P2P-Zone - View Single Post - The Newspaper Shop -- Thursday edition

walktalker · 12-07-01, 05:38 PM

Ashcroft Terrified by Terrorism
It's been just one month since Timothy McVeigh was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and U.S. officials are trying to prevent similar disasters. At a government summit on Wednesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that thwarting terrorist attacks was his "number-one priority" and that the Feds were stepping up efforts to guard against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Ashcroft said the Justice Department was already planning for 2003 an exercise called "TOPOFF2" -- which stands for "top officials" -- involving simulated attacks carried out with no notice against American cities.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45159,00.html

Huge Genetic Variation Found
The notion of a uniform genetic blueprint for human beings took a tumble on Thursday, as the most detailed examination yet of variations in the genetic makeup of people detected unexpectedly large individual differences. Researchers with Genaissance Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, Connecticut, found astonishing variance at the genetic level in 82 unrelated people primarily from four racial backgrounds -- white, black, Asian and Hispanic.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45214,00.html

IBM's Eliza Is Here to Serve You
IBM announced on Thursday the release of software that intends to replace humans on perennially understaffed computer help desks. The software, called Virtual Help Desk, incorporates an artificial intelligence component that can understand complaints in normal prose -- typed, not spoken -- and fix the problem, said John Richards of IBM's eBusiness support division. IBM bills the program as a "self-help, self-healing and self-diagnostic" tool, released as part of its ongoing "autonomic" computing technology billed under the name Project eLiza.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45210,00.html

Judge Grants E-Books Status
In a victory for authors and electronic publishers, a federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction by Random House to stop e-publisher RosettaBooks from releasing e-books of eight titles on Random's backlist. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled that contracts for the titles were signed prior to the advent of electronic publishing, and therefore didn't stipulate e-rights to the publisher. Stein found "that the right to 'print, publish and sell the works(s) in book form' in the contracts at issue does not include the right to publish the works in the format that has come to be known as the e-book."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45193,00.html

Searching: 'Little Green Men'
Seven years after members of Congress rejected research into extraterrestrial life as a search for "little green men," lawmakers encouraged scientists in their efforts to find life beyond the Earth. "The discovery of life in the universe would be one of the most astounding discoveries in human history," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Thursday at a hearing of the House space science subcommittee. "Funding should match public interest and I don't believe it does."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45203,00.html

Stem Cell Furor Heats Up
Researchers in the field weren't surprised at the news that reproduction scientists created hundreds of embryos solely to derive stem cells. Many assumed it was done fairly often, even though -- researchers have long maintained -- plenty of embryos are left over and frozen every day as a result of in vitro fertilization. But no one had solid proof that embryos were created for utilitarian purposes until researchers at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine published a paper Wednesday stating they had done just that.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45179,00.html

What's the Time? Ask a Scientist
Using sophisticated laser technology and a lone atom of mercury, U.S. government scientists have created the world's most precise clock -- a device that tick-tocks circles around the best previous timepieces, according to research published on Thursday. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, developed a new type of atomic clock that produces about 1 quadrillion "ticks" per second and promises to be far more accurate than the current top standard in time measurement -- cesium-based microwave atomic clocks.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45200,00.html

Harley Unveils a Real Fast One
Harley-Davidson has a radically new horse in its stable for the first time in almost half a century. It's not your father's hog -- this Harley focuses on performance and speed and its faster engine doesn't have that signature Harley "potato, potato, potato" rumble. The new bike, the V-Rod, moves faster because it has a liquid-cooled engine instead of an air-cooled version. Unlike Harley's other families of bikes, whose top horsepower is 101, the V-Rod features a 115 horsepower engine and boasts a top speed of 140 miles per hour.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45213,00.html

Pick a Song, Any Song
Digital music has grown from a small pizza party in San Diego into a worldwide PC phenomenon in just four years. The next step is to make the party mobile. The fourth MP3 Summit -– a yearly conference that examines the coming trends in digital music –- will examine new technologies that mobilize music stores on PCs. The concept of moving music away from the computer is the next front in the digital music revolution. But talk of such high ideas as beaming songs to consumers often brings up an industry joke about how one day music will be mobilized and digitized. The punch line, of course, is that radio and CDs already take care of that.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45094,00.html

Congressional hearings focus on Whois
The launch of seven new top-level domains is again highlighting concerns about the thoroughness and privacy of publicly searchable databases. Whois, a database that contains personal contact information of people who register Web sites, is the subject of an oversight hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Thursday. People representing privacy groups, trademark holders, copyright owners and software makers will testify before the committee, which is using the event as a fact-finding mission. There is no specific Whois-related legislation planned. Copyright and trademark holders say a thorough, accurate database is necessary to pursue people who pirate their works and post them for free on the Web. But privacy advocates worry that a single, centralized system makes it easier for everyone from marketers to stalkers to abuse people's privacy rights.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...094032,00.html

Dick Armey and ACLU team to protest video surveillance
House Majority Leader Dick Armey teamed up with a prominent civil-rights group Wednesday to protest surveillance systems that match faces of people on the street with a database of known criminals. The Texas republican and the American Civil Liberties Union urged local governments to avoid such systems, saying they failed to curb crime and invaded privacy. Tampa, Florida, currently uses such a “biometric” system, and Virginia Beach plans to install one as well. The state of Colorado is to begin issuing driver’s licenses only after sorting through a photographic database of existing licenses.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/599251.asp

Through the Looking Glass, to Holographic Data Storage
Storage space is tight these days, and not just in cramped New York apartments. Home dwellers anywhere might be delighted to stow the 10 years' worth of receipts, canceled checks and tax records clogging their files in a space no bigger than an ice cube. Hospitals, insurance companies, banks and department stores might also appreciate storage that compact for their vast databases. Now two researchers from Canada and Spain have devised a glass-based material that they say may one day safely store huge amounts of data in just such small spaces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/te...ts/12NEXT.html

UK manufacturer launches stool-sampling cyberjohn
UK toilet manufacturer Twyford yesterday placed the humble bog at the cutting edge of 21st century crappercraft with the world's first e-enabled health-monitoring cyberloo. The company describes the Versatile Interactive Pan (VIP) as a "major breakthrough" in toilet technology. The designer dunny incorporates a voice-activated seat and autoflush, but also boasts the abilty to monitor stools and urine for potential health problems. Should the VIP detect that your motions are not all they should be, it will contact your GP via the Internet. Or, if you're simply getting a bit loose down there, it will order extra roughage from your supermarket.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/20340.html

Tackling Puzzles PC by PCInside a country inn at the base of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, a handful of home computers belonging to innkeeper Michael Kelly are whirring away on one of the gargantuan problems of modern medicine. Kelly's five PCs are using their excess computing power to analyze hundreds of millions of genes to understand their role in diseases such as AIDS and cancer. On a good day, he can plod through eight or nine genes -- a rate that would allow him to finish in a few eons. But joining Kelly's humble computers are 10,000 other PCs scattered around the globe that have been woven together over the Internet into a makeshift supercomputer.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...076jul12.story

More news later on

12-07-01, 05:38 PM	#2
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Ashcroft Terrified by Terrorism It's been just one month since Timothy McVeigh was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and U.S. officials are trying to prevent similar disasters. At a government summit on Wednesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that thwarting terrorist attacks was his "number-one priority" and that the Feds were stepping up efforts to guard against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Ashcroft said the Justice Department was already planning for 2003 an exercise called "TOPOFF2" -- which stands for "top officials" -- involving simulated attacks carried out with no notice against American cities. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45159,00.html Huge Genetic Variation Found The notion of a uniform genetic blueprint for human beings took a tumble on Thursday, as the most detailed examination yet of variations in the genetic makeup of people detected unexpectedly large individual differences. Researchers with Genaissance Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, Connecticut, found astonishing variance at the genetic level in 82 unrelated people primarily from four racial backgrounds -- white, black, Asian and Hispanic. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45214,00.html IBM's Eliza Is Here to Serve You IBM announced on Thursday the release of software that intends to replace humans on perennially understaffed computer help desks. The software, called Virtual Help Desk, incorporates an artificial intelligence component that can understand complaints in normal prose -- typed, not spoken -- and fix the problem, said John Richards of IBM's eBusiness support division. IBM bills the program as a "self-help, self-healing and self-diagnostic" tool, released as part of its ongoing "autonomic" computing technology billed under the name Project eLiza. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45210,00.html Judge Grants E-Books Status In a victory for authors and electronic publishers, a federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction by Random House to stop e-publisher RosettaBooks from releasing e-books of eight titles on Random's backlist. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled that contracts for the titles were signed prior to the advent of electronic publishing, and therefore didn't stipulate e-rights to the publisher. Stein found "that the right to 'print, publish and sell the works(s) in book form' in the contracts at issue does not include the right to publish the works in the format that has come to be known as the e-book." http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,45193,00.html Searching: 'Little Green Men' Seven years after members of Congress rejected research into extraterrestrial life as a search for "little green men," lawmakers encouraged scientists in their efforts to find life beyond the Earth. "The discovery of life in the universe would be one of the most astounding discoveries in human history," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Thursday at a hearing of the House space science subcommittee. "Funding should match public interest and I don't believe it does." http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45203,00.html Stem Cell Furor Heats Up Researchers in the field weren't surprised at the news that reproduction scientists created hundreds of embryos solely to derive stem cells. Many assumed it was done fairly often, even though -- researchers have long maintained -- plenty of embryos are left over and frozen every day as a result of in vitro fertilization. But no one had solid proof that embryos were created for utilitarian purposes until researchers at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine published a paper Wednesday stating they had done just that. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45179,00.html What's the Time? Ask a Scientist Using sophisticated laser technology and a lone atom of mercury, U.S. government scientists have created the world's most precise clock -- a device that tick-tocks circles around the best previous timepieces, according to research published on Thursday. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, developed a new type of atomic clock that produces about 1 quadrillion "ticks" per second and promises to be far more accurate than the current top standard in time measurement -- cesium-based microwave atomic clocks. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,45200,00.html Harley Unveils a Real Fast One Harley-Davidson has a radically new horse in its stable for the first time in almost half a century. It's not your father's hog -- this Harley focuses on performance and speed and its faster engine doesn't have that signature Harley "potato, potato, potato" rumble. The new bike, the V-Rod, moves faster because it has a liquid-cooled engine instead of an air-cooled version. Unlike Harley's other families of bikes, whose top horsepower is 101, the V-Rod features a 115 horsepower engine and boasts a top speed of 140 miles per hour. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45213,00.html Pick a Song, Any Song Digital music has grown from a small pizza party in San Diego into a worldwide PC phenomenon in just four years. The next step is to make the party mobile. The fourth MP3 Summit -– a yearly conference that examines the coming trends in digital music –- will examine new technologies that mobilize music stores on PCs. The concept of moving music away from the computer is the next front in the digital music revolution. But talk of such high ideas as beaming songs to consumers often brings up an industry joke about how one day music will be mobilized and digitized. The punch line, of course, is that radio and CDs already take care of that. http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,45094,00.html Congressional hearings focus on Whois The launch of seven new top-level domains is again highlighting concerns about the thoroughness and privacy of publicly searchable databases. Whois, a database that contains personal contact information of people who register Web sites, is the subject of an oversight hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Thursday. People representing privacy groups, trademark holders, copyright owners and software makers will testify before the committee, which is using the event as a fact-finding mission. There is no specific Whois-related legislation planned. Copyright and trademark holders say a thorough, accurate database is necessary to pursue people who pirate their works and post them for free on the Web. But privacy advocates worry that a single, centralized system makes it easier for everyone from marketers to stalkers to abuse people's privacy rights. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...094032,00.html Dick Armey and ACLU team to protest video surveillance House Majority Leader Dick Armey teamed up with a prominent civil-rights group Wednesday to protest surveillance systems that match faces of people on the street with a database of known criminals. The Texas republican and the American Civil Liberties Union urged local governments to avoid such systems, saying they failed to curb crime and invaded privacy. Tampa, Florida, currently uses such a “biometric” system, and Virginia Beach plans to install one as well. The state of Colorado is to begin issuing driver’s licenses only after sorting through a photographic database of existing licenses. http://www.msnbc.com/news/599251.asp Through the Looking Glass, to Holographic Data Storage Storage space is tight these days, and not just in cramped New York apartments. Home dwellers anywhere might be delighted to stow the 10 years' worth of receipts, canceled checks and tax records clogging their files in a space no bigger than an ice cube. Hospitals, insurance companies, banks and department stores might also appreciate storage that compact for their vast databases. Now two researchers from Canada and Spain have devised a glass-based material that they say may one day safely store huge amounts of data in just such small spaces. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/12/te...ts/12NEXT.html UK manufacturer launches stool-sampling cyberjohn UK toilet manufacturer Twyford yesterday placed the humble bog at the cutting edge of 21st century crappercraft with the world's first e-enabled health-monitoring cyberloo. The company describes the Versatile Interactive Pan (VIP) as a "major breakthrough" in toilet technology. The designer dunny incorporates a voice-activated seat and autoflush, but also boasts the abilty to monitor stools and urine for potential health problems. Should the VIP detect that your motions are not all they should be, it will contact your GP via the Internet. Or, if you're simply getting a bit loose down there, it will order extra roughage from your supermarket. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/20340.html Tackling Puzzles PC by PCInside a country inn at the base of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, a handful of home computers belonging to innkeeper Michael Kelly are whirring away on one of the gargantuan problems of modern medicine. Kelly's five PCs are using their excess computing power to analyze hundreds of millions of genes to understand their role in diseases such as AIDS and cancer. On a good day, he can plod through eight or nine genes -- a rate that would allow him to finish in a few eons. But joining Kelly's humble computers are 10,000 other PCs scattered around the globe that have been woven together over the Internet into a makeshift supercomputer. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...076jul12.story More news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies