A nanoscale technology called “spintronics” may help usher in a new era of nanosized—and more powerful—computer chips.

Current technologies carry information on an electron’s charge. Electrons also spin and researchers believe information could be encoded for by different types of spin. If that spin can be controlled and manipulated, researchers say, then devices built using spintronic technology could offer higher data processing speeds and lower electric consumption, among many other advantages. They may even be able to carry out quantum computations we have not yet seen the likes of.

Just one problem—no one can reliably control an electron’s spin.

Until now. University of Notre Dame physicist Boldizsar Janko and his colleagues believe they have figured it out.

Scientists have found a molecule that can spin freely in liquid, clearing out water like a person swinging suitcases would clear a crowded room.

The molecule spins without causing friction [Video]. That shouldn’t be possible, according to a chemical physics theory. The finding could alter the way scientists think about chemical reactions in liquids.

Researchers hit a drop of iodine cyanide and water with pulses from an ultraviolet laser, exciting one type of molecule to reconfigure into a small, peanut shape with a carbon atom on one end, a nitrogen atom on the other.

The molecule heated up to 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit (4,427 Celsius) and started spinning at a furious 270 trillion rotations per minute.

Gear Live reports:

Recently there have been rumors that Apple is planning to release an iPod with phone features, some say within the next few months. Insiders at cell phone maker BenQ say that Apple executives have begun talking to various Taiwanese manufacturers about supplying parts for a new product. Apple has not commented on the possibility of an iPod with phone features. Some market analysts believe that if Apple does go through with its plans for an iPod with phone features, that it will have the biggest impact on Motorola, the leading cell phone maker in the United States.

I know I’ll get one if/when it comes out. Jonathan Ive is a great industrial designer, and I have no doubts that an iPhone would look and work great.

A study published this month in Chest (trust me, it’s a medical journal) finds that antibiotic exposure during infancy is associated with asthma. This follows a string of studies from the past few years, such as those from the Immune Tolerance Network, revealing that early exposure to harmful bacteria builds a healthy immune system. Kids exposed to endotoxin-releasing bacteria, for example, are less likely to be allergic to dogs and cats.

These docs have a sense of humor, too. They call this the Pigpen Effect, after the Peanuts character with his protective cloud of dirt. It’s a dirty little secret the antibacterial soap people don’t want you to know about.

Symptoms of electrical sensitivity include the joint pain Mr. Byrne experienced, but also a bewildering array of other common problems most everyone feels at one time or another, such as fatigue, headaches, poor sleep quality with frequent wakefulness, ringing in the ears, depression, difficulty remembering things, and skin rashes. The list of symptoms has created speculation that some cases of sick building syndrome, where people working in buildings complain of nausea and headaches, might be due to electrical sensitivities.

Madga Havas, an associate professor at the Environmental Studies Department of Trent University who is an expert on the health claims about electricity, says she receives “almost a call a day” from people who say electricity is making them ill and they can’t find help in the medical system. “It’s not just from Canada. It’s usually from the States as well,” she says.

She thinks the condition is more widespread than commonly thought, and speculates that for some people, exposure to electricity causes physiological stress, producing symptoms of tiredness, difficulty concentrating and poor sleep.

It’s something I’ve actually tried to keep a cap on. My phone doesn’t ring, for example—instead, I just have it set to vibrate. Sometimes I’ll hear it, sometimes I won’t, but it’s one less annoying electrical noise in my life.

And then, of course, there’s the man who made the gods and monsters, Ray Harryhausen, who, along with pals Ray Bradbury and Famous Monsters of Filmland’s Forest J Ackerman, was and is the single greatest architect of silver nitrate dreams Hollywood has ever produced.

Harryhausen’s unique status in cinematic history is unrivaled. His perfection of the technique of stop-motion animation, in which small, articulated models are animated frame-by-frame and then optically composited alongside their flesh-and-blood co-stars, has in one form or another influenced everyone from Peter Jackson to Robert Rodriguez, and from Alamo Drafthouse regulars (this writer very much included) to Stephen Spielberg, Joe Dante, Tim Burton, and countless others. Any film fan who can’t rattle off at least five Harryhausen films with a grin on his chin is less buff than snuff and is not to be trusted.

Scientists are trying to develop an industrial process that grows meat tissue from a few cells in a lab—or even at home, in a device like a bread maker.

Instead of being cut from a farm animal, the beef, pork or chicken would be grown in incubators from a few starter cells, a growth medium and some hormones to get the cells to divide.

The first attempts by scientists who grow animal muscle tissue in the lab have been small in scale. But researchers are looking forward to the day when meat could be cultivated in industrial bioreactors or even in a device sitting on a kitchen counter.

Their experiment involves a ring of superconducting material rotating up to 6 500 times a minute. Superconductors are special materials that lose all electrical resistance at a certain temperature. Spinning superconductors produce a weak magnetic field, the so-called London moment. The new experiment tests a conjecture by Tajmar and de Matos that explains the difference between high-precision mass measurements of Cooper-pairs (the current carriers in superconductors) and their prediction via quantum theory. They have discovered that this anomaly could be explained by the appearance of a gravitomagnetic field in the spinning superconductor (This effect has been named the Gravitomagnetic London Moment by analogy with its magnetic counterpart).

Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. “This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday’s electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831.

John Siracusa at Ars Technica on Mac OS X’s Five Year Anniversary:

Mac OS X arose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Mac-That-Was. Okay, maybe more like an injured phoenix. Also, Apple didn’t light the bird on fire until a few years later. But still, technically, phoenix-like.

A side-by-side test-drive of Mac OS X 10.0 and 10.4 is shocking. The eternal debate is whether this gap exists because 10.4 is so good, or because 10.0 was so, so bad. That said, Apple’s ability to plan and execute its OS strategy is not open for debate. In five short years, Apple has essentially created an entirely new platform. Oh, I know, it’s really just the foundation of NeXT combined with the wreckage of classic Mac OS, but I think that makes it even more impressive. Two failing, marginalized platforms have combined to become the platform for the alpha geeks in the new century.

Today’s Mac users span a much wider range than those of the past. Mac OS X’s Unix-like core reached out to the beard-and-suspenders crowd (and the newer source-code-and-a-dream crowd) while the luscious Aqua user interface pulled all the touchy-feely aesthetes from the other direction. In the middle were the refugees from the Mac-That-Was, but they aren’t the story here. Mac OS X is about new blood and new ideas—some good, some bad, but all vibrant. The Mac is alive again!

After spending half my life watching smart, talented people ignore the Mac for reasons of circumstance or prejudice, it’s incredibly gratifying to live in a post-Mac OS X world. When I encounter a tech-world luminary or up-and-coming geek today, I just assume that he or she uses a Mac. Most of the time, I’m right. Even those with a conflicting affiliation (e.g., Linux enthusiasts) often use Apple laptops, if not the OS.

In a wide-ranging interview with the British Computer Society, Sir Tim Berners-Lee criticizes software patents, speaks out on US and ICANN control of the Internet, proposes browser security changes, and says he got domain names backwards in web addresses all those years ago.

Reliable sources informed MacosXrumors that Apple is developing virtualisation software that could be added to Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard. The technology will allow users to create and run virtual machines with Mac OS X, Linux or Windows on any Intel-based Mac.

The software, which is said to be code-named “Chameleon,” will be made available in “Client” and “Server” versions. The Client version will have similar features to Virtual PC and will be included with Leopard Client while the Server version will act as a virtualisation server and will come with Leopard Server. Apple may also sell the solution separately just as it currently sells Apple Remote Desktop. Sources also claim that Apple is developing the technology hand in hand with partners such as Intel and Microsoft.

For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history—putting human beings on Mars.

The moon is not for the faint of heart. It is a lethal place, without atmosphere, pelted constantly by cosmic rays and micrometeorites, plagued by temperature swings of hundreds of degrees, and swathed in a blanket of dust that can ruin space suits, pollute the air supply and bring machinery to a screeching halt.

In some ways, the moon will be harder than Mars. Moon dust is much more abrasive than Mars dust; Mars has atmosphere; Mars has more gravity (one-third of Earth’s); Mars has plenty of ice for a potential water supply, while the moon may have some, but probably not very much.

Still, the moon is ultimately much more forgiving because it is much closer—250,000 miles away, while Mars is 34 million miles from Earth at its closest point. If someone needs help on the moon, it takes three days to get there. By contrast, Mars will be several months away even with the help of advanced—and as yet nonexistent—propulsion systems.

In their search for patterns, mathematicians have uncovered unlikely connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. The gist is that energy levels in the nucleus of heavy atoms can tell us about the distribution of zeros in Riemann’s zeta function—and hence where to find prime numbers. This article discusses this connection, and introduces two physisicts who tell us why the answer to life, the universe and the third moment of the Riemann zeta function should be 42.

Birth control pills, cancer drugs and a host of other pharmaceuticals that people flush down the drain every day are showing up in our drinking water, says Gord Miller, Ontario’s environmental commissioner.

“We need to do a better job of keeping drugs out of lakes, rivers and drinking water,” Miller told the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on Wednesday.

Although the drugs are not considered a threat to human health, there is evidence that they can harm wildlife.

“There is no health hazard in drinking water now that has been detected in Canada, but we have detected substances in drinking water,” he said, adding that the problem is likely to get worse rather than better as the population grows.

“Our society loves to pop pills,” Miller said. “If you were designing the perfect pollutant it would probably look like a pill.”

Astronomers have produced the clearest map to date of giant star factories in our Milky Way.

The factories are gas clouds that were mapped by tracking a rare form of carbon monoxide. The clouds are displayed on a wide panorama of the galaxy.

The researchers are seeing hints of dark, cold molecular clouds in the earliest stages of star development.

“Data from the Galactic Ring Survey have shown that these clouds are the counterparts to active, bright star-forming clouds, but because they have not yet been heated by the embedded stars, they are much colder and quieter,” said James Jackson, astronomy professor at Boston University and lead investigator of the study. “Follow-up studies of these clouds will provide additional important clues about the origin of stars since we’ll be able to examine them at an earlier point in their life.”

All of the molecular clouds examined in the new view so far have similar lumpy structures, regardless of their size, mass, and star-forming activity. These lumps will eventually become stars, and the researchers say this similarity suggests that all clouds form stars of various masses in roughly the same proportion.

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed “neuro-chips” in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

This wasn’t just any old postmortem, however. For one, Seropian delivered his findings with a style and at times off-kilter humor that should be familiar to those who have played Stubbs. Beyond that, Seropian’s presentation was a look back on an experimental method of game development that he conceived upon leaving Bungie (another studio he founded) after the Halo developer was acquired by Microsoft.

“I was trying to think what I wanted to do with my life,” Seropian said of how he spent his time after leaving Bungie. “What I wanted to do was make games. I wanted to be independent, I wanted to work on original games, but I was kind of terrified of that prospect after watching how Bungie evolved for about 10 years and watching a lot of indie developers, what they were faced with.”

I miss Bungie. It was nice having such a cool all-Mac gaming company.

Microsoft employees are arguing among themselves over who is to blame for the delay in the launch of Windows Vista. One disgruntled insider named Who da’Punk voiced his feelings in a blog posting under the heading “Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!.” Last week it was announced that Vista would be delayed until November for corporate customers while the consumer versions would not appear until early 2007. There was further bad news for Microsoft customers when the company revealed that the delay in the release of Vista would have a knock on effect on the new version of Office which will also now be pushed back to 2007.”

In the posting the anonymous employee complains “We’re missing the holiday sales market. Not only did we miss last year’s opportunity, we’re missing this year’s opportunity, too.” He finally signed off with the call for heads to roll at Microsoft senior management with the comment “People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where’s the freakin’ accountability?” The diatribe set off a lot of feeling amongst Microsoft employees with several demanding that Ballmer should head the list of people who should be fired from the company. One remarked: “Being a 10+ year vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels,” Even more damning is the comment “Vista—I wouldn’t buy it with someone else’s money. Then again what do I know, I’ve only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs.”

Today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past; they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

(Hat tip: David Galbraith)

Spam king and online drugstore operator Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, 26, who is awaiting trial at the Sherburne County Jail, Elk River, Minn., used his phone privileges to arrange a hit on a witness and the witness’s family.

According to the indictment, Smith called an acquaintance from jail March 4 and allegedly stated he intended to threaten and intimidate a witness he expected would testify against him in his upcoming trial on drug and other charges. The indictment alleges Smith also said he intended to have the witness or the witness’s family killed.

It always amazes me how low spammers can get. Scum of the Earth, I tell you…

Until now, scientists could not explain why ice cubes in your drink melt. They’ve known the basics, but the details remained elusive.

A breakthrough new study, announced today, supports a leading theory that melting starts when the fundamental structure of matter begins to crack.

Melting is considered a basic phenomenon in physics. An understanding of how it works is crucial to gaining a firm grasp on the physical world.

“Yet major details about the mechanisms that drive the melting of an ice cube are missing,” said Arjun Yodh of the University of Pennsylvania. “Superficially, the principle is straightforward. As a solid heats up, molecules within the ice acquire more energy and jiggle around more, driving the transition from a solid to a liquid. This is true in part, but reality is richer and more complex.”

The problem is that the earliest phase of melting has never been seen. Scientists can’t see the atoms involved because they are so small and because they are hidden in the structure of solid material.

So Yodh’s team made some big atoms. Specifically, they made see-through crystals that are like small beads and are visible in an optical microscope.

The first images from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were returned to Earth early this morning to the delight of scientists waiting to see how the camera would perform.

Apparently it’s working just fine.

“The first HiRISE images are in,” wrote from the University of Arizona systems programmer Loretta McKibben in a blog early this morning. “And they are gorgeous! These images are sharp, clear and beautiful in the ‘quick-look’ or raw form.”

“Incredible,” said Candy Hansen, Deputy Principal Investigator for the project.

“I am VERY happy!” said from the University of Arizona researcher Alfred McEwen, chief scientist of the HiRISE camera. “They are sharp, clear, and beautiful!”

It’s also worth noting that the images clearly show that NASA uses Macs.

The first Methuselah Foundation Rejuvenation “M Prize” for Reversing Aging in Middle-Aged Mice Using Techniques Applicable to Human Beings has been awarded to Dr. Stephen Spindler, who lead an experiment to make mice biologically younger while extending their lifespans.

The research was first reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of science. Dr. Spindler demonstrated that middle-aged mice could achieve an average 15% longer life, accompanied by significant reductions in deaths from cancer. DNA microarray analysis showed that the mice actually became younger; this video of the elderly mice sprinting around in their cages makes its own statement. The results were achieved using calorie restriction in a group of mice starting at age 19 months.

There’s some other cool things, but check out the video to see how Phantom Hourglass looks. It’s awesome.

Microsoft program manager Stephen Toulouse, in a series of entries on his personal blog, has challenged Apple to hire a security czar and revamp the way information is disseminated when Mac OS X security updates are released.

“Look, the only way you can tackle security issues is by getting out ahead of them and clearly communicating to your users the threat, and the clear guidance on how to be safe,” Toulouse said. “Here’s the reality, for the next couple of years the Mac OS will experience increasing security threats and mark my words, the company will have to seek outside expertise in the form of a head of security communications in the next 12 months,” Toulouse added. The program manager said Apple needs a person “steeped in security issues, true technical analysis, [someone who] can lead a good security team to get good guidance out there,” according to a report from eWeek.com.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews replied with the following:

What’s next, Donald Trump advising Patrick Dempsey on hair styling? Rob Glaser lecturing Jack LaLanne on physical fitness? William Hung as Pavarotti’s voice coach? The size of Microsoft’s cajones sometimes defy description.

The love song of a humpback whale sounds magnificently free-flowing and improvised to the casual human listener.

But fresh mathematical analysis of shows there are complex grammatical rules. Using syntax, the whales combine sounds into phrases, which they further weave into hours-long melodies packed with information.

Although the researchers say these songs don’t meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language, this is the first evidence that animals other than humans use a hierarchical structure of communication. Whales have also been found to sing in dialects.

The study is detailed online in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The MacBook Pro Core Duo runs Adobe Photoshop faster than other laptops originally designed for Microsoft Windows, according to Benchmark tests of Windows XP running on PCs and other Intel-based Macs: “The MacBook Pro is the fastest Core Duo laptop we’ve tested running the Photoshop scripts. It’s faster than other laptops originally designed for Windows. This bodes very well for the performance of an Intel-accelerated OS X Photoshop, when that finally appears.” GearLog tested the performance of Windows XP on a Mac mini, an iMac, and a MacBook Pro, according to Macworld UK. Testers used a guide available from OnMac, discovering that each computer requires a different version of software to help the machines choose between operating systems on start-up. Although no video drivers yet exist for the dual-boot machines, testers found that once Windows was installed, it had no problem running at the full 1,680×1,050 resolution of the 20-inch screen. “We got Ethernet, wireless networking, and the headphone jack (but not the internal speakers, iSight or the remote) working using drivers suggested by OnMac,” testers said.

A team of astronomers has found a cold object that is neither star nor planet circling a star relatively close to Earth.

The object, a cool brown dwarf orbiting its red parent star, sits about 12.7 light-years from the Sun, making it the third closest such object known to date, researchers said.

Cold and dim, brown dwarfs are objects that are typically more massive than planets but fall short of igniting into full-fledged stars. Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope at European Southern Observatory in Paranal, Chile found the latest brown dwarf orbiting the red star SCR 1845-6357.

“Besides being extremely close to Earth, this object is a T dwarf—a very cool brown dwarf—and the only such object found as a companion to a low-mass star,” said Beth Biller, lead author of the study reporting brown dwarf find and a graduate student at the University of Arizona, in a statement. “It is also likely the brightest known object of its temperature because it is so close.”

Socio-biology founder Edward O. Wilson explains why we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions, denies that “evolutionism” is a faith, and says that heaven, if it existed, would be hell.

(Registration required, but easily bypassed.)

With challenges to legal abortion in the headlines, a debate over another kind of reproductive rights has been making news as well. Earlier this month, a group called the National Centre for Men filed a federal lawsuit in Michigan arguing that men should be able to decline financial responsibility for an unwanted child. The case has been dubbed “Roe v. Wade for men.” While neither the plaintiff, 25-year-old Matt Dubay, nor men’s rights activists who are helping him expect to prevail in court, they hope that the case will raise awareness of the issues and start a debate about male reproductive rights. And it should.

Mel Feit, director of the National Centre for Men—who has been looking for such a test case for years—argues that with abortion legally available, the current situation for men violates the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. If a woman gets pregnant, she has the option to raise the child, terminate the pregnancy, or have the baby and put it up for adoption. If she wants to raise the child and asks for child support, the man has no options. Dubay is paying $500 a month to a former girlfriend who, he says, assured him she couldn’t get pregnant because of a medical condition.

New legislation in France would force Apple Computer to open the iPod and iTunes to competitors—and that’s a good thing for consumers, in the long run.

On Tuesday, the French parliament passed a law that would require digital content bought at any online store to be playable on any hardware. The law would be applicable to all hardware and service providers, but the immediate impact would be on Apple and iTunes, and may prompt the company to withdraw from France.

To many, France’s move seems patently unfair to Apple.

The company created the market for legal music downloads, why shouldn’t it dominate it? Why should the French government help competitors like Microsoft or Sony to get a foothold in a market they have proven incapable of competing in? And why should Apple be subject to antimonopoly legislation when rivals like Microsoft traditionally have not? To free marketers, it’s government meddling at its worst.

But French legislators aren’t just looking at Apple. They’re looking ahead to a time when most entertainment is online, a shift with profound consequences for consumers and culture in general. French lawmakers want to protect the consumer from one or two companies holding the keys to all of its culture, just as Microsoft holds the keys to today’s desktop computers.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn’t going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings—the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

Martian gullies that some scientists believe were recently carved by liquid water might instead be the result of landslides triggered by wind and meteor impacts, scientists say.

The idea is based on new findings that the Moon, where no liquid water has been found, contains gullies similar to those found on Mars.

Gwendolyn Bart, a graduate student in planetary sciences at the University of Arizona, presented her findings last week at the 37th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston.

Many scientists think Mars was a planet once drenched in water, at least for periods of time: its surface contains canyons larger than any found on Earth. NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has found BB-like spheres and layered deposits of sandstone that many scientists believe could have only formed under conditions in which large bodies of water existed at or near the Martian surface for long periods of time.

But these findings only confirm the presence of Martian water in the ancient past. Whether liquid water ever exists on the planet now is a subject of debate among scientists.

I’m still in the camp that there’s probably underground aquifers on Mars, but we’ll see.

Can openers, scissors and spiral-bound notebooks discriminate against lefties. Despite such challenges, 10 to 12 per cent of the human population has historically preferred the left hand.

Why doesn’t the number ever waiver? Nobody knows for sure, but new research supports a body of evidence that suggests genetics have a hand in it all.

In the meantime, the myth remains that lefties are more artistic. And the idea that left-handed fighters have an advantage persists on scant evidence, supported by Scottish lore and Rocky Balboa’s heroics in the ring.

I do find it interesting that while they say there’s no correlation between left-handedness and a predisposition to artistry, I am left-handed myself, and an artist. When I was learning how to write, my teachers tried to “make” me right-handed, and as a result I developed a slight ambidexterity. I’ve always thought it was interesting that I’m left-handed, and born on 29 February. An unlikely coincidence if ever I’ve seen one.

Indeed, there is a certain dry humour about goth that is often overlooked amid tales of black-clad youths worshipping Satan and, in one case, carrying out the Columbine massacre. “That wasn’t goths,” insists Brill. “The guys who did it always wore black trench coats but they listened to Marilyn Manson. There’s an academic article: Why Marilyn Manson Isn’t Goth.” Brill insists that goth is a non-violent subculture. “They’re like hippies. I don’t know any goths who are into graveyard destruction or cat slaughtering. They like their graveyards and they love their cats.”

First, Klebold and Harris didn’t listen to Marilyn Manson. Second, the sort of distaste that so called “real goths” have with people like Marilyn Manson (and those who listen to him) I’ve always thought was unreasonable, and was one thing that always turned me off to that subculture. Third, the sort of arrogance found within that community is the main thing that turns people from “the scene.” I had a bit of a goth/punk/rivet streak for a good number of years, but even then, the entire time, I hated “the scene” because I hated their hypocrisy. It always struck me as odd that an entire subculture based around “being different” would always ostracise people who weren’t just like everyone else in “the scene.”

Either way, though, it’s actually a good, somewhat funny article. It does illustrate some rather important points, I think, and it is good to see that recognition is taking place regarding the aging of the subculture. I mean, hell, I still listen to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Joy Division and Marilyn Manson and My Bloody Valentine and Velvet Acid Christ and Snog and all that, but I just don’t feel the need to stick with the dogma of the subculture. People grow up, and if they’re reasonable people, they realise that how you look doesn’t matter—it’s what’s on the inside that matters.

While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.

Since refining the FTIR sensing technique, we’ve been experimenting with a wide variety of application scenarios and interaction modalities that utilize multi-touch input information. These go far beyond the “poking” actions you get with a typical touchscreen, or the gross gesturing found in video-based interactive interfaces. It is a rich area for research, and we are extremely excited by its potential for advances in efficiency, usability, and intuitiveness. It’s also just so much fun!

Our technique is force-sensitive, and provides unprecedented resolution and scalability, allowing us to create sophisticated multi-point widgets for applications large enough to accommodate both hands and multiple users.

The drafting table style implementation shown here measures 36″×27″, is rear-projected, and has a sensing resolution of better than 0.1″ at 50Hz. Stroke event information is sent to applications using the lightweight OSC protocol over UDP.

Watch the video. I only hope someone is taking notice…

“When users take the specifications of an MP3 player into consideration, one very important factor most take into account is the rated battery life. However, as many are aware, the battery life stated is generally the runtime from a full charge in ideal conditions, such as when the player is left playing without any sound enhancements (EQ, bass-boost, etc.), volume set to a moderate level, all music is 128kbps MP3, backlit display goes out within a few seconds and so on. However, according to tests conducted by CNET, they found that while many players met or exceeded their claims, one feature that has a drastic affect on battery life is the infamous DRM,” Seán Byrne writes for CD Freaks.

“When it comes to the Creative Zen Vision:M’s 14-hour claim, CNET got about 16 hours of playback time with MP3s from a full charge, which was a nice surprise. However, when they tried playing WMA 10 DRM crippled subscription tracks on it, they only got just over 12 hours; a loss of almost 4 hours (≈25%) of playback time due to the battery-hungry DRM. CNET found similar results with other players with WMA DRM drastically reducing battery life by up to around 20%. Apple’s FairPlay DRM seems to have less of an effect with battery life being reduced by around 8% when compared with MP3 playback,” Byrne writes.

MacDailyNews replied with the following:

This doesn’t tell us that DRM is battery-hungry. This tells us that Microsoft’s WMA is horribly inefficient and causes the processor work so hard to decode that it saps 25% of battery life versus playing MP3 files. AAC, which is used by Apple, is more efficient than Microsoft’s WMA (big surprise, huh?), causing an 8% battery hit versus playing MP3 files. So, this test is about codecs; MP3 vs. WMA and MP3 vs. AAC. To test whether DRM affects battery life, unprotected AAC files need to be tested against protected AAC files and unprotected WMA files need to be tested against protected WMA files.

“Now, Mac dentists in Canada no longer need to feel like they’ve been left behind. iDental’s documented ease of use is now available for all of North America. We are extremely proud to continue to be the easiest way for DentalMac users to move to OS X,” Edwards stated in the press release. “Changing software programs can be a daunting task for an office and its staff. iDental makes the changeover easy with its familiarity for DentalMac users, elegant interface, and powerful features. Our design philosophy for iDental has been to make sure the basics are there and work well before we add bells and whistles that may or may not be used by the office.”

I’m not sure why I find this to be cool, but I do.

The TV series spin-off of the Stars Wars film franchise will run to at least 100 episodes, according to producer Rick McCallum. He told BBC Radio 1 the writing team would soon be meeting to start on the project, which would begin filming in 2008 and be ready the same year.

“Hopefully if we can make it work and everybody’s excited and watches it we will keep on going,” said McCallum.

The series will be set between episodes three and four of the film saga. It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.

McCallum said there would be “a whole bunch of new characters” and the series would be “much more dramatic and darker.”

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has dismissed Tony Blair as a man with “no environmental credentials.”

The singer has revealed how he turned down a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss climate change.

Yorke is an ambassador for Friends of the Earth and the charity asked Yorke to meet Blair to talk about environmental issues.

The star said dealing with Labour “spin-doctors” had made him feel ill.

(Hat tip: Wesa)

NASA is reporting that two years into its 90-day mission, Spirit has lost one wheel and is now running on five wheels, dragging the broken wheel. With this reduced mobiity, the rover still needs to make its way to a slope where it can catch enough sun over the Martian winter to keep it operating. ‘Even though the rovers are well past their original design life, they still have plenty of capability to conduct outstanding science on Mars.’, says project leader Dr. John Callas.

(Hat tip: Slashdot)

Water is worth fighting for—even to the death, activists holding an “alternate” forum outside the world water summit said Friday. That attitude might seem strange in developed countries, where water flows at the touch of a faucet. But it isn’t nearly as accessible in the developing world.

And water wars aren’t an apocalyptic vision of the future. They’re already starting to happen, the protesters say.

“We’ve been beaten, we’ve been jailed, some of us have even been killed, but we’re not going to give up,” said Marco Suastegui, who marched alongside about 10,000 protesters Thursday outside a convention center where the international Fourth World Water Forum is being held.

(Hat tip: Disinfo.net)

This is a pretty good article, actually. For years I’ve tried to take better care of my hearing. I’ve always got a supply of earplugs on hand, and I wear them whenever I go to concerts or out to clubs. I live with someone who definitely has hearing loss, and I’ve noticed a few things. People with hearing loss talk really loud, which gets beyond irritating. They require everything to be turned up louder, which is also incredibly irritating. She got Apple’s iPod in-ear headphones last year, and at one point I wanted to watch some anime on my iBook and asked to borrow them. What immediately struck me about them was that they had terrible sound quality! When I brought this up, she sounded quite surprised. “No they don’t,” she said. “Those are the best headphones I’ve ever had!” But trust me, dear readers; they’re crappy. When I demonstrated this to my friend Mo, who studied, among other things, sound at LIPA, he concurred. Apparently those headphones are designed for people with hearing loss, based on the frequency ranges they don’t include. Interesting stuff, really.

Also interesting, in the content of the article, is that smoking contributes to hearing loss. One more reason for me to be glad I quit.

Covered by five millimeters (0.2 inches) soft silicone, RI-MAN is equipped with sensors that show it a body’s weight and position.

The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face.

“In the future, we would like to develop a capacity to detect a human’s health condition through his breath,” Mukai said.

Japan is bracing for a major increase in needs for elderly care due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world’s longest living.

Why am I not surprised that Japan’s solution to geriatrics involves robots? I love Japan.

The Business Council of BC says the Lower Mainland’s strict air-quality standards are too stringent, and cost too much money to achieve.

The council’s Jock Finlayson says the Greater Vancouver Regional District standards are tougher than those in the rest of the province and country—and he says that’s driving business away.

Boo-fucking-hoo.

Verifying a rumor that has been floating around the interweb for months, Entertainment Weekly revealed last week that Radiohead will contribute music to Before Sunrise / School of Rock director Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s cult science fiction book A Scanner Darkly. The film, which stars Keanu Reeves, is due in theaters July 7.

Although the band won’t be responsible for the flick’s entire score, Warner Independent Pictures told EW that A Scanner Darkly will “feature music by Radiohead, including a brand-new track from lead singer Thom Yorke’s upcoming solo release.” We’re eager to watch Keanu Reev—wait, WHAT? A Thom Yorke solo album? Since when did he go all Beyonce on us? Or rather, since when did he go all Jonny Greenwood?

Of course, Radiohead keeps its official news guarded like the Pentagon, so we’ll have to wait until some huge corporate magazine finds out what’s going on before we can give you more information on Thom’s solo jawn.

As for the new Radiohead album, we can only assume that’s what Yorke was referring to last week when he posted on Radiohead’s blog a week ago about “furiously writing, working out parts. cracking up. not much time left. unshure about everything.” Unless he’s coming up with a new soufflé recipe.

Undrinkable and dangerous tap water has created a new growth stream for North American and European beverage companies—selling bottled water to poor people in developing countries.

In many of them, public water is so bad that people are afraid to use it, even for taking a bath.

“You can’t even brush your teeth without fearing you’re going to get who-knows-what infection,” said Javier Bogantes, director of the Latin American Water Tribunal.

Capsaicin, which makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves, U.S. and Japanese researchers said on Wednesday.

Capsaicin led 80 percent of human prostate cancer cells growing in mice to commit suicide in a process known as apoptosis, the researchers said.

Prostate cancer tumors in mice fed capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in untreated mice, they reported in the journal Cancer Research.

PC Magazine is flat-out wrong in pricing the PowerMac G5 Quad, and they should correct the error. You can buy a PowerMac G5 Quad for less than half the price they list, which means: for about the same as an equivalent PC, or somewhat less. The serious error here is that PC Magazine lists Apple’s Power Mac G5 Quad as costing… Guess! You’ll never guess how much they say it costs. Honestly.

OK, I gotta spill the beans at some point. PC Magazine says a Quad costs $7,023 to $9,522!

When I first read this in December, those numbers struck me as very odd, since I had just bought a new Quad for myself, and I didn’t pay anywhere near $7,000-$9,500 for it. The unit I bought was hardly the base model, either: I had paid an extra $350 for the Nvidia GeForce 7800 graphics card with 512MB of VRAM when it became available as an option, and also added $99 for Bluetooth and Airport wireless cards, and I got all this for only $3,448! How is this possible, you ask?

This is a site that’s all about running Macintosh System 7. It reminds me a lot of System 6 Heaven (which is—big surprise—all about Macintosh System 6) but with an actual site design, as opposed to a collection of text-only articles. Either way, check ’em out!

After being part of a Monash University team that developed a plant-made vaccine for Newcastle disease—a virus that affects poultry—Walmsley has turned her attention to growing a bird flu vaccine in tomatoes, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported Wednesday.

She said developing vaccines in tomatoes would allow vaccines to be fed to birds rather than injected.

“We just harvest the fruit, freeze-dry it and there’s your vaccine,” Walmsley told the newspaper. “That would be a lot easier than giving injections—especially for a flock of 5,000 chickens.”

I haven’t really been worried about the whole “bird flu” thing, but this is still interesting.

Alan Moore:

As far I’m concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they’re just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we’re fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn’t a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity.

Alan Moore is one of my favourite writers, and even though I’m very much looking forward to V for Vendetta (as I have been a big fan of the comic), I know that he’s always critical of movies based on his stories. Quite understandibly, though. Still, it’s nice to see him chime in on it, since it looks like it’s going to be the best Alan Moore adaptation to film yet. And I always appreciate his points of view on things.

(Hat tip: David Galbraith)

Most of all the species that have ever existed are extinct and it is certain that human beings will also one day be extinct, or our current cultural history lost through a Dark Age, most probably accelerated by our own doing.

In the spirit of the Internet Archive and the Long Now project, perhaps we should look at mothballing human knowledge somewhere very safe—like on the Moon. A reverse of Arthur C Clarke’s ‘The Sentinel’—where we put a monolith on the Moon for others.

You know, he really needs comments on his site. But this is a subject about which I’ve been thinking for some time now, and I fully agree with him. But I don’t think we should limit ourselves to text-only data, and I think that it should be a mirror, because you don’t want to put all the eggs in one basket, as it were.

I wish I could make up headlines like this.

The Pentagon’s defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.

The idea is to insert micro-systems at the pupa stage, when the insects can integrate them into their body, so they can be remotely controlled later.

Dealing with unrealistic expectations is as much, if not moreso, a part of being a Genius as is general Mac troubleshooting. Customers demand all sorts of things silly, idiotic, or worse. They want special treatment, because they assume none of our other customers have business critical machines. They demand replacements because it’s not reasonable to accept a single hardware failure in a year. They demand on-the-spot replacement of a module that is out-of-stock, and then demand to speak to a manager, as managers are well known for rectally-expelling physical goods on command. When reality sets in that, in fact, a manager’s arse does not house a wormhole to the warehouse on the other side of the continent, they then demand a replacement computer, since “tomorrow” is too long to wait.

EVERMINT MAN: Peanuts? What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Helen?

HELEN: But they’re just peanuts. How bad—

EVERMINT MAN: Elephants eat peanuts. Have you ever smelled an elephant’s breath, Helen? IT’S RANCID!

(Stifling a sob, HELEN returns the peanuts to the shelf.)

EVERMINT MAN: (To camera.) And remember: Evermint—hey!

I sure love McSweeney’s.

It’s so rare, given the basic tenor of most arguments in politics today, but every once in a while someone says something so remarkable that’s it’s worth noting, without any comment at all.

Such a situation took place on March 1st in Annapolis, Maryland, where a hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was taking place.

The far right wing was doing its usual best to frighten, anger, and intimidate the witnesses who dared disagree with them.

Then Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, testified as to why the amendment should not be passed.

At the end of his testimony, one of Maryland’s most insane ultra-far-rightwingers, republican Senator Nancy Jacobs, stood up and shouted: “Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?”

To which Mr. Raskin replied: “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

(Hat tip: Wesa)

62? Holy shit! Well, Sly, here’s to hearing some new shit from you!

Scientists partially restored the vision in blinded hamsters by plugging gaps in their injured brains with a synthetic substance that allowed brain cells to reconnect with one another, a new study reports.

If it can be applied to humans, the microscopic material could one day help restore sensory and motor function to patients suffering from strokes and injuries of the brain or spinal cord. It could also help mend cuts made in the brain during surgery.

“If we can reconnect parts of the brain that were disconnected by a stroke, then we may be able to restore speech to an individual who is able to understand what is said but has lost the ability to speak,” said study team member Rutledge Ellis-Behnke from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The substance contains nano-sized particles that self-assemble into a fibrous mesh that mimics the body’s natural connective tissue when placed in contact with living cells.

If you’ll permit me to say so, it’s about damned time! I mean, come on; some of the best designers in the business are WaSP members, and yet it took them until three months into 2006 to finally get a nice, modern site design? Either way, good job, guys!

OsXBook.com has developed software dubbed “BamBios,” which allows legacy booting of operating systems on Intel-based Macs. A non-EFI version of Linux can be readily booted using BamBios, and developers are excited about the possibilities of using the software to multiboot several operating systems on the new Mac hardware. “Linux works fine, and we have made good progress with booting an unmodified Windows XP installation.” Meanwhile, the “Windows XP on an Intel Mac” contest is boasting a cash prize that has swelled to over $12,500, which may have already been won by one developer. A recent post by a user who is said to be very credible on the “WinXP on Mac” forums has submitted his process to the owners of the site for review, and there is now a thread on the forums asking for testers—three MacBook Pros, three iMacs, and three Mac minis, according to Ars Technica. As yet no definitive evidence has been released to the public that Windows XP is running on an Intel-based Mac, however.

Most predominantly, the filings depict several new Mac OS X Finder interface windows with enhanced Spotlight search capabilities and integration. In one example, Apple software engineers describe a Spotlight “configurable pull down menu” that would reside horizontally between the toolbar and the file listing criteria bar in Finder windows.

Without first entering a Spotlight search term, users would presumably be able to use an initial Spotlight criteria pull down menu to select a search location such as “Local Disks” or “Network Volumes.” Following the user’s selection, the Spotlight pull down interface would then automatically spawn a secondary submenu allowing the user to refine the search by general file types such as “images” or more specific types such as “Photoshop,” “Director,” or “Excel.” Again, users would then be able to further limit their search through a third Spotlight search parameter pull down menu, which would ask for a “last modified date” to be specified, and so forth. The functionality would presumably compliment keyword searches as well.

Within the filings, Apple employees list several alternative Finder interfaces for the enhanced Spotlight integration, described above. Another example anchors a Spotlight “Browse” icon in the Finder window bookmark bar, just above a computer’s hard disk icon. In this example, selecting the Browse icon would spawn a new column view in the Finder window with a vertical listing of sub menus to help users refine their searches.

Another potential Spotlight features described in the filings is a “Recent Searches” option that would appear within the primary Spotlight search interface, located at the far right of the Mac OS X menu bar or in the upper right-hand corner of Finder windows. In the illustrations accompanying the filings, this feature also includes a “Clear Menu” option to erase Spotlight search histories.

Based on the filings, Apple also appear appears to be working on enhancements to Spotlight Smart Folders. One example details “Nested Smart Folders” while another appears to show a Smart Folder that can be assigned an expanded set of Finder view options along the lines of traditional Mac OS X folders.

Perhaps the most promising revelation to come from the filings is a Spotlight-supported Finder feature that would allow Mac OS X users to perform selections from multiple Finder windows simultaneously when organizing or relocating files.

In one example outlined in the filings, Apple engineers show a total of five Mac OS X files being selected simultaneously from three open Finder windows, in addition to a sixth file that resides on a Mac OS X desktop.

The filings also describe a new contextual menu feature that would coincide with the enhanced selection capabilities. After making a multi-window file selection, users would be able to trigger a new contextual menu that would present three functions that could be applied to the selected files in a single operation: “Move to Trash,” “Create a New Folder and Move Items to New Folder,” and “Create a New Folder and Copy Items to New Folder.” The filing explains that the move and copy functions may prompt the user to name new folder being created or create a new folder with a default name such as “untitled folder.”

Click the link for the full article, with pictures.

“It looks like someone may have finally gotten Windows XP booting on an Intel-based Mac. narf2006 posted a series of photos in his Flickr account, showing what appears to be XP Pro booting up on an iMac Core Duo,” Mac on Intel reports. “Some are holding out for verification of this alleged achievement, given the difficulties involved in finding true victory. We will keep everyone posted on the latest surrounding this news.”

“We’re still a little dubious about this one, but word is out that one narf2006 has successfully installed Windows XP on an Intel iMac, has gotten it to boot (despite the EFI issue, and apparently after extensive hacking), and is now asking for volunteers to test his process on other Intel-based Macs. And that last bit is really what has us thinking this may be more than just the latest Photoshop art project,” Marc Perton writes for Engadget.

If the history of life on Earth could be rewound and replayed, many of the same innovations would reappear, although at different times and in slightly different forms.

This is the conclusion of Geerat Vermeij, a paleontologist at the University of California, Davis.

Vermeij’s views imply that evolution is in some ways predictable and that life on other planets might not be so alien after all.

“Some traits are so advantageous under so many circumstances, or arise so relatively easily by virtue of self-organization, that you’re likely to see the same things again and again,” Vermeij told LiveScience.

Among the innovations that evolution might find irresistible: photosynthesis, plant seeds, mineralized bones, intelligence and language.

Apple is now selling what appears to be the first full-length movie on the iTunes Music Store. The movie, however, is not from a major Hollywood studio—“High School Musical” is a made-for-TV Disney Channel original movie. It’s one hour and 40 minutes in length and weighs in at 487MB in file size. Like most videos on iTunes, the movie sells for $1.99.

Update: Following its $1.99 debut on the iTunes Music Store, High School Musical has been repriced at $9.99, and apparently can no longer be found via the Search feature on the Store. This link continues to work.

Currently, it can take about 40 minutes to relay information from a Mars rover to a NASA scientist—a rather amazing feat, considering the data has between 100 million and 400 million kilometers to travel.

But to Adrian Hooke, that’s still too long to wait.

Hooke, manager of data-standards programs at NASA, says it is technically possible to build a system allowing for interactive communication between humans and machines about as far away as the moon. Meanwhile, across greater distances in space, researchers are finding ways to maintain dialogs despite frequent disruptions.

“There isn’t a lot of interaction in interplanetary communications… Everything tends to be done in a store-and-forward mode,” said Hooke. “We’re extending internet-like communications into highly disrupted, highly stressed communications environments.”

Forget the world wide web. Through a project called the interplanetary internet, Hooke and networking guru Vint Cerf, co-creator the internet’s TCP/IP protocol, have been working for the past six years to develop a standard for communicating in disconnected environments, where an uninterrupted two-way dialog isn’t possible. The approach is called delay-tolerant networking and relies on communications technologies designed for use in remote places like deep beneath the sea or out in space.

Me, I want a .mars top-level domain.

Pieces of a comet returned to Earth by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft apparently formed near the Sun or around another star altogether before being flung to the outer edges of the Solar System, mission scientists said Monday.

Researchers studying samples of Comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt 2”) embedded in Stardust’s gel-filled collector found that the minerals formed under extremely high temperatures—such as those near a star—and not in the frigid cold expected at the Solar System’s edge, where most short-term comets originate.

At Tenebraex, we are developing software and prototypes to help you do just that. Today, most people carry a cell phone with a camera in it. With an eyePilot-enabled phone, you will able to easily and unobtrusively use your cell phone’s camera to tell you the actual color of the objects around you… like that tie in the store or the routes on that subway map.

While to the rest of the world it looks like you are sending a text message or looking at your calendar, the eyePilot software will show you an image from your camera with a crosshair superimposed on it. Whatever object you place in that crosshair, eyePilot will tell you what color it is! Simple, practical and discrete.

I’m not colourblind myself, but I’ve always felt sorry for those who are. Things like this are definitely good to see.

The group of 17 men, women and children emerged from the scrubby forests of western Paraguay in 2004 in search of water. Colonists had penetrated their remote forest home and were using the permanent waterholes for their cattle, thus preventing the Indians [sic] from making use of them.

The group are the close relatives of other Totobiegosode Indians forced out of the forest in two controversial incidents, in 1979 and 1986. On both occasions missionaries of the New Tribes Mission assisted in the contact expeditions; several Ayoreo died as a result of these encounters.

Visits to the most recently-contacted group, who have now returned to the forest and are living with other Ayoreo in a newly-established community called Chaidi, are supposed to be closely regulated to avoid the Indians catching diseases to which they have no immunity. But the NTM recently confirmed that, “Each week missionary John Keefe and two Ayore [sic] men go to Chaidi to teach evangelistic Bible lessons to a group of Ayores [sic] who emerged from the jungle in March 2004.”

“As John taught about the Ten Commandments he held up a mirror, showing the Ayores how he could look into it and see himself. Then he took mud and spread it all over his face. The people thought it was hilarious, but John brought out the seriousness of the lesson. He told them how, in the mirror, he could see the dirt all over his face and that God’s Law was like a mirror. It showed people how they are dirty (sinful) before God.”

This just pisses me off. I mean, really, what the hell is wrong with these people? Is nothing sacred anymore? Do we have to kill off every link we have to prehistory? When will we, as a species, finally grow up? (Hat tip: Warren Ellis)

Since February 2002, Milosevic had been on trial for war crimes on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

He suffered a heart condition and high blood pressure, which had repeatedly interrupted his trial. The hearings were entering the final phase, with arguments expected to wrap up within a few months.

His was the second death within a week at the UN detention center in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague. Former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, serving 13 years for crimes against humanity, committed suicide in his cell last weekend.

Milosevic led Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, into four Balkan wars, including the 1992–95 Bosnia war, in which 200,000 people died.

He was accused of overseeing the systematic killing of about 8,000 men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, the worst massacre on European soil since the Second World War.

Opposition MPs blasted Stephen Harper on Thursday for his refusal to co-operate with the federal ethics commissioner, with one MP threatening to hold the prime minister in contempt.

“Let’s not mince words. The prime minister is being an absolute hypocrite over this whole issue,” NDP MP Pat Martin said on Thursday in Ottawa.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter discusses Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to co-operate with the ethics commissioner. “If he won’t comply with the ethics commissioner’s inquiry, I’d be prepared to table a motion to see the prime minister in contempt.”

This is why I wasn’t particularly worried when the Tories won in January.

The promise of data mining is compelling, and convinces many. But it’s wrong. We’re not going to find terrorist plots through systems like this, and we’re going to waste valuable resources chasing down false alarms. To understand why, we have to look at the economics of the system.

Security is always a trade-off, and for a system to be worthwhile, the advantages have to be greater than the disadvantages. A national security data-mining program is going to find some percentage of real attacks and some percentage of false alarms. If the benefits of finding and stopping those attacks outweigh the cost—in money, liberties, etc.—then the system is a good one. If not, you’d be better off spending that capital elsewhere.

Data mining works best when you’re searching for a well-defined profile, a reasonable number of attacks per year and a low cost of false alarms. Credit-card fraud is one of data mining’s success stories: all credit-card companies mine their transaction databases for data for spending patterns that indicate a stolen card.

Many credit-card thieves share a pattern—purchase expensive luxury goods, purchase things that can be easily fenced, etc.—and data mining systems can minimize the losses in many cases by shutting down the card. In addition, the cost of false alarms is only a phone call to the cardholder asking him to verify a couple of purchases. The cardholders don’t even resent these phone calls—as long as they’re infrequent—so the cost is just a few minutes of operator time.

Terrorist plots are different. There is no well-defined profile and attacks are very rare. Taken together, these facts mean that data-mining systems won’t uncover any terrorist plots until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless.

Some people are naturally graceful on the dance floor, while others seem burdened by two inept left feet. Blame it on the Ice Age.

According to new research, the ability to dance may have been a factor in survival for our prehistoric ancestors, who used their moves to bond and communicate with each other when times were tough.

A study published in a recent issue of the Public Library of Science’s genetics journal, suggests that, as a result, today’s creative dancers actually share two specific genes. Both genes are associated with a predisposition for being good social communicators.

Scientists believe this gave early humans who were well coordinated and rhythmic a distinct evolutionary advantage.

The color of Pluto’s two recently discovered satellites are essentially the same neutral color as Pluto’s large moon, Charon, scientists said Friday.

Charon’s surface is known to consist primarily of water ice, so the similar colors of P1 and P2 suggests that these moons have water ice surfaces, too.

The finding supports the theory that all three of Pluto’s moons were formed from a single giant impact that took place about 4.6 billion years ago. Recent observations about the orbital motions of Pluto’s recently discovered moons, P1 and P2, also support this theory.

“Everything now makes even more sense,” said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). “If all three satellites presumably formed from the same material lofted into orbit around Pluto from a giant impact, you might well expect the surfaces of all three satellites to have similar colors.”

Microsoft has been desperate to claim the living-room as its trophy wife, but a series of attempts to nail the Media Center concept have largely failed. Noisy PCs with fans blaring don’t really appeal to many of us.

After a hard day at work, slaving in the sickly glow of an Excel spreadsheet, the last thing you want to do when you get home is run a spyware removal tool and edit the registry before you can get Shrek to play. Still, Microsoft was the only real option last year.

Ain’t that the truth?

For video iPod owners, recording using Miglia’s EyeTV2 is nothing short of a revelation. Not only can you schedule and record live TV, but you can save it in a format that is used by the video iPod. It’s a very smart solution for any commuter who wants to catch up on their favourite shows on the train to work. Microsoft Media Center can’t export video in an iPod format.

Ding DING! We’ve reached the end of round one, and the Microsoft Media Center is already panting in the corner of the ring. The Mac Mini automatically recognised the LCD TV we’re using, and the third-party tuner was similarly straightforward to set up. Compared to the hours we’ve spent coaxing similar results out of some Microsoft Media Center systems, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.

It can’t be understated how frustrating it can potentially be to get a Media Center PC to communicate with a TV. It’s easy for the technical-minded to overlook this simple fact, but anyone who is used to a DVD or video recorder ‘just working’ will find that Media Center PCs are sometimes not an easy alternative. Several systems get it right, but many have problems. The Evesham Mini PC, for example, worked well straight out of the box—just like the Mac Mini does. But this is often not the case. We can’t count the number of times we’ve had to plug in a regular screen and tweak monitor settings.

Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. But in Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world’s highest, officials are worried about a recent spate of such deaths.

A record 91 people died in 34 internet-linked suicide cases in Japan in 2005, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, the National Police Agency reported last month. The number of internet suicide pacts has almost tripled from 2003, when the agency began keeping records.

I first became aware of this phenomenon after watching Suicide Club a few years ago and learning that large amounts of people were actually doing that sort of thing in Japan, even more than in other countries. It would be interesting to find out what sorts of correlations there are to Japan’s high suicide rate. My bet would be that it’s a result of high population density, ultra-capitalistic society, high unemployment rate, and cultural tendencies.

The $450 million spacecraft, aimed at tracking Mars’ watery past and hunting for landing sites to aid future missions, entered orbit at about 4:24 p.m. EST (21:24 GMT) today after firing six main engines to slow itself from an 11,000 mile (17,702 kilometer) per hour gait.

“Today was picture perfect,” said James Graf, NASA’s MRO project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a post-orbital arrival mission briefing. “I thought today was a simulation because we came so close to being right on.”

Jacob Citrin was once employed by International Airport Centers and given a laptop to use in his company’s real estate related business. The work consisted of identifying “potential acquisition targets.”

At some point, Citrin quit IAC and decided to continue in the same business for himself, a choice that IAC claims violated his employment contract.

Normally that would have been a routine business dispute. But the twist came when Citrin dutifully returned his work laptop–and IAC tried to undelete files on it to prove he did something wrong.

IAC couldn’t. It turned out that (again according to IAC) Citrin had used a “secure delete” program to make sure that the files were not just deleted, but overwritten and unrecoverable.

In most operating systems, of course, when a file is deleted only the reference to it in the directory structure disappears. The data remains on the hard drive.

But a wealth of programs like PGP, open-source programs such as Wipe, and a built-in feature in Apple Computer’s OS X called Secure Empty Trash will make sure the information has truly vanished.

Inevitably, perhaps, IAC sued. The relevance for Police Blotter readers is that the company claimed that Citrin’s alleged secure deletion violated a federal computer crime law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

That law says whoever “knowingly causes damage without authorization” to a networked computer can be held civilly and criminally liable.

The 7th Circuit made two remarkable leaps. First, the judges said that deleting files from a laptop counts as “damage.” Second, they ruled that Citrin’s implicit “authorization” evaporated when he (again, allegedly) chose to go into business for himself and violate his employment contract.

The implications of this decision are broad. It effectively says that employees better not use OS X’s Secure Empty Trash feature, or any similar utility, because they could face civil and criminal charges after they leave their job.

Stop the presses! Zeldman’s moved to WordPress! As he wrote recently on his website:

With a book half-written, two conferences looming, and waves of client work smashing the levees, it seemed a good time to change hosts and funnel this old hand-tooled site into a modern content management system.

Amazing. Zeldman. WordPress. Who’d have thought…?

A few months after researchers on one team thought they had discovered a new family of rodent, another group snatched their glory by identifying the critter as a member of a family thought long extinct.

Last year scientists described the body of a squirrel-like rodent found for sale in a meat market in Laos. They believed it belonged to a previously undescribed family and named it Laonastes aenigmamus.

But they failed to fully inspect the fossil record. Upon closer analysis of the creature’s teeth, a second group of researchers determined it was a member of the previously known rodent family Diatomyidae.

So a family thought to have died out 11 million years ago is still alive and kicking, the scientists report in the March 10 issue of the journal Science.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus may have pockets of liquid water lurking beneath its surface, feeding great jets that spew from the satellite and hinting at the possibility of a habitable environment, researchers said Thursday.

Observations from the Cassini spacecraft currently studying Saturn and its myriad moons shows Enceladus, one of the brightest objects in the Solar System, to be a geologist’s dream, with an active plume spewing water and other material spaceward, as well as a hot spot of thermal activity at its south pole.

“This finding has substantially broadened the range of environments in the solar system that might support living organisms, and it doesn’t get any more significant than that,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “I’d say we’ve just hit the ball right out of the park.”

Upon calling the credit card company, Booth was told that Homeland Security would not allow her to make two payments from two different sources in the same day.

Booth was then slapped with the $140 overcharge for causing the hard working boys at Homeland so much inconvenience.

This is a monumental waste of time and if there were any real terrorists out there Homeland Security is more interested in your spending habits than Al-Qaeda.

Researchers from the University of Chicago analyzed the genomes of 209 unrelated individuals from three distinct human populations: East Asians, Europeans and Yorubans from Nigeria. Each population contained roughly 250 positively selected genes; however, most of the affected genes differed depending on the group.

“This study addresses the question ‘Are humans still evolving?’, and the answer is ‘Absolutely.’”

A commercial from Japan about a new drink. It must be seen to be believed.

Click the link to see the full comic.