Slashdot Mirror

Dirak writes "A small 112-pound ocean glider named Spray is the first autonomous underwater vehicle to cross the Gulf Stream underwater. Launched September 11, 2004, it has been slowly making 12 miles per day measuring various properties of the ocean. Spray spent 15 minutes three times a day on the surface to relay its position and information about ocean conditions and then glided back down to 3,300-feet depth ." And reader RoboFreak writes "Two Computer Science students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii have developed a Low Cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. The students also entered their robot, LUV, in the AUVSI and ONR's 7th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition at San Diego, CA and competed against top Ivy-League teams. Their robot received recognition in the form of an award at this competition. This robot was designed with a budget of only about $600 and seems to be the cheapest AUV around. One of the AUV designers' interview conducted by Amit Kr Chanda of The Times of India is available here."

cynical writes "From releasing packs of Feral Robot Dogs that sniff out chemical contamination, to teaching Yale engineering students socially responsible design, to co-authoring Biotech Hobbyist Magazine, Natalie Jeremijenko's work merges engineering, biology, politics and art. Enviro-tech blog WorldChanging has an exclusive interview with Jeremijenko where she discusses how art and technology mix, garage biotech, and being the "Q" (from James Bond) of the activist community."

GrokSoup writes "UC San Diego is holding a public symposium on Friday, October 22nd, honoring the 30th anniversary of the Pascal programming language. Oh the memories of undergraduate bubble-sorts ..."

Suburbanpride writes "Last year, as Slashdot readers may remember, the University of California, San Diego forced student website UCSDuncensored to change its name to SDuncensored, citing California education code that gives it exclusive rights to the name. This year, the target is youCSD, a student blog that has been critical of the administration. The university denies that the site's content had anything to do with the nastygram they received, which informed them that were in violation for not only the name, but for an image they took of the Geisel Library, which the university claims to hold a trademark on. There are dozens of sites that use UCSD in the name, not to mention the 1000+ members of the UCSD xanga blogring. What's next, campus police stopping people from taking pictures of the library?"

underpar writes "This ComputerWorld.com article discusses the UCSD's $6.2 million attempt to study Internet viruses in a manner similar to the study of human epidemics. Stefan Savage, a computer science professor, is quoted in the article as saying, 'We'll be focused on what vectors are used, just like in assessing West Nile, to spread computer viruses and ultimately try to develop defenses to prevent them from spreading.'"

underpar writes "This ComputerWorld.com article discusses the UCSD's $6.2 million attempt to study Internet viruses in a manner similar to the study of human epidemics. Stefan Savage, a computer science professor, is quoted in the article as saying, 'We'll be focused on what vectors are used, just like in assessing West Nile, to spread computer viruses and ultimately try to develop defenses to prevent them from spreading.'"

alicebotmaster writes "The A.L.I.C.E. chatbot won the 2004 Loebner Prize contest for most human computer. The contest, held on September 19 in New York City, is based on the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. The non-profit ALICE A. I. Foundation was awarded the Bronze Loebner medal and a cash prize of $2000. The A.L.I.C.E. program runs on open source GNU licensed AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) software. This was the third Loebner prize win for the ALICE and AIML software"

bden writes "As another tidbit from Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram, remember back in January when WinZip was Slashdotted for moving forward with its new AES-based encryption technology? Everything sounded good since we all knew that AES is secure, right? Well, a cryptographer took a look at how WinZip uses AES and found lots of problems. Regardless of how many people actually plan to use WinZip encryption, the lesson, according to Schneier, is that "cryptography is hard, and simply using AES in a product does not magically make it secure." So how can we distinguish between an application that simply uses the right buzzwords, like AES, from an application that is actually secure?"

bden writes "As another tidbit from Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram, remember back in January when WinZip was Slashdotted for moving forward with its new AES-based encryption technology? Everything sounded good since we all knew that AES is secure, right? Well, a cryptographer took a look at how WinZip uses AES and found lots of problems. Regardless of how many people actually plan to use WinZip encryption, the lesson, according to Schneier, is that "cryptography is hard, and simply using AES in a product does not magically make it secure." So how can we distinguish between an application that simply uses the right buzzwords, like AES, from an application that is actually secure?"

ILMfan writes "BBC Technology is describing a new graphics algorithm for creating perfect virtual skin. This technique by graphics wizard Henrik Jensen (the guy who invented photon mapping) is already being used in movies (it was used on Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and it will be used in the soon-to-be-released van Helsing movie). And perhaps more exciting is that several game companies are planning on using it for their next generation games. So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3? Of course there are endless other opportunities for virtual humans with perfect skin :-)"

DavidMoore writes "The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) and the University of California, San Diego Computer Science Department have an analysis of the recent Witty worm. Among other things, Witty was started in an organized manner with an order of magnitude more ground-zero hosts than any previous Internet worm."

cosyne asks: "Seeing the recent announcement about FreeS/WAN reminds me that there are many cool projects that I'm mostly unaware of (or, more often, completely oblivious to), which I only hear about when Slashdot posts a 'Developers finally giving up on this cool project' story. What projects (software or otherwise) are out there that would benefit from more involvement if only they had the publicity?"

Licensed2Hack writes "The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), part of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego has an analysis of the recent DDOS on SCO.com. Netcraft also has more information in their article and analysis graphs. Seems SCO was hit with a 50,000 packet-per-second SYN flood peak, which yields approximately 20 Mb/s each way, or about the capacity of a DS3 line."

Slashback tonight brings updates and clarifications on the odds of Apple Computer buying Universal Music, the Evil Bit RFC, and more, including Niels Provos' reasons for moving his cryptographic research tools off-shore.

The more numerous the laws ... friscolr writes "The Register has an article about security researcher Niels Provos's (creator/collaborator for systrace, honeyd, openssh, various steg tools, and more) struggle to continue his Ph.D. studies amidst an increasingly restrictive set of U.S. and Michigan laws. This isn't the first time a prominent security researcher in Michigan has voiced serious concerns over new laws."

You may remember several earlier stories mentioning Provos' research, such as this article on his honeynet creation tool honeyd.

Apple Records has a certain ring, though, doesn't it? egoff writes "The Apple/Universal Music deal is unlikely, according to the New York Times (reg req), nor would it be a sure hit with investors. However, if the deal did go through, it would be because of Steve Job's vision for the future of digital music. Said one former Apple exec: 'Apple always needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat. Universal is a pretty big rabbit.'"

Swearing in another language doesn't count. Chilliwilli writes with an update to the recent Anger As a Software Design Philosophy: "Anyone that took a look at the foul language feckfeck might be amazed to see that somebody has actually risen to one of the three challenges and written a quine in this more irritating of languages. Congratulations go to 'hoser'."

Upping their meds. Elyjah writes "Steve Bellovin has compiled a short list of emails he got regarding his most recent RFC (3514) which appeared this last April 1st. (I believe you may have seen something on Slashdot about it.) Some people just...don't...get it."

If you go beyond the Enterprise, doesn't that invalidate their theme song? Built enough floppy-disk Enterprises? GaryK writes "With Dell getting rid of 3.5" disk drives, I'm quite sure we'll have to come up with creative uses for the hundreds and hundreds of floppies we have around our offices. This guy should serve as an inspiration to us all.

mike_stay asks: "Imperative Programming follows closely the 'outline' style of writing most of us were taught in elementary school. Japanese, however, have a very hard time with that writing style, as they've been trained in the concept of kishotenketsu: stories are usually told by bouncing around between various points of view, which necessarily give different accounts; no attempt is made to say what 'really' happened. 'Good writing style' expects readers to draw the conclusions; writing that is too explicit is not valued. The writing, therefore, tends to be inductive: specific examples precede general principles. The closest thing I can think of to kishotenketsu in programming is functional programming or declarative languages, but then, I'm American. Would other readers point me at other languages with this type of 'eastern' feel?"

sensui writes "Today we take DVD, cellphones for granted. Here is a nice documentary produced by UCSD-TV that helps us to remember who's the man behind all the fundamental theoretical work that truly enabled the information age. This documentary has recently won an biography award. Hope that can remind us this is not just what Bell Lab has been known for." Note: the entire documentary, not just a teaser, is available here, but only in RealMedia format.

sensui writes "Today we take DVD, cellphones for granted. Here is a nice documentary produced by UCSD-TV that helps us to remember who's the man behind all the fundamental theoretical work that truly enabled the information age. This documentary has recently won an biography award. Hope that can remind us this is not just what Bell Lab has been known for." Note: the entire documentary, not just a teaser, is available here, but only in RealMedia format.

Slashback (below) brings you tonight more on the fate of Mobilix, "borrowing" from the Onion, keeping track of campus, the recent (partial) eclipse, and animated television. Enjoy!

I want you to hear my side of the story. R. Benjamin Shapiro writes "Hi There, After reading the reactionary (and slanted) Salon story (of which I am a subscriber) and the responses to it, I thought I'd point the /. community to a paper describing what we are actually doing. Many of the suggestions posted on /. are things we have been doing for some time now. Thanks very much for your feedback!"

A minor but nice victory. Werner Heuser writes "In the hearing from June 12th the court has rejected the arguments of 'Lés Editions Albert René.' The court says the words 'MobiliX' and 'Obelix' can hardly be mixed up with each other. Also the work of MobiliX is dedicated to another audience. This is a great success for the Free Software Community.

MobiliX is a very well-known site dedicated to Linux and BSD on mobile devices (like laptops, PDAs, cell phones and more). In November 2001 Werner Heuser, owner of the Open Source project MobiliX - UniX on Mobile Computers was charged by 'Lés Editions Albert René,' which is owner of the trademark 'Obelix.' In their opinion the names Obelix and MobiliX are very similar. The charge aimed for a deletion of the trademark 'MobiliX' and a compensation fee. The charge has been discussed in many newsgroups and mailing lists. It seems to be a very important case for the Free Software Community, because there are many projects, which names are also ending on 'iX.' Some other projects have even silently withdrawn their names, because the financial risk of losing a trademark case is high. The documentation of the case is available online. It includes the letters from MobiliX lawyers Jaschinski Biere Brexl - JBB."

In 10,000 years, these plates will be mandatory. An Anonymous Coward writes "The director of the Nevada DMV has denied the application for a custom plate depicting a mushroom-shaped cloud. The plates where apparently 'insensitive' and otherwise politically incorrect. .. "

Truer than you know. Zeekamotay writes "Referring to this previously reported story, The Beijing Evening News has now apologized to its readers for printing a story that originated from The Onion. They don't quite seem to grasp the concept of satire though: 'Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money,' the paper said. 'This is what the Onion does.'"

One more item for your bazillion-hour PVR. Stalke writes "This is a little old, but Tripping the Rift, first mentioned in a previous slashdot article, has been picked up by the SCI FI channel as their first ever animated series. For those of you that don't know, this is a parody of Starwars and Star Trek that takes place on the "Free Enterprise" and includes Chode, a purple alien, Six, a half-naked android, and a dark clown named Bobo. A higher res version of the original movie linked by the previous article is also available on their website."

Some of the "Sun" projectors were just down for scheduled maintenance. leananglemorgan writes "Just in case anyone missed the ol' Solar Eclipse on the 10th, here is a link to quick snaps I took ... Not the greatest, but reasonable enough to get some 'Hey that's cool!' remarks. Enjoy! I thought a couple came out good enough to share!" Another reader submits: "Thought everyone would enjoy this eclipse video I found."

Uche writes: "Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have uncovered the first genetic evidence that explains how large-scale alterations to body plans were accomplished during the early evolution of animals."

Judebert writes "While some may argue that any modern processor without a heat sink already exhibits this behavior, UCSD chemists have discovered that properly doped computer chips are actually explosive. Standard techniques are used, and they function just like normal computer chips. Better yet, they burn clean, making them ideal for chemical analysis. The article sites other uses, such as micromachine propulsion and military explosives, but I imagine this woudl make for the ultimate in copy protection, as well: "Unauthorized copy detected. This system will self-destruct in 10... 9..." Science Daily also has a copy."

Judebert writes "While some may argue that any modern processor without a heat sink already exhibits this behavior, UCSD chemists have discovered that properly doped computer chips are actually explosive. Standard techniques are used, and they function just like normal computer chips. Better yet, they burn clean, making them ideal for chemical analysis. The article sites other uses, such as micromachine propulsion and military explosives, but I imagine this woudl make for the ultimate in copy protection, as well: "Unauthorized copy detected. This system will self-destruct in 10... 9..." Science Daily also has a copy."

Jeremi writes: "Salon has a brief article about a new content self-rating system being proposed to Congress in lieu of government-imposed restrictions. I wonder if this is a good thing or bad, and whether or not it will succeed where previous attempts failed?"

JoeyPea writes "Researchers have found that volcanic glass (super-cooled lava) in the ocean's upper crust is eaten by microbes. The researchers found tiny tubular tunnels bored through the rock. The breakdown of volcanic rock was thought to be a chemical/physical process, but now it obviously has a biological component."

akb writes: "Interesting article entitled Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks describing a project which provided three Indian reservations near San Diego with wireless broadband connectivity. The collaboration between UC San Diego and the Southern California Tribal Chairman Association has attracted additional funding from HP's Digital Village Program doubling the original NSF allocation, which will allow the network to expand to connect 18 reservations to the Internet and educational facilities. The network sports a 45mbps wireless backbone with 802.11b uplinks." The HPWREN pages have a lot of interesting information, including specifications for their 45 megabit solar-powered relays.

akb writes: "Interesting article entitled Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks describing a project which provided three Indian reservations near San Diego with wireless broadband connectivity. The collaboration between UC San Diego and the Southern California Tribal Chairman Association has attracted additional funding from HP's Digital Village Program doubling the original NSF allocation, which will allow the network to expand to connect 18 reservations to the Internet and educational facilities. The network sports a 45mbps wireless backbone with 802.11b uplinks." The HPWREN pages have a lot of interesting information, including specifications for their 45 megabit solar-powered relays.

frekio asks: "I'm a 4th year undergrad at UCSD and am taking part of an ambitious cognitive science course that moves us, as groups, to redesign an interface with cognitive processes, usability and efficiency in mind. My idea was to contribute to Open Source with this project by assisting in a GUI design/redesign. We need to work with something that has an active user community which could provide feedback about changes we made or propose, and therefore must have a decently large userbase. What are some projects out there that provide software which people use day-to-day and could use more time and effort put into the User Interface?"

frekio asks: "I'm a 4th year undergrad at UCSD and am taking part of an ambitious cognitive science course that moves us, as groups, to redesign an interface with cognitive processes, usability and efficiency in mind. My idea was to contribute to Open Source with this project by assisting in a GUI design/redesign. We need to work with something that has an active user community which could provide feedback about changes we made or propose, and therefore must have a decently large userbase. What are some projects out there that provide software which people use day-to-day and could use more time and effort put into the User Interface?"

Brandon Downey writes: "I found this site the other day, after giving up on Dejanews in disgust. (Does anyone think they don't suck these days?) Apparently, this site's owner has resurrected a tape archive of usenet posts from 1981-1982. The site appears courtesy of Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, and David Wiseman, who deserve credit for compiling this utterly intriguing selection of articles from our past."

What's amazing is not so much how far we've come, but how visionary some of the people then were.

Take this little gem, for instance:

Aallegra.131
net.general
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!mhtsa!allegra!rdg
Thu Nov 12 21:05:29 1981
democracy
wouldn't it be great to be able to use this electronic medium
to send notes to our government officials?  i never seem to write
postal letters or telegrams, but we all seem to find these
electric notes convenient enough to use often.  can you imagine
net.reagan with a few authentic replys?

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright© 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.

The archive gets better than this though -- there are articles about whether you can be prosecuted for profanity on usenet, copies of the TCP/IP digest volume 1, and even people asking for dice rolling programs for d&d on a vax! Check it out for yourself, it's well worth the read."

A few weeks ago you asked the multi-talented Chris McKinstry questions, about the telescope projects he's involved with (ESO's Very Large Telescope -- VLT -- and the OverWhelmingly Large telescope -- OWL), about his project to synthesize AI by collecting a database of answers to questions common and obscure, and about the possibilities of discovering extraterrestrial life. Read what he has to say on everything from humans leaving the solar system to telescopes staying here on Earth. [Updated 5 Aug by t:] Chris notes for the record: "The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the opinions of the European Southern Observatory."

1) GAC
by Dungeon Dweller

I have an active interest in artificial intelligence. I study it as part of my major, and hope to do research in it in the future. As a young man coming up in the world, I am hoping to enter into research eventually, am entering into research at my university (WVU).

Your project reminds me of several projects/theories that have been discussed before. In the psychological debate, your system depends entirely upon nurture, it would seem. I like that kind of system and research. I do have a few questions.

1. What separates this from other projects in the field?
2. Where did you draw your inspiration for this project?
3. What kind of support staff do you recommend to an individual who has never led research before, but would like to? (I ask this of many of my professors who conduct research)
4. Where are you getting the bulk of your input for this project?
5. What do you hope to learn from this project?
6. At what time will you consider this project a success?

I know that I posed a lot of questions, but several could be answered in combination, I just didn't want to ask 2 questions at the same time.

Chris McKinstry:

Question 1-1:

There are three primary features of the MindPixel Digital Mind Modeling Project (also known by GAC -- for Generic Artificial Consciousness -- which is public interface to the project) that distinguish it from other large scale knowledge projects such as CYC.

1. The first phase is a completely public, internet based effort. All the data it will be collecting will come from average people, with no specific training in AI or psychology. It is like seti@home in many respects, except that we're not after your CPU's cycles, but rather your humanness. We're actually seeking to extract the entire content of an average person's mind bit by literal bit from millions of different internet users. We're not trying to write the algorithm for consciousness, but rather create the world's most rigorous fitness test (a Dawkinsian continuous variable) and get it into the hands of researchers who will attempt to make systems that will learn or evolve into consciousness by feeding back against this fitness test. Not only will we be collecting consensus fact, but also consensus emotion. (When the project is fully operational, in addition to collecting information about each MindPixel's truth or falsity, we will also collect emotional data based on Mehrabian's PAD model of emotion.)
2. The second phase of the project involves releasing the data collected to the scientific community and providing those researchers with some funds (generated by advertising to the people supplying the data) to conduct their research. As a side note, Jeff Elman's page contrains information about recurrent neural networks that are very good at processing just the kind of data that this project will collect and distribute. Specifically his 1990 article, Finding Structure in Time (PDF) is one of the most important neural network papers ever written; it strongly influenced me.
3. Finally, the project is a meritocracy. People will gain voting rights that will give them a say in every aspect of how the project is run, from data collection and use to the distribution of data and research funds, based entirely on the amount of data they have contributed to the project. The more work you do, the stronger your voice becomes.

Question 1-2:

My primary inspiration for the project comes from observation: I observed that computers are stupid and know nothing of human existence. I concluded a very long time ago that either we had to write a "magic" program that was able to go out in the world and learn like a human child, or we just had to sit down and type in ALL the data. When I was studying psychology in the late 80's I wanted to begin to gnaw the bullet and start getting people to type in ALL the data. It was my plan then to get people to enter data as part of an intro psych course, or get the university to allow me ask people for data when they logged on to the university's computer system. I was never able to get permission for either and the idea sat on the shelf until I downloaded my first copy of NCSA's Mosaic in 1994. I saw in following my first hyperlink, a different path.

I decided to collect my data via the internet. But, the problem was, that I needed to think of a standard format for the data; some way of representing human knowledge that an average person could learn quickly. That idea didn't come to me until I was preparing an entry for the 1995 Loebner Prize. Jackie, my program, was a stimulus response creature. You would ask her a full text question, and she scan her database for a canned full text response. My idea for the Loebner competition was to have her talk to a lot of people a get a lot of canned responses (at the time I was consulting for a large insurance company and brought Jackie to work everyday where she could talk to my colleagues) As well, I stored the responses in a number of different ways: phonetically using soundex, again with all the words in each stimulus sorted alphabetically, and also with a primitive concept token system. So, if there was no direct match, she would look for a phonetic match or sorted or conceptual match. Essentially I was breaking down each stimulus and standardizing it like a Fourier transform breaks down a waveform.

Then suddenly Hugh Loebner changed the rules. No longer was passing a text based Turing Test good enough for him. Now he would only award his prize if the system passed a full audio/video Inquisition. I hit the roof! Hell, there were tens of thousands of people on the planet that couldn't pass that kind of test! Anyone blind or deaf are just two obvious examples. I withdrew Jackie in a loud protest, stating that intelligence didn't depend on the bandwidth of the communication channel; intelligence could be communicated with one bit! If you locked a person in a box I could detect them with a series of yes/no questions and nothing more. And there all of a sudden, I had my answer (and a quick paper - The Minimum Intelligent Signal Test - An Objective Turing Test in Canadian Artificial Intelligence, issue 41.) There was a minimum intelligent signal, and it was just one bit. I would store my model of the human mind in binary propositions. I would make a digital model of the mind.

I realized within minutes that a giant database of these propositions could be used to train a neural net to mimic a conscious, thinking, feeling human being! I thought, maybe I'm missing something obvious. So, I emailed Marvin Minsky and asked him if he thought it would be possible to train a neural network into something resembling human using a database of binary propositions. He replied quickly saying "Yes, it is possible, but the training corpus would have to be enormous." The moment I finished reading that email, I knew I would spend the rest of my life building and validating the most enormous corpus I could.

Question 1-3:

Support staff! I recommend using the entire planet as support staff! Seriously, don't even dream about it. Almost every researcher I know works on their own or with a handful of collaborators. When you're a big cheese you might get a student or two, but other than that you'll get nothing more than shared use of a departmental secretary. You'll definitely be writing all your own code for a very long time.

Question 1-4:

I can't tell you that yet because at the time I wrote this, the project was not yet online (should be now though.) What I can tell you is that in 1995 I did try to collect this same data, using a web based form that sent an email back to me. I managed to collect some 450,000 items. This time, I expect to collect more and higher quality data and I expect it to come from a wide cross section of the internet public. I should also note MindPixels will be collected in multiple languages, which opens up the future prospect of mapping the sampled human languages to each other concept by concept. It will be very interesting to see exactly how an artificial consciousness trained in English differs at the conceptual level from one trained in say, Spanish.

Question 1-5:

I hope to learn what the human conceptual network looks like. I hope that in a few years I will be able to access a map of all the concepts in the head of an average person or to have learned why I can't.

Question 1-6:

I will consider the project a complete success when the cover of Science announces that for the first time in history there exists an artificial system that has passed a scientifically strong form of the Turing Test known as the Minimum Intelligent Signal Test.

2) How do you guys do it?
by pc486

With exptremely high magnification, how in heck do you keep the telescope still enough to take photos?

The slightest movement ought to mean millions of miles so thoes pesky little earthquakes should be a problem. Not to mention how you guys move the telescope accurately?

Chris: You're quite right about the system being very sensitive; if I walk on the azimuth platform of a VLT telescope while we're observing, I will destroy the observation. For normal tracking we use a software system called Tpoint written by a well known telescope genius named Pat Wallace (Pat has a wonderful and detailed article about telescope pointing that anyone seriously interested in telescope pointing should read); the same system is in use on telescopes all over the world. Basically what we do is build a pointing model for each of our telescopes. This involves pointing each telescope to a number of different points uniformly covering the sky. At each sample point, we observe a guide star and record how it moves from the center of the field over about one minute of tracking time. After we have collected enough data, we build a computer model of the telescope's tracking error. Then we basically run the model backwards into the telescope control system and thus apply corrections that try to cancel out the tracking errors of the telescope. This of course can't correct for any unusual vibrations, we rely on normal guide star tracking and hydraulic isolation of the telescope for that. And baring a large earthquake, Tpoint, automatic guide star corrections and the isolation work pretty well (In the event of a large earthquake, there are giant airbags that inflate to protect the mirror from damage.)

3) How can we help?
by Mignon

You probably know about SETI At Home, which lets people volunteer spare CPU time to processing radio-telescope data, in a (so far vain) attempt to find extra-terrestrial intelligence. Is there a similar way that we can help process some of the data that you gather?

As a simple example, one could compute the differences between a sequence of pictures of the same portion of the sky, looking for anomalies like giant asterioids on their way to wiping us all out.

Chris: seti@home is one of the most impressive demonstrations of how the world of science has changed. There are now over 2 million average people working together for a common scientific goal. I just wish they sold advertising to raise funds for other worthy (meritocratically determined) projects. It really bugs me that my Pentium III 450 which has done over 7000 hours of seti@home processing since last June, hasn't shown me a single science supporting ad. What a waste!

Now as for your idea of doing the same thing in optical wavelengths, I think in it there is a great deal of merit. There are a whole pile on new survey telescopes coming online soon that will be useful for just what you proposed. And if you read ahead to my answer to question 11, you'll see I do think it is a problem we have to pay attention to. (As well, I know of at least two virtual telescope projects; the NRC's National Virtual Telescope. See NVO White Paper (PDF) and ESO's ASTROVIRTEL which seek to allow data mining of previously collected telescope data.

In general, I think the future will see a lot more distributed processing projects doing useful science. The question remains whether or not it is more cost effective to build supercomputers for critical projects or harness the CPU's of private citizens, and I think the answer will need to be determined on a case by case basis. As well, there will be some projects (my own for example) where the CPU cycles are incidental; where what we want to harvest is not your electricity and capital equipment, but actually your humanity.

4) Division between Science and Spirituality
by ParticleGirl

I am continuously frustrated that people's general perception seems to be that science and art, spirituality, and so forth are divided by an uncrossable schism. People feel the need to pit science against spirituality; logic against intuition. It is a rare thing that people accept the idea that these are different ways of approaching the same reality. As a dreamer and artist as well as a respected scientist, what do you say to people who doubt that scientists can be spiritual and artistic people?

Chris: Science for me at least, is concerned with the external, the measurable; while art is concerned with the internal and immeasurable. Every scientist knows measurement can only go so far; that nature at its most fundamental is immeasurable. Unfortunately many scientists turn away from what they can't measure (and conversely, many artists turn from measurement) instead of finding some way, any way to express it. It is this turning away or fear of the immeasurable (or many artist's converse fear of reduction to measurement) that creates doubt; that separates science from art. The scientist can learn that one does not become any less of a scientist for attempting to express the inexpressible or attempting to measure the immeasurable, just as the artist can learn that because we are neurons and our neurons atoms, doesn't mean we are any less human.

5) CCD or what?
by paRcat

What kind of imaging does a telescope of this scale use? Is it an OWLCCD or something else? What kind of resolution? And how far away would an object need to be before the resolution becomes a shortcoming?

Chris: I actually can't answer this question. I am only aware of one discussion regarding instrumentation for the OWL and I haven't read it yet. See FROM ISAAC TO GOLIATH, OR BETTER NOT!? INFRARED INSTRUMENTATION CONCEPTS FOR 100M CLASS TELESCOPES (PDF) on the OWL project page.

6) Yeah, they're big ...
by viper21

But what do you do with them?

What kind of work do the telescopes at your facility generally do? Do local astronomers get to come in and do research or are the scopes reserved for some large project?

Chris: There is a very wide spectrum of observing programs for the VTL; from the study of comets in our solar system to the detection and measurement of objects on the edge of the observable universe. The VTL operates in two primary modes: visitor and service. In visitor mode, scientists actually travel to Chile and execute their observing program interactively with the support of operations personnel like myself who know the telescope and control system intimately and staff astronomers that know the instruments and science. Visitor mode is best utilized when the program contains interactive components, for example when what the observer does next depends on the results of what he has just completed. In service mode, observers don't travel to Chile but instead submit observing programs that don't have a large interactive component. Service programs are executed by staff astronomers and the data is automatically returned to the observer upon completion. Service mode is much like the old batch mode of mainframe computers. In both service and visitor modes, the programs that get time are determined by an observing program committee made up of scientists from all over the world based on scientific merit. And yes, a portion of the time (I believe it is 10%) automatically goes to Chilean astronomers in exchange for Chile's donation of the land for the project.

7) How parellelizable?
by Omnifarious

How parallelizable is the problem of micro-adjusting small portions of a large deformable mirror to correct for atmospheric distortion?

I remember a Scientific American article stating that you'd have to devote a top-of-the-line Cray to continuously recalculate the deformations needed given data from the guide star, or laser simulated guide star. If this problem is highly parallelizable, you may be able to get away with _much_ cheaper hardware.

I'm sure the idea has occured to you, but I want to know what your thoughts are on it.

Chris: My experience with deformable mirrors is entirely practical and I'm really not qualified to comment on the theory behind them. However, speaking from a practical standpoint, the VLT's 450 force actuators (150 per operating telescope) are each activated about 1000 times per night, night after night almost without error (7 non-critical electronic failures up to May of this year). I see no obvious reason why it shouldn't scale smoothly to 130 or 150 meters with current computer technology. And we certainly don't have any supercomputers doing the deformation calculations.

8) Why single-mirror?
by jd

I could have been mis-reading the article, but it seemed to me as though the idea was to build a single-mirror system. On the other hand, in radio astronomy, and in the insect world, arrays are considered the norm. Is there some advantage that a single mirror gives that cannot be duplicated using multiple smaller mirrors? (Simpler optics is an obvious one, paradoxically. :) Or is this (at least in part) NerdTrek III: The Search for Sponsors, where a record-setting single telescope is going to get more interest than a comparable array?

(A supplementary question, to go along with this. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that optical arrays are practical. Do you see any possibility of optical astronomers adopting the same line as radio astronomers, in trying to build an effective 1Km+ optical telescope, using an array?)

Chris: Actually, it isn't a single mirror. It is "filled aperture" telescope. The aperture is filled with many smaller mirrors, just like Keck. And as for optical arrays (interferometers), the VLT (called VLTI in this mode) will be the first real large scale test of such a system. But that stage of the project is still a few years away. In short, we'll have to wait and see how effective it is before we even consider giant optical interferometers.

9) funding
by jmayes

What's the biggest hurdle to hop over in getting funding for projects like OWL? And how did you pull it off?

Chris: The biggest hurdle for getting funding for projects like OWL, is getting funding for construction! Construction of OWL hasn't been funded, so nothing has really been pulled off, yet. But, if the public really wants projects like this to go ahead, then they need to be active about it. If you're in Europe, write your representatives and mention OWL by name and direct them to the OWL project page. If you're not in Europe, urge your representatives to find some way to participate in this project or projects like it.

10) Terrestrial Optical Telescopes
by pb

What are the benefits of having an Earth-bound, optical telescope? Or rather, what can a larger optical telescope find better from Earth that we can't already find on other wavelengths and from other venues (i.e. The Hubble)?

If there are no advantages here, is it more cost-effective, or what?

Chris: What you should actually ask is what advantage does a space based telescope have over a ground based telescope? The only thing you gain from being in space for an optical telescope is better image quality due to lack of atmospheric turbulence. By for every other measure (maintenance, support, materials, etc.) being in space is much, much more expensive and limited. Which is why the Hubble and it's 2.4 meter primary cost a number of times more than the projected cost of of the 100 meter OWL. Recent advances in computer technology (adaptive and active optics) have greatly reduced the advantage that being in space provides at optical wavelengths. For some non-optical telescopes (x-ray, IR, gamma ray) there will always be an advantage to being in orbit.

11) might as well ask it now..
by Blue Lang

I noticed in your 'fave books' section that you have the blind watchmaker, et al.

so, with an eye towards dawkins' views on evolution, what's your personal take on the probability (not the possibility) of humans locating extraterrestrial life without going outside the solar system?

Chris: Actually I'm quite pessimistic about the prospects of us locating ETL, AND independently about leaving the solar system. My main reason for this is that I doubt our civilization can last long enough. Not that I think we're going to self-destruct, but rather I think that nature is going to do it for us. It is my opinion that it is much more PROBABLE that we are driven into or close to extinction by an asteroid collision, than it is we will detect ETL or travel outside the solar system. This is one of the major reasons I strongly support construction of self-supporting Lunar and Martian colonies (and sky survey telescopes!) I just don't like us having all our eggs in the one basket called Earth. Having said all that, if we survive, I am confident we will eventually detect ETL, and that we will leave the solar system.

A few weeks ago you asked the multi-talented Chris McKinstry questions, about the telescope projects he's involved with (ESO's Very Large Telescope -- VLT -- and the OverWhelmingly Large telescope -- OWL), about his project to synthesize AI by collecting a database of answers to questions common and obscure, and about the possibilities of discovering extraterrestrial life. Read what he has to say on everything from humans leaving the solar system to telescopes staying here on Earth. [Updated 5 Aug by t:] Chris notes for the record: "The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the opinions of the European Southern Observatory."

1) GAC
by Dungeon Dweller

I have an active interest in artificial intelligence. I study it as part of my major, and hope to do research in it in the future. As a young man coming up in the world, I am hoping to enter into research eventually, am entering into research at my university (WVU).

Your project reminds me of several projects/theories that have been discussed before. In the psychological debate, your system depends entirely upon nurture, it would seem. I like that kind of system and research. I do have a few questions.

1. What separates this from other projects in the field?
2. Where did you draw your inspiration for this project?
3. What kind of support staff do you recommend to an individual who has never led research before, but would like to? (I ask this of many of my professors who conduct research)
4. Where are you getting the bulk of your input for this project?
5. What do you hope to learn from this project?
6. At what time will you consider this project a success?

I know that I posed a lot of questions, but several could be answered in combination, I just didn't want to ask 2 questions at the same time.

Chris McKinstry:

Question 1-1:

There are three primary features of the MindPixel Digital Mind Modeling Project (also known by GAC -- for Generic Artificial Consciousness -- which is public interface to the project) that distinguish it from other large scale knowledge projects such as CYC.

1. The first phase is a completely public, internet based effort. All the data it will be collecting will come from average people, with no specific training in AI or psychology. It is like seti@home in many respects, except that we're not after your CPU's cycles, but rather your humanness. We're actually seeking to extract the entire content of an average person's mind bit by literal bit from millions of different internet users. We're not trying to write the algorithm for consciousness, but rather create the world's most rigorous fitness test (a Dawkinsian continuous variable) and get it into the hands of researchers who will attempt to make systems that will learn or evolve into consciousness by feeding back against this fitness test. Not only will we be collecting consensus fact, but also consensus emotion. (When the project is fully operational, in addition to collecting information about each MindPixel's truth or falsity, we will also collect emotional data based on Mehrabian's PAD model of emotion.)
2. The second phase of the project involves releasing the data collected to the scientific community and providing those researchers with some funds (generated by advertising to the people supplying the data) to conduct their research. As a side note, Jeff Elman's page contrains information about recurrent neural networks that are very good at processing just the kind of data that this project will collect and distribute. Specifically his 1990 article, Finding Structure in Time (PDF) is one of the most important neural network papers ever written; it strongly influenced me.
3. Finally, the project is a meritocracy. People will gain voting rights that will give them a say in every aspect of how the project is run, from data collection and use to the distribution of data and research funds, based entirely on the amount of data they have contributed to the project. The more work you do, the stronger your voice becomes.

Question 1-2:

My primary inspiration for the project comes from observation: I observed that computers are stupid and know nothing of human existence. I concluded a very long time ago that either we had to write a "magic" program that was able to go out in the world and learn like a human child, or we just had to sit down and type in ALL the data. When I was studying psychology in the late 80's I wanted to begin to gnaw the bullet and start getting people to type in ALL the data. It was my plan then to get people to enter data as part of an intro psych course, or get the university to allow me ask people for data when they logged on to the university's computer system. I was never able to get permission for either and the idea sat on the shelf until I downloaded my first copy of NCSA's Mosaic in 1994. I saw in following my first hyperlink, a different path.

I decided to collect my data via the internet. But, the problem was, that I needed to think of a standard format for the data; some way of representing human knowledge that an average person could learn quickly. That idea didn't come to me until I was preparing an entry for the 1995 Loebner Prize. Jackie, my program, was a stimulus response creature. You would ask her a full text question, and she scan her database for a canned full text response. My idea for the Loebner competition was to have her talk to a lot of people a get a lot of canned responses (at the time I was consulting for a large insurance company and brought Jackie to work everyday where she could talk to my colleagues) As well, I stored the responses in a number of different ways: phonetically using soundex, again with all the words in each stimulus sorted alphabetically, and also with a primitive concept token system. So, if there was no direct match, she would look for a phonetic match or sorted or conceptual match. Essentially I was breaking down each stimulus and standardizing it like a Fourier transform breaks down a waveform.

Then suddenly Hugh Loebner changed the rules. No longer was passing a text based Turing Test good enough for him. Now he would only award his prize if the system passed a full audio/video Inquisition. I hit the roof! Hell, there were tens of thousands of people on the planet that couldn't pass that kind of test! Anyone blind or deaf are just two obvious examples. I withdrew Jackie in a loud protest, stating that intelligence didn't depend on the bandwidth of the communication channel; intelligence could be communicated with one bit! If you locked a person in a box I could detect them with a series of yes/no questions and nothing more. And there all of a sudden, I had my answer (and a quick paper - The Minimum Intelligent Signal Test - An Objective Turing Test in Canadian Artificial Intelligence, issue 41.) There was a minimum intelligent signal, and it was just one bit. I would store my model of the human mind in binary propositions. I would make a digital model of the mind.

I realized within minutes that a giant database of these propositions could be used to train a neural net to mimic a conscious, thinking, feeling human being! I thought, maybe I'm missing something obvious. So, I emailed Marvin Minsky and asked him if he thought it would be possible to train a neural network into something resembling human using a database of binary propositions. He replied quickly saying "Yes, it is possible, but the training corpus would have to be enormous." The moment I finished reading that email, I knew I would spend the rest of my life building and validating the most enormous corpus I could.

Question 1-3:

Support staff! I recommend using the entire planet as support staff! Seriously, don't even dream about it. Almost every researcher I know works on their own or with a handful of collaborators. When you're a big cheese you might get a student or two, but other than that you'll get nothing more than shared use of a departmental secretary. You'll definitely be writing all your own code for a very long time.

Question 1-4:

I can't tell you that yet because at the time I wrote this, the project was not yet online (should be now though.) What I can tell you is that in 1995 I did try to collect this same data, using a web based form that sent an email back to me. I managed to collect some 450,000 items. This time, I expect to collect more and higher quality data and I expect it to come from a wide cross section of the internet public. I should also note MindPixels will be collected in multiple languages, which opens up the future prospect of mapping the sampled human languages to each other concept by concept. It will be very interesting to see exactly how an artificial consciousness trained in English differs at the conceptual level from one trained in say, Spanish.

Question 1-5:

I hope to learn what the human conceptual network looks like. I hope that in a few years I will be able to access a map of all the concepts in the head of an average person or to have learned why I can't.

Question 1-6:

I will consider the project a complete success when the cover of Science announces that for the first time in history there exists an artificial system that has passed a scientifically strong form of the Turing Test known as the Minimum Intelligent Signal Test.

2) How do you guys do it?
by pc486

With exptremely high magnification, how in heck do you keep the telescope still enough to take photos?

The slightest movement ought to mean millions of miles so thoes pesky little earthquakes should be a problem. Not to mention how you guys move the telescope accurately?

Chris: You're quite right about the system being very sensitive; if I walk on the azimuth platform of a VLT telescope while we're observing, I will destroy the observation. For normal tracking we use a software system called Tpoint written by a well known telescope genius named Pat Wallace (Pat has a wonderful and detailed article about telescope pointing that anyone seriously interested in telescope pointing should read); the same system is in use on telescopes all over the world. Basically what we do is build a pointing model for each of our telescopes. This involves pointing each telescope to a number of different points uniformly covering the sky. At each sample point, we observe a guide star and record how it moves from the center of the field over about one minute of tracking time. After we have collected enough data, we build a computer model of the telescope's tracking error. Then we basically run the model backwards into the telescope control system and thus apply corrections that try to cancel out the tracking errors of the telescope. This of course can't correct for any unusual vibrations, we rely on normal guide star tracking and hydraulic isolation of the telescope for that. And baring a large earthquake, Tpoint, automatic guide star corrections and the isolation work pretty well (In the event of a large earthquake, there are giant airbags that inflate to protect the mirror from damage.)

3) How can we help?
by Mignon

You probably know about SETI At Home, which lets people volunteer spare CPU time to processing radio-telescope data, in a (so far vain) attempt to find extra-terrestrial intelligence. Is there a similar way that we can help process some of the data that you gather?

As a simple example, one could compute the differences between a sequence of pictures of the same portion of the sky, looking for anomalies like giant asterioids on their way to wiping us all out.

Chris: seti@home is one of the most impressive demonstrations of how the world of science has changed. There are now over 2 million average people working together for a common scientific goal. I just wish they sold advertising to raise funds for other worthy (meritocratically determined) projects. It really bugs me that my Pentium III 450 which has done over 7000 hours of seti@home processing since last June, hasn't shown me a single science supporting ad. What a waste!

Now as for your idea of doing the same thing in optical wavelengths, I think in it there is a great deal of merit. There are a whole pile on new survey telescopes coming online soon that will be useful for just what you proposed. And if you read ahead to my answer to question 11, you'll see I do think it is a problem we have to pay attention to. (As well, I know of at least two virtual telescope projects; the NRC's National Virtual Telescope. See NVO White Paper (PDF) and ESO's ASTROVIRTEL which seek to allow data mining of previously collected telescope data.

In general, I think the future will see a lot more distributed processing projects doing useful science. The question remains whether or not it is more cost effective to build supercomputers for critical projects or harness the CPU's of private citizens, and I think the answer will need to be determined on a case by case basis. As well, there will be some projects (my own for example) where the CPU cycles are incidental; where what we want to harvest is not your electricity and capital equipment, but actually your humanity.

4) Division between Science and Spirituality
by ParticleGirl

I am continuously frustrated that people's general perception seems to be that science and art, spirituality, and so forth are divided by an uncrossable schism. People feel the need to pit science against spirituality; logic against intuition. It is a rare thing that people accept the idea that these are different ways of approaching the same reality. As a dreamer and artist as well as a respected scientist, what do you say to people who doubt that scientists can be spiritual and artistic people?

Chris: Science for me at least, is concerned with the external, the measurable; while art is concerned with the internal and immeasurable. Every scientist knows measurement can only go so far; that nature at its most fundamental is immeasurable. Unfortunately many scientists turn away from what they can't measure (and conversely, many artists turn from measurement) instead of finding some way, any way to express it. It is this turning away or fear of the immeasurable (or many artist's converse fear of reduction to measurement) that creates doubt; that separates science from art. The scientist can learn that one does not become any less of a scientist for attempting to express the inexpressible or attempting to measure the immeasurable, just as the artist can learn that because we are neurons and our neurons atoms, doesn't mean we are any less human.

5) CCD or what?
by paRcat

What kind of imaging does a telescope of this scale use? Is it an OWLCCD or something else? What kind of resolution? And how far away would an object need to be before the resolution becomes a shortcoming?

Chris: I actually can't answer this question. I am only aware of one discussion regarding instrumentation for the OWL and I haven't read it yet. See FROM ISAAC TO GOLIATH, OR BETTER NOT!? INFRARED INSTRUMENTATION CONCEPTS FOR 100M CLASS TELESCOPES (PDF) on the OWL project page.

6) Yeah, they're big ...
by viper21

But what do you do with them?

What kind of work do the telescopes at your facility generally do? Do local astronomers get to come in and do research or are the scopes reserved for some large project?

Chris: There is a very wide spectrum of observing programs for the VTL; from the study of comets in our solar system to the detection and measurement of objects on the edge of the observable universe. The VTL operates in two primary modes: visitor and service. In visitor mode, scientists actually travel to Chile and execute their observing program interactively with the support of operations personnel like myself who know the telescope and control system intimately and staff astronomers that know the instruments and science. Visitor mode is best utilized when the program contains interactive components, for example when what the observer does next depends on the results of what he has just completed. In service mode, observers don't travel to Chile but instead submit observing programs that don't have a large interactive component. Service programs are executed by staff astronomers and the data is automatically returned to the observer upon completion. Service mode is much like the old batch mode of mainframe computers. In both service and visitor modes, the programs that get time are determined by an observing program committee made up of scientists from all over the world based on scientific merit. And yes, a portion of the time (I believe it is 10%) automatically goes to Chilean astronomers in exchange for Chile's donation of the land for the project.

7) How parellelizable?
by Omnifarious

How parallelizable is the problem of micro-adjusting small portions of a large deformable mirror to correct for atmospheric distortion?

I remember a Scientific American article stating that you'd have to devote a top-of-the-line Cray to continuously recalculate the deformations needed given data from the guide star, or laser simulated guide star. If this problem is highly parallelizable, you may be able to get away with _much_ cheaper hardware.

I'm sure the idea has occured to you, but I want to know what your thoughts are on it.

Chris: My experience with deformable mirrors is entirely practical and I'm really not qualified to comment on the theory behind them. However, speaking from a practical standpoint, the VLT's 450 force actuators (150 per operating telescope) are each activated about 1000 times per night, night after night almost without error (7 non-critical electronic failures up to May of this year). I see no obvious reason why it shouldn't scale smoothly to 130 or 150 meters with current computer technology. And we certainly don't have any supercomputers doing the deformation calculations.

8) Why single-mirror?
by jd

I could have been mis-reading the article, but it seemed to me as though the idea was to build a single-mirror system. On the other hand, in radio astronomy, and in the insect world, arrays are considered the norm. Is there some advantage that a single mirror gives that cannot be duplicated using multiple smaller mirrors? (Simpler optics is an obvious one, paradoxically. :) Or is this (at least in part) NerdTrek III: The Search for Sponsors, where a record-setting single telescope is going to get more interest than a comparable array?

(A supplementary question, to go along with this. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that optical arrays are practical. Do you see any possibility of optical astronomers adopting the same line as radio astronomers, in trying to build an effective 1Km+ optical telescope, using an array?)

Chris: Actually, it isn't a single mirror. It is "filled aperture" telescope. The aperture is filled with many smaller mirrors, just like Keck. And as for optical arrays (interferometers), the VLT (called VLTI in this mode) will be the first real large scale test of such a system. But that stage of the project is still a few years away. In short, we'll have to wait and see how effective it is before we even consider giant optical interferometers.

9) funding
by jmayes

What's the biggest hurdle to hop over in getting funding for projects like OWL? And how did you pull it off?

Chris: The biggest hurdle for getting funding for projects like OWL, is getting funding for construction! Construction of OWL hasn't been funded, so nothing has really been pulled off, yet. But, if the public really wants projects like this to go ahead, then they need to be active about it. If you're in Europe, write your representatives and mention OWL by name and direct them to the OWL project page. If you're not in Europe, urge your representatives to find some way to participate in this project or projects like it.

10) Terrestrial Optical Telescopes
by pb

What are the benefits of having an Earth-bound, optical telescope? Or rather, what can a larger optical telescope find better from Earth that we can't already find on other wavelengths and from other venues (i.e. The Hubble)?

If there are no advantages here, is it more cost-effective, or what?

Chris: What you should actually ask is what advantage does a space based telescope have over a ground based telescope? The only thing you gain from being in space for an optical telescope is better image quality due to lack of atmospheric turbulence. By for every other measure (maintenance, support, materials, etc.) being in space is much, much more expensive and limited. Which is why the Hubble and it's 2.4 meter primary cost a number of times more than the projected cost of of the 100 meter OWL. Recent advances in computer technology (adaptive and active optics) have greatly reduced the advantage that being in space provides at optical wavelengths. For some non-optical telescopes (x-ray, IR, gamma ray) there will always be an advantage to being in orbit.

11) might as well ask it now..
by Blue Lang

I noticed in your 'fave books' section that you have the blind watchmaker, et al.

so, with an eye towards dawkins' views on evolution, what's your personal take on the probability (not the possibility) of humans locating extraterrestrial life without going outside the solar system?

Chris: Actually I'm quite pessimistic about the prospects of us locating ETL, AND independently about leaving the solar system. My main reason for this is that I doubt our civilization can last long enough. Not that I think we're going to self-destruct, but rather I think that nature is going to do it for us. It is my opinion that it is much more PROBABLE that we are driven into or close to extinction by an asteroid collision, than it is we will detect ETL or travel outside the solar system. This is one of the major reasons I strongly support construction of self-supporting Lunar and Martian colonies (and sky survey telescopes!) I just don't like us having all our eggs in the one basket called Earth. Having said all that, if we survive, I am confident we will eventually detect ETL, and that we will leave the solar system.

Let's start this off with bio2's link to "the tube": an unrollable laptop:super crazy hardware. seizer sent us the most amusing firewall circumventer: a TCP/IP Email Tunnel. While on the subject of bizarre technology, John Petz sent us a webserver running on an Atari 800. Still not in shock? hool sent us a hack over at x42.com which uses the hostname as input to a calculator. tdunn linked us to a place that lists odd things found inside PC cases. It includes a *shudder* severed finger tip. For more wierd tech support, yeahbensteres submitted iamanidiot.com which has some tales that you may or may not believe. Pike sent us 94 Uses for Old Altoids Tins: Who eats 94 tins of altoids? Oh... wait. OwenF sent us linkage to the latest robotic pet craze. Look out AIBO, here comes Robotic Fish! Slashdot's own jamiemccarthy points us to TimeCube.com for all your wierd-science needs. You econ majors might be interested in Yhetti's link to the fortune-cookie market index. Bradley noted a story about a man who changed his name to 'Oxford University' to avoid domain squatting charges from Oxford University. If you have a mission:impossible scheduled next week, Dr. Manhattan sent us a link to a Swiss company that is developing self-destructing CDs. The CIA has some on back order. An anonymous reader pointed us to EarthKam, which has several really beautiful pictures of earth from space. Check out their top 10 ... if only they were bigger they'd make great background art. And finally for those of you who are sick of all the naughty language on TV, deepak saxena sent us a machine that claims it will filter all the damn swearing from TV and video. I'm waiting for a version that filters out Regis.

SL33Z3 writes "Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have found increased brain activity in areas of the brain that otherwise stay inactive. The longer the students went without sleep, the more activity was found. Research found students to have better recollection after long periods of sleep deprivation. Check out the release here. " Heck, combine this with the news about caffeine and I'm all set!

SL33Z3 writes "Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have found increased brain activity in areas of the brain that otherwise stay inactive. The longer the students went without sleep, the more activity was found. Research found students to have better recollection after long periods of sleep deprivation. Check out the release here. " Heck, combine this with the news about caffeine and I'm all set!

Chernicky writes "In 1950, Alan Turing , the father of computer science and (arguably) artificial intelligence, made a prediction about the year 2000. Turing said that in about fifty years, the answers of a computer would be indistinguishable from those of human beings, when asked questions by a human interrogator. With the year 2000 upon us, Dartmouth College is offering a $100,000 prize to the first programmer that can pass the Turing Test. The deadline for submissions is October 30, 1999. "

William Tanksley send us the story that Bernstein, who's case against the United States resulted in a three judge panel over-turning the US laws regarding exportation of cryptography software. At the request of the DOJ, a full Court of Appeals will rehear the case. Here's to hoping that the full court follows the advice of the panel.

William Tanksley writes "Anyone here remember the Illuminati card game? It seems that Steve Jackson Games got enough complaints about the horrid MagicTheGathering-clone version they'd released, and they're finally releasing an updated, full-color version of the original game."

Andy Tai writes "InfoWorld awards the "Collaborative Software Community" (including the Free Software/Open Source community) the Industry Achievement award for 1998. O'Reilly accepts the award on the behalf of the community. Nick Petreley names many important people of Free Software in his award story, including RMS, Linus, ESR, Larry Wall, John Ousterhout, Alan Cox, Jon (maddog) Hall, Robert Young, Jeremy Allison, etc." Suppose this should be in the same article as the next one, but hey, they're both important. They can each have their own story today.

Andy Tai writes "This InfoWorld story reports on RedHat's choice of GNOME as the desktop for the next version of its Redhat Linux. While the story is nothing new, this is a sign that GNOME has captured "mainstream" attention." The IDC analyst quoted does not seem to realize that GNOME is optional.

jelwell asks "Is anyone working on an RPM installation for the new Xfree86-3.3.3? I've been checking the RPM repository regularly. I tried downloading the source code, but my computer reboots when I try to compile. Am I going to have to wait for Red Hat 5.3? "

Andy Tai writes "This news.com story reports on the new 600 mHz third-generation Alpha chip, 21264, from Samsung. It is twice as powerful as the previous generation."

Andy Tai writes "This InfoWorld news reports that Sybase, another major database vender, will port its Adaptive Server Enterprise 11 database to Linux." That's like, all of them, right? =) It looks as though this one will lag behind ports on other platforms, though.

Andy Tai writes "The Linux Weekly News is reporting that Sun will join Linux International. No other info is available. " Can anyone confirm or deny this? If this is true, it is very cool.

Andy Tai writes "The US Federal Trade Commission issues an order motifying the Intel-Digital deal. The FTC disallows Alphas to be produced by Intel. Instead Digital has to certify another company such as IBM as manufacturers of the Alpha chip. Digital also will license Alpha to AMD, Samsung, and others. The FTC aims to keep Alphas as "viable competitive alternatives" to Intel chips. " Read about it here.

Andy Tai writes "Infoworld just did a short but "top news story" report describing how Free Software is entering the corporate world. It states in brief terms how GNU Tools, Linux, Apache, Sendmail, etc. are used in business. It also describe the Free Software business model, where commerical support businesses will grow in revenue by 50% in 1998. It defines the term "freeware" in terms of source code availability, not cost. Clearly our definition of the name "Free Software" is gaining acceptance by mainstream media." here is the story.

Each of these is pretty important and probably warrents its own post, buuut we've had a ton of articles posted already today, and these are pretty notable, so: I)ruid asked me to plug C Scene, a nice little E-zine devoted to C and C++ programming. Chris Short sent us this link where you can read the results of a shocking government study:After much research (and spending of tax payers money) they confirm that the web is growing! Wow. Amazing.

Andy Tai wrote in to tell us that another Open Source web site has arrived, this one is The Open Source Journal. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that there are suddenly dozens of web sites focused on this stuff? It seems like a lot of duplication of effort is occuring. I'm all for variety, but a dozen decent sites could combine forces to create one super site.

Next, Adam Keys wrote in to tell us that Apple Posted a $55 million profit this quarter. Lastly we have this link, sent to us by Dave Blondell, where you can read about Linux at Comdex 98, and a few other related Chicago/Spring Comdex area events.

The XFree86 project has issued a press release regarding the status of the X11R6.4 licensing issues, and the SI (sample implementation). Also in the release are statements from Theo De Raadt and Linus Torvalds. Thanks to Andy Tai (who has a very funny image everyone should look at) for pointing this out.

The XFree86 project has issued a press release regarding the status of the X11R6.4 licensing issues, and the SI (sample implementation). Also in the release are statements from Theo De Raadt and Linus Torvalds. Thanks to Andy Tai (who has a very funny image everyone should look at) for pointing this out.

Andy Tai wrote in to give us this link where you can read a news.com article where they talk about the future of Sun. We all know that Sun is in for rough times ahead. I personally want to see them follow Netscape's lead, but maybe they have other tricks up their sleeve.

This infoworld article talks about Corel losing $21 million in the first quarter of '98. Thanks to Andy Tai for sending it in, and noting that this is nice ammo for my theory that corel is an ideal candidate for Open Source.

Things have been pretty tense lately for microsoft, and they got a nice slap on the wrist today thanks to a federal judge that ordered them to remove Sun's Java logo from all their java products. Is this just the first dominoe in the chain? Read about it at this link, sent in by Andy Tai