Slashdot Mirror

mlimber writes "The NYTimes science section has up an interesting article discussing the nature of scientific laws. It comes partly in reply to physicist Paul Davies, whose recent op-ed in same paper lit up the blogosphere and solicited flurry of reader responses to the editorial page. It asks, 'Are [laws of nature] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?' The current article proceeds to survey different views on the matter. The author seems to be poking fun at himself by quoting Richard Feynman's epigram, 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.'"

mlimber writes "The New York Times is running a story about multicore computing and the efforts of Microsoft et al. to try to switch to the new paradigm: "The challenges [of parallel programming] have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.... Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs." It mirrors what C++ guru and now Microsoft architect Herb Sutter has been saying in articles such as his "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software." Sutter is part of the C++ standards committee that is working hard to make multithreading standard in C++."

A New York Times article from this past Friday highlights the 'problem' that Nintendo is facing: more people want to give them money than they can handle. Analysts quoted in the story discussing Nintendo's unique Wii shortage problem indicate that the company could be selling twice the 1.8 million consoles a month it ships. All told, these same individuals believe the company could be leaving as much as $1 billion on the table this holiday season. "'We don't feel like we've made any mistakes,' said George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. He said there was a shortage because the company must plan its production schedule five months ahead, and projecting future demand is difficult. He added that there had been a worldwide shortage of disk drives that had hurt Nintendo as well as makers of many other devices. 'It's a good problem to have,' Mr. Harrison said of the demand, but he acknowledged that there could be a downside. 'We do worry about not satisfying consumers and that they will drift to a competitor's system.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well worth reading, about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business — 'software plus Internet services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."

The feed brings us this NYTimes story giving new details on the telecom carriers' cooperation with secret NSA (and other) domestic spying programs. One revelation is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been running a program since the 1990s to collect the phone records of calls from US citizens to Latin America in order to catch narcotics traffickers. Another revelation is what exactly the NSA asked for in 2001 that Qwest balked at supplying. According to the article, it was access to the company's most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "A new restaurant has opened at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, fitted with a control center and two dozen hidden cameras devoted to exploring the question of what makes people eat and drink the way they do. Over the next 10 years, a team of more than 20 scientists will use the research facility to watch how people walk through the restaurant, what food catches their eye, whether they always sit at the same table and how much food they throw away. Researchers will examine environmental influences on eating behavior by making small changes in the color of the lights, in accompanying sounds, in the scents or the furniture. "We want to find out what influences people: colors, taste, personnel," said one researcher. "This restaurant is a playground of possibilities. We can ask the staff to be less friendly and visible or the reverse." University staff who want to eat at the new restaurant will have to sign a consent form agreeing to be watched."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Senate just passed a bill that will increase auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades. The auto industry's fleet of new cars, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans will have to average 35 mpg by 2020, a significant increase over the 2008 requirement of 27.5 mpg average. For consumers, the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build more diesel-powered SUVs and gas-electric hybrid cars as well as vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol. Automakers had vehemently opposed legislation in June that contained the same mileage requirements and Fortune magazine reported that American automakers were starting the miles-per-gallon race far behind Japan and that the new standards could doom US automakers. At the time, Chrysler officially put the cost of meeting the proposed rules at $6,700 per vehicle. The White House announced the President will sign the bill if it comes to his desk."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Senate just passed a bill that will increase auto mileage standards for the first time in three decades. The auto industry's fleet of new cars, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans will have to average 35 mpg by 2020, a significant increase over the 2008 requirement of 27.5 mpg average. For consumers, the legislation will mean that over the next dozen years auto companies will likely build more diesel-powered SUVs and gas-electric hybrid cars as well as vehicles that can run on 85 percent ethanol. Automakers had vehemently opposed legislation in June that contained the same mileage requirements and Fortune magazine reported that American automakers were starting the miles-per-gallon race far behind Japan and that the new standards could doom US automakers. At the time, Chrysler officially put the cost of meeting the proposed rules at $6,700 per vehicle. The White House announced the President will sign the bill if it comes to his desk."

blitzkrieg3 writes "The New York Times is reporting on how the NYSE group now feels that Linux is 'mature enough' for the New York Stock Exchange. They are using commodity x86 based Hewlett-Packard hardware and Linux in place of their traditional UNIX machines. From NYSE Euronext CIO Steve Rubinow: 'We don't want to be closely aligned with proprietary Unix. No offense to HP-UX, but we feel the same way about [IBM's] AIX, and we feel the same way to some extent about Solaris. Other reasons cited for the switch were increased flexibility and lower cost.'"

nem75 writes "The New York Times has a review of British AI researcher David Levy's book 'Love and Sex with Robots'. He claims that within a span of about 50 years the day will come when people could actually fall in love with life-like robots. While this may seem far fetched at first, he has some pretty interesting views. 'He begins with what scientists know about why humans fall in love with other humans. There are 10 factors, he writes, including mystery, reciprocal liking, and readiness to enter a relationship. Why can't these factors apply to robots, too?' The case he builds goes much further though, and certainly provides food for thought." Update: 12/14 16:16 GMT by Z : This article is very similar to a discussion we had recently.

Slur writes "The New York Times reports an insightful theory of Human evolution that gives credit for our accelerated evolution to the evolving brain. By virtue of our aesthetic and utilitarian preferences we ourselves have been responsible for molding the present human form and consciousness. Applied to other species we call it 'artificial selection,' but the new theory implies we did it all quite naturally, unconsciously, and that the exponential evolutionary acceleration we have achieved as a species in recent time is just what you'd expect. It also suggests that the current lull in our physical evolution is by 'choice' as well."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."

cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.

mlimber sends us to the NYTimes for a story about flying people who jump from planes or other high locations wearing a wing suit akin to a flying squirrel's. Their efforts have potential military and Xtreme sports applications. The story profiles, with video, one guy who wants to be the first to jump from a plane and land without a parachute (and live). Here's a YouTube video of another of these fliers skimming six feet above skiers in the Swiss Alps. Quoting: "Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent. As the suits, which cost about $1,000, have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides."

DeeQ writes "Ask.com is betting that it will. The search engine is working on a service called AskEraser that will attempt to obscure the searches a user enters into the site. 'Some privacy experts doubt that concerns about privacy are significant enough to turn a feature like AskEraser into a major selling point for Ask.com. The search engine accounted for 4.7 percent of all searches conducted in the United States in October, according to comScore, which ranks Internet traffic. By comparison, Google accounted for 58.5 percent, Yahoo for 22.9 percent and Microsoft for 9.7 percent.'" We first discussed this project back in July.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "When the 2008 Olympic Games kick off in Beijing next year, organizers will be using a sophisticated computer system to scan video images of city streets looking for everything from troublemakers to terrorists. The IBM system, called the Smart Surveillance System, uses analytic tools to index digital video recordings and then issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. It can be used to warn security guards when someone has entered a secure area or keep track of cars coming in and out of a parking lot. The system can also search through old event data to find patterns that can be used to enable new security strategies and identify potential vulnerabilities. IBM is also developing a similar surveillance system for lower Manhattan, but has not yet begun deploying that project. "Physical security and IT security are starting to come together," says Julie Donahue, vice president of security and privacy services with IBM. "A lot of the guys I'm meeting on the IT side are just starting to get involved on the physical side.""

necro81 writes "A prototype buoy has been launched off the Oregon coast to try generating electrical power from the ever-present waves. The OSU device works like a giant shake-up flashlight. It is one of several competing designs to take advantage of a potential clean energy goldmine. It will be years before substantial power is contributed to the grid, but several companies have received permits to develop test platforms. The New York Times has an article that surveys the current outlook for wave energy, which it compares to wind energy's prospects back in the 1980s. Concerns about impacts to wildlife and fishing remain to be answered."

Erris writes "The New York Times site is running an opinion piece from last weekend which lambasts Yahoo! (and other US ISPs) for cooperating with China and other repressive governments. 'Yahoo's collaboration is appalling, and Yahoo is not the only American company helping the Chinese government repress its people ... Last January, Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act in the House. It would fine American companies that hand over information about their customers to foreign governments that suppress online dissent.'"

Ponca City, We Love You writes "JetBlue Airways will soon begin testing a free e-mail and instant messaging service on one aircraft, while American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines plan to offer a broader Web experience in the coming months, probably priced at about $10 a flight. A recent survey found that 26 percent of leisure travelers would pay $10 for Internet access on a two-to-four-hour flight and 45 percent would pay that amount for a flight longer than four hours. The airlines plans to turn their planes into the equivalent of a wireless hot spot once the aircraft reaches its cruising altitude but service will not be available on takeoff and landing. While the technology could allow travelers to make phone calls over the Internet, most carriers say they have no plans to allow voice communications."

longacre writes "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England, has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, which has led to numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, and they don't contain data on road width or no-truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."

necro81 writes "The NYTimes has an in-depth piece describing an upcoming shuttle mission, scheduled for next August, to make a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the Columbia accident and the scheduled shuttle decommission in 2010, additional service trips to the telescope were off the table. The resulting hue and cry from scientists, legislators, and the public forced NASA to reconsider. Next August, if all goes well, Atlantis will grab Hubble, replace its aging gyros, attempt to revive the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and install a new camera and spectrograph. The telescope could then continue doing science well into the next decade."

Samrobb writes "In grand Slashdot tradition, the Freakonomics blog solicited reader questions for a Q&A session with Bruce Schneier. The blog host writes that Mr. Schneier's answers '...are extraordinarily interesting, providing mandatory reading for anyone who uses a computer. He also plainly thinks like an economist: search below for "crime pays" to see his sober assessment of why it's better to earn a living as a security expert than as a computer criminal.'" The interview covers pretty much the whole range of issues Schneier has written about, and he provides links to more detailed writings on many of the questions.

Hugh Pickens writes "Monday was the deadline for potential bidders to file with the Federal Communications Commission over the auction of the 700-megahertz band, a useful swath of the electromagnetic spectrum that is being freed up by the move to digital television. Once bidders file they become subject to strict 'anticollusion' rules that in effect prohibit participants from discussing any aspect of their bidding until the auction is over. The next official word will be late December or mid-January, when the FCC announces who has been approved to bid. The auction will start on January 24. Participants will use an Internet system to enter bids on any of 1,099 separate licenses that are being offered (pdf). Most coveted seems to be the C block, 12 regional licenses that can be combined to create a national wireless network. This is the spectrum Google is presumed to be most interested in. The bidding will be conducted in a series of rounds (pdf)."

SpiritGod21 writes in with a NYTimes article on a new approach to spam detection that claims out-of-the-box improvement of 1 or 2 orders of magnitude over existing approaches. The article wanders off into human-interest territory as the inventor, Steven T. Kirsch, has an incurable disease and an engineer's approach to fighting it. But a description of the anti-spam tech, based on the reputation of the receiver and not the sender, is worth a read.

Samsung has announced a new line of GDDR5 chips that will supposedly be able to deliver data at speeds of up to 6 Gbps. In addition to faster data delivery the new chips also claim to consume less energy than previous versions. "Samsung said the new chips consume 1.5 volts, making them about 20 percent more efficient than GDDR 3 chips. Samples of the GDDR 5 chips began shipping to graphics-processor makers last month, and Samsung plans to begin mass production of the chips during the first half of next year. GDDR 5 memory should first appear in high-end gaming systems where users are willing to pay a premium for better graphics. Samsung did not disclose pricing for the chips.

jeffporcaro writes "Texas' Director of Science Curriculum was 'forced to step down' for favoring evolution over intelligent design (ID). She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID — although state regulations require her not to have any opinion 'on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.' 'The agency documents say that officials recommended firing Ms. Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. The officials said forwarding the e-mail message conflicted with her job responsibilities and violated a directive that she not communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding a pending science curriculum review.'"

Nrbelex writes "Facebook is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program, after users became extremely upset and threatened various 'protests' over possible privacy infringement issues. 'Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time ... Facebook executives say the people who are complaining are a marginal minority. With time, Facebook says, users will accept Beacon, which Facebook views as an extension of the type of book and movie recommendations that members routinely volunteer on their profile pages.'"

A number of readers are letting us know about Verizon's plans, announced today, to open their nationwide wireless network to devices that they don't sell. A NYTimes blog posting puts VZW's announcement in industry context. From the press release: "In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices."

An anonymous reader noted that "The Arecibo Observatory funding was slashed. Cut to $8 million from $10.5 million, which will decrease the amount of time that the telescope is operational. "A quarter of its staff was laid off last year," and Arecibo, which is located in Puerto Rico, could possibly be completely closed in four years, according to the "National Science Foundation (NSF), which pays for the operation of the telescope." This comes after "a review panel for the foundation's astronomy division two years ago" suggested cutting Arecibo's financing by 25 percent as a way to pay for new facilities. There has been "[a]n outcry" in response to the "decision, particularly from planetary scientists" who argued that the panel "overlooked Arecibo's role in cataloging potential dangers from asteroids." The Times notes that in Arecibo's favor is the fact that it "may be much cheaper to keep...open" than dismantle, which "could cost hundreds of millions of dollars."" I've been considering a vacation to PR for a few years, and seeing this thing is on my list of awesome things to try to see. Guess I should hurry ;)

Dekortage writes "Allegedly, electronics giant Samsung Electronics attempted to bribe a South Korean government official with 5 million won (US$5,445). Ironically, the official was Lee Yong-chul, who was a presidential monitor against corruption at the time. This is the latest allegation against Samsung, which was recently accused of running 'a vast network of bribery through the government, the judiciary branch and the news media' that reaches all the way to South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun."

Reservoir Hill writes "Once Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Dow Jones & Company is completed later this year, Murdoch plans to provide free access to The Wall Street Journal's Web site, trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue. The WSJ web site, one of the few news sites to successfully introduce a subscription model, currently has around one million subscribers and generates about $50 million annually in user fees. Murdoch's decision to move to an advertising based model comes amid reports that newspaper's online profits margins are skyrocketing worldwide. Murdoch's previous internet initiative, his acquisition of MySpace has worked out very well. He actually first discussed this two years ago when he spoke before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the role of newspapers in this digital world.""

Reservoir Hill writes "Once Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Dow Jones & Company is completed later this year, Murdoch plans to provide free access to The Wall Street Journal's Web site, trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue. The WSJ web site, one of the few news sites to successfully introduce a subscription model, currently has around one million subscribers and generates about $50 million annually in user fees. Murdoch's decision to move to an advertising based model comes amid reports that newspaper's online profits margins are skyrocketing worldwide. Murdoch's previous internet initiative, his acquisition of MySpace has worked out very well. He actually first discussed this two years ago when he spoke before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the role of newspapers in this digital world.""

abb3w writes "The bad news: the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled (pdf) that the Al-Haramain lawyers may not submit into evidence their recollections of the top secret document handed to them detailing the warrantless electronic scrutiny they received. 'Once properly invoked and judicially blessed, the state secrets privilege is not a half-way proposition.' The good news: they have declined to answer and directed the lower court to consider whether 'FISA preempts the common law state secrets privilege' with respect to the underlying nature of the program itself ... which also keeps alive hopes for the EFF and ACLU to make those responsible answer for their actions."

theodp writes "The earliest episodes of Sesame Street are being made available on DVD, but the NYT notes Volumes 1 and 2 carry a rather strange warning: 'These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child.' So why are they unsuitable for toddlers in 2007? Well, in the parody 'Monsterpiece Theater,' Alistair Cookie — played by Cookie Monster — used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. 'That modeled the wrong behavior,' explained a Sesame Street executive producer, adding that 'we might not be able to create a character like Oscar [the Grouch] now.'"

caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story about a Korean kids' camp for 'curing' Internet addiction. 'Seventeen hours a day online is fine,' said one such kid at the camp. From the article: 'Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming ... this year, the camp held its first two 12-day sessions, with 16 to 18 male participants each time. (South Korean researchers say an overwhelming majority of compulsive computer users are male.)'"

PCOL writes "When Conquistadors came to Peru from Spain in 1532, they were astonished to see Inca suspension bridges achieve clear spans of at least 150 feet at a time when the longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span of 95 feet. The bridges swayed under the weight of traffic terrifying the Spanish and their horses, even though, as one Spaniard observed, they were almost as "sturdy as the street of Seville." To build the bridges, thick cables were pulled across a river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side. Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, two others served as handrails and pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor before the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden. Earlier this year students at MIT built a 70-foot fiber bridge in the style of the Incan Empire. The project used sisal twine from the Yucatan Peninsula and anchored it by wrapping it around massive concrete blocks. The weekend's burst of activity was preceded by 360 hours of rope-twisting as the 50 miles of sisal twine was turned into rope. Working together as a group was part of the exercise. "A third of the time was spent learning to work together," one of the students said. "But after a while, we were banging those cables out.""

corded writes "Yesterday, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their $985 personal genotyping product, deCODEme (video), beating their competitors to market. Perhaps not coincidentally, 23andMe's website is suddenly much more informative today, and the New York Times features a preview of 23andMe's $999 offering. deCODEme and 23andMe will scan about a million and 600,000 sites across the genome, respectively and assess your risk for common diseases, along with providing information about ancestry, physical traits, and the ability to compare genes with friends and family."

An anonymous reader writes "Saul Hansell from the New York Times spoke with Microsoft's J. Allard, formerly of the Xbox games division and now in charge of their push on Apple's captive audience with the Zune. Allard lays out Microsoft's media battle plan, highlighting their longterm goals for expanding beyond games and software. 'This service will at some point add more options for video and mobile phones, Mr. Allard said, without offering details. Actually, Microsoft has been quite successful selling video downloads and online movie rentals through the Xbox Live service already. This seems a bit too much like the initial plan for MSN. This new network would be the switchboard through which all entertainment content and communication flows. Pretty much everything else in the technology world now is revolving around open systems where the Internet, and some simple standards, are in the middle.'"

sufijazz writes "Scientists have gotten tiny robots to not only integrate into cockroach society but also control it. 'This experiment in bug peer pressure combined entomology, robotics and the study of ways that complex and even intelligent patterns can arise from simple behavior. Animal behavior research shows that swarms working together can prosper where individuals might fail, and robotics researchers have been experimenting with simple robots that, together, act a little like a swarm.' The BBC also has a video story on this."

cell-block-9 writes "Today the last section of the old Edison DC power grid will be shut down in Manhattan. 'The last snip of Con Ed's direct current system will take place at 10 East 40th Street, near the Mid-Manhattan Library. That building, like the thousands of other direct current users that have been transitioned over the last several years, now has a converter installed on the premises that can take alternating electricity from the Con Ed power grid and adapt it on premises.' I guess Tesla finally won the argument."

Hugh Pickens writes "A UN-sponsored Internet conference ended with little progress on the issue of US control over the domain name system run by ICANN, a California-based nonprofit over which the US. government retains veto power. By controlling the core systems, the United States indirectly influences the way much of the world uses the Internet. As the conference drew to a close, the Russian representative, Konstantin Novoderejhkin, called on the United Nations secretary-general to create a working group to develop ''practical steps'' for moving Internet governance ''under the control of the international community.'' The United States insists that the existing arrangements ensure the Internet's stability and there's little indication that the US government and ICANN plan to cede their roles over domain names anytime soon. ''I think (there are) a small number of countries that are very agitated and almost don't care what the facts are,'' said Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, who stepped down as ICANN's chairman earlier this month. ''It's a very small vocal group bothered by this issue. ICANN has existed for eight years and done a great job with its plans for internationalization.'' With no concrete recommendations for action, the only certainty going forward is that any resentment about the American influence will only grow as more users from the developing world come online, changing the face of the global network. The next forum will held next year in New Delhi, India."

An anonymous reader writes "You're doing something interesting. The phone rings. You get up, pick up the phone, and hear only silence. It could be a slasher waiting outside your house, but it's probably an errant computer at a telemarketer. This article describes how some are fighting back by setting up websites to track the worst telemarketers by their caller ids. The article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen), 800notes.com and numberzoom.com . One intrepid guy is even writing a program to check these sites when the call comes in before ringing the phone."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Saul Hansell at the NY Times has an interesting article on his technology blog about his conversations with executives at Yahoo and Google about how they plan to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services into social networks. Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That's why social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize they can use this information to build their own services that connect people to their contacts. Yahoo is working on what they call "Inbox 2.0" which will display messages more prominently from people who are more important to you, determining the strength of your relationship by how often you exchange e-mail and instant messages with him or her. "The inbox you have today is based on what people send you, not what you want to see," says Brad Garlinghouse, who runs communication and community products for Yahoo. "We can say, here are the messages from the people you care about most." There will also be some sort of profile system attached to Inbox 2.0 with a profile users show to others and a personal page where they can see information from their friends. "The exciting part is that a lot of this information already exists on our network, but it's dormant," Mr. Garlinghouse added."

An anonymous reader writes "Recent articles in the New York Times and at CNET have highlighted the growing concern that Google holds significant power and influence over Firefox's development. In an interview published today, Mozilla's technology strategist Mike Shaver did his best to proclaim Mozilla's independence. Yes, Google pays Mozilla $56 million per year, Google is the default search engine, and supplier of many of the browser's features (anti-phishing, anti-malware, incorrect URL resolution). Shaver insists that in spite of these ties, Mozilla still calls the shots over Firefox's development."

Ponca City, We Love You writes "In October 2006, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first team to improve the accuracy of Netflix's movie recommendations by 10% based on personal preferences. Each contestant was given a set of data from which three million predictions were made about how certain users rated certain movies and Netflix compared that list with the actual ratings and generated a score for each team. More than 27,000 contestants from 161 countries submitted their entries and some got close, but not close enough. Today Netflix announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent but the $1 million grand prize is still up for grabs and a $50,000 progress prize will be awarded every year until the 10 percent goal is met. As part of the rules of the competition, the team was required to disclose their solution publicly. (pdf)"

Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers are starting to discover the simple rules that allow swarms of thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism. To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Iain Couzin, a mathematical biologist at the Collective Animal Behaviour Laboratory at Princeton University, builds computer models of virtual swarms with thousands of individual agents that he can program to follow a few simple rules. Among the findings are that swarm behavior has patterns common to many different species, that just as liquid water can suddenly begin to boil, swarm behavior can also change abruptly in character, and that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction. The rules of the swarm may also apply to the cells inside our bodies and researchers are working with cancer biologists to discover the rules by which cancer cells work together to build tumors or migrate through tissues. Even brain cells may follow the same rules for collective behavior seen in locusts or fish. "How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you're seeing?" Dr. Couzin says. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm."

The New York Times has up a piece looking at the ongoing battle between websites and magazines in the world of games journalism. With magazine subscriptions falling every year and a non-stop churn of news online, the article examines the ways that mags try to stay competitive, and the views of the gamers that read them. "The circulation for PC Gamer, a leading magazine from Future US, shrank to 210,369 this year from 300,271 in 2003, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Magazine publishers say that readers want longer features and in-depth articles as a counterpoint to the short, bloglike pieces they find online. But Kyle Orland, a freelance journalist who writes a media coverage column for Gamedaily.com, wondered if that strategy was working, saying that when a large feature is published, it doesn't get read. 'Attention spans are just getting so small that readers don't know what they want,' Mr. Orland said."

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on the life of George Koval, codenamed Delmar, one of the most important spies to have infiltrated the Manhattan Project, the secret program that created the world's first nuclear weapon. President Putin recently granted Koval a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation award, the highest honorary title that can be given to a Russian citizen. Koval was born in Iowa, spoke fluent American English, and played baseball. But he was also recruited and trained by the GRU, Russia's largest intelligence agency."

PCOL writes "The NY Times is running a story on how stock options that have given an estimated 1,000 employees at Google a net worth of $5 million each affects the culture at Google. Google gives each of its new employees stock options, as well as a smaller number of shares of Google stock, as a recruiting incentive. The average options grant for a "Noogler" (new Google employee) who started a year ago was 685 shares at a price of roughly $475 a share which at last Friday's close would be worth $128,000. But employees say Google is different from other large high-tech companies where the day's stock price is a fixture on many people's computer screens. "It isn't considered 'Googley' to check the stock price," said one engineer adding that it is also considered unseemly to discuss the price with other employees. And the masseuse? In 1999 Bonnie Brown answered an ad for an in-house masseuse at Google "on a lark" and after five years of kneading engineers' backs, she retired, cashing in most of her stock options to travel the world, oversee a charitable foundation she founded, and write a book, still unpublished, titled "Giigle: How I Got Lucky Massaging Google.""

Jamie found an NYT story about a new t-mobile Shadow phone which starts off by talking about how Apple is changing the phone game by wrestling power from the carriers, and then discussing what could be a reasonable piece of hardware. And then how it is wrecked by software. The phone has wait screens, a task manager, odd error messages etc. Makes for an amusing read.