Slashdot Mirror

netcetra writes "From a post by on CircleID by Phillip J. Windley: 'Doc Searls has written a brilliant piece framing the battle for the Net at Linux Journal. ... if you take the time to read just one essay on the Net and the politics surround it this year, read this one.' Quote from Doc himself: 'This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.' Also see additional background on the piece on Doc Searls blog."

netcetra writes "From a post by on CircleID by Phillip J. Windley: 'Doc Searls has written a brilliant piece framing the battle for the Net at Linux Journal. ... if you take the time to read just one essay on the Net and the politics surround it this year, read this one.' Quote from Doc himself: 'This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many threats. We can't begin to cover them all or cover all the ways we can fight them. I believe, however, that there is one sure way to fight all of these threats at once, and without doing it the bad guys will win. That's what this essay is about.' Also see additional background on the piece on Doc Searls blog."

Robert Scoble writes "Microsoft is unveiling a major reorganization today to help get Vista out the door. Some of the major changes include the appointing of three new officers to the three major divisions. The Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division will be led by Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin as co-presidents; Jeff Raikes has been named president of the Microsoft Business Division; and Robbie Bach has been named as president of Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division. In addition, the company said Ray Ozzie will expand his role as chief technical officer by assuming responsibility for helping drive its software-based services strategy and execution across all three divisions."

Shalendra Chhabra writes "Jonathan Zdziarski has been fighting spam since before the first MIT spam conference in 2003, and has now released a full-on technical book, Ending Spam, on spam filtering. Ending Spam covers how the current and near-future crop of heuristic and statistical filters actually work under the hood, and how you can most effectively use such filters to protect your inbox." Read on for the rest of Chhabra's review. Ending Spam: Bayesian Content Filtering and the Art of Statistical Language Classification author Jonathan A. Zdziarski pages 312 publisher No Starch Press rating 8 reviewer Shalendra Chhabra ISBN 1593270526 summary Very Good Book Covering Statistical Models and Techniques Implemented in Current Spam Filters

Spam (unsolicited commercial email) and phishing (fraudulent emails) are causing losses of billions of dollars to businesses. Many initiatives are currently underway for fighting this challenge. On the legal front, a Virginia court recently sentenced a prolific spammer, Jeremy Jaynes, to nine years in prison, and a Nigerian court sentenced a woman to two and a half years for phishing. Michigan and Utah have both passed laws creating "do-not-contact" registries in July/August 2005, covering e-mail addresses, instant messaging addresses and telephone numbers. Technical initiatives to fight spam include server- or client-side spam filtering, using Lists (Blacklists, Whitelists, Greylists), Email Authentication Standards (IIM, DK, DKIM, SPF, SenderID), and emerging sender reputation and accreditation services.

Ending Spam is the first book explaining the fine details of the theoretical models and machine-learning algorithms implemented in these filters. The book is divided into three parts: introduction to spam filtering, fundamentals of statistical filtering, and advanced concepts of statistical filtering.

The first section of the book discusses the history of spam, spam kings, different approaches for fighting spam such as blacklisting, whitelisting, heuristic filtering, challenge response, throttling, collaborative filtering, Authenticated SMTP, Sender Policy Framework and SenderID, spammer fingerprinting, etc. However, the author omitted any mention of locally-sensitive hash functions (such as Nilsimsa Hash) to counter spammers' random insertion of words, the use of CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), Greylisting, Identified Internet Mail, and Domain Keys (now Domain Keys Identified Mail).

In the next chapter, the author clearly explains various components of a Language Classifier Pipeline, including the Historical Dataset (aka wordlist, database, dictionary, filter memory), Tokenizer, and the Analysis Engine with its feedback loop. However, the process flow of a language classifier could have been more generalized, e.g. incorporating an initial text-to-text transformer. This chapter also covers the advantages and disadvantages of various training modes for filters, such as Train Everything (TEFT), Train-on-Error (TOE), and Train Until No Errors (TUNE). This part concludes with the description of Paul Graham's famous spam-filtering technique using Bayesian classification (as described in "A Plan for Spam"), Gary Robinson's Geometric Mean Test, Fisher-Robinsons Inverse Chi Square (including the source code for the inversion function), and some other tricks for optimizing spam- filtering accuracy.

The second part of this book deals with the fundamentals of statistical filtering. The author explains HTML and Base64 encoding, followed by a detailed description of tokenization techniques (e.g. Sparse Binary Polynomial Hashing). Then there's a discussion of the various tricks that spammers use for penetrating filters. Although these tactics are mentioned in John Graham-Cumming's "Spammers Compendium," Jonathan has very elegantly explained why some tricks work for spammers and some don't. This part concludes by addressing some of the resource, storage and scaling concerns raised by the large number of features generated from tokenization techniques.

The third part of this book deals with advanced concepts of statistical filtering. This includes the testing criteria for measuring accuracy of an email filter, and some advanced tokenization concepts, e.g. chained tokens (taking word-pairs and phrases into account, instead of individual words) generated using a sliding 5-byte window as mentioned in Sparse Binary Polynomial Hashing. The next chapter describes the Markovian Model implemented in the CRM114 Discriminator, but the author fails to describe different weighting schemes for features implemented in the Markovian-based version of CRM114. The author then describes the Bayesian Noise Reduction Technique for purging "out of context" data from the mail text. This chapter concludes with a very nice summary of collaborative algorithms and techniques, such as Message Innoculation, Streamlined Blackhole List, Fingerprinting, Automatic Whitelisting, URL Blacklisting, and Honeypot email addresses for snaring spammers' address harvesting bots.

The most interesting part of this book is the appendix, where the author presents interviews with John Graham-Cumming of POPFile, Brian Burton of SpamProbe, Marty Lamb of TarProxy, Bill Yerazunis of CRM114 Discriminator, and Jonathan Zdziarski of DSPAM (himself). I loved this section.

The salient points of the book: it's very easy to read; each chapter begins with a very thought-provoking introduction, and concludes with a crisp "final thoughts" section. The number of technical errors are very few in this print, and the illustrations are of good quality. Since the book is geared more toward the Bayesian and statistical generation of spam filters, the absence of certain spam-busting technologies is acceptable. However, a noticeable omission is the lack of discussion about measuring spam-filter accuracy, and what impact this has on setting filtration thresholds. A section on the economics of tradeoffs, and the use of a Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) would have been very helpful.

Overall, by putting together Ending Spam, Jonathan Zdziarski has made another significant contribution (after DSPAM) to the anti-spam community. Whether you are a system administrator, anti-spam researcher, engineer or a newbie interested in fighting spam, this book is a great reference.

William S Yerazunis and Richard Jowsey also contributed to this review. Shalendra Chhabra is a Graduate Student in Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, Riverside. He is on the development team of CRM114 Discriminator and has presented his work at MIT Spam Conference 2005, Cisco Systems, and Stanford University. You can purchase Ending Spam: Bayesian Content Filtering and the Art of Statistical Language Classification from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

jeremyw writes "A day before its official launch, MSN Virtual Earth has gone live. MSN appears to have been inspired by Google Maps in this combination of local search and mapping. Virtual Earth introduces a number of interface enhancements to the now-familiar draggable aerial web map, such as the ability to zoom in using your mouse scroll wheel, and a Location Finder to determine your location to determine your real-world location "using Wi-Fi technology." Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday."

Victor Cheng writes "Robert Scoble today points to a blogger who is claiming he earns between $10,000 and $20,000 per month via Google Adsense." From the article: "The cheque was the biggest cheque I've ever held onto (well the biggest I've held onto that has my name on it). The amazing thing is that in the month of May I earned more than I earned in a whole year in 2003 from a 'real job' (of course at the time I was only working a 3 day week while I studied part time) and well over half as much as I earned from Adsense in the whole of 2004."

sriram_2001 writes "Bowing to intense pressure both from outside as well as its employees, Microsoft has reversed its stand on the anti-discrimination bill. In a company wide email, Steve Ballmer says that though the Washington legislative session is over for the year, they'll support any such legislation in the future. However, he adds that they'll be supporting it in the US only as they don't want to involve the company in debates in countries with different cultures and value systems. He also says that he doesn't think Microsoft should be involved in most public policy issues." Announcement about the email's release on the Scobleizer main site.

Tim writes "With Beta 1 of Longhorn less than two months away, Microsoft is looking at a new marketing tool to help promote its new Windows: bloggers. According to BetaNews, Microsoft's "Team 99" evangelism effort will be composed of bloggers that will become Microsoft's voice to the masses. Robert Scoble said Team 99 was once secret, but has been revived and Microsoft is now accepting nominations. It's nice to see Microsoft recognizing the power of blogs, but the move is likely going to draw accusations that Redmond is trying to buy off bloggers to hype Longhorn."

sriram_2001 writes "In a long email to all Microsoft employees, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laid out the reasons for Microsoft changing its stance to neutral on the anti-discrimination bill. He explains that Microsoft wanted to focus on fewer legislations and that the anti-discrimination bill was one of the bills that they didn't have the resources to follow. Also, far from caving in to Rev.Hutcherson, Microsoft told him to take a hike when he asked them to fire 2 employees for testifying during the legislation consideration period. He goes on to explain how though he personally supports the bill, a lot of employees and shareholders don't. Finally, he raises the question on whether corporations should get involved in social issues."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Michael Stonebraker is well-known in the database business, and for good reasons. He was the computer science professor behind Ingres and Postgres. Eighteen months ago, he started a new company, StreamBase, with another computer science professor, Stan Zdonik, with the goal of speeding access to relational databases. In 'Data On The Fly,' Forbes.com reports that the company software, also named StreamBase, is reading TCP/IP streams and using asynchronous messaging. Streaming data without storing it on disk gives them a tremendous speed advantage. The company claims it can process 140,000 messages per second on a $1,500 PC, when its competitors can only deal with 900 messages per second. Too good to be true? This overview contains more details and references."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Tele-immersion is a technology which allows cooperative interaction between groups of distant people working in the same virtual environment. At the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, interdisciplinary teams are deploying this technology. It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world. For example, it will allow students and professors on different campuses to meet -- virtually -- and discuss -- lively -- while being in ancient sites of Greece or Italy. The technology offers more promises than academics discussions. Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him. Of course, this technology is facing some hurdles, such as the cost involved to model you with so many cameras. This summary shows you some details about the image processing involved in this project."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Tele-immersion is a technology which allows cooperative interaction between groups of distant people working in the same virtual environment. At the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, interdisciplinary teams are deploying this technology. It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world. For example, it will allow students and professors on different campuses to meet -- virtually -- and discuss -- lively -- while being in ancient sites of Greece or Italy. The technology offers more promises than academics discussions. Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him. Of course, this technology is facing some hurdles, such as the cost involved to model you with so many cameras. This summary shows you some details about the image processing involved in this project."

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live in France, and soon elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S., and if you need a dental prosthesis, chances are good that RFID tags are involved in the manufacturing process, according to this article from the RFID Journal. The tag is embedded by the dental lab in the cast which will be used to make the prosthesis. Then it is used to record the whole history of the crown, a process requested by a European sanitary regulation. Before delivering the bridge to your dentist, all the data is copied to a smart card that will be given to you. The company is also studying the idea to put directly the tag inside the prosthesis. Maybe one day, when your dentist installs your new bridge, you'll also be the owner of a deactivated RFID tag inside it. This summary contains more details and a picture of the RFID tag used to record the life of your next crown."

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live in France, and soon elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S., and if you need a dental prosthesis, chances are good that RFID tags are involved in the manufacturing process, according to this article from the RFID Journal. The tag is embedded by the dental lab in the cast which will be used to make the prosthesis. Then it is used to record the whole history of the crown, a process requested by a European sanitary regulation. Before delivering the bridge to your dentist, all the data is copied to a smart card that will be given to you. The company is also studying the idea to put directly the tag inside the prosthesis. Maybe one day, when your dentist installs your new bridge, you'll also be the owner of a deactivated RFID tag inside it. This summary contains more details and a picture of the RFID tag used to record the life of your next crown."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year. The SSETI Express is currently under integration in one of the technology centers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Only a few selected members of the team will attend the launch which will be part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3 in May 2005. The SSETI Express will embark three mini 'cubesats' for specific experiments while the main satellite will test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read this summary for more details."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year. The SSETI Express is currently under integration in one of the technology centers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Only a few selected members of the team will attend the launch which will be part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3 in May 2005. The SSETI Express will embark three mini 'cubesats' for specific experiments while the main satellite will test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read this summary for more details."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, our handheld devices are powered by batteries, which are heavy and inconvenient. Fuel cells are just arriving on the market as a replacement. But there is a new contender: micro gas turbine engines under development at the MIT. Engineers there shrunk jet engines to the size of a coat button. And their blades which span an area smaller than a dime can spin a million times per minute and produce enough electricity to power your PDA or your cell phone. While there are still a few hurdles to overcome, these micro turbine engines should be operational in two or three years, with commercial products available four years from now. These micro jet engines also have the potential to free soldiers or travelers from carrying heavy batteries. The engineers even think their engines on a chip could be used in poor countries to bring electricity there. This summary gives you the essential details about a technology which promises to free us to carry extra fuel instead of batteries."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, our handheld devices are powered by batteries, which are heavy and inconvenient. Fuel cells are just arriving on the market as a replacement. But there is a new contender: micro gas turbine engines under development at the MIT. Engineers there shrunk jet engines to the size of a coat button. And their blades which span an area smaller than a dime can spin a million times per minute and produce enough electricity to power your PDA or your cell phone. While there are still a few hurdles to overcome, these micro turbine engines should be operational in two or three years, with commercial products available four years from now. These micro jet engines also have the potential to free soldiers or travelers from carrying heavy batteries. The engineers even think their engines on a chip could be used in poor countries to bring electricity there. This summary gives you the essential details about a technology which promises to free us to carry extra fuel instead of batteries."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In this interview with CIO Magazine, Ray Kurzweil says that one day, software and computers will reside inside us. He adds that by 2020, "we will be placing millions or billions of nanobots -- blood cell-size devices -- inside our bloodstream to travel into our brains and interact with our neurons." He also says that if we're not enhanced by machines, they will surpass us. But he doesn't think it will happen. According to him, machines and humans will merge. In the mean time, he's pursuing his anti-aging quest and takes about 250 supplements to his diet every day! With this regime, he says his biological age is 40 while he's 56 years old. By 2030, there will be very little difference between 30-year-old and 120-year-old people, says Kurzweil. He's certainly a bright person, but I'm not sure that I agree with someone taking daily such an amount of pills. What do you think? This summary contains some selected -- and biased -- excerpts to help you forge your opinion."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In this interview with CIO Magazine, Ray Kurzweil says that one day, software and computers will reside inside us. He adds that by 2020, "we will be placing millions or billions of nanobots -- blood cell-size devices -- inside our bloodstream to travel into our brains and interact with our neurons." He also says that if we're not enhanced by machines, they will surpass us. But he doesn't think it will happen. According to him, machines and humans will merge. In the mean time, he's pursuing his anti-aging quest and takes about 250 supplements to his diet every day! With this regime, he says his biological age is 40 while he's 56 years old. By 2030, there will be very little difference between 30-year-old and 120-year-old people, says Kurzweil. He's certainly a bright person, but I'm not sure that I agree with someone taking daily such an amount of pills. What do you think? This summary contains some selected -- and biased -- excerpts to help you forge your opinion."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Europe will launch 50 ultra-small satellites in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of the Earth launched in October 1957. BBC News Online writes that each nanosatellite will weigh only about 1 kilogram and represent a single nation. Arianespace will launch all 50 of the nanosats in a single payload. The nanosats will stay in orbit for about 2 years and will perform experiments chosen and designed by each individual country. For the first time in history, 50 different countries will have the opportunity to do space research, and probably at little cost. In the future, similar clusters of nanosats could be launched for collaborative missions, acting as groups or swarms and having a single goal. Read more for selected excerpts and pointers to this future historic mission."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Europe will launch 50 ultra-small satellites in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of the Earth launched in October 1957. BBC News Online writes that each nanosatellite will weigh only about 1 kilogram and represent a single nation. Arianespace will launch all 50 of the nanosats in a single payload. The nanosats will stay in orbit for about 2 years and will perform experiments chosen and designed by each individual country. For the first time in history, 50 different countries will have the opportunity to do space research, and probably at little cost. In the future, similar clusters of nanosats could be launched for collaborative missions, acting as groups or swarms and having a single goal. Read more for selected excerpts and pointers to this future historic mission."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Once again, technology is imitating nature with a new class of biologically inspired robots called "Biomimetic Robots." In this very long article, IEEE Computer Magazine looks at several projects currently underway. All these projects will have practical applications a few years from now. They include robotic lobsters for underwater mine research or flying insect-based robots for future spatial missions. Other projects are about cricket-inspired robots to be used in rescue missions or scorpion-like robots to be deployed in hostile environments for humans. and of course, there are the now famous and robust "sprawling" robots based on cockroaches. For more information, read the whole very well documented article. Or read this summary for a photo gallery and direct links to all the projects."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Once again, technology is imitating nature with a new class of biologically inspired robots called "Biomimetic Robots." In this very long article, IEEE Computer Magazine looks at several projects currently underway. All these projects will have practical applications a few years from now. They include robotic lobsters for underwater mine research or flying insect-based robots for future spatial missions. Other projects are about cricket-inspired robots to be used in rescue missions or scorpion-like robots to be deployed in hostile environments for humans. and of course, there are the now famous and robust "sprawling" robots based on cockroaches. For more information, read the whole very well documented article. Or read this summary for a photo gallery and direct links to all the projects."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Welcome to the world of 'Reality Mining'! The billions of networked sensors that exist today are generating humongous streams of data. What about 'data mining' this big flow of data and discover our environment in a way that never existed before? Suddenly, sensors would look like pixels and we would start to browse reality as easily as we browse web pages today. Fascinating concept! Some fellows at Accenture Technology Labs are thinking about this and they already have designed some demos of reality mining software. Their demos include web agents, data modeling, GIS systems and much more. They also show how you could detect fires or how you would do virtual shopping. Please read their long article or this shorter summary for a couple of examples."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Welcome to the world of 'Reality Mining'! The billions of networked sensors that exist today are generating humongous streams of data. What about 'data mining' this big flow of data and discover our environment in a way that never existed before? Suddenly, sensors would look like pixels and we would start to browse reality as easily as we browse web pages today. Fascinating concept! Some fellows at Accenture Technology Labs are thinking about this and they already have designed some demos of reality mining software. Their demos include web agents, data modeling, GIS systems and much more. They also show how you could detect fires or how you would do virtual shopping. Please read their long article or this shorter summary for a couple of examples."

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many systems designed to help car drivers and to improve safety. In this article, New Scientist focuses on a system developed by the National ICT Australia lab (NICTA). This new driver assistance system uses three cameras, one to look at road signs ahead and two to check what the driver is looking at. The images are transmitted to a computer which decodes the road signs and the driver's reactions to them. If you're driving above speed limits, you will be alerted. Same thing if you're about to pass a stop sign without reducing speed. You still can choose to ignore the warnings, but if you're caught speeding, you'll have to tell the police officer why you refused to slow down. This system is currently being tested and appears to perform well especially in poor lighting conditions. Read more for other references about similar helping systems and to see how the road signs are analyzed."

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many systems designed to help car drivers and to improve safety. In this article, New Scientist focuses on a system developed by the National ICT Australia lab (NICTA). This new driver assistance system uses three cameras, one to look at road signs ahead and two to check what the driver is looking at. The images are transmitted to a computer which decodes the road signs and the driver's reactions to them. If you're driving above speed limits, you will be alerted. Same thing if you're about to pass a stop sign without reducing speed. You still can choose to ignore the warnings, but if you're caught speeding, you'll have to tell the police officer why you refused to slow down. This system is currently being tested and appears to perform well especially in poor lighting conditions. Read more for other references about similar helping systems and to see how the road signs are analyzed."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Farmers in Switzerland receive money from their government for letting their cows eat young trees in the Alps. But why? Because this is improving the mountain views for tourists who might return year after year and spend their cash in the country. As the Swiss government wants to wisely spend its money, it is using a computer model of the mountains populated by virtual tourists -- or software agents -- which tirelessly take the same roads again and again and give their appreciation about the best spots. The Economist reports about these virtual tourists in this very cleverly-titled article, "Computer browsers." What will be the next logical step? Pay more the farmers with the strongest potential to improve the views for real tourists? Wrong. Instead, real hikers will be invited to explore the virtual Alps to give their feedback. Their observations will be then integrated into the software managing the virtual travelers. Read more for pictures and references."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Farmers in Switzerland receive money from their government for letting their cows eat young trees in the Alps. But why? Because this is improving the mountain views for tourists who might return year after year and spend their cash in the country. As the Swiss government wants to wisely spend its money, it is using a computer model of the mountains populated by virtual tourists -- or software agents -- which tirelessly take the same roads again and again and give their appreciation about the best spots. The Economist reports about these virtual tourists in this very cleverly-titled article, "Computer browsers." What will be the next logical step? Pay more the farmers with the strongest potential to improve the views for real tourists? Wrong. Instead, real hikers will be invited to explore the virtual Alps to give their feedback. Their observations will be then integrated into the software managing the virtual travelers. Read more for pictures and references."

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are some sure things in life, such as death and taxes. When you are heating a solid, you expect it will melt and when you're boiling water, you're pretty certain that it will turn into vapor. But what about a liquid that becomes solid when it's heated? Of course, it has already been done, for example in the chemical process of polymerization. But now, PhysicsWeb writes that a team of French physicists has discovered a law-breaking liquid that defies the rules. When you heat it between 45 and 75C, it becomes solid. But the process is fully reversible, and this is a world's premiere. When you decrease the temperature, this solid melts and turns again into a liquid. I'm not sure of the implications of such a phenomenon, but it's fascinating. Read more for essential details."

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are some sure things in life, such as death and taxes. When you are heating a solid, you expect it will melt and when you're boiling water, you're pretty certain that it will turn into vapor. But what about a liquid that becomes solid when it's heated? Of course, it has already been done, for example in the chemical process of polymerization. But now, PhysicsWeb writes that a team of French physicists has discovered a law-breaking liquid that defies the rules. When you heat it between 45 and 75C, it becomes solid. But the process is fully reversible, and this is a world's premiere. When you decrease the temperature, this solid melts and turns again into a liquid. I'm not sure of the implications of such a phenomenon, but it's fascinating. Read more for essential details."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, lots of efforts have been made to give robots the ability to hear and see. But what about the sense of touch? Unlike us, robots don't have sensitive skin. But this is about to change. By using organic, or plastic, field-effect transistors as pressure sensors deposited on a flexible material, researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an artificial skin which will give robots the sense of touch. The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips. When this density increases and when the problem of the reliability of this kind of transistors is solved, the researchers say this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets. Expect to see them in four or five years. More details and a picture of a robotic hand using organic transistors as pressure sensors."

Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, lots of efforts have been made to give robots the ability to hear and see. But what about the sense of touch? Unlike us, robots don't have sensitive skin. But this is about to change. By using organic, or plastic, field-effect transistors as pressure sensors deposited on a flexible material, researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an artificial skin which will give robots the sense of touch. The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips. When this density increases and when the problem of the reliability of this kind of transistors is solved, the researchers say this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets. Expect to see them in four or five years. More details and a picture of a robotic hand using organic transistors as pressure sensors."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A cloud filled with simple molecules of sugar has been found 26,000 light-years away from us, near the middle of our galaxy. The 8-atom sugar molecules exist in a gas cloud named Sagittarius B2 at a temperature of only 8 degrees above absolute zero. Too far and too cold to bake your next cake! However, even if chemistry reactions on Earth and in this frigid sugar cloud are very different, astronomers think this discovery "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." Please read the original article for more details or just enjoy these illustrations describing how prebiotic chemistry -- the formation of the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life -- occurs in interstellar clouds."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A cloud filled with simple molecules of sugar has been found 26,000 light-years away from us, near the middle of our galaxy. The 8-atom sugar molecules exist in a gas cloud named Sagittarius B2 at a temperature of only 8 degrees above absolute zero. Too far and too cold to bake your next cake! However, even if chemistry reactions on Earth and in this frigid sugar cloud are very different, astronomers think this discovery "suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space." Please read the original article for more details or just enjoy these illustrations describing how prebiotic chemistry -- the formation of the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life -- occurs in interstellar clouds."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several U.S. hospitals have found an innovative way to deal with nursing shortage. They post shift openings and the highest hourly rate they're willing to pay on their internal networks. Then, the nurses bid online for these extra shifts. The lowest bidders get the shifts and are notified by e-mail. This bidding process is almost certainly a good thing for the hospitals, but is it good for the nurses? Or safe for you? And what will happen if other industries also adopt auction systems? Imagine a company telling you, "Hey, you want to make some extra dollars by building this car or writing this piece of software? Name your price, and you'll make some more cash." What do you think of this bidding process? Read more before posting your comments."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several U.S. hospitals have found an innovative way to deal with nursing shortage. They post shift openings and the highest hourly rate they're willing to pay on their internal networks. Then, the nurses bid online for these extra shifts. The lowest bidders get the shifts and are notified by e-mail. This bidding process is almost certainly a good thing for the hospitals, but is it good for the nurses? Or safe for you? And what will happen if other industries also adopt auction systems? Imagine a company telling you, "Hey, you want to make some extra dollars by building this car or writing this piece of software? Name your price, and you'll make some more cash." What do you think of this bidding process? Read more before posting your comments."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chips holding 10 terabits of data? Copper as strong as steel? Ceramics tough enough to be used in car engines? All this will be true in five years, thanks to two new methods to create self-assembling 3D nanostructures. These methods used pulsed laser deposition to create layers of nanodots organized in a matrix. These arrays of nanodots are consistent in shape and size -- 7 nanometers with nickel for example. But the real beauty of these methods is that they can be applied to almost any material, like nickel for data storage or aluminum oxide for ceramics. These methods also reduce drastically imperfections, leading to future superstrong materials. Read more here for other details and an image of a single nickel nanocrystal, or nanodot."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chips holding 10 terabits of data? Copper as strong as steel? Ceramics tough enough to be used in car engines? All this will be true in five years, thanks to two new methods to create self-assembling 3D nanostructures. These methods used pulsed laser deposition to create layers of nanodots organized in a matrix. These arrays of nanodots are consistent in shape and size -- 7 nanometers with nickel for example. But the real beauty of these methods is that they can be applied to almost any material, like nickel for data storage or aluminum oxide for ceramics. These methods also reduce drastically imperfections, leading to future superstrong materials. Read more here for other details and an image of a single nickel nanocrystal, or nanodot."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international group of cosmologists, the Virgo Consortium, has realized the first simulation of the entire universe, starting 380,000 years after the Big Bang and going up to now. In 'Computing the Cosmos,' IEEE Spectrum writes that the scientists used a 4.2 teraflops system at the Max Planck Society's Computing Center in Garching, Germany, to do the computations. The whole universe was simulated by ten billion particles, each having a mass a billion times that of our sun. As it was necessary to compute the gravitational interactions between each of the ten billion mass points and all the others, a task that needed 60,000 years, the computer scientists devised a couple of tricks to reduce the amount of computations. And in June 2004, the first simulation of our universe was completed. The resulting data, which represents about 20 terabytes, will be available to everyone in the months to come, at least to people with a high-bandwidth connection. Read more here about the computing aspects of the simulation, but if you're interested by cosmology, the long original article is a must-read."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international group of cosmologists, the Virgo Consortium, has realized the first simulation of the entire universe, starting 380,000 years after the Big Bang and going up to now. In 'Computing the Cosmos,' IEEE Spectrum writes that the scientists used a 4.2 teraflops system at the Max Planck Society's Computing Center in Garching, Germany, to do the computations. The whole universe was simulated by ten billion particles, each having a mass a billion times that of our sun. As it was necessary to compute the gravitational interactions between each of the ten billion mass points and all the others, a task that needed 60,000 years, the computer scientists devised a couple of tricks to reduce the amount of computations. And in June 2004, the first simulation of our universe was completed. The resulting data, which represents about 20 terabytes, will be available to everyone in the months to come, at least to people with a high-bandwidth connection. Read more here about the computing aspects of the simulation, but if you're interested by cosmology, the long original article is a must-read."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are designing a self-contained, tamper-resistant nuclear reactor that can be transported and installed anywhere in the world. In 'US plans portable nuclear power plants,' New Scientist writes that the sealed reactors would last 30 years and deliver between 10 and 100 megawatts. The largest version would be about 15 meters high and 3 meters wide, with a weight of about 500 tons, allowing for transportation by ships or very large trucks. The DOE thinks that this kind of nuclear reactor -- named SSTAR for 'small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor' -- would help to deliver nuclear energy to developing countries while significantly reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation associated with the use of nuclear power. What do you think of this idea? Is it a good one or a crazy one? Leaving a nuclear reactor in a developing country which can potentially become unstable during the 30 years of service of the reactor doesn't seem to be terribly safe. Read more before deciding. Anyway, there will be no prototypes before 2015."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are designing a self-contained, tamper-resistant nuclear reactor that can be transported and installed anywhere in the world. In 'US plans portable nuclear power plants,' New Scientist writes that the sealed reactors would last 30 years and deliver between 10 and 100 megawatts. The largest version would be about 15 meters high and 3 meters wide, with a weight of about 500 tons, allowing for transportation by ships or very large trucks. The DOE thinks that this kind of nuclear reactor -- named SSTAR for 'small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor' -- would help to deliver nuclear energy to developing countries while significantly reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation associated with the use of nuclear power. What do you think of this idea? Is it a good one or a crazy one? Leaving a nuclear reactor in a developing country which can potentially become unstable during the 30 years of service of the reactor doesn't seem to be terribly safe. Read more before deciding. Anyway, there will be no prototypes before 2015."

Roland Piquepaille writes "At least, the founders of Tableau Software, a small company established in 2003 and based in Seattle, come from Stanford University, where they worked down the hall with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in 1997. In 'Tableau making name for itself,' the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Tableau intends to make structured databases easy to use the way Google did with unstructured data. So the company is turning databases into easy-to-generate graphics. Tableau doesn't say who are its customers, but claims that it has more than 100 installations and that it's already profitable. This graphical data mining tool runs on desktops and costs $1,000 per user for a standard edition and $1,600 per user for a professional version. Will this company be successful and become another Google? Read more and decide after looking at an example of database drilling."

Roland Piquepaille writes "At least, the founders of Tableau Software, a small company established in 2003 and based in Seattle, come from Stanford University, where they worked down the hall with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in 1997. In 'Tableau making name for itself,' the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Tableau intends to make structured databases easy to use the way Google did with unstructured data. So the company is turning databases into easy-to-generate graphics. Tableau doesn't say who are its customers, but claims that it has more than 100 installations and that it's already profitable. This graphical data mining tool runs on desktops and costs $1,000 per user for a standard edition and $1,600 per user for a professional version. Will this company be successful and become another Google? Read more and decide after looking at an example of database drilling."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A small Santa Clara-based company, Orion Multisystems, today unveils a new concept in computing, 'cluster workstations.' In October, you'll be able to choose between a 12-processor unit for less than $10,000 or a 96-processor system for less than $100,000. These new systems are powered by Efficeon processor from Transmeta and are running Fedora Linux version 2.6.6. Apparently, this new company has friends in the industry. You already can read articles in CNET News.com ("A renaissance for the workstation?"), the New York Times ("A PC That Packs Real Power, and All Just for Me," free registration, permanent link) and the Wall Street Journal ("Orion Sees Gold in Moribund Workstations," paid registration). The company is targeting engineers, life scientists and movie animators. It's too early to know if the company can be successful, but I would certainly have to get one of these systems under my desk. In this overview, I've picked the essential details from the three stories mentioned above."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A small Santa Clara-based company, Orion Multisystems, today unveils a new concept in computing, 'cluster workstations.' In October, you'll be able to choose between a 12-processor unit for less than $10,000 or a 96-processor system for less than $100,000. These new systems are powered by Efficeon processor from Transmeta and are running Fedora Linux version 2.6.6. Apparently, this new company has friends in the industry. You already can read articles in CNET News.com ("A renaissance for the workstation?"), the New York Times ("A PC That Packs Real Power, and All Just for Me," free registration, permanent link) and the Wall Street Journal ("Orion Sees Gold in Moribund Workstations," paid registration). The company is targeting engineers, life scientists and movie animators. It's too early to know if the company can be successful, but I would certainly have to get one of these systems under my desk. In this overview, I've picked the essential details from the three stories mentioned above."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of physicists has entangled five photons for the first time in the world, reports Technology Research News in "Five photons linked." Why is this important? Because it's the minimum number of qubits needed for universal error correction in quantum computing. In other words, they found a way to check computational errors in future quantum computers. The physicists also demonstrated what they call 'open-destination teleportation,' a way to teleport quantum information within and between computers." "They teleported the unknown quantum state of a single photon onto a superposition of three photons. They were then able to read out this teleported state at any one of the three photons by performing a measurement on the other two photons," adds PhysicsWeb in "Entanglement breaks new record ". This will be used in about ten to twenty years to move information among quantum networks. You'll find more details and references in this overview."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of physicists has entangled five photons for the first time in the world, reports Technology Research News in "Five photons linked." Why is this important? Because it's the minimum number of qubits needed for universal error correction in quantum computing. In other words, they found a way to check computational errors in future quantum computers. The physicists also demonstrated what they call 'open-destination teleportation,' a way to teleport quantum information within and between computers." "They teleported the unknown quantum state of a single photon onto a superposition of three photons. They were then able to read out this teleported state at any one of the three photons by performing a measurement on the other two photons," adds PhysicsWeb in "Entanglement breaks new record ". This will be used in about ten to twenty years to move information among quantum networks. You'll find more details and references in this overview."