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Here is an article from New Scientist from 2001 where something very similar was done. That should have been it, more of this kind of research is not going to be helpful (unless you count a world without people being helpful). I can just see the North Koreans saying "Hmm. Aussies did this in 2001, and the Americans in 2003. Not a fluke, so gotta be easier than these nukes just use smallpox | ebola | influenza instead ...". You get the picture.

Here is an article from New Scientist from 2001 where something very similar was done. That should have been it, more of this kind of research is not going to be helpful (unless you count a world without people being helpful). I can just see the North Koreans saying "Hmm. Aussies did this in 2001, and the Americans in 2003. Not a fluke, so gotta be easier than these nukes just use smallpox | ebola | influenza instead ...". You get the picture.

here

Stop press! We've found the weapons of mass destruction. Somebody inform Fox News...

I'm not sure why, but a couple of links were removed from the edited post. I haven't yet used MS Office 2003, so I'm not in a position to say whether or not the PC World review 'sums things up pretty well' (not my words) or not. Some of the other edits do clarify, however. As for the "spectacular-conglomeration dept.", if that referred to this post, a tip of the hat to simoniker.

For anyone who cares, here's how it looked as submitted, with an additional Google link for PC Pro article to bypass their registration page. The interesting thing is that PC Pro changed the headline which was definitive about shutting out Macs to something less than absolute.

The first users of MS Office 2003 are weighing in and the response is decidedly mixed. The new Outlook has received a favorable response but the mantra seems to be there's little reason to upgrade unless you absolutely need the new features. Microsoft probably heard this in beta trials and has adopted the curious strategy of denigrating previous versions of Office as "too hard to find things" and having a "clunky" interface. Meanwhile, Bill Gates dismissed the open source competition. One of the new features - self-destructing documents - seems to have caused some confusion because 'Microsoft says the new feature is not designed to remove all traces of a file' and MS spokesman Mike Pryke-Smith says, "The message will still be in various places." E-mails will not self-destruct. Another problem is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management that will shut out Mac users (Google link). PC World has a long and detailed review of Microsoft Office 2003 (single-page).

"Each user's version of Word will access the central server to determine how that person is allowed to use the document."

New Scientist reports that "Between the 1950s and 1990s, thousands of girls worldwide who were predicted to grow to more than 177 centimetres (5 foot 10 inches) were given synthetic oestrogen - over four times the dose in the modern pill - for an average of two years" to stop them growing too tall.

Now they are having trouble conceiving children of their own.

i know these scareful ninja robots can be destroyed by using Robot guard-dragons !!!11!

The first entry in the "top news stories" sidebar of that page is an article entitled Astronomers date Universe's 'cosmic jerk'. What do they see in that guy, anyway?

they also have a linklink to a robotic dragon. hmm, martial arts, dragons....

they also have a linklink to a robotic dragon. hmm, martial arts, dragons....

New Scientist

I read an article on New Scientist, and I guess it sums up the coolness of this flight:

'Xie Guangxuan, director of China Rocket Design Department, told the Chinese news web site Sina.com: "China's space technology has been created by China itself. We may have started later than Russia and the US, but it's amazing how fast we've been able to do this."'

Also, remember that stunt Brazil pulled a few months back? The big cheese of these events is that people are getting more interested in space flight, and so, as the others have commented, the world will be spurred into another space race - hopefully culminating in a serious funding increase for international space programs.

If you'd take a look at the graphic from the article you will see that there is some sort of "OS" indeed below Linux/Windows/whatever. They call it Hyper-OS.

If you subscribe to New Scientist magazine, last week's print issue had an unqualified blurb (not available on the web site, sorry) stating that scientists were puzzling over a 50% rise in water vapour in the upper atmosphere. If I remember correctly, water vapour is a green house gas too. And a 50% increase is substantial.

Another bit that I found interesting is the article on the oldest ice core. I quote:

If the layers in the Dome Concordia core are intact, it will give ice researchers their first information about climate changes before that time. A period between ice ages known as Stage 11, which occurred about 450,000 years ago, is of particular interest because the Earth's orbit at that time is believed to have been very similar to its orbit today.

And next it will go from 'gaseous' to 'plasma,' instantly killing anyone who accesses it, and spawning its own form of life.

Nobody made any mistakes, because nobody knows what really happened. Elsewhere there are examples of gas giants orbiting within 3-7 million miles of their stars' surfaces. Perhaps the enormous mass loss rate is bleeding the gas giant of its orbital angular momentum and essentially driving it into the star that is frying it. Or if the star is rotating slower than the planet is revolving around it (the previously mentioned evaporating gas giants have a period of 3-4 days, about a tenth of the rotational period of our own sun), then the induced tidal bulges will cause the planet to transfer its orbital angular momentum to the star's rotational angular momentum (and this could increase convection, allowing the star's energy to escape faster as light). Notice that in this case the planet is transferring energy to the star without even touching it while simultaneously falling towards it (the reverse process is happening here on Earth, where the rapidly rotating Earth is using its tidal bulges to slowly increase the orbital radius of the Moon, and we've actually been able to measure that increase). So there are a variety of ways a star could eat a planet. You seem to favor the expanding red giant model, so I'll quote from this article:

"In principle, that explanation seems OK," says John Lattanzio, director of the Centre for Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics at Monash University. But he says the star was too hot to have been a red giant. "It was probably one that was on its way there - that could fit the parameters."

And also the equation in my previous post is surprisingly robust. It should work quite well once the planet dips into the outer layers of star, no matter whether the star grew to meet it or it fell in. Also, one factor that I ignored but that works in my favor is the mass lot rate of m. The energy per unit radius lost by the planet decreases linearly with a decrease in m. Therefore the planet will be losing most of its energy when it still has most of its mass and before it gets far enough into the star that the force of gravity actually weakens (note that I've been treating M as the mass of the star interior to the radius of the planet's orbit, outside M is merely the mass of the star, but inside it decreases to 0). Once the star ate the first planet, it did increase in size, so your idea of how it eats is valid for the second and third planets.

Google access and a new scientist story on the same thing.

The 13 September 2003 issue of New Scientist has a special report on this topic:

Special Report
No one has yet proved that cellphones are bad for you. Is it time to give up on the hunt for potential dangers? p.12

Unfortunately it isn't online (yet?). The interesting point from the article (I got it in paper form) is that the WHO is going to stop researching into the health effects of mobile phone use in another ~3 years unless a link is discovered; the article says that they have many other things that could do with the research funding, and the lack of credible or reproducable evidence so far is perhaps evidence in itself?

You might want to read this New Scientist article where (it is claimed that) "Mays Swicord spent 26 years searching for a health effect of radio-frequency radiation. He tried and tried to falsify the notion that this radiation - the kind emitted by mobile phones - has no effect. He failed."

Coolest thing in the Universe revealed

A tiny cloud of sodium atoms has been chilled to within half a billionth of a degree of absolute zero

To reply to each of your points:

Any competent sysadmin already had their systems patched against that one.
So, according to you, then, most MS sysadmins aren't competent, because a shitload of businesses were brought down by msblaster (CNX, Air Canada, DMV in several states, etc.) Mind you,we already knew that :-)

When was the last new threat that was directly a result of Visual Basic scripting? By "new" I mean within the last three months or so.
today here To quote:

18:12 04 September 03
NewScientist.com news service
A string of software bugs in Microsoft products were announced on Wednesday,

The most serious of the software bugs concerns Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a software development system that makes it possible to customise VBA-enabled Microsoft applications. This includes Office software and many less well known business programs.

Who says you have to use WMP if you use Windows?
Most of the Windows-based players will have to contend w. any DRM that's integrated at the OS level.

Gross exaggeration, obviously. And like in #1, any competent sysadmin should always know where their original discs are.
So that's why so many companies had to repurchase licenses (because administering licenses is a major headache for them, and staff changes make it harder), and it doesn't negate my point, which is that it can take dozens (or on developer machines, 50 or more) disk swaps to set everything up under Windows.

Come on, that was TOO easy.

I loved the article over at NewScientist (here)

A Microsoft spokeswoman told New Scientist the risk was lessened by the fact that exploiting any of the vulnerabilities would require a victim to open a document or carry out some other active task. She added: "We don't know of any worms being created."

Uh...Open a document? You mean like an email with the attached virus/worm that says: "Here is the document you requested"?

Sigh...Damage control must be getting lazy or something.

you can read the original, more detailed story at New Scientist

here is the new scientist link:

Computer game boosts children's' language skills

The game, based on distinguishing between sounds, is claimed to deliver the equivalent of two years improvement in just a few weeks

From the acticle;
An injection of magnetic nanoparticles into your bloodstream could reveal precisely where harmful viruses are lurking. The particles are coated with antibodies to a particular virus, so they will form clumps that should be visible on conventional body scans if that virus is present. ....[using these particles] they hope to be able to detect viruses in patients' bodies within a couple of years. Much of the technology has already been tested in humans, so the scientists are confident that it will be safe.

And yet another link.

And here is a working link.

Large oceans of liquid water under an atmosphere with CO2 tend to form large deposits of carbonate minerals. In other words, we should find wide areas of carbonate rock, especially at low elevations. No carbonate rocks were found, only carbonate signatures in soil. What's news is that the Arizona team spent 6 years using the thermal emission spectrometer to look for carbonates, and didn't find thick layers of it. Other (better) articles on the same news release can be found here or here.

Another article here

coulda read it first (and better) at New Scientist!

A recent New Scientist article mentions: Unusual warm spots on Mars might represent "ice towers" similar to those seen in Antarctica, say researchers. They could even harbour life...

These are located in the Hellas Basin, a large feature on the bottom left of Mars, viewed from Earth. Here's a photo of Mars, the elliptical bright feature at lower-center in the image is the Hellas Basin, the largest unequivocal impact basin (formed by an asteroid or comet) on the planet. Hellas is approximately 2200 km (1,370 mi) across. Really amazing detail, photo was taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, check out many more of its pics here.

So THAT looks like an excellent area to Survey!

I also covered this subject today on my blog where I gave some additional references, including an illustration of a face reconstruction process.

And remember that this software was shown during last Siggraph. New Scientist published "Animation lets murder victims have final say" on this work about two weeks ago with a nice illustration, "How the dead can express themselves."

In "Skulls gain virtual faces," Technology Research News didn't give much more information.

I also covered this subject today on my blog where I gave some additional references, including an illustration of a face reconstruction process.

And remember that this software was shown during last Siggraph. New Scientist published "Animation lets murder victims have final say" on this work about two weeks ago with a nice illustration, "How the dead can express themselves."

In "Skulls gain virtual faces," Technology Research News didn't give much more information.

The article doesnt say, but in abscense of photos I'd guess this is just more headwork.

Good thing you didnt report on an unimportant article on New Scientist, you know, like this way to stop cancer.

Beyond the obvious Hulk jokes, did anyone follow the link in the articles? This story describes how this technology is slated to be used in powering UAVs that could stay aloft over a combat zone for months at a time. IMHO, channelling and controlling the energy in a useful way such as this is much cooler than being able to build a straight energy-release bomb.

Oddly enough, there was an article in New Scientist today on just this, about a laser transmuting iodine-129 with its 15.7 million year half-life to iodine-128, with a halflife of 25 minutes. It takes a lot of power, and I imagine kicks out a lot of radiation, but it's a start.

From the New Scientist article:

Are there any other cataclysmic events in the offing?

One fear is that the entire West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets might disappear into the oceans raising sea levels by seven metres or more. Even the most pessimistic experts say this is only a worry if the world warms by about 4 C, which is outside the range of mainstream predictions for the next century. And a glacial collapse is such a slow process it would take several hundred years for all the ice to slide into the sea.

As mentioned above, it's important to note that the study mentioned in the original post is only referring to ice caps that are alreday floating in the water. Johannessen himself says:

"Because the ice cap is already in the water when it is melting, you are not adding any mass. Only precipitation, discharge from rivers and the melting of glaciers can cause the water to rise."

If the ice caps are melting now, glaciers may melt later. That is when the situation will start turning catastrophic. This particular study doesn't really add any insight to the global warming debate. But of course, many will sieze on it to justify there claims that global warming does not exist. Sad, really.

All in all, a half-researched and largely irrelevant story on Slashdot's part...

-j

the aerosol issue is a different one. Aerosols (airborn particals) are thought to dampen climate change. Aerosols come from factories, volcanos, cars and yes, spray cans project tiny droplets of water which are, yes, aerosols, but no, they probably don't effect global temperatures much. The one's he refers to are volcanic and industry derived particles. The worry is that as industry becomes cleaner a greater portion of the global warming will become apparent. Just follow his link:

This guy came up with a way to evolve designs for FPGAs.

Article at New Scientist

Basically, he setup a number of FPGAs to acomplish a certian goal (testing a human generated sound like the work "GO") by setting up a "standard genetic algorithm to evolve a configuration program for an FPGA." His hardware basically evolved to acomplish the defined task. I'd like to read about someone doing this on a grander scale... Say 1024 FPGAs?
-EtA

According to the New Scientist, cloned mammals suffer from some genetic defects. This would open new possibilites for betting: how many races can the horse run - or which clone dies in this race.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing (TM)...

Special section on the New Scientist site

who ever invented ni-cads should be beaten withing an inch of their lives.

Ni-cads are the shitiest invention ever to hit the market. What an absolute, total rip off they are.
I've poured thousands of dollars down the drain on them over the years and they sucked then just as they suck now.

Not to mention that Cadmium has been show to mimic female hormones when ingested by mice and fish.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93935
There are reports of fish changing sex because of cadmium run off into lakes and rivers.
This is NOT good. Ni-cads should be outlawed.

Wearing a tie will make you go blind... and the New Scientist are reporting that masturbation is
good for you.

Putting your hands down there can also make you go blind.

But at least you will have a smaller risk of getting prostate cancer.

This is a short term problem. Scientists are working very hard for either growing replacement organs within other animals or doing it on external scaffolding OR doing it within your own body. Right now this requires using embryonic stem cells, but there are many scientists also working on how to get normal cells to revert to stem cells.

Once that happens, all bets are off =)

start stockpiling the pornography now

...when you consider that the globe would be smoother than a squash (or racket) ball if it were shrunk to the same size.

Also, a recent Australian study seems to indicate that masturbation may protect against prostate cancer.

As my story submission got rejected, I think this is a good opportunity to mention this New Scientist article. It's news for nerds who release early and release often.