of the above. The Net certainly offers some new machinery for that, perhaps a real chance to re-democratize democracy. That won't be easy, though. The alienating nature of our politics is deep and destructive.

What's clear is that the two major candidates manipulate a handful of issues -- abortion, the environment and the judiciary come to mind -- to promote the idea that they have substantial differences when, in fact, they have few. Since both parties are dependent on the same sources of funding, read the same market research, both edge closer to the same positions all the time, at least in public.

Mass political marketers, using the latest polling technologies, and dependent on televised and other images, have driven ugly, fat or odd-looking people out of national politics.If you're not blow-dried, you don't make the cut. That means the prettiest people get to run for president, not the smartest or most idealistic. American political candidates all wind up as militant moderates, hewing close to the center. Neither party offers a radically different approach or vision of the future. Neither has any appetite for addressing expensive or complicated social problems, apart from pandering to parental fears about technology or the fears of the vulnerable elderly. What remains is a media popularity contest that focuses on two issues: Is George Bush intellectually unprepared for the job? Is Al Gore smarmy and obnoxious? So far, the answer to all those questions seems to be yes, but that's hardly a rallying cry for democracy. Or a persuasive argument for voting.

Both candidates continually exploit fears about children and promote ignorant, Luddite views about technology and culture. Both candidates and their running mates advance the dishonest idea that technology and culture are endangering the young, undermining values and education. Lieberman is demanding that Hollywood alter the nature of filmmaking and marketing. Gore is advancing the idea of "cultural pollution." Bush has lamented that the Net can turn the heart of a child dark and murderous. Cheney has criticized Lieberman for not being rabid enough in his attacks on popular culture. No one has made an intelligent or coherent statement about a single one of the many increasingly significant issues that revolve around technology. Their economic and other visions and policies and politics seem ill-suited to a virtual, hyper-connected world, the one that's coming.

I once loved going to my neighborhood polling place. I look forward to the day when I will have the chance to vote for a candidate who speaks honestly, who grasps the centrality of technology and culture in our time, and is willing to raise those important issues in a rational way. That person is unlikely to come out of Washington, or the existing political structure, and is more likely to have grown up reading a site like this.

This fantasy candidate will be neither a "liberal" nor a "conservative" but an original thinker, perhaps one who has used technology all his or her life to test ideas, and take advantage of all that liberated information. He will be an enthusiastic free-marketeer, championing environments that reward opportunity, individuality and creativity. He will offer sane and fair-minded solutions, resist religious and political dogma. He wll fight for the equitable distribution of technology and use it to re-democratize democracy. Instead of branding them stupid and offensive, he or she will fight for the mostly younger people who are building the Net and the Web. He will not be in thrall to corporate contributors.

Actually, I think that such a person will pop up, and pretty soon. When he does, he will generate a tide of money and support, and begin to transform politics into something people want to participate in, rather than a dreary duty. Maybe a person like Tristan Eversole, a college student, who e-mailed me his idea about using the Net to re-invent politics:

"In my opinion, the most amazing thing about the Open Source Movement is the fact that a whole bunch of people came together from different locales and voluntarily created something. No profit motive, no political support. The end product is superior. This is unprecedented. That people actually submit code, that that code can be integrated into a cohesive whole, that people voluntarily debug it ... I can't think of any historical parallel."

"People have many ideas about how a fair and just society can come to exist and govern itself. Your articles [and the responses] prove that. There is no good reason why we can't integrate, test, and argue these ideas into a coherent political system or public policy ... it should be possible to create a similar site [to Slashdot and other open source sites] dedicated to providing a forum for political debate, distilling the most important news about global problems, putting interested people in contact with experts on particular problems, providing an accurate and objective picture of the state of the world, and slowly creating an archive of really good ideas on how major problems should be dealt with. Many care enough to make such a site viable.

Tristan seems to have an intuitive grasp for big political ideas. He said he'd divide politics into two aspects: the ethical (what should we do about a particular issue in the moral sense), and the technical (how should we implement a rational policy?) This kind of thinking is in shocking contrast to the closed-minded and manipulative posturing that passes for politics in the other world.

"I'd love for there to be a site dedicated to finding the truth about the real state of the world; I'm considering creating one eventually," Tristan wrote.

If he runs, he's got my vote.

There's a widespread belief in the tech world, inspired perhaps by the growing interaction between technology and politics, that citizens ought to vote, even in an elitist, irrational system they feel disconnected from. This point has been made to me lots of times this past week. Yet two-thirds of Americans disenfranchised themselves four years ago. Since non-voters never get on Washington talk shows, we aren't sure what they think, but their messages may be the most important ones. If you've got such a message, here's a place to put it, and check out an inspiring e-mail from a tech-spawned pol of the future.

There's a strong and historic impulse -- a reflex maybe -- that insists that citizens ought to vote, because it's an important duty (which is true), because it might make a difference (less clear), because it's simply the right thing.

"Just wanted to drop my 2 cents in and say that maybe those who are thinking of sitting out the election should vote Nader," e-mailed Wade."If enough people vote for another party, maybe, just maybe, someone might take notice, and in the next election things could be different. Seems vaguely familiar to me. I think I went through this when I switched OSes...."

Byron Albert wrote that "in the next four years 3 Supreme Court justices will retire. This means that the new president will get to appoint them. These justices will be a major factor in the upcoming years when most of the intellectual property laws and many other things that will impact us (the open source and free software community)."

Scott wrote that he used to think that the individual voter didn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things. "But then I realized that the grand scheme of things was made up of individual voters. It is imperative that every single person vote. If none of the candidates appeal to your personal politics, then write someone -- anyone -- in. If you don't vote, you aren't counted. If you do vote, then you are counted."

But obviously it isn't that simple for me (and others), for reasons relating primarily to integrity, technology and culture. I have growing problems with the idea that the only way for me to be counted is to vote for "someone" or "anyone." Maybe it's time -- to be metaphoric -- to switch political OSes.

Not voting can be as distinctly a political statement as voting. Elections shouldn't be about choosing which candidate we dislike least, or symbolic and pointless exercises in voting for people who can't possibly win, especially in the Corporate Republic's most corporate election. People would truly count if their political system offered them real choices and options, and gave them genuine ways to participate -- if their views were actually heard.

Democracy can be much more than our current incarnation of it. It was supposed to be much more. It deserves better than we're giving it.

Our two-party political system, no longer representative or legitimate, functions as a closed and proprietary system in an increasingly open culture. It represents the interests of three groups (corporations, politicians and journalists) while individual citizens have little role to play. They are merely asked to offer themselves for manipulation, then to support an unsupportable system by voting.

In the last presidential election, only one-third of eligible voters voted. Pundits tell us the non-voters are morally oblivious, stupid or apathetic, though since we rarely hear from them, we can only guess. The people who run politics and media have succeeded in trivializing non-voters, making them appear repugnant and irresponsible, the opposite of moral and idealistic. They are democracy's ghosts, invisible people.

Perhaps the non-voters are acting more consciously than that, their decisions worthy of more respect and more careful consideration. Gore and Bush will often urge people to vote in this election, but they won't talk much about why so many people don't. They don't dare.

Being a free-thinking individual doesn't mean taking a single position -- like the belief that voting is a moral imperative -- and always adhering to it. In part, it means recommitting to decisions, considering them anew each time.

The current political system doesn't promote democracy by encouraging debate and diversity. It stifles debate and diversity by limiting the participants to two people from two parties who espouse only slightly different versions of two ideologies: liberalism and conservatism, both to my mind equally discredited and outdated.

It operates by character assassination; it uses technology to promote negative and distorted imagery. Its elemental ideology is marketing, not morals. It's become possible to discuss ideas and solutions in the mediasphere. One day, perhaps, the Net will offer a new kind of space for a different brand of politics. I believe it will. But it doesn't yet.

People e-mail me that they'll vote for one candidate or another because of particular issues like abortion, gun control or legislation affecting the environment. That makes perfect sense, but that rationale is a far cry from the original ideas of the people who created the political process. Jefferson would have thrown himself into the Potomac if he thought that this would be the justification for participating in participatory democracy.

This election especially highlights an ugly truth about American politics, argue mathematicians and voting theorists Donald Saari of the University of California at Irvine and Steven Brams of New York University. In a Discover Magazine article called "May The Best Man Lose," Saari and Brams contend that the voting protocol used in America is fundamentally flawed.

The problem, the mathematicians say, lies in the voting system itself, and the way it thwarts the popular will. Voting theorists have recognized the weakness of the plurality system for centuries, argue the authors. Although few Americans learn this in their high school civics classes, there are many alternative voting systems in the world. And they tend to attract a much higher percentage of voters.

In our system, the winner often amasses only a plurality, not a majority, of the votes. Bill Clinton, for example, won the presidency with 43% of the vote; Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governorship with 37%. The plurality winner could be everybody else's least favorite candidate. As Saari puts it, "the plurality vote is the only procedure that will elect someone who's despised by almost two thirds of the voters."

This may explain why so many people feel it's pointless to vote. A majority of Americans, for example, have repeatedly supported abortion rights, yet their popular will is continually challenged. The system doesn't, in fact, respond to the majority will, often permitting a plurality to supplant it.

The current process personalizes civics, reducing it to an image-spinning contest between two camps who apparently have few coherent or consistent values, whose candidates' public personae change almost weekly to reflect the latest polls.

Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.

It would also be admirable if non-voters found alternative means to support a democratic political system -- running for office, supporting a better crop of candidates, founding and supporting alternative political parties, using technology perhaps to do all of the above. The Net certainly offers some new machinery for that, perhaps a real chance to re-democratize democracy. That won't be easy, though. The alienating nature of our politics is deep and destructive.

What's clear is that the two major candidates manipulate a handful of issues -- abortion, the environment and the judiciary come to mind -- to promote the idea that they have substantial differences when, in fact, they have few. Since both parties are dependent on the same sources of funding, read the same market research, both edge closer to the same positions all the time, at least in public.

Mass political marketers, using the latest polling technologies, and dependent on televised and other images, have driven ugly, fat or odd-looking people out of national politics.If you're not blow-dried, you don't make the cut. That means the prettiest people get to run for president, not the smartest or most idealistic. American political candidates all wind up as militant moderates, hewing close to the center. Neither party offers a radically different approach or vision of the future. Neither has any appetite for addressing expensive or complicated social problems, apart from pandering to parental fears about technology or the fears of the vulnerable elderly. What remains is a media popularity contest that focuses on two issues: Is George Bush intellectually unprepared for the job? Is Al Gore smarmy and obnoxious? So far, the answer to all those questions seems to be yes, but that's hardly a rallying cry for democracy. Or a persuasive argument for voting.

Both candidates continually exploit fears about children and promote ignorant, Luddite views about technology and culture. Both candidates and their running mates advance the dishonest idea that technology and culture are endangering the young, undermining values and education. Lieberman is demanding that Hollywood alter the nature of filmmaking and marketing. Gore is advancing the idea of "cultural pollution." Bush has lamented that the Net can turn the heart of a child dark and murderous. Cheney has criticized Lieberman for not being rabid enough in his attacks on popular culture. No one has made an intelligent or coherent statement about a single one of the many increasingly significant issues that revolve around technology. Their economic and other visions and policies and politics seem ill-suited to a virtual, hyper-connected world, the one that's coming.

I once loved going to my neighborhood polling place. I look forward to the day when I will have the chance to vote for a candidate who speaks honestly, who grasps the centrality of technology and culture in our time, and is willing to raise those important issues in a rational way. That person is unlikely to come out of Washington, or the existing political structure, and is more likely to have grown up reading a site like this.

This fantasy candidate will be neither a "liberal" nor a "conservative" but an original thinker, perhaps one who has used technology all his or her life to test ideas, and take advantage of all that liberated information. He will be an enthusiastic free-marketeer, championing environments that reward opportunity, individuality and creativity. He will offer sane and fair-minded solutions, resist religious and political dogma. He wll fight for the equitable distribution of technology and use it to re-democratize democracy. Instead of branding them stupid and offensive, he or she will fight for the mostly younger people who are building the Net and the Web. He will not be in thrall to corporate contributors.

Actually, I think that such a person will pop up, and pretty soon. When he does, he will generate a tide of money and support, and begin to transform politics into something people want to participate in, rather than a dreary duty. Maybe a person like Tristan Eversole, a college student, who e-mailed me his idea about using the Net to re-invent politics:

"In my opinion, the most amazing thing about the Open Source Movement is the fact that a whole bunch of people came together from different locales and voluntarily created something. No profit motive, no political support. The end product is superior. This is unprecedented. That people actually submit code, that that code can be integrated into a cohesive whole, that people voluntarily debug it ... I can't think of any historical parallel."

"People have many ideas about how a fair and just society can come to exist and govern itself. Your articles [and the responses] prove that. There is no good reason why we can't integrate, test, and argue these ideas into a coherent political system or public policy ... it should be possible to create a similar site [to Slashdot and other open source sites] dedicated to providing a forum for political debate, distilling the most important news about global problems, putting interested people in contact with experts on particular problems, providing an accurate and objective picture of the state of the world, and slowly creating an archive of really good ideas on how major problems should be dealt with. Many care enough to make such a site viable.

Tristan seems to have an intuitive grasp for big political ideas. He said he'd divide politics into two aspects: the ethical (what should we do about a particular issue in the moral sense), and the technical (how should we implement a rational policy?) This kind of thinking is in shocking contrast to the closed-minded and manipulative posturing that passes for politics in the other world.

"I'd love for there to be a site dedicated to finding the truth about the real state of the world; I'm considering creating one eventually," Tristan wrote.

If he runs, he's got my vote.

Mr.Newt writes "You may wonder why we're here. Britain's Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, thinks he has it figured out. As a small part of a large multiverse, everything has to be perfect for life as we know it to exist. " Just reminds me of the Python song: "Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's..."

Here's a really interesting story on The New Science of Character Assassination which lists a bunch of things gore said that the media has used regularly to misrepresent him. Very worthwhile reading to help remember how the press skews things (no, I'm not an exception to the rule: but at least you guys can disagree with me below). Its not exactly about the election, but Does the US Electoral College Still Work?. Lastly for now, the presidential debate commision is looking for feedback. I just personally wanted to note that the submissions are extremely lopsided; virtually nil for any 3rd party candidates (except a few Nader) and only a little more for Bush. We're trying to give the major candidates linkage, so if you find good sources on the net (or want to write one!) submit it!

4/3PI*R^3 writes "At my fellow UM System University, the University of Missouri Rolla Dr. Ming Leu, Wei Zhang, and their fellow mechanical engineers invented a device that constructs a 3-D model out of ice in a matter of hours, using a technique they call rapid-freeze prototyping. Article in Discover. At last we can finally make strawberry-banana swirl popsicles!!!!"

4/3PI*R^3 writes "At my fellow UM System University, the University of Missouri Rolla Dr. Ming Leu, Wei Zhang, and their fellow mechanical engineers invented a device that constructs a 3-D model out of ice in a matter of hours, using a technique they call rapid-freeze prototyping. Article in Discover. At last we can finally make strawberry-banana swirl popsicles!!!!"

FurBurger writes: "Another interesting article from Discover.com on NeuroComputers . 'Although scientists have developed software that attempts to mimic the brain's learning process using only the yes-no binary logic of digital computers, all the connections in a personal computer are wired back at the factory. Breaking a single one of these connections usually crashes the computer.' (a la Windows =))" The promise of neuron-based computers is greater flexibility and fault tolerance, with components that require very little power. Or, as FurBurger puts, it, "Watch out, Transmeta!" Mike also points to a June article on the BBC about the same group and their "leech-ulator."

kevlar wrote to us with the online version of Discover's 20 Ways the World Could End. Ranging from Asteriod Impacts to Mini Black Holes, it's all sorts of fun potential disasters.

|deity| pointed us at Discover Magazine, which is running an article about nanoimprint lithography. Cutting to the chase, this gives you 400 gigabytes per square inch, or 180 gigabytes on a CD the size of a penny. The advantage of this manufacturing process over others, such as the optical memory featured recently, is that the moulds can be reused, allowing easy mass production.

|deity| pointed us at Discover Magazine, which is running an article about nanoimprint lithography. Cutting to the chase, this gives you 400 gigabytes per square inch, or 180 gigabytes on a CD the size of a penny. The advantage of this manufacturing process over others, such as the optical memory featured recently, is that the moulds can be reused, allowing easy mass production.

Noel writes "Princeton University electrical engineer Stephen Chou who directs the NanoStructures Laboratory, has created CDs that can concentrate data 800 times more efficiently than current discs. " Tiny storage is my friend.

yum wrote in to send us a story about Luckman Interactive winning An Award from Discover Magazine for writing cookie filtering software. Considering how amazingly difficult doing that would be, congratulations to everyone involved. The first article is funny too, it talks about how evil corporations are tracking us using cookies that they deposit on our harddrives. I can't believe cookie paranoia isn't dead yet, but I'm even more amazed that software promoting cookie paranoia can win an award. Especially when most web browsers have it built in. Ugh. I guess it really isn't about creating software people need as much as it is about making people think they need it. I guess that's Screen Savers still exist.

wolfhack sent us a link to this page at mvis where you can read about a head mounted display that blasts lasers right into your eye! This can simulate video from an arms length away. It's too bad that stuff like this is years away from retail. Daniel Nash sent us this link to a brief blurb that mentions a similiar product.