Slashdot Mirror

A few interesting movie tidbits: Joel Greengrass writes "Final post-production has been completed on the long awaited documentary, 'Life, the Universe, and Douglas Adams.' Narrated by Neil Gaiman, the film is a tribute documentary about the life, loves, and passions, of the greatest sci fi comedy writer ever, Douglas Adams. The film will be available for sale on August 4 at douglasadams.com." Reader The_Shadows writes "Sci-fi Storm and Scfi.com's Scifi-wire are reporting that Walden Media exercised options for feature-length, big screen versions of the Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. They have also found an Emmy award winning writer (Ann Peacock) to adapt the most famous book, 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.'" And finally, there's an interesting piece about the process of turning a two-hour movie into a two-minute trailer.

socolow writes "The New York Times (free registration required) has an article about the NYC subway system's use of flywheels to store the braking energy of trains approaching stations. Not only does this advance the development of flywheel energy storage, but it will help relieve a lot of the heat subways generate (always appreciated during the summer)."

melquiades writes "Mathematician Hendrik Lenstra was struck by the blank spot in M. C. Escher's Print Gallery . Why is the spot blank there, he wondered, and what should go in it? Although Escher, who had only a high-school mathematics background, drew the picture by brilliant and methodical intuition, the mathematical machinery underlying the image turned out to be elliptic curves (which come up in factorization, cryptography, and the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem). Lenstra and his colleagues were able to generate several breathtaking possible completions for the missing space. Read the story at the ever-registration-required NYT."

Longtime Reader writes: "It is a short article with links all over the place, but Linux and Main is running a story that says Ziff Davis might file for bankruptcy this week. The company plans to stay in business by expanding its focus on computer games, the story says." To get you started, reader idiotnot contributes this link to coverage in the NYT.

capt.Hij writes "The NY Times has an article about how scientific journals are struggling with how to avoid publishing information that might help bio-terrorists. Once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance. This is scary when it comes to democracy and decision making."

capt.Hij writes "The NY Times has an article about how scientific journals are struggling with how to avoid publishing information that might help bio-terrorists. Once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance. This is scary when it comes to democracy and decision making."

AdamBa writes "Speaking to financial analysts and reporters, Bill Gates admitted that .NET hadn't caught on as quickly as he had hoped. The headline ('Gates admits .NET a "misstep"') is a bit misleading; he doesn't think all of .NET was a misstep, just the My Services part (aka Hailstorm). He also said that labelling the current generation of enterprise products as .NET might have been 'premature.' Summary: Microsoft got too excited about locking in users via Hailstorm and botched the overall .NET message." There's also a Reuters report and a NYTimes story on the same subject, which includes the interesting line: "Microsoft also warned today that the era of "open computing," the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry, is ending." It isn't clear if Microsoft is talking about something happening beyond their control, or if they're boasting about ending it.

Erris writes "Should we be surprised at the NYT attacking search engines? This article seeks to blame Google for all privacy loss, as if someone else remembering and sharing the things YOU publish is worse than credit card purchase databases, phone records, credit records being created and shared by OTHERS without your consent. Libraries must really be evil."

ibi writes "The NYT reports that humans apparently have an inborne bias towards cooperation. People who cooperated during standard Prisoner's Dilemma tests registered high levels of activity in the pleasure centers of their brains. This result was the opposite of what the researchers were expecting. (But I bet they were testing students rather than their advisers :-)"

Hugh Hancock writes: "Machinima (real-time 3D film-making in game engines, what used to be called 'Quake Movies') has a bit of a grab-bag day today -- the New York Times (registration, blah) is running an article on it, prompted by the announcement of the first Machinima-only film festival, sponsored by NVidia!"

Saint Aardvark writes: "The New York Times reports that two researchers at IBM have come up with a way to persuade people to give correct answers to survey questions: randomize the results. Strangely enough, they can get accurate information out of the aggregate of enough answers -- but it's completely anonymized. Since conservative estimates say nearly half of all survey answers are bogus, there's an interest in persuading people to be more truthful. As ever, you can use the Random NY Times Registration Generator to falsify your registration details and read the article..."

peatbakke writes: "Here's an interesting article about the affordability of backyard observatories. Rich kids get all the fun at the moment, but it's getting better." Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.

guttentag writes "The New York Times reports Sematech (the international consortium of computer chip makers that turned Austin, TX into a tech center) plans to turn Albany, NY into a research hub. The consortium, which represents IBM, Intel, Motorola, HP, TI, AMD, Philips and others, will put up $193 million for the project while New York State will supply the remaining $210 million. The really unusual thing about the deal is that the state isn't offering any tax breaks or loans to lure the consortium to its capital. Why are they so excited about a location that is over 100 miles from their nearest constituent company (IBM)?"

More information this evening (below) on Daniel Gomez-Ibanez' digital turntable, the Coble-Berman [T: not "Sherman," sorry] bill, moral-free domain registrars, Gator's un-requested link substitutions, and more. Enjoy!

Wouldn't be be nice if this didn't need to be a surprise? dklon writes: "I just got off the phone with Senate Warner's Office (R-VA). Senator Warner, and his compadre, Senator George Allen, both sit on the High Tech Committee, of which Senator Allen is the chairman. After sending them a strongly-worded letter yesterday, Mr. Warner's office was kind enough to call me back and let me know that the likelihood of Coble-Berman becoming law is slim-to-none. It is committee at the moment, and has only 1 sponsor at the moment in the Senate."

Make a joyful noise, and keep repeating it. mrspin writes "stage4 has an interview with Daniel Gomez-Ibanez a graduate from Stanford University who has designed and produced a 'Digital Turntable' that allows DJs to mix and scratch digital music using what looks like a conventional record player.

Daniel recently posted a short piece on Slashdot about his 'Digital Turntable'. In an email interview with stage4 he talks about what makes it different from other such products and the inspiration behind this hardware hack. stage4 is a community site dedicated to creative uses of technology and features a weekly music webcast via PirateTV"

Daniel also says (by email) that if "anyone would want a very unique sampling turntable I would sell more of them for around the cost of the parts because it would be fun to get them out there and get people playing with them." Even those parts aren't cheap (totaling around a thousand dollars) but handcrafted audio tools rarely are. Check his site for email address ;)

Please keep your Gator away from my eyeballs. EyesWideOpen writes "The New York Times is reporting that a preliminary injunction will be issued against Gator Corporation as a result of the company being sued by 10 web site publishers last month because they felt that the company's use of online pop-up ads violated copyright and trademark laws. 'In court Friday, Judge Hilton said that he found enough evidence to support the plaintiffs' claim that Gator's advertisements violated trademark laws in particular...he indicated that one issue was the proximity of Gator's pop-up ads to the publishers' trademarks.'"

You may already have won! We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S. kungfuftr writes: "I'm currently registering all my domains names through a company in the uk called 123reg who are very reasonable and run a good company. Today i got a letter from a company called "Domain Registry of Europe" saying that my domain name "kungfuftr.com" must be renewed. The form they sent looks like a bill and for someone who doesn't know too much about the DNS process it looks like something that should be filled in if they want to keep their domain. Of course if they do this their control of their domain will be transferred to a new registrar. Giving the company an official name as if they are the 'only' registrar in europe is pretty shady. Are companies reaching a new low?"

For when I get a larger hard drive ... TheRedHorse writes "The Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 ISO's have been released . Slashdot did a story about it YDL 2.3 before. Please remember to use the mirrors. Have fun."

You knew this would happen, right? JUSTONEMORELATTE writes "LightReading is reporting today that the EBone portion of KPNQwest's network has been bought for pennies on the dollar (or is that cents on the Euro?) by U.K.-based service provider Interoute Telecommunications. EBone had been valued at EU645 million back in March, today's deal is rumoured to be at about EU15 million, or about a 98% loss of value. Slashdot has covered the heroic efforts to keep the network alive, and talked about the shutdown of the same."

Genetics is never having to say "Am I your type, baby?" Teluial writes "Slashdot's previous story about ColonelPanic's genetic keyboard layout is taking an interesting development. *cue Spidey music* When we last left PMK he was trying his latest layout. Having found it "usable," he is now collecting Dvorak keystroke data and requesting volunteers of the QWERTY breed to also collect data to compare interesting findings against. Details near bottom of project page."

rakerman writes "IBM, Intel and a number of wireless services operators are considering building a wireless data network across the U.S., according to the New York Times."

impaler writes: "Roblimo has posted a great piece over at NewsForge about how the Washington Post and other newspapers are hosting MP3 download sites for local musicians and how the sites are actually very popular. An interesting read." Just because the "music industry" works a certain way right now doesn't mean that all change is bad; Bruce Springsteen is apparently finding that he doesn't need much beyond a lock and key to keep the Internet hordes from passing around his albums before they're released, and the musicians on the Washington Post site seem to like being there.

Matt W writes "The New York Times (free as in beer reg, blah blah) has an article about a recent reconstruction of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score. Film Forum on Houston St. in NY City will be showing the film for two weeks." Collect all three! I don't think they're using Georgio Morodor for the soundtrack for this one.

Matt W writes "The New York Times (free as in beer reg, blah blah) has an article about a recent reconstruction of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score. Film Forum on Houston St. in NY City will be showing the film for two weeks." Collect all three! I don't think they're using Georgio Morodor for the soundtrack for this one.

EyesWideOpen writes "According to this New York Times article (free reg. req.) the Office of Naval Research is coordinating an effort to determine what it will take to build a system that will make it possible for autonomous vehicles (in the air and on the ground), or A. V.'s, to serve as soldiers on the battlefield. The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.' The article also mentions that the A. V.'s will have the ability to send high resolution color video as well as still photographs using MPEG-4 compression. Pretty interesting stuff."

Flamerule writes "The New York Times has a new article up that relates the end result of the DrinkorDie copyright infringement case (the "ringleader" and 5 other guys are in prison), and talks about warez in general. They at least tried to get a story from both software companies and denizens of the warez scene. Pretty interesting stuff, even if you haven't been following the case closely."

Flamerule writes "The New York Times has a new article up that relates the end result of the DrinkorDie copyright infringement case (the "ringleader" and 5 other guys are in prison), and talks about warez in general. They at least tried to get a story from both software companies and denizens of the warez scene. Pretty interesting stuff, even if you haven't been following the case closely."

Betelgeuse writes: "The NY Times has a story story about a new bookshelf MP3/CD player from Sony. Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive. It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site." As the article puts it, they've come up with "the world's first TiVo for radio." Long overdue -- I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard, and let you pull tracks to other media. Update: 07/11 18:17 GMT by T : Ooops -- messed up that link, now fixed.

There's an interesting article currently carried by the NYTimes (free reg. yada yada) that talks about the world of dieting, National Institutes of Health, Atkins as well as low-carb vs low-fat. The interesting thing, from a scientific perspective, is the sheer lack of study - and the reticence from the scientific community to question the party line.

aridg writes: "This week's New York Times Magazine has an article about Richard Wallace, the programmer of the ALICE AI chatbot that won first place in several competitions for realistic human-like conversation. Wallace sounds like a pretty unusual and interesting fellow; the article quotes an NYU prof both praising ALICE and saying to Wallace: '... I actively dislike you. I think you are a paranoid psycho.' A good read. [Usual NY Times registration disclaimers apply.]"

wik writes "The New York Times reports that the statute of limitations for defamation is one year from the date of posting a page on the web. The courts had to decide whether the posting date or the last download date of a web page constitutes the publication date."

banannaslug writes "NYTimes (subscription, etc.) talks about Microsofts Palladium. The article addresses how applications of controlling technology affect competition as well as the consumer, can be used to extend monopolies to new markets and has very serious implications for what happens to user driven innovation. We'd have the people's operating system, the people's web browser and the people's media player, and 'computers' would be as useful to innovation as a bicycle to a fish. This is the kind of behavior you expect in a mature industry that tries to add 'law' to preserve failing market models dependent on a lack of competition. Next thing you know they'll want to force customers to upgrade periodically." Point it out to your boss.

Anonymous Coward writes "The NYTimes has a little story on a recent conference at New York University's Courant Institute where mathematicians gathered to discuss potential attacks on the Riemann hypothesis. The Clay Mathematics Institute had announced an award of a million dollars for a proof (or refutation) of the Riemann hypothesis during the millenial celebrations. That million dollars won't be worth much if it takes as long as that Last Theorem by Fermat to solve. There were some interesting observations such as the statistical distribution of the zeros looked just like calculations on the energy levels of large atoms." We did a related story on hard math problems two years ago.

redfieldp writes: "This is a pretty interesting story about the 'last' HD manufacturer in the U.S., and reasons why the industry is ailing ..." There's quite a bit of interesting hard-drive history in here, too.

InspectorPraline writes "Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly, this article at the New York Times reports that two major record companies, Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications, have been convicted of price fixing by the FTC over a recording from 1998 of the Three Tenors. While Warner reached an agreement with the FTC about a year ago, Vivendi continues to deny wrongdoing and will, of course, appeal." The FTC's release is quite informative, describing the entire case.

shofmann writes "The Washington Post is reporting that a number of publishers, including the Washington Post, is suing Gator Corp. over their obnoxious spyware, saying that Gator is "a parasite that free rides on the hard work and investment" of other people's web sites. The lawsuit alleges that Gator's spyware contributes to trademark infringement, misappropriation of the news, and represents unfair competition." The publishers seem to be distressed about Gator replacing website ads with its own. Several people submitted this related article about blocking internet advertising - nothing really new here for geeks, but a good URL to send to your less technically-inclined friends.

Hettinga writes: "Through many popular books and articles in the New York Times, Peter Wayner has done more to promote the field of applied financial cryptography, and in particular open source financial cryptography, than any other author writing today. His new book, Translucent Databases, from Flyzone Press, is no exception." Read on for the rest of the review. Translucent Databases author Peter Wayner pages 185 publisher Flyzone Press rating Outstanding. 5 Stars. Buy this Book. reviewer Robert Hettinga ISBN 0-9675844-1-8 summary Translucent Databases cure "Database Nation" and the "Transparent Society"?

Translucent Databases has all the hallmarks of Wayner's books: clear, easy to read exposition of the main issues, why they're important, and, in his technical books, excellently documented code written for the most popular platforms for the technology in question.

This book in particular should be an instant classic because like all great books, it takes what should be a very simple idea, encrypted databases, and expands it to some amazing conclusions.

For a long time now, I've been interested in what I call the geodesic economy, where all information, including information controlling financial assets, is fractally "surfacted", like so much grease in soapy dishwater, as far out into the edges of a ubiquitous internetwork as Moore's Law will allow, using financial cryptography protocols to secure transactions and markets on a nominally insecure, but ubiquitous, public internetwork.

People who are familiar with my thinking about such things over the past 8 years will see quite quickly why I think Peter's new book is so important. Transparent databases represent a way not only to link the batch-settled, book-entry debit-for-credit world of modern financial operations with a more simply founded, but much more sophisticated world which uses cryptographic tokens representing control of various financial and real assets. They also show us how to actually account for those tokens in such a fashion that every financial actor in that market, man or machine, can trust that their bearer certificates are authentic ones, and done in such a fashion that a given token retains its cryptographic integrity, including the functionally anonymous characteristics that made it so cheap to use in the first place.

The singular feature of Wayner's translucent databases is that, like internet bearer transactions themselves, the cryptography securing data in them can happen in the client, and not a centrally vulnerable server. More to the point, by using data stored in this fashion, the data can be dispersed as far out in the network as... well, Moore's Law allows, in extremely fast and lightweight files, and, instead of creating summaries of data for reports, the data can be polled for as close to its source as possible, instantaneously, in realtime, instead of being rolled up into increasingly larger batch-processed summaries taking weeks, sometimes months, to produce and audit.

There are obvious implications for my own particular hobby-horses, like anonymous but accurate double spend databases for bearer transactions, where only a simple blinded m-of-n cryptographic hash of a given promise to pay is necessary to prevent the duplication of that promise to more than one person at a time. However, for the rest of us :-), Wayner also points to a whole host of much less esoteric applications in the lots of the usual places where absolute privacy and extremely authentic information, is at a premium. Examples for military, medical, and anti-rape databases, for accounting systems and securities transactions, and even for internet poker -- the paradigm of completely untrusted parties cooperating for what each player hopes will be his own, preferrably cash, benefit -- are all presented in clear writing and running code.

There has been a lot of lip-service in the privacy community about "owning" your own data. Unfortunately, by involving the state at all, these "advocates" almost always favor inadvertantly draconian political solutions to the problem presented by the ubiquity of database technology and its otherwise beneficial presense in our lives. They ususally present this nonsense as a "sacrifice" for the "greater good" that would make Hayek's Road to Serfdom look like Lilac Sunday at the local arboretum.

In Translucent Databases, Wayner shows, in precise detail, with code, how to solve that problem, without trusting lawyers, much less guys with guns.

Though quite a short read, the scope of the book itself is quite considerable. Wayner starts from simple hashes of data to merely obscure it, through various kinds of encryption, quantization of data, and even accounting with encrypted data using what amounts to virtual cumulative crossfoots like the kind you would see on all good accounting reports. In so doing, Wayner explains, quite simply, something that people like Eric Hughes made great, complicated hay out of years ago with gangling theories of encrypted "open" books.

Ultimately, Wayner really does end up where a lot of us think databases will be someday, particularly in finance: repositories of data accessible only by digital bearer tokens using various blind signature protocols, neatly, and quite literally, "dis-integrating" the ability of databases to be used against us as a tool of totalitarianism, exemplified most recently by Simpson Garfinkel in his book Database Nation , and, oddly enough, not because someone or other wants to strike a blow against the empire, but simply because it's safer -- and cheaper -- to do that way.

Every database programmer should have a copy of this simple and elegant book on his reference bookshelf. Particularly if he cares about the integrity of his data, the liability to the database's owner should information be misappropriated, and, not least, about freedom itself in a world of ubiquitous, and, frankly, necessary, stored detail: details about practically every person on earth, their property and finances, and, ultimately, everything they do.

Translucent Databases presents a simple, frankly beautiful, solution to David Brin's world of ubiquitous surveillance, one not requiring, as Brin seems to want, "trust" of state force-monopolists, much less their lawyers and apparatchiks.

In fact, it's such an elegant solution that, as Schopenhauer liked to say about the public acceptance of important new ideas, soon enough, people will say it was obvious all along.

Robert Hettinga is founder of IBUC, the Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation, which will, hopefully, someday, :-), use translucent databases full of internet bearer certificates to reduce transaction costs by three orders of magnitude. You can purchase Translucent Databases through the publisher. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

aarondsouza writes: "The NY Times (registration required, mumble... mutter...) has this story on two different directions being taken in the supercomputing community. The Los Alamos labs have a couple of new toys. One built for raw numbercrunching speed, and the other for efficiency. The article has interesting numbers on the performance/price (price in the power consumption and maintenance sense) ratios for the two machines. As an aside... 'Deep Blue', 'Green Blade' ... wonder what Google Sets would think of that..."

Anonymous Coward writes "DaisyMan over on ArsWare has come up with a software based Dead Man's Switch that will, if you don't 'check in' every so often, post a message (presumably about your demise, but whatever you wish) to various message boards, send email (maybe that incriminating evidence?) to your friends, and encrypt specified files on your computer so that 'they' can't have them. Paranoia? Yeah, but they really _are_ watching you ..." Update: 06/22 12:57 GMT by T : The idea isn't new, but recently sparked a New York Times article.

ICANN is meeting in Bucharest next week, which means they're floating all their usual smoky-room schemes just prior to the meeting. leto writes "The three RIR's, ARIN, APNIC and RIPE-NCC have just released a joint statement that basically tells ICANN that their Evolution and Reform plan is unacceptable, and tells ICANN to go play elsewhere, and leave the address space in the hands of the well working bodies." An interesting mailing list debate has been going on between ICANN's critics and ICANN's extremely well-paid and extremely sleazy attorney: critic, attorney (sleazy!), critic again, another critic, attorney again, critic's response, still other critics. And finally, note that the .org TLD is up for bids - the New York Times has a story, Newsforge has another.

MrNovember writes "The New York Times (registration blah blah) describes a new choice for office suites. The writer seems a bit slanted toward OpenOffice but it's a fair discussion of its pros and cons. The article has identified some interesting compatibility issues to those who aren't using OpenOffice but might. Again we see major media discussing open source as an actual alternative to a longstanding standard. The article concludes amusingly with 'Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for;' just tack on 'Open Source' to the beginning for the perfect sig." We've gotten numerous submissions recently from people whose [company/school/whatever] is switching to OpenOffice.

DrBlake writes "New York Times has an article about new systems used to stabilize cameras hung from aircraft. Apparently they make it possible to see many details at 500 meters or higher. The systems are interesting in themselves and the article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy."

jonerik writes "Today's New York Times has this article on the current renovation of the Very Large Array; the Y-shaped collection of 27 movable large dish antennas in New Mexico that are collectively one of the most important radio telescope systems in the world. The Times article details plans currently underway to upgrade the system with new electronics, as well as the eventual addition of eight more telescopes to the array. 'The planned renovation is scheduled to be completed in 2011. The National Science Foundation, the observatory's principal supporter, will pay for most of the $75 million project, with smaller amounts coming from Canada and Mexico.'"

jonerik writes "Today's New York Times has this article on the current renovation of the Very Large Array; the Y-shaped collection of 27 movable large dish antennas in New Mexico that are collectively one of the most important radio telescope systems in the world. The Times article details plans currently underway to upgrade the system with new electronics, as well as the eventual addition of eight more telescopes to the array. 'The planned renovation is scheduled to be completed in 2011. The National Science Foundation, the observatory's principal supporter, will pay for most of the $75 million project, with smaller amounts coming from Canada and Mexico.'"

jonerik writes: "As part of its inevitable 30th-anniversary-of-Watergate coverage, ABC News has this article on the National Archives' search for someone who can recover part or all of the missing 18 ½ minutes of President Nixon's Oval Office tapes, whose existence had been unknown until the Watergate hearings. The famous tape - recorded on June 20th, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in - was last examined in 1974, but Nixon tape archivist Karl Weissenbach is hoping that nearly thirty years of technological progress can make the difference this time, saying 'We have decided that the time is right and appropriate to determine whether that conversation can be retrieved or recovered.' Stephen St. Croix, one of several forensic audio experts who is interested in taking on the job, says 'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'" There's another article in Wired on this quest as well.

EEEthan writes: "It looks like Linux is really the next big thing for movie graphics houses. The New York Times is reporting that Disney has switched over to Linux-based HP workstations for animation. Although Disney has historically been known for their hand-drawn animation, this is a big move to Linux for what might be the world's most famous producer of animated films."

InspectorPraline writes "According to this article at the New York Times [free reg req'd], a tech firm known as Tyzx is developing optics technology that will have three-dimensional capability -- using two cameras attached by a high-bandwidth connection to a custom processing card inside a PC. The article makes one believe that the system would have a top speed of as much as 132 stereo frames per second, which could be very useful in security systems. Of course, the real question is who's behind the cameras, but we can all drool over the other possibilities, right?"

mithras the prophet writes "Global warming stories usually focus on the hotbutton politics, scientific debate, or latest disturbing anecdote of receding ice. A very interesting New York Times story takes a different tack, highlighting the reality of climate change for small-town Alaskans. Whatever the cause, temperatures in Alaska have risen by seven degrees in the last 30 years. This has very real consequences for ordinary citizens; the rest of us would do well to consider their stories. Lucy Eningowuk and her 600 fellow citizens of Shishmaref will vote next week whether to move their town to the mainland. Despite community efforts, thawing of permafrost and wave action from melting ice has eroded away most of the land the village is built on. Residents of Barrow (warning: MIDI-enabled page), on the North Shore, are swatting mosquitos for the first time in their lives. In an ironic twist, managers of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline are putting in supports to keep the pipeline from breaking as permafrost thaws."

An Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times has had a couple of articles about Stephen Wolfram in the last couple of weeks. Is he self-aggrandizing or brilliant? Or both? And is God a software engineer?" I thought our reader-contributed review of ANKOS was quite good.

An Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times has had a couple of articles about Stephen Wolfram in the last couple of weeks. Is he self-aggrandizing or brilliant? Or both? And is God a software engineer?" I thought our reader-contributed review of ANKOS was quite good.

An Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times has had a couple of articles about Stephen Wolfram in the last couple of weeks. Is he self-aggrandizing or brilliant? Or both? And is God a software engineer?" I thought our reader-contributed review of ANKOS was quite good.

Dhrakar writes: "Now, I know that normally press releases are imediately round-filed, however, as this is the first NEC^H^H^HCray SX-6 to be installed in the U.S. it is newsworthy. The 8cpu, 64Gb system has been installed at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center for benchmarking and other testing. See either ARSC or the NY Times (sub. required. Yada, yada) article."

wdb writes: "A NY Times article (free subscription required) describes the competition surrounding control of the .org domain, which Verisign coughed up in order to keep .com and .net from going to the highest bidder. Open source and Internet pioneers Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud have entered the fray; central to their bid is their announced intent to place all the software necessary to manage a TLD in the public domain. 'This shouldn't be a dot-com opportunity,' Mr. Malamud said. 'There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors, but what we need is actually a public utility that is well managed in the public interest.'"

bluegreenone writes: "The New York Times has an article on what may be the first 'virtual' piano competition. One of the judges for the contest being held in St. Paul will actually be in Japan. He will evaluate the performances as relayed by Yamaha's Disklavier system. This has some interest from a technical standpoint, and also raises new questions about what a "live" performance is."

grim_thing writes "I.B.M. scientists say they have created a data-storage technology that can store the equivalent of 200 CD-ROM's on a surface the size of a postage stamp. Writing in the current issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, researchers at I.B.M.'s laboratories in Zurich report that they have achieved a storage density of one trillion bits of data per square inch, about 25 times as great as current hard disks." Reuters also has a story.

theodp writes: "An Actual Internet Success Story explains how, in just a few years, the Internet has transformed the world into a huge marketplace for used books, utterly transforming a business that had gone pretty much unobserved for centuries. The Net has changed how we buy and think about books - someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars. According to the story, the increase in the number of used books sold is staggering, maybe 100 times what it was in 1995, and now accounts for more than 15 percent of Amazon's sales. Tales are told of used book dealers lining up nine hours before a library sale to get 'free money,' cutting deals with thrift-store managers and library-sale organizers to avoid 'feeding frenzy' fights, volunteering at the Salvation Army to get first dibs on donations, and offering review copies for half price on the Net weeks before a book is even published."