Debugging

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:51:37 GMT

Oh, what fun. I actually was trying to find inspiration for my ceramics project, and I thought maybe an oversized computer part would be cool. Next thing I know, I've ripped an old laptop to shreds, and it's all over my desk. LOL!

Here is a funny picture I took:

code fixed... now it actually works.

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:42:44 GMT

1. Go to a website with graphics (Google, CNN, weather.com, etc - does NOT work on LJ)
2. Delete everything in the address bar and paste this:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

3. Hit enter. Funny!!

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:44:16 GMT

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:28:36 GMT

This is pretty darn cool!

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:19:07 GMT

(12:17:07) AOL System Msg: Your screen name (cmobrien) is now signed into AOL(R) Instant Messenger (TM) in 2 locations. To sign off the other location(s), reply to this message with the number 1. Click here for more information.
(12:17:42) cmobrien:1
(12:17:42) AOL System Msg: Your other AIM sessions have been signed-off. You are now signed-on from 1 location(s).

silly funnies

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:46:06 GMT

To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password.

Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
"No" or "Linux" is the answer.

Linux don't need no steenkin' viruses. The users can destroy the system all by themselves.

Microsoft -- because God hates us.

The *REAL* Y2K is the year 2048.

Favorite MAC error message: "Not enough memory to eject disk!"

Well, there's a quantum computer that can factor 15, so those of you using 4-bit RSA should worry.

The BeOS takes the best features from the major operating systems. It's got the power and flexibility of Unix, the interface and ease of use of the MacOS, and Minesweeper from Windows.

Why do geeks think Halloween and Christmas occur on the same day?
Because 31oct = 25dec!

The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9. - Erwin Dietrich

99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
101 little bugs in the code....

An old IBM commercial with MAS*H characters - hehe!

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 19:06:26 GMT

COOL!

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:01:27 GMT

Dell user paid to uninstall Windows XP
By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News website

A Sheffield man has won a refund from Dell for not installing Microsoft's Windows XP on a laptop he bought from the PC giant.

Freelance programmer Dave Mitchell ordered a Dell laptop on 21 October, and the machine was delivered a few days later.

As Mr Mitchell was planning to run the Linux open source operating system on the machine, he had no need for the copy of Windows XP Home that had been pre-installed.

When he started it for the first time, he clicked the box that said "no" on the Windows licence agreement that asked him to agree to its terms. The text of this agreement states users can get a refund for the "unused products" on their new computer if they get in touch with the machine's manufacturer.

Cash back

Mr Mitchell, who is an active member of the open source community, said he knew that other Linux fans had tried to get refunds in a similar fashion with varying degrees of success.

The origins of this campaign date from 1999 when open source activists in the San Francisco area started campaigning to get refunds for software they had no intention of using.

Every time a computer-maker, such as Dell, sells a PC or laptop they must pay Microsoft for the copy of the Windows operating system installed on it. While many PCs are now sold with a customer's choice of operating system installed, no laptop-makers yet offer the option of anything but Windows, said Mr Mitchell.

To bolster his case, Mr Mitchell shot photographs of every stage of the process that ended with him declining Microsoft's licence terms.

"I had a clear record of what the licence did or did not say," he said.

"I fully intended to take it as far as the small claims court," he said, "just to be bloody-minded."

He then wrote a letter, outlining what he had done, to Dell's Bracknell office and waited for a response. In the letter he did not mention his digital document of the process with photographs.

"I assumed that would come out when it came to the small claims court," he told the BBC News website.

However, two days later, Dell rang him and told him to expect a refund to his credit card soon after.

"They only took two days to respond," he said. "I was pretty gob-smacked that it was so easy."

The total refund was for £55.23, which Mr Mitchell took to be the value of a pre-installed version of Windows XP Home.

A couple of days after the refund was agreed, an invoice from Dell arrived through the post, which described the refund as "goodwill unspecified".

Although Mr Mitchell has now waived the right to use the copy of Windows XP Home on his laptop, Dell has not asked for the installation disc to be returned.

"I've cost Dell £50, not Microsoft, which is a slightly annoying," said Mr Mitchell. He encouraged other people to try to get a refund and wondered if Dell's policy on which operating systems it offered on laptops would change if enough people tried.

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:55:38 GMT

Physics promises wireless power
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Wednesday, 15 November 2006

The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today's electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past.

US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players without wires.

The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.

Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it will work.

"There are so many autonomous devices such as cell phones and laptops that have emerged in the last few years," said Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the researchers behind the work.

"We started thinking, 'it would be really convenient if you didn't have to recharge these things'.

"And because we're physicists we asked, 'what kind of physical phenomenon can we use to do this wireless energy transfer?'."

How wireless energy could work

The answer the team came up with was "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.

"When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly," Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website.

Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example.

"When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate," he said.

Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team's system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays.

Typically, systems that use electromagnetic radiation, such as radio antennas, are not suitable for the efficient transfer of energy because they scatter energy in all directions, wasting large amounts of it into free space.

To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances".

When energy is applied to these objects it remains bound to them, rather than escaping to space. "Tails" of energy, which can be many metres long, flicker over the surface.

"If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic.

Hence, a simple copper antenna designed to have long-lived resonance could transfer energy to a laptop with its own antenna resonating at the same frequency. The computer would be truly wireless.

Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed.

The systems that the team have described would be able to transfer energy over three to five metres.

"This would work in a room let's say but you could adapt it to work in a factory," he said.

"You could also scale it down to the microscopic or nanoscopic world."

Old technology

The team from MIT is not the first group to suggest wireless energy transfer.

Nineteenth-century physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla experimented with long-range wireless energy transfer, but his most ambitious attempt - the 29m high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower, in New York - failed when he ran out of money.

Others have worked on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer such as lasers.

However, these require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.

A UK company called Splashpower has also designed wireless recharging pads onto which gadget lovers can directly place their phones and MP3 players to recharge them.

The pads use electromagnetic induction to charge devices, the same process used to charge electric toothbrushes.

One of the co-founders of Splashpower, James Hay, said the MIT work was "clearly at an early stage" but "interesting for the future".

"Consumers desire a simple universal solution that frees them from the hassles of plug-in chargers and adaptors," he said.

"Wireless power technology has the potential to deliver on all of these needs."

However, Mr Hay said that transferring the power was only part of the solution.

"There are a number of other aspects that need to be addressed to ensure efficient conversion of power to a form useful to input to devices."

Professor Soljacic will present the work at the American Institute of Physics Industrial Physics Forum in San Francisco on 14 November.

The work was done in collaboration with his colleagues Aristeidis Karalis and John Joannopoulos.

HOW WIRELESS POWER COULD WORK:

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4Mhz, emitting electromagnetic waves
3) 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m (16.4ft)
4) Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4Mhz. Energy used to re-charge device
5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4Mhz

Glitches in state databases could turn away voters

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:09:08 GMT

Summary:

The November 7 elections will mark the first use of a centralized voter database in a general election in Florida and many other states. These databases are governed by state selection officials in accordance with the Help America Vote Act. However, the databases require that new-voter information match information in other databases, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, says Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida (LWVF). The databases were compiled quickly, providing IT workers minimal time for proper training. Leon County, Fla., has the benefit of having previously used a database system on which the new system was built, so IT personnel there will be better prepared, but according to Ion Sancho, head of elections for the county, "Other counties don't know all the ins and outs." Discrepancies, such as "Bill" in one database and "William" in another, would mean that this voter would receive a provisional ballot, and would need to furnish proper documentation within three days; contrary to the belief of many that a voter in this position would simply be sent home, says a spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb. Some ineligible voters have been sent warnings, but many will find out at the poll site. Justin Levitt, associate counsel with the democracy program at New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice, cites Ohio's eligibility practices that are quite unclear, explaining, "Where the systems are less transparent, there's greater reason for concern." The provisional ballot is meant to assuage voters' fears concerning ineligibility, but LWVF's Wheatley Giliotti sees it as yet another obstacle for a shrinking pool of voters to negotiate.

Glitches in state databases could turn away voters

November 06, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Eligible voters in Florida may arrive at the polls tomorrow and find that they are ineligible to cast ballots because of the strict requirements for inclusion in the state's new database of registered voters.

Tomorrow marks the first time that Florida, along with many other states, will use a centralized voter database in a general election. Voter advocates said low turnout in earlier primary elections didn’t provide a strong test of the new databases.

States are required to have a repository of statewide voters under the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act. In the past, these lists of eligible voters were compiled mostly by local governments. The new centralized databases are governed by rules created by state elections officials following HAVA guidelines.

Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a nonprofit advocacy group in Tallahassee, said officials in many states are anxious about how the relatively untested databases will function in a full-scale election.

“I think the cause for concern now is that it’s new,” said Wilcox. “The primary election back in September had a very low turnout. We were hoping for a higher one to put the database to a good test.

Going into the general election, there is still concern that people may show up to vote and not find themselves on the rolls.”

Adding to the challenge in Florida is a strict policy requiring that new-voter information exactly match that person’s information in other state databases, such as that used by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, president of the Tallahassee-based League of Women Voters of Florida.

If a Florida resident is identified as “Bill Smith” in one database and “William Smith” in the other, the voter won’t be allowed to cast a ballot, she said. Voters who haven’t been validated won’t necessarily know until they arrive to cast their ballots.

Some, but not all, ineligible voters have been sent warnings, but those notes don’t specify which information on their registration forms is incomplete, Wheatley-Giliotti said.

Ion Sancho, head of elections in Leon County, Fla., said the problem could be compounded in some counties where IT personnel are unfamiliar with the statewide database technology.

The voter database previously used in Leon County was based on the same technology in the new statewide data�base, so IT personnel there can fix glitches, Sancho said. “Other counties don’t know all the ins and outs,” he noted.

Justin Levitt, associate counsel with the democracy program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, predicted that database problems are likely in a number of states, such as Florida, North Carolina and South Dakota, which require that new-voter information exactly match data in other state repositories.

Levitt also noted that a study of HAVA’s voter registration requirements by the Brennan Center found that the databases were quickly created in many states, leaving IT workers little time for training.

“We worry that people will only find out on [Election Day] that they are ineligible to vote,” Levitt said.

Bob Fitrakis, an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, fears that a sizable number of voters have been unknowingly purged from the statewide database there, according to his campaign manager, Paddy Shaffer. The fears were prompted by the use of outdated registration forms in several counties, Shaffer said.

A spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell did not respond to requests for comment.

In Ohio, said Levitt, eligibility practices are unclear. “Where systems are less transparent, there’s greater reason for concern,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb downplayed concerns about the new voter database, noting that no one will be turned away from Florida polling places. “If you are not on the registration rolls, you are able to vote [using] a provisional ballot,” she said. “The voter has three days to bring in documentation that confirms that they are a registered voter.”

The Florida database was created under HAVA guidelines, the spokeswoman said. Following the Sept. 5 primary election, supervisors were “very pleased” with the new Florida Voter Registration System, she said.

Wheatley-Giliotti called the provisional ballot another stumbling block for an ever-diminishing pool of voters to overcome.

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 18:50:25 GMT

Microsoft backs Novell's Linux platform

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. has embraced Novell Inc.'s open-source software platform, forming a technological truce between two longtime antagonists who want to make it easier for the still-dominant Windows operating system and the increasingly popular Linux system to work together.

The agreement announced Thursday between the world's largest seller of patent-protected software and a leader in the open-source software movement has potentially important business, technical and legal implications.

"This builds a very important intellectual-property bridge between the open source and proprietary sides of software," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said shortly before the companies formally announced their alliance in San Francisco.

Financial terms of the arrangement weren't disclosed.

The alliance is primarily aimed at the growing number of major companies and government agencies that rely on elements of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's Windows and Linux to run their computers.

"It all comes down to recognizing there is a mixed environment out there," Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said during a Thursday press conference.

The partnership's impact on consumers appears to be inconsequential except for a commitment to improve the interaction between Microsoft's top-selling suite of Office software and a free alternative known as OpenOffice.

Microsoft's stamp of approval, extracted after six months of negotiations, represents a coup for Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell as it touts the advantage of its version of Linux over other varieties made by competitors such as Red Hat Inc.

Under the partnership, Microsoft's sales team will offer its corporate customers a chance to license its Windows operating system as part of a package offering maintenance and support for Novell's Suse Linux platform.

Novell primarily relies on the fees for customer support to make money off the Linux software, which is developed by a global community of programmers who aren't tied to any single company and freely share improvements to the code.

Ballmer stressed that Microsoft will first try to convince corporate customers to use Windows exclusively before relenting to the notion of a hybrid system using Suse Linux.

To encourage more companies to embrace Novell's open-source platform, Microsoft has pledged not to assert its patent rights over any of its technology that may be blended with Suse Linux.

The concession is meant to address the concerns of many corporate users who have been reluctant to use Linux because they feared Microsoft might retaliate with patent-infringement claims.

"This is a big day for Microsoft customers," said Stuart Cohen, chief executive officer of the Open Source Development Labs, a Beaverton, Ore., group trying to expand corporate America's reliance on Linux. "They are being told by Microsoft that they can use Linux and not worry about it. That's a big statement."

Microsoft's patent waiver only applies to users of the Suse Linux platform.

The new partners have a stormy history.

In 2004, Novell reached a $536 million settlement with Microsoft over antitrust complaints in Europe and then sued its rival again in the United States. The U.S. suit alleged that Microsoft withheld technical information about Windows that Novell needed for its word processing program. Novell has since sold WordPerfect, but its antitrust claim remains alive.

Microsoft's decision to work with Novell reflects the increasingly important role of Linux's open-source software in corporate computing systems. About 20 percent of corporate America relies on some form of Linux, Cohen estimated.

Because it's available for free, Linux software long has been has been a source of consternation for Microsoft, which makes most of its money from the sale of its proprietary software.

"I have had a lot of conversations with (Ballmer), and I can assure you he wasn't usually smiling when we were talking about Linux," said Shane Robison, chief strategy and technology officer for Hewlett-Packard Co.

But Microsoft has been under increasing pressure to loosen up, and not just from customers who want to be able to run Linux with Windows.

Online search leader Google Inc. also is giving away more Web-based software, including word processing and spreadsheet programs, and last year promised to work with Sun Microsystems Inc. to help distribute OpenOffice.

Just last week, Oracle Corp. provided the Linux system with another major lift by offering steep discounts on product support of the Linux platform provided by Red Hat Inc.

Microsoft's backing of Novell's Linux platform may raise even more worries for Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat, whose stock price has dropped by 17 percent since Oracle launched its assault.

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:56:09 GMT

Robot car to tackle city streets

Look, Ma, no humans.

Such is the rallying cry of the Stanford Racing Team, composed of nearly forty Stanford faculty, researchers and graduate students. The team has been in collaboration with Volkswagen’s Silicon Valley lab to try to win the 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge, seeking a car that can navigate a simulated urban environment for sixty miles in less than six hours, without any human guidance. To win the $2 million prize money, the Stanford team must do all this while finishing first in what will likely be a field of more than thirty teams.
...
According to Montemerlo — the new car, a Passat donated by Volkswagen — will have to reliably detect and track a variety of new obstacles. These will range from static hazards, such as curbs and holes, to dynamic hazards including cars, bicycles and pedestrians. And it will have to do so while obeying traffic laws, acting appropriately at intersections and doing everything else an experienced human driver would.
...
“We have a tremendous amount of space on this campus devoted to parking,” Stavens said. “But an automatic car could drop you off and go park itself some distance away.”
...
In a self-driving car, the passenger’s attention could be focused on more productive tasks, such as answering email.
...
“It could also affect traffic,” Montemerlo added. “With communication between vehicles, you could increase [traffic flow] substantially so you actually get places faster on the highway. And you can imagine people driving who can’t drive today, such as elderly people who can’t see very well. Or even kids. Their parents could put them in the car and send them to where they need to go.”

Stanford Racing Team has big plans for 2007 Grand Challenge
October 11, 2006
By Rahul Kanakia

Look, Ma, no humans.

Such is the rallying cry of the Stanford Racing Team, composed of nearly forty Stanford faculty, researchers and graduate students. The team has been in collaboration with Volkswagen’s Silicon Valley lab to try to win the 2007 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge, seeking a car that can navigate a simulated urban environment for sixty miles in less than six hours, without any human guidance. To win the $2 million prize money, the Stanford team must do all this while finishing first in what will likely be a field of more than thirty teams.

The Racing Team is fresh off a first-place finish in the 2006 DARPA Grand Challenge, where its robot car, a Volkswagen Touareg dubbed “Stanley,” won a race through the desert.

Michael Montemerlo, senior researcher at Stanford’s AI Labs and software lead for the Racing Team, said the squad faces additional challenges this year.

“Last year, you had a robot that had to complete a course in the desert all by itself without any manual intervention,” Montemerlo said. “So you press the go button and either it makes it or it doesn’t. In the urban challenge it also has to act reasonably in the face of other traffic.”

According to Montemerlo — the new car, a Passat donated by Volkswagen — will have to reliably detect and track a variety of new obstacles. These will range from static hazards, such as curbs and holes, to dynamic hazards including cars, bicycles and pedestrians. And it will have to do so while obeying traffic laws, acting appropriately at intersections and doing everything else an experienced human driver would.

David Stavens, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in computer science and co-creator of Stanley, said the team is in it for the “humanitarian aspect”. With 43,000 deaths on the road every year, countless lives could be saved if human drivers were replaced by machines that could potentially have quicker reactions, better senses and never get tired.

“We have a tremendous amount of space on this campus devoted to parking,” Stavens said. “But an automatic car could drop you off and go park itself some distance away.”

Stavens said that an automated car could be a more efficient use of both time and money. For instance, three or four people could easily share one car, since it could drive itself between their locations. And commuting time would no longer consist of wasted hours stuck on either end of the working day. In a self-driving car, the passenger’s attention could be focused on more productive tasks, such as answering email.

“It could also affect traffic,” Montemerlo added. “With communication between vehicles, you could increase [traffic flow] substantially so you actually get places faster on the highway. And you can imagine people driving who can’t drive today, such as elderly people who can’t see very well. Or even kids. Their parents could put them in the car and send them to where they need to go.”

Montemerlo emphasized that the move towards autonomous cars like Stanley and the winner of the 2007 Grand Challenge would not happen overnight.

“I don’t think cars will become autonomous instantly,” Montemerlo said, pointing to “smart” anti-lock brakes that are already in cars. “You should think of that car as being just a tiny bit autonomous. Cars are going to have more and more of these adaptive systems and one day you’ll wake up, and you’ll have a car that’s able to drive itself.”

The Stanford Racing Team is led by Sebastion Thrun, an assistant professor of computer science and the head of Stanford’s 150-person AI Labs. Last year, Stanley was first out of 23 robot cars to compete in a 132-mile race through the Nevada desert and one of only four which successfully completed the drive.

The team took away $2 million from last year’s race. Some of the prize money was used to fund this year’s research, while the rest went to the School of Engineering to endow a scholarship.

“From now until pretty much indefinitely there will be a student funded by Stanley’s prize money,” Stavens said.

This year, the Racing Team sought money from a variety of sponsors, including Mohr Davidow Ventures, Intel, Google and NXP Semiconductors. Sponsors donated money in return for the right to put logos on the autonomous car and exchange information with the team. The team also applied for and received a technology development grant from DARPA, which may total up to $1 million. The team also includes members of Volkswagen Labs, based in Palo Alto.

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:58:12 GMT

I'm still learning about this whole podcast thing. I thought maybe Firefox could read podcasts, but I guess not... so I downloaded Juice to receive podcasts. I've found some podcasts on an Italian news site, so I might use that to keep my Italian skillz up. BBC also has great podcasts. Now I'm looking at NPR's podcast list.

Whoa, I'm listening to an NPR technology podcast, and they are talking about MySpace. News Corp (parent company of Fox) bought MySpace last year. Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace. That's insane. Big corporations scare me.

Women in Science

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:59:54 GMT

Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists

When I was a physics major in the late 1970’s, my very few fellow female students and I had high hopes that women would soon stand equal with men in science. But progress has proved slower than many of us imagined. A report last month by the National Academy of Sciences documents widespread bias against women in science and engineering and recommends a sweeping overhaul of our institutions.

While there may indeed be subtle biological differences contributing to the scarcity of women in the top ranks of science, interviews make clear that many female scientists continue to experience both overt and covert discrimination.

The academy’s report is welcome, yet there is reason to believe that when it comes to the mathematically intensive sciences like physics and astronomy, it is not just bureaucracies that stand in the way.

Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male. Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.

The problem goes back to the ancient Greeks, particularly to Pythagoras, the philosophical giant who dreamed the dream that became modern physics. Pythagoras almost certainly learned his famous theorem about right-angled triangles from the Babylonians, but we owe to him a far greater idea: “All is number,” he declared, becoming the first person to say that the physical world could be described by the language of mathematics.

Pythagoras also gave us the idea of the “music of the spheres,” a set of mathematical relationships that would describe the structure of the universe itself. His vision would eventually give rise to the scientific revolution led by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. The search for a theory of everything today is the latest version of the ancient Pythagorean quest for divine “cosmic harmonies.”

Though many cultures have developed sophisticated mathematical traditions, including the Chinese, the Arabs, the Indians and the Mayans, the West is the one that came to see the material world as an embodiment of mathematical laws. And from the beginning, the search for such laws was viewed as an innately male activity.

The Pythagorean society of the fifth century B.C. was a cradle of mathematical research, but Pythagoreanism was also a religion, and like many Greek cults its beliefs were dualistic. For Pythagoreans, reality consisted of two parts: on one side were the mind and spirit and the transcendent realm of the gods; on the other side were the body and matter and the mundane realm of the earth. Like many Greek thinkers, the Pythagoreans associated the mind/spirit side of reality with maleness and the body/matter side with femaleness.

Pythagoras introduced numbers into this mix and put them on the male side of the ledger. In the Pythagorean system, thinking about numbers, or doing mathematics, was an inherently masculine task. Mathematics was associated with the gods, and with transcendence from the material world; women, by their nature, were supposedly rooted in this latter, baser realm.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Pythagorean interest in a mathematical approach to science began to gain ground, and it is here that we begin to see the seeds of modern physics.

“The creation of number was the creation of things,” Thierry of Chartres wrote in the 12th century, when the first universities were formed and academic learning was formalized. The universities were founded to educate the clergy, and since women could not be priests they could not attend. Many university departments did not admit women at all until the early 20th century, and physics departments were often among the last to accept students and professors who were women.

The Pythagorean association of mathematics with transcendence was easily imported into a Christian context, giving rise to the idea of the Judeo-Christian god as a mathematical creator. When Stephen Hawking links a theory of everything to the mind of god today, he is reiterating an essentially Pythagorean view. But this godly-mathematical connection also sat easily with the Catholic tradition of a male-only priesthood. Thus, from the start, women were excluded from this academic field and its associated sciences.

When the early scientific societies formed in the 17th and 18th centuries, most continued this misogynistic trend. Henry Oldenburg, an original secretary of the Royal Society in Britain, wrote that the organization’s mission was to “raise a Masculine Philosophy.” Not until 1945 did this bastion of science admit a woman as a full member.

Female physicists have continued to confront deep-seated prejudices. Emmy Noether, who discovered that all physical conservation laws were associated with mathematical symmetries, was a contemporary to Einstein and helped work out some of the math of general relativity. She did so without a formal academic position and mostly without pay.

Lise Meitner, who developed the theory of nuclear fission, was not included when the Nobel Prize was given for this work in 1944. The Harvard University physics department did not give tenure to a woman until 1992.

This week, the Swedish Academy announces the Nobel Prizes in science. It will be remarkable if any women are on the list. Marie Curie won a Nobel in physics in 1903; the only woman to follow her was Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, when she shared the award for her theory about the structure of atomic nuclei. In mathematics women have fared even worse. The Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel, has never gone to a woman.

Many women who have gone into science since the 1970’s continue to be stunned at how slow change has been. Gail G. Hanson, distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Riverside, and the only woman to have won the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in experimental particle physics, said by phone: “At this point there seems to be an acceptance of women in science at relatively junior levels. But once we get to more senior levels, a kind of antagonism sets in.”

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Dr. Hanson discovered quark jets, the work for which she would later be awarded the Panofsky Prize. Yet throughout her research career, she said, she has continued to be treated like a junior colleague, not like a leading researcher.

Dr. Hanson is the subject of a chapter in a new book tracing the lives and work of 40 outstanding female physicists of the past century. Called “Out of the Shadows” and edited by Nina Byers and Gary Williams, physicists at the University of California, Los Angeles, the book recounts the barriers many of these women faced — and continue to face today. A number of younger female physicists contacted for this article agreed that bias remained real, but they did not want to be quoted on the record.

With sadness and anger evident in her voice, Dr. Hanson said: “I thought these kinds of things only happened in the 1950’s. It’s appalling that women still confront these hurdles.”

She added: “And when you get the prizes, you’re often treated even worse. Men can tolerate a woman in physics as long as she is in a subordinate position, but many cannot tolerate a woman above them.”

The National Academy’s report states that we still have a long way to go. Compared with their male colleagues of similar experience, female scientists and engineers are underpaid, undervalued and underrepresented in the top tiers of science. Given the long history of antipathy toward women of a mathematical bent, it was perhaps naïve to think we could change our institutions in a generation. It is not just bureaucratic will that needs to shift; it is the cultural zeitgeist.

COOL!

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:35:45 GMT

Scientists teleport two different objects

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Beaming people in Star Trek fashion is still in the realms of science fiction but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality.

Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second.

But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter.

"It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium," Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday.

The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further.

"Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams but this was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimeter," Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained.

"Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement," he added.

Quantum entanglement involves entwining two or more particles without physical contact.

Although teleportation is associated with the science-fiction series Star Trek, no one is likely to be beamed anywhere soon.

But the achievement of Polzik's team, in collaboration with the theorist Ignacio Cirac of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, marks an advancement in the field of quantum information and computers, which could transmit and process information in a way that was impossible before.

"It is really about teleporting information from one site to another site. Quantum information is different from classical information in the sense that it cannot be measured. It has much higher information capacity and it cannot be eavesdropped on. The transmission of quantum information can be made unconditionally secure," said Polzik whose research is reported in the journal Nature.

Quantum computing requires manipulation of information contained in the quantum states, which include physical properties such as energy, motion and magnetic field, of the atoms.

"Creating entanglement is a very important step but there are two more steps at least to perform teleportation. We have succeeded in making all three steps -- that is entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback," he added.

This is super interesting to me. The concept of entanglement was part of the Quantum Computing paper I wrote for Physics last semester, and it really fascinates me - I think it might be evidence of at least one more spatial dimension, and by teleporting, we are tapping into that dimension. At least that's what I like to think :)

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:44:29 GMT

Best Buy:

SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4.0GB USB Flash Drive

USB 2.0 (compatible with USB 1.1)
Retractable USB connector
2.25"L x 0.8"W x 0.3"D
Brilliant amber LED (lights up when plugged in)
Lanyard and SKYPE voucher card
SignupShield password manager
SKYPE VoIP software
AVAST virus scan
U3 Smart enabled

Originally $206.
Listed on sandisk.com at $180.
Best price on pricegrabber.com is $113.
On sale at Best Buy for $100.

It's back-ordered online, but check availability at your local Best Buy - mine had some, and gosh darn it, I got me one!

Firefox "flaw" was a joke! LOL!

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:02:23 GMT

Mozilla Duped by Hacker's 'Humorous' Presentation

A Firefox 'flaw' revealed at a hacker conference over the weekend was a joke, hacker admits.

One of the hackers who demonstrated exploit code for a vulnerability in the way the Firefox browser handles JavaScript admitted today that the presentation last week at a hacker conference was meant to be a joke, according to Mozilla's chief of security.

Mozilla security researchers spent most of Sunday and Monday scrambling to determine whether exploit code revealed during a presentation by hackers Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi at Toorcon over the weekend could allow someone to execute malicious code through a memory corruption attack on Firefox.

However, Window Snyder, who leads Mozilla's security team, said Spiegelmock admitted to the company that the presentation was meant to be humorous, and that he and Wbeelsoi had not actually achieved remote execution with the exploit code demonstrated at the show.

"At best, in some cases it will crash only the client," Snyder said Tuesday. "That's all we've been able to verify at this point."

Spiegelmock, who works for blogging-software maker Six Apart, confirmed as much in his LiveJournal blog, in which he includes a link to a statement he made that is posted on Snyder's Mozilla blog.
All a Joke

"The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous," according to the statement. "As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has."

During the presentation, the hackers also had said that they knew of 30 other vulnerabilities in Firefox, but this, too, was a joke, Snyder said.

To hear Six Apart spokesperson Jane Anderson tell it, the Toorcon presentation was a joke invented by two kids barely out of their teens who didn't understand the ramifications of their actions.

"It was all a parody," she said. Anderson added that Spiegelmock was not representing Six Apart at the show, and the company spent most of Sunday on the phone with Mozilla putting out fires and cooperating with the company to get to the bottom of the matter.

Anderson added that Spiegelmock will not be terminated for his actions. "We all make mistakes," she said.

Snyder and the Mozilla team also are being good sports about the ordeal.

"Of course, we always prefer that security researchers report vulnerabilities to us so we can create a patch before customers are put at risk," she said. "But at this point he's been very cooperative, and we're pleased he's chosen to work with us."

Still, Snyder said, "I know people who were working really hard here on Sunday probably have other things they'd rather be doing."

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:54:18 GMT

Sony Launches GPS for Cameras

Device adds location info to your digital camera's metadata.

Ever been on a trip where you've visited a dozen places, taken hundreds of pictures but can't quite remember where you shot them? Sony has developed a pocket-size, Global Positioning System device and software that helps you identify the location of every picture you've taken within a couple of meters.

The Japanese consumer electronics giant announced the availability of the GPS-CS1 tracking system on the eve of the Photokina imaging trade show, which opens Tuesday in Cologne, Germany.
Specs

The device, which records location data every 15 seconds, can accurately pinpoint a shot to within two meters.

The device measures 3.43 by 1.42 by 1.42 inches, can hold up to 31MB (equivalent to approximately one month of tracking and recording for 12 hours per day) and has a power-efficient design that allows up to 10 hours of continuous use with a single, alkaline cell battery.

How It Works

The GPS-CS1 doesn't connect to a digital camera. Instead, tracking data from the device is downloaded via a USB cable to a Windows PC running the Sony GPS Image Tracker software. Camera images are also downloaded to the same PC, which then "matches" the position data from the GPS tracking device with date and time data from the images.

Another piece of software, the Picture Motion Browser, which Sony now supplies with new cameras, allows users to view JPEG images with the appended location information. If they want a more visual view of the location, they can click the "Map View" function, which uses the online Google Maps services to show the geographic location.

"This is a device aimed at the amateur user," a Sony spokesman said at the company's booth. "It's lightweight, easy to use and affordable."

The suggested retail price of the GPS-CS1, now available in all major markets, is $166, the spokesman said.

THIS IS AMAZING!

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:33:53 GMT

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 04:54:43 GMT

This is really random, but I was just working on something in Microsoft Word. I had just typed a letter, and I was trying to do Ctrl+z to undo it, but I accidentally hit Alt+x. Suddenly, the letter (a lowercase "a") turned into 0061. I tried it after an "r" and it turned into 0072. I thought maybe it was ASCII, but it didn't make sense for "r" to be only 11 numbers after "a". I looked up an ASCII chart online, and it looks like it's maybe the hexidecimal representation of the letters.
If you do Alt+x, it'll change the letter to hexidecimal, and then if you hit it again, it will change it back (although it doesn't always convert back correctly). WEIRD! Does anyone know more about this?? I wonder if Microsoft did this on purpose for some reason, or if it is some debugging tool or something.

Hacking Coke machines

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:38:22 GMT

I'd never heard of this until plexplex told me about it.

From this site:

Coke vending machines are everywhere. They're getting more and more like regular computers with LEDs that show little "ICE COLD" messages and whatnot. Well, there's a lot more to those little built-in computers than you may think. Included in the low-level operating system that these babies run on is an actual debug menu that gives you access to all sorts of machine information and possibly gives you free cokes in older machines.

There's a very strict list of vending machines that have the debug menu. First off, they're all COCA-COLA product vending machines. The machine must have an LED screen. Some of the olderones just allow the LED to be set to a price amount and won't have thedebug menu. You're safer if the little LED is telling you something.Usually it will scroll a little message like "Ice Cold Cokes". Newer machines are more likely candidates.

ACCESSING THE MENU
To enter the menu, there's a button combination. HERE'S THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO REALLY REMEMBER:

[4]-[2]-[3]-[1]

The buttons are numbered depending on how they are positioned. They will either be vertical (more likely), or in horizontal rows of 4 buttons per row. If it is vertical, the first button is #1, the one below it is #2, and so forth. If the buttons are in horizontal rows, the first button is #1, and the one to the right of it is #2. The numbers work like a type writer after that. In rows of 4, the first button of row 2 will be button #5. So, to review, getting in to the debug menu looks like this:

COKE MACHINE::::::
$1.00 -------
-------------
[ Coke ] <-- Hit this button last
[ Coke ] <-- Hit this button second
[ Diet Coke ] <-- Hit this button third
[ Sprite ] <-- Hit this button first

Some text should show up on the LED (probably the word "Error", we'll explain what it means next sections). If nothing happens, your machine doesn't have the debug menu.

NAVIGATION
To navigate from option to option (What they are is next section), remember the numberings we gave the buttons. They work as follows:
Button [ 1 ] - Exit/Back
Button [ 2 ] - Up
Button [ 3 ] - Down
Button [ 4 ] - Select

OPTIONS
Depending on the age of the machine, you will get a varying amount of default options available.
On older machines: SALE, VER, EROR, and RTN
On newer machines: CASH, SALE, EROR, and RTN

CASH - Machine Earnings Display
The CASH option will display how much money is in the machine currently. It generally takes a second or two to load. From here, you can scroll up and down through 12 or 16 different options, depending on the machine age. These other options display how much money was spent on each individual item, classified through its button (or slot, as I like to call it) number.
A neat side note about the slot numbers is that there are more slot numbers than there are actual slot, so usually the last 4 buttons contain zero money. This could be so that the same OS could be used on bigger machines, but the newer machines have even more slot numbers.

SALE - Total Sale Count
The SALE option displays how many drinks have been sold out of the machine. This tends to be cumulative, but not on all machines. The stock guy is probably supposed to reset this each time he re-stocks. Also, this has the same sub-options as the CASH option, where you can scroll up and down and see how many drinks have been sold from each slot.

VER - System/Machine Version?
This option will cause a large alphanumeric string to scroll across the LCD. The number looks very much like a serial number, but doesn't vary from machine to machine. It is most likely the OS or machine version number, but of the older machines that have the option, I haven't seen one that doesn't have the same number.

EROR - Error Log
There are 8 different types of errors - COLJ (Column Jams), VEnd (Vend Mechanism), door (Door Switch), sels (Select Switch), CHAR (Changer Errors), acce (Acceptor Errors), StS (Space-to-sales errors), and bVal (Bill Validators). The separate types and actual errors are useless, as you assumably can't get inside the machine, BUT(!) you can clear the errors. Hold the enter (Number 4) button down for about 2 seconds, and it should clear the error.

RTN - Return
This is simply the return option. Selecting this will exit the debug menu. On newer machines, pressing the BACK button at the main menu will not exit, and RTN must be selected.
A side note: The menu can also be exited by pressing the coin return button.

EXTRAS
By holding in the coin return button and not releasing, on the newer "big-button" machines, this will display the internal temperature in Fahrenheit, as in "42F".

**Update**
There are many more menu options that are only accessible if they've either been enabled from the computer inside the machine, or on the internal computer behind the door (Probably not feasible for you to access).

CPO - Coin Payout Mode
You can can dump coins from the coin mechanism, and the various menu options allow you to choose which type of coins (Nickels, dimes, etc.) are dumped.

tVFL - Tube Fill Mode
This is useless to you. This allows you to load coins into the coin tubes, which you can't do from the outside.

TEST - Test Routines
This allows you to test the following various routines:
SE Allows you to test the buttons. Will give you number
of button when you press it
SP Sold-out paddle test. Not quite sure, most likely internal function.
Su Sold-out switch test. Same as paddle.
CO Motor test. Will run various column motors.
Cn Coin test. Put in a coin and it will tell you what kind of
coin it is.
nA Note acceptor test. Same as Cn, but for bills.
dSP Display test. Will illuminate various LEDs.
vErS Rattles off version number.

RELY - Relay test
This tests the relay electronic control of various parts. Do not do, as it will cause damage if various internal parts are not unplugged before usage.

PASS - Password
This is not normally accessible, but allows you to change the menu password from the 4-2-3-1. Whoo!

PrIC - Price Setting
Used to set the price for a drink. Not sure how to work it, but it seems simple enough.

StOS - Space-to-sales routine
Lets you change the STS routine and other options. This means that various buttons will all mean the same thing, i.e. the 6 coke buttons don't actually vend from 6 different columns, but vend from one (changing when one runs out of course).

COn - Machine Configuration/Permissions
This is the machine config menu that decides what of these options you are allowed to access through the outside panel. This is probably only accessible with the door open. I won't go into detail, but I'll list the Config numbers and what each do: C1 sets price menu on, C2 sets special (manufacturer) options on), C3 disables the "ICE COLD COKE" message. C4 is autoviewing of menu when door is opened, C5 is door switch status, C6 is mysteriously reserved for "future use", C7 determines whether your money credit stays in for 5 minutes or indefinitely, C8 is Force Vend, C9 allows multiple vends without putting in more money (i.e put in a 5 and get 3 cokes and then your change), and C10 is Escrow Inhibit.

CCoC - Correct Change Only Control
Adjusts Correct Change only rule to your liking.

TIME - Time Adjustment
Allows you to set the machine's local time.

LANG - Language Selection
Not sure how many languages are supported, but there are apparently more than just English.

USEFULNESS
Unless you can get behind the door, there's little you can do with this except impress your friends. However, if you're able to set the C-switches properly, you'll be able to manipulate the machine in any way you want, get free drinks, change the price, set up cool buy-one-get-one-free deals, etc, etc :). Not to forget, knowledge is power. One step closer to free sodas!

WEEE TRAFFIC LIGHTS!!

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:20:14 GMT

There is something exotic about the traffic lights that "know" you are there -- the instant you pull up, they change! How do they detect your presence?

Some lights don't have any sort of detectors. For example, in a large city, the traffic lights may simply operate on timers -- no matter what time of day it is, there is going to be a lot of traffic. In the suburbs and on country roads, however, detectors are common. They may detect when a car arrives at an intersection, when too many cars are stacked up at an intersection (to control the length of the light), or when cars have entered a turn lane (in order to activate the arrow light).

There are all sorts of technologies for detecting cars -- everything from lasers to rubber hoses filled with air! By far the most common technique is the inductive loop. An inductive loop is simply a coil of wire embedded in the road's surface. To install the loop, they lay the asphalt and then come back and cut a groove in the asphalt with a saw. The wire is placed in the groove and sealed with a rubbery compound. You can often see these big rectangular loops cut in the pavement because the compound is obvious.

Inductive loops work by detecting a change of inductance. To understand the process, let's first look at what inductance is. This figure is helpful:

What you see here is a battery, a light bulb, a coil of wire around a piece of iron (yellow), and a switch. The coil of wire is an inductor. If you have read How Electromagnets Work, you will also recognize that the inductor is an electromagnet.

If you were to take the inductor out of this circuit, then what you have is a normal flashlight. You close the switch and the bulb lights up. With the inductor in the circuit as shown, the behavior is completely different. The light bulb is a resistor (the resistance creates heat to make the filament in the bulb glow). The wire in the coil has much lower resistance (it's just wire), so what you would expect when you turn on the switch is for the bulb to glow very dimly. Most of the current should follow the low-resistance path through the loop. What happens instead is that when you close the switch, the bulb burns brightly and then gets dimmer. When you open the switch, the bulb burns very brightly and then quickly goes out.

The reason for this strange behavior is the inductor. When current first starts flowing in the coil, the coil wants to build up a magnetic field. While the field is building, the coil inhibits the flow of current. Once the field is built, then current can flow normally through the wire. When the switch gets opened, the magnetic field around the coil keeps current flowing in the coil until the field collapses. This current keeps the bulb lit for a period of time even though the switch is open.

The capacity of an inductor is controlled by two factors:

* The number of coils
* The material that the coils are wrapped around (the core)

Putting iron in the core of an inductor gives it much more inductance than air or any other non-magnetic core would. There are devices that can measure the inductance of a coil, and the standard unit of measure is the henry.

So... Let's say you take a coil of wire perhaps 5 feet in diameter, containing five or six loops of wire. You cut some grooves in a road and place the coil in the grooves. You attach an inductance meter to the coil and see what the inductance of the coil is. Now you park a car over the coil and check the inductance again. The inductance will be much larger because of the large steel object positioned in the loop's magnetic field. The car parked over the coil is acting like the core of the inductor, and its presence changes the inductance of the coil.

A traffic light sensor uses the loop in that same way. It constantly tests the inductance of the loop in the road, and when the inductance rises, it knows there is a car waiting!

howstuffworks.com

scary! and cool!!

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:11:21 GMT

Scientists Prepare to Create Mini Big Bang

An experiment that could prove the existence of additional special dimensions
By: Vlad Tarko, Sci-Tech News Editor

"We are going to make mini Big Bangs. There has never been such a jump in particle physics. It will go into an area that we don't really understand," said Brian Cox of Manchester University at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

He is referring to a new experiment that will be conducted at the Large Hadron Collider, the 27km-long underground circular particle accelerator at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border. Scientists will smash protons (hydrogen nuclei) into each other at such tremendous speeds that they expect to replicate the conditions during the Big Bang.

"It is an incredibly exciting machine. It will be turned on next year and run for at least a decade and probably 20 years and the first results - if the machine behaves itself - should start coming out within a year," Dr Cox said.

The experiment might also reveal the existence of other spatial dimensions which are postulated by various candidate theories to the "theory of everything".
But the most important question is how matter appeared in the beginning of the universe.

"We don't know what 95 per cent of the universe is made of - which is a bit embarrassing for a subject that claims to be fundamental," Dr Cox said. "There is dark matter. It is all over the place but we have no idea what it is. There is also something called dark energy, and that is an even bigger question. It makes up about 70 per cent of the energy in the universe, but again we have absolutely no idea what it is."

Some physicists think that at first, there was nothing but, due to the uncertainty principle, the nothing "fluctuated" and as a consequence, the Big Bang happened. According to such views, there might be many universes.

If the theories are correct, the collider should create tiny black holes that evaporate and leave behind other particles. These particles might offer evidences about additional spatial dimensions above the familiar three ones we know.

"That would be an even bigger headline than the black holes. It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimeter away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here," Dr Cox said. "That would be a real paradigm shift - our relegation to a little sheet in a multi-dimensional universe. That kind of thing is really profound and will capture the imagination that perhaps the origin of mass won't, although it should. For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction. New processes are bound to be discovered. We are truly journeying into unknown territory."

Some have worried that such an experiment that would create black holes could destroy the entire planet, but Dr Cox dismissed the worries. "The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said. That is a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance.

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:39:05 GMT

The assault on software giant Microsoft
The next two years will be crucial for software giant Microsoft. Under attack on numerous fronts, it could falter - or fight back to become even more dominant.

It looks like a Star Trek gadget: nudge the stubby black stick (no wires) and a virtual keyboard glitters in red on the kitchen worktop.

After a few taps, the shopping list is sent to an online grocer.

Next you could video-conference with a friend to swap recipes, or watch a cooking show stored on the hard drive of the media hub in the living room.

Upstairs, the mirror on the bedroom wall becomes a monitor, allowing you to watch a film, browse the web - or turn up the heating and open the blinds.

Welcome to Microsoft's wireless "M.home", on a leafy street in London's Ladbroke Grove.

"This is not the home of the future," says Cynthia Crossley, who is in charge of Microsoft's Windows operating system in the UK. "All the technology can be bought off-the-shelf and fits subtly into your home."

Driven by Microsoft's Media Center software, the showcase home lends credibility to the promise of Microsoft boss Bill Gates that in a few years' time his company will deliver a "user-centric" digital world.

Reality check

Alas, the M.home is a far cry from real life: where few computers link up to hi-fi and television, where complex software, hardware and competing media formats drive users to despair, and where setting up wireless home networks is a black art.

Security is another issue. Millions of computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system are under constant virus attack and riddled with spyware.

Microsoft, meanwhile, finds itself hassled by ever more competitors.

"Microsoft is in its most vulnerable moment in history, just like IBM in the 1990s," says George Colony, the chief executive of technology research firm Forrester.

Vulnerable? The company whose software powers more than 90% of all the world's personal computers?

Linux and friends

Microsoft may have a monopoly right now, says Mr Colony, but "protection of a monopoly is tricky".

And there are plenty of challengers ready to put Microsoft's durability to the test.

Foremost among them is the Linux operating system.

Rivalling Windows, this "open source" software project is developed by an online community of volunteers, but backed by big and small corporate players (like IBM and Red Hat) who provide support and tailor the software for individual business needs.

Linux, its champions say, is more stable and secure than anything Microsoft has ever produced.

It is cheap - even free if you are computer-savvy enough to install and maintain it - and much more customisable, because the code that makes it tick is neither a secret nor copyrighted by a single firm.

These days Linux is not just the software of choice for geeks; recently even the stolid bureaucrats of Bavaria's capital Munich decided to switch all their computers to Linux.

China, South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, have joined forces to develop an Asian flavour of Linux, to ensure they are not in thrall to Microsoft.

Other parts of the empire are under attack too, such as the hugely profitable "Office" suite.

Don't want to pay for a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation tool? Download OpenOffice. It won't look as nice as Office 2003, but it's free and fully featured.

Editing pictures? You don't have to pay for Microsoft's "image suite". The open source "Gimp" is powerful, while Google's free Picasa will meet the everyday needs of most consumers.

The browser war

Microsoft's biggest worry, though, should be the huge success of Mozilla Firefox, the open source web browser.

Faster and more secure than Internet Explorer, it is the first browser to seriously challenge Microsoft's dominance.

In just nine months Firefox has chalked up 50 million downloads, although some are admittedly upgrades.

Bill Gates is one of the people with Firefox on his computer, so I asked him for his opinion.

"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better," Mr Gates told me, and challenged my assertion that Firefox's 'market share' is growing rapidly.

"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.

Apple takes a bite

In this fast-moving technology market, Microsoft's biggest problem may be its very size.

"Microsoft is not an innovator or transformer right now," says Forrester's George Colony. Many rivals are more focused and nimble.

Take a company like Skype with its software for free internet telephony, successfully invading the turf of Microsoft's MSN Messenger.

Or long-term rival Apple, whose iPod media player and iTunes music store have thrown Microsoft's music ambitions into disarray.

And even giants like mobile phone maker Nokia give Microsoft a run for its money, pushing their own mobile software into the pockets of millions of consumers.

Microsoft squeezed

"Companies are not afraid of competing with Microsoft anymore," says Marc Benioff, the boss of salesforce.com, which offers a service over the internet which competes with Microsoft in the lucrative market for "customer relationship management" software.

"Microsoft is a great business... but people don't want big software applications any more," he claims.

It also works for consumers. Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?

Here is Microsoft's problem: while rivals try to pick off its software offering one by one, new ways of writing software - for example open source - speed up the pace of innovation and threaten Microsoft's business model.

The fate of "Longhorn" is a case in point. The much-heralded successor to Windows XP is badly delayed and key components won't be ready for launch.

"We are working hard to get it on the market in 2006 and scale our ambitions to fit with that," Mr Gates admits.

Thus users will have to wait until 2007 for Longhorn's revolutionary filing system, designed to help find information buried in ever larger hard drives.

Once ready it will be deployed as part of a Longhorn service pack, says Alistair Baker, boss of Microsoft UK.

But Apple's brand-new "OS X Tiger" operating system offers this kind of functionality today.

Add Microsoft's ongoing trouble with regulators - the company is already talking to US authorities about Longhorn - and the picture of a rich but troubled company is complete.

Forrester boss George Colony predicts that there will be "a crisis at Microsoft, where they decide their model is broken".

But remember Netscape, which dominated the internet - only for Microsoft to catch up.

Bill Gates has a clear strategy. His company has very deep pockets.

And his fightback starts now.

Microsoft is under attack by a bevy of competitors. But is the software giant really at its "most vulnerable moment in history"?

In the second part of our report we examine how Microsoft hopes to beat its rivals.

Microsoft has plenty of headaches.

A raft of companies is newly emboldened to challenge the software giant in every market: music, messaging, mobile phones and more.

"Open source" projects - developed by legions of volunteers - undermine the firm's business model.

To make things worse Microsoft's developers are struggling to close the security holes in their software.

And as long as consumers don't trust the Microsoft world, they are unlikely to buy into the digital lifestyle vision of company founder Bill Gates.

But despite what rivals may say, the software giant is not on the ropes just yet.

Microsoft has a multi-billion dollar pile of cash ready to invest, and Bill Gates has a strategy to fight his rivals.

First battle: Sort out security

"Security will always be on top of the [Microsoft] agenda," says Mr Gates, who is ready to admit that consumers are worried about security.

Already Microsoft is spending 30% to 35% of its research and development budget on security issues, he says.

His promise: Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system, will make malicious software (malware) that gets onto computers without the users' knowledge "a thing of the past".

Longhorn works, explains Microsoft UK boss Alistair Baker, because "security needs to be part of the design, not a bolt-on".

It took Microsoft a long time to discover this.

The design and defaults for Microsoft's older software seem to have been written for a kinder, gentler age - without hackers, internet connections or computer viruses.

Now Microsoft is racing against time to secure its users.

The more connected we get, the more people with old Microsoft software switch to always-on broadband connections. As they do, security risks rise.

But Longhorn and its security benefits are much delayed; it will ship at the end of 2006 at the earliest.

Microsoft also tries to play down expectations for take-up.

"We don't expect a rush to buy," says Mr Baker, not least because Longhorn is likely to run on high-spec computers only.

Critics suggest a simple solution: use Apple or Linux to be safe and sound.

But Linux (and Unix) systems have been hacked before, and Apple's brand-new Tiger operating system has already been fingered for a security flaw.

Yes, Microsoft's software has security holes, but hackers mainly love it because there are so many Windows PCs out there. Write one virus and 90% of the wired world could be yours.

So if Microsoft comes good on its promise to get Longhorn's security right, it lays the foundation of future success.

Second battle: Get into the living room

Think of Microsoft products: What do you see?

A moderately colourful computer screen, a word processor, maybe a weirdly shaped keyboard?

Whatever it is, it probably reminds you of work.

Now take a look at this sleek DVD player/recorder. It doubles up as a digital TV set-top box, comes with surround sound and has a 200 Gigabyte hard drive.

But have you spotted its tiny Microsoft Windows icon?

The hifi exterior hides a fully-fledged Windows XP personal computer running Microsoft's Media Center software.

Welcome to your personal video recorder, picture archive, juke box, internet access, music download service, wireless media streaming hub, control box for your home's lighting and heating ... oh, and personal computer as well.

Not content with dominating office life, Microsoft wants to enter our living rooms.

Paul Randle, Windows product marketing manager in the UK, admits it will be tricky: "How do we jump from the PC aisle to the consumer electronics aisle?".

It's a question of cost, admits Mr Baker, who says "the Media Center will move into the mainstream... in about three years".

More worryingly, in some countries the cable networks and satellite broadcasters like Sky control the software in set-top boxes.

And how many consumers will be confident enough to integrate their old audio and video equipment with Microsoft's hi-tech box?

Microsoft hopes that home users planning to replace their old PCs will opt for Media Centers instead.

And it bets that once the digital lifestyle reaches our mobile phones and MP3 players, consumers will clamour for an entertainment hub to pull all content together.

Third battle: Get them young

Thursday is a red letter day for fans of video games.

Microsoft launches the second generation of its Xbox console.

Mr Gates says the new Xbox will show that Microsoft "is hardcore about gaming".

Internet rumour suggests it will be called Xbox 360, is either white or silver and has an unusual concave shape.

More interesting, though, is what's inside.

I am not talking about its microprocessor or whether it delivers a better experience of playing Halo 2 or Perfect Dark Zero.

Switch on the new Xbox and according to Bill Gates you will see something very similar to the userfriendly 'this-is-not-really-a-computer' interface of the Windows Media Center.

So if the media center fails to sneak into your living room, Microsoft's Xbox is likely to succeed - and make a whole new generation comfortable with using Microsoft.

Fourth battle: Go mobile

"We've never been afraid to work on any platform out there," says Bill Gates.

In the market for handheld computers, though, it took Microsoft three attempts to challenge Palm.

With mobile phones Microsoft fared worse.

Most handset makers are pushing their own software, while upstart Blackberry is grabbing marketshare among business users that want a phone-cum-organiser.

Adding insult to injury, old rival Apple delivered a double-whammy with its iPod music player becoming industry leader in both the music download and MP3 player markets.

The endgame, however, is yet to come.

Mobile phone giant Nokia and Microsoft recently announced a "long-term collaboration" on mobile media software.

Phones with massive storage, like Nokia's brand new N91, could prove to be iPod killers.

And on Tuesday Microsoft released Windows Mobile 5.0, which brings together its Smartphone and PocketPC software and supports iPod style devices with massive hard drives.

"In the portable space... the phone sort of trumps everything. It trumps media players, it trumps cameras, it trumps GPS-mapping devices, digital wallets, and even entertainment. And obviously we're in the phone software space," Bill Gates told gizmo website Engadget.com.

Microsoft's assault on the mobile space has just begun.

Fifth battle: Serious software

But what about Windows and Office, Microsoft's real cash cows?

Aren't they challenged by Linux, OpenOffice, a revitalised Apple and many others?

Time for a reality check.

More copies of Windows will be sold this year than there are Apple Macs in the whole wide world.

Apple's iMac computer was revolutionary, but no Windows killer; its new Mac Mini won't achieve that feat either.

OpenOffice may be efficient, but how many IT managers will be bold enough to go to their bosses and propose dumping the office software used by most major corporations.

Tidying up at the edges, Microsoft is tackling firms like Skype by integrating Voice-over-Internet telephony into its Messenger software.

Which leaves Linux, the great hope of Windows critics worldwide.

Yes, Linux is powering more and more corporate servers, but so is Microsoft's server software.

And it takes a fairly computer-literate user to install and maintain the open source operating system on a personal computer.

"It may take another 10 years until Linux becomes a consumer product," admits Stuart Cohen, the chief executive of Open Source Development Labs, an industry group that helps businesses go Linux.

And there is the weight of numbers: the majority of developers writes software for the Microsoft world, because most PCs run Windows.

Microsoft is not yet in the clear, though.

Government officials in China, Japan, South Korea and Brazil are actively pushing for Linux solutions.

If they get serious, the balance of power could shift quickly.

Sixth battle: Open source

Microsoft executives, meanwhile, are trying their best to diss open source software, with its volunteer developers and 'general public license' copyright.

Such software, Bill Gates tells customers, might not be "interoperable" and could be more expensive to run than Windows "if you look at the entire software stack".

And "do you really want to have your security issues discussed by the Linux developer community on a public bulletin board," queries Alistair Baker of Microsoft UK.

With the likes of IBM backing Linux, such assertions may be questionable.

But that's not an issue, as long as Microsoft manages to sow enough doubt.

So what about Firefox, the hugely successful open source browser that has grabbed a 6% market share in less than nine months (disclosure: the author's default browser is Firefox).

Startled by its success, Microsoft brought forward the launch of Internet Explorer 7.0 to this summer.

Watch out for Firefox hallmarks like tabbed browsing, better security, integrated RSS feeds.

The final push: Convergence

It is competition - from Apple to Linux - that has forced Microsoft to raise its game and sharpen its vision of the future.

As Bill Gates tells it, we are set for a wonderful life where software is user-centric and your digital world accompanies you wherever you go - in the office, at home and on the road.

Mr Gates calls it "convergence", and says: "We need someone who creates an architecture, need someone who puts that into a framework."

Soon, he implies, soon Microsoft could be everywhere.

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:24:01 GMT

Samsung Unveils New Kind of Memory

Company says PRAM will replace NOR memory used in mobile phones.

Samsung Electronics unveiled a new kind of memory chip Monday, PRAM (phase-change RAM), aimed at replacing NOR flash memory in mobile phones.

The new kind of chip, which will be commercially available in 2008, combines the faster data transfer speeds of DRAM (dynamic RAM) with the ability to retain data after power is shut off in a device, similar to flash memory. PRAM is effectively 30-times faster than flash memory, easier to manufacture, and will have a life span 10 times longer, Samsung said.
Serious Competition

Samsung will have to compete against Intel and Spansion, the two biggest makers of NOR flash memory, with PRAM. NOR is popular in mobile phones for its ability to quickly launch software programs. Most handsets contain NOR and NAND flash, the more popular flash memory valued for its ability to store huge amounts of data, such as songs, videos and photos.

But PRAM will also have to compete with a host of other types of memory used in mobile phones, including DRAM, which costs less than most other memory chips due to its widespread use in PCs and video game consoles.

Samsung plans to launch PRAM initially in a 512-megabit capacity, the same as the prototype it showed off on Monday.

Debugging

code fixed... now it actually works.

This is pretty darn cool!

silly funnies

An old IBM commercial with M*A*S*H characters - hehe!

COOL!

Glitches in state databases could turn away voters

Women in Science

COOL!

Firefox "flaw" was a joke! LOL!

THIS IS AMAZING!

Hacking Coke machines

WEEE TRAFFIC LIGHTS!!

scary! and cool!!

An old IBM commercial with MAS*H characters - hehe!