Words to the wise on the Web
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once quipped that though he couldn't define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. Will filtering software ever have it that easy? Not anytime soon, and not without a lot of human intervention, according to language expert Geoffrey Nunberg. The Internet is too vast and diverse, and the applications too indiscriminate in their quest for the obscene and the pornographic, he says. But Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University -- and until last year, a principal scientist at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center -- wouldn't want to do away with the software, so long as people recognize its limitations. Indeed, he's given a portion of his wordsmithing career to developing software that makes sense of written material.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-957333.html?tag=fd_nc_1
Mozilla rising
Netscape is right to have high hopes for the new Navigator. Version 7.0 is a fine browser; it's as stable and reliable as Internet Explorer, it renders pages just as quickly, and they all seem to work as they ought to. But the browser's best new features, like faster HTML rendering and "tabbed browsing," aren't exactly novel -- they've been available in Mozilla, the open-source browser upon which Netscape is based, for some time. Under Netscape's development model, its programmers work on code for Mozilla, and only after a new version of Mozilla has been determined "stable" is it re-branded and released as a Netscape product. This development system has some benefits, but it's got one big drawback: It ensures that Netscape is always behind Mozilla, releasing features that the open-source browser had months before.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ars/index.html
E-Legal: Should Court Records Be Available on the Internet?
Historically, "openness" has been a guiding principle of the judicial system in the United States. Yet, as courts enter the age of the Internet, certain pluses and minuses of openness emerge. On the one hand, placing court records on the Internet makes them more widely available and easier to obtain. On the other hand, Internet-accessible court records facilitates disclosure of sensitive and personally identifiable information about people involved in court proceedings. Striking the proper balance between public disclosure and protecting privacy rights will be a challenge going forward.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1030821183740
Sonicblue, Intel tout mini video player
Consumer-electronics maker Sonicblue will team with chipmaker Intel to develop a portable video player that can download files from ReplayTV digital video recorders and PCs. The companies demonstrated a prototype of the device at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif., on Monday. The ReplayTV Portable Video Player, which will begin selling next year, will use hardware and software developed by Intel's Emerging Platforms Lab and designed for use with an Intel XScale processor. The device will come with a 4-inch screen and a hard drive of at least 40GB. "We're attempting to reduce the risk and speed up and help validate the market for a PVP," Intel spokesman Ken Salzberg said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957228.html?tag=cd_mh
Thin Line Splits Cheating, Smarts
Most teachers wouldn't be surprised to hear that students have bribed friends or siblings to do their homework in exchange for a few bucks. What might surprise them is that Google Answers sometimes takes school kids up on the offer. Staffed by a cadre of 500-plus freelance researchers, the service takes people's questions -- for example, a calculus problem or a term paper topic -- and provides answers and links to information. Google charges a listing fee of 50 cents and, if someone comes up with a satisfactory response, the user pays that researcher a previously entered bid (minimum: $2). Although Google Answers has a policy encouraging students to use the service as a study aid rather than a substitution for original work, several cases show that students often ignore this advice.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54963,00.html
Got Cheaters? Ask New Questions
Jamie McKenzie has spent his whole career trying to get schools "to ask better questions." But now that he preaches better questions as an antidote for rampant Internet plagiarism, a lot more teachers are listening. In the professional development seminars he gives, McKenzie said, 60 to 80 percent of teachers cite cases of plagiarism in their classrooms. A more formal study, conducted by a professor at Rutgers University, found that more than half of high school kids "have engaged in some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the Internet." According to McKenzie, however, students aren't solely to blame for this trend.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54996,00.html
Lighting Up Fetal Brain Activity
A device called SARA can detect and record fetal brain activity. That is a milestone for pediatrics, but the machine's most valuable feature lies in its potential to help reduce the number of children born with brain damage. SARA, which stands for SQUID Array for Reproductive Assessment (SQUID, in turn, is shorthand for Superconducting Quantum Interference Device), uses a superconductor and pick-up coils cooled by liquid helium to detect tiny fluctuations in magnetic fields. With SARA, doctors can measure how long the fetus takes to respond to light stimuli and so glean more information about the fetus' health.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,54944,00.html
Study: Humans Not Fit for Cloning
A new study on cloning shows more than ever it's probably a very bad idea to replicate human beings. The study, performed by researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston, found that cloning to create new animals will almost always create an abnormal creature. Rudolf Jaenisch and his colleagues report that the cloning process jeopardizes the integrity of an animal's entire genetic make-up in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers looked at 10,000 genes, making it the largest study of its kind. A preliminary study of just 12 genes -- as well as circumstantial evidence such as Dolly the cloned sheep's arthritis and various clone stillbirths, early aging and other health problems -- had already suggested problems with cloning.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,55043,00.html
Intel to make hacker-resistant chips
Intel Corp. next year plans to build special security features into its microprocessor chips for the first time, a move designed to address problems such as computer viruses and tampering by malicious hackers. The technology, dubbed LaGrande, could become a factor in a widening debate over how to prevent personal-computer users from unauthorized copying of digital information, such as movies or music. Intel has generally been critical of attempts by Hollywood to mandate content-protection technology, though longtime partner Microsoft Corp. has been adding such features to its software.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/806011.asp?0si=-
Administration Pares Cyber-Security Plan
As the White House moves to finalize a national plan to better secure cyberspace, high-tech firms and other companies are continuing a furious campaign to have some recommendations struck from the document. The administration no longer plans to recommend that Internet service providers such as America Online, MSN and EarthLink bundle firewall and other security technology with their software. Instead, it will ask ISPs to "make it easier" for home users to get access to such protections. It also does not plan to recommend that a privacy czar be appointed to oversee how companies make use of their customers' personal information, according to several people involved in drafting the document.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2002Sep9.html
Moon opens for business
The first private Moon landing has finally been given the green light by the US Government. TransOrbital of California has become the first private company in the history of spaceflight to gain approval from the US authorities to explore, photograph and land on the moon. The US State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have granted it permission to send its TrailBlazer spacecraft into lunar orbit. The launch is set for June 2003 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The decision to let TransOrbital launch its lunar mission could spell the beginning of the commercialisation of the Moon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2249064.stm
Genetic modification alters hair colour
Shuttling genes into hair follicles can alter hair colour, scientists have shown for the first time. The experiments on mice also suggest genetic modification treatments for hair loss will be possible in future. Closer to reality is the prospect of restoring colour to greying hair. But it will be some years before the pioneering work that has given mice shocks of gaudy green hair reaches the salon. "They're punk mice, you could say," jokes Ronald Hoffman, head of the team which developed the mice with green hair at AntiCancer, a Californian biotech company based in San Diego. But he warns that the breakthrough is very much a first step, and that genes to treat baldness cannot be delivered in the same way until someone identifies them. Candidates include the genes that suppress the overproduction of the "superandrogen", dihydrotestosterone. This hormone is also implicated in acne, which in theory could also be helped by the new approach.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992774
Single atom memory device stores data
A workable atomic memory that uses individual atoms to store information has been developed by physicists for the first time. "The difference between a one and a zero is represented by a single atom," says Franz Himpsel of the University of Wisconsin. Current hard drives use millions of atoms to store each individual bit of information. In contrast, the new system could be used to squeeze millions of times more data on to a disk of comparable size. This represents a density equivalent to 250 terabits of data per square inch, although only a few dozen bits were actually stored in the demonstration. The atomic memory drive mimics a conventional hard drive, meaning it can be formatted and data could be written to it and read from it.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992775
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