Posted 04/14/2001 - 11:20am EDT [Discussion] Updated Some
of the SPAM I get is absolutely priceless. The kinds of things that people try
to hawk, and the ways in which they try to hawk them, never cease to amaze me. I
recently got one of the best pieces of SPAM I've seen in a long time. The email
informed me that minister Charles Simpson has the power to make me "a
LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER within 48 hours!!!!!" All for the low, low price
of $29.95. Why would I want to do this? Here are just a few of the reasons:
BAPTISMS You can say "WELCOME TO THE WORLD!!!! I AM YOUR MINISTER AND
YOUR UNCLE!!" What a special way to welcome a child of God.
FORGIVENESS OF SINS The Catholic Church has practiced the forgiveness of
sins for centuries **Forgiveness of Sins is granted to all who ask in
sincerity and willingness to change for the better!!
VISIT CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES Since you will be a Certified Minister, you
can visit others in need!! Preach the Word of God to those who have strayed
from the flock
WANT TO START YOUR OWN CHURCH?? After your LEGAL ORDINATION, you may start
your own congregation!!
Well, I've always wanted to welcome someone to the world as their minister
and their uncle, and I've always had an intense, voyeuristic fascination with
correctional facilities.... For those of you who, like me, want to ORDER TODAY!
and take advantage of this LIMITED TIME OFFER, I've copied the complete email
into the discussion
thread link.
You know, it occurs to me that ecclesiastical positions have been sold by the
Church for centuries, but historically such positions have been available only
to a select few who had the money and influence to buy them. The democratizing
power of the Internet has, however, now brought the opportunity to PURCHASE an
ecclesiastical office DIRECTLY TO YOU!, no matter your station in life. If only
we could buy political appointments via the Internet, then the 'net truly would
be a force for democracy and freedom.
Update: AAGGGHH!!!! Stop mailing me about the ULC!!!
I know about the ULC. It's all over the discussion thread for this post. I know
you can get ordained for free. The reason the SPAM is funny is because they want
to charge for it. Get it? Charging $29.95 for ordination = funny. Getting
ordained for free over the Internet = not quite as funny. Please, read the
discussion thread before sending in corrections to the posts. Alright, sorry for
the outburst. Carry on... -Hannibal
04/13/2001
Itanium @ Ace's
Posted 04/13/2001 - 12:42am EDT [Discussion] Ace's
Hardware has a blurb up
that contains the latest on Intel's roadmap for rolling out IA-64, as well as
some new benchmark numbers for the Itanium. With the specific compiler and
benchmark used, it's still not looking so great compared to the Alpha. -Hannibal
New IBM PPC chip aimed at the IA
Posted 04/13/2001 - 12:42am EDT [Discussion]
The details are scarce, but IBM is cookin'
up a new PowerPC chip, dubbed PowerPC IAP, for the Internet appliance
market. It allegedly has all sorts of stuff on it besides just a core, but the
article doesn't say what. I'm assuming it would have some sort of memory
controller integrated. This chip has potential, especially considering that
IBM's copper process means that they're in a good position to provide really low
power consumption devices. -Hannibal
04/12/2001
100 Dumbest moments in e-Business history
Posted 04/12/2001 - 1:19am EDT [Discussion]
You wouldn't think that over the course of only about 6 years of existence an
industry could produce so many incredibly dumb moments. eCompany.com, however,
has listed 100 of
them, some of which are priceless. Someone should burn this onto a CD-ROM
and bury it in a time capsule as a warning for future generations. Link by
kampers.
In related news, monetary black hole Kozmo.com is shutting
down. Heh, nobody saw that one coming, I'm sure. -Hannibal
04/10/2001
Field Programmable Gate Arrays at NASA?
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:42pm EDT [Discussion]
Back in September,
Hannibal posted a blurb on the concept of Field Programmable Gate Arrays, and a
company looking to be making money off of them, Star Bridge Systems.
Today, reader Bob Kozachek sent us a link to a story
on FPGAs generally that has the following quote:
If this sounds theoretical, consider that NASA's Langley Research Center
has just announced that it is buying a HAL hypercomputer from Star Bridge
Systems of Midvale, Utah. This computer is no larger than a regular desktop
machine, yet it's roughly 1,000 times faster than traditional commercial
systems because it uses Field Programmable Gate Arrays like those Thomson used
in his work.
So, at least somebody thinks that these folks might actually be making a
workable product. The rest of the article is an introduction to the
technology and its potential, so if you don't know what the hell I'm talking
about, you can see the
article or Hannibal's
blurb for an explanation. -Ator
Microsoft XP chooses sides in USB 2.0 vs. FireWire
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:42pm EDT [Discussion]
The very fact that this story is newsworthy probably gives you a clue as to
which technology XP will be supporting. Yes, Microsoft will be featuring support
for FireWire, but not USB 2.0, in Windows XP. Why no USB 2.0?
"USB 2.0 support will not be included in the (final) version of Windows
XP due to the fact that there is not a sufficient array of production-quality
devices to test against," [a Microsoft spokesperson] wrote in an e-mail.
"Microsoft will not ship support for a standard that they can't guarantee a
great user experience on."
Well, all snide comments that the above quote might induce aside, I've got to
say that I'm pretty surprised by this move. First of all, there's the
little fact that Microsoft is a part of the USB 2.0 project. Second, the
standard is supposed to be backwards compatible with USB 1.0, which one might
expect to lead Microsoft to a "why not support it?" attitude.
And third, I've never bought the idea that these two technologies couldn't both
exist in the same machine at the same time, or at least in the same
market. Personally, I'd rather see robust support for both and let the
market sort things out. I guess Microsoft is just being conservative, but
it wouldn't surprise me if they don't already have a contingency plan to put
this and Bluetooth back into XP if either experiences a sudden surge in
popularity. Thanks to reader Ethan Estes, who linked us to this story by
way of MacCentral.
-Ator
Motorola develops .13 micron fab process
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:42pm EDT [Discussion]
Good news for Motorola fans: they've just announced HiPerMOS7, the "Seventh
Generation High Performance Metal Oxide Semiconductor " fab process which
will utilize .13 micron lithography and Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology.
According to this
story on MacCentral, the PowerPC line should see the advantages of this next
year:
Mike Mendacino, Motorola's SOI Technology Manager, said that future PowerPC
processors created using the 0.13-micron manufacturing process could have larger
on-die L2 caches. "With more transistors on a given area, one could
logically conclude that we could add more cache if the processor's performance
and price worked out in a larger cache's favor," said Mendacino. He also
suggested that, given Motorola's history, a larger on-die cache is a logical
progression in the PowerPC's development.
It's fun to watch things heat up (or, perhaps get cooler in this case). Intel
has also started sampling .13 micron cores, so the good times will keep on comin'.
Thanks to Ethan for the heads-up. -Cæsar
Move over Firewall, I've got Drywall
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:25pm EDT [Discussion]
This was just too funny not to post. Techweb
is reporting that UNC has finally, after four years, found a "missing
server" that, quite strangely, has in fact been on-line this whole time.
Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server.
Working with Novell Inc., IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following
cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly
sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.
I guess one would have to see the location to understand, but how the heck do
you manage to seal a server (or any computer, for that matter) behind a wall,
and not know it? Thanks to Cryolithic and Dan DePratto for forwarding this bit. -Cæsar
PassPort terms revised
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:14pm EST [Discussion]
Ator reported
last week that Microsoft's "PassPort" terms were a little less
than acceptable. As it turns out, Microsoft has
revised those terms. The previous terms gave Microsoft incredibly broad
license for use of any material that passes through PassPort services.
Microsoft has deleted terms that granted the company broad license to use,
modify, distribute, publish or sell "any communication with or through
the Passport website." According to definitions in the old terms,
'communication' included bulletin boards, chat rooms, personal Web pages, or
e-mail. Critics accused the company of wanting to own and control all the
information passing over its network.
I guess this is one thing we can wipe off the armed-revolution-o-meter, at
least for now. In all seriousness, it's good to see that Microsoft responded
fairly to this. Still, the
article indicates that when Hailstorm launches, it will include a separate
terms of use agreement. -Cæsar
NASA Goes to Mars (Again)
Posted 04/10/2001 - 10:02pm EST [Discussion]
One of the biggest fascinations in my life has been space. So what better place to announce this then my first post on Ars (note, please refrain from throwing tomatoes, I�m wearing my favorite white T-Shirt)? Recently, NASA has been putting a lot of time into Mars. On April 7th, NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey. The mission is 100%
robotics (except for the operators of course), and it will lay the groundwork for future missions to Mars.
The three primary instruments included on the mission will be used to collect images and data about the planet.
THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System), for determining the distribution of minerals, particularly those that can only form the presence of water.
GRS (Gamma Ray Spectrometer), for determining the presence of 20 chemical elements on the surface of Mars, including hydrogen in the shallow subsurface (which acts as a proxy for determining the amount and distribution of possible water ice on the planet).
MARIE (Mars Radiation Environment Experiment), for studying the radiation environment.
(Note: more detailed information on this technology can be found
here.)
The interesting thing about this mission is that although it is
primarily geared towards collecting data, it will establish a communication relay for
future exploration of Mars (both by the USA and other countries). The mission has four basic goals. The first is to determine whether life ever existed on
Mars. Second, to characterize the climate of Mars. Third, to characterize the geology of
Mars. And last but not least, to prepare for more missions to Mars (as mentioned above). Obviously, there is way too much information to list here about the goals, so go
here
if you're interested.
This stuff is really fascinating. Think about it: most of our parents got to see the moon landing, and now a manned landing on mars in our lifetime is closer then ever (although still a number of years away). Am I the only one who gets really pumped over stuff like this? Now all we have to do is get Arnold over there to find that machine that will make the atmosphere breathable ;-)
. -LamoTheKid
Digital libraries in the here and now
Posted 04/10/2001 - 2:25am EST [Discussion]
I got some great emails in response to my recent post on the new
Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Many of these were from people who are or have been
involved in digitizing books and manuscripts for archival and resale purposes. I
figured it would be good to do a follow-up post and share with you some of the
links and info on these projects.
Info on two commercial projects was submitted, the first of which is Octavo.
Octavo publishes rare books and manuscripts in PDF format. They have each page
stored as an image (often available at multiple resolutions), with the text
behind the image so you can search the document. Next is Questia,
which according to a current employee who contacted me "has spent over $140
million locating, digitizing, XML-coding, cross-referencing, and linking 40,000
rare and out of print books for an online scholarly research service, focused on
the liberal arts."
Other readers wrote in to tell me about book digitizing projects going on at
libraries in various parts of the world. For instance, the British Library in
London has a digital copy of every book ever published in Britain. (Here's a
link to a description of their Digital Library.) I also heard from someone
who used to work at the University of Virginia library, which is also involved
in XML and/or SGML encoding books. Finally, Justin S. wrote me to let me know
about a digitizing project related to maritime documents at the Mystic Seaport
Museum, Inc. He also mentioned hearing about such projects at Yale and Cornell
U.
If you know of any more projects like these and would like to let us know
about them, please post links or info in the discussion link attached to this
post. Props to Chris P., Lee, Damian K., Justin S., and Elliot T. for the links
and information. -Hannibal
The Web in 3D: one more try
Posted 04/10/2001 - 2:02am EST [Discussion]
I used to be way into VRML when it first came out. I was a VRML codin'
fool, but the fact that with all my enthusiasm I could barely make anything work
because the spec kept changing and the support was poor made me sour on the
while idea of 3D web surfing. The other problem with it was, of course, that the
3D "interfaces" that people cooked up were more difficult to use than
the plain old 2D web. (This last point is actually true for pretty much every
kind of 3D interface I've ever seen.)
Well, the dream of a 3D web still isn't dead. I think we've covered former MS
DirectX evangelist Alex St. John's company, WildTangent, before, so you may be
familiar with them. They've just announced an impressive score of $34 million in
funding from Sony, who's interested in their web-based 3D technology. The News.com
article covering this has the following quote from the folks over at
Macromedia:
Macromedia praised WildTangent's effort, but noted that it is vying with
nearly 60 other Web 3D players now available and Shockwave's audience of 200
million players. "It's a really targeted player built for very compelling
gaming content," said Peter Ryce, senior director of Shockwave Director
marketing and product management for Macromedia. "What we've got is a
much broader platform. We've also got much broader deployment. Our customers
want something that's cross-platform, that's not gated by the availability of
hardware acceleration, and has already a large enough audience so their
customers who want to see the content aren't faced with a dialog box to
install a plug-in from a company that they're not familiar with."
Of course they're going to say this, especially when they're about
to announce that the next version of Director Shockwave will include new, web-based
3D technology developed with Intel.
Shockwave 8.5 changes this, the companies assert, by eliminating the need
to transport a complex set of directions over the network and instead
rendering 3D animation using a computer's CPU. "Rather than send the data
across (the network), we're sending an instruction set that (tells the) CPU to
do this with the data," said Rick Benoit, Intel's strategic marketing
manager. "It used to be that developers had to build multiple models of
the same thing. Now I can allow the processor to scale it accordingly." A
"bones" feature, for example, lets developers make a human figure
move on a screen by sending a series of images and a reference model to a
person's computer. The image is able to adjust and change using information
that has passed from a server to a person's computer, without importing large
amounts of data. Transferring much of the work to the CPU not only minimizes
the amount of the data that needs to be transmitted over the network, it also
expands the number of people able to view 3D graphics.
I wish there were more technical detail in the article. I'm sure when the
product is announced, however, more substantial info will be available.
Anyway, I've messed around with WildTangent's stuff a little bit, and it
looks kind of nice. I mean, it's not Q3A or Black & White, but
it's better than I expected for the web. And since both WildTangent and the new
Shockwave stuff are aimed at entertainment and not at any sort of ultimate 3D
web surfing interface, they'll find more use than most of the old VRML stuff
did. The one thing that bothers me about these two 3D solutions is that they're
proprietary, whereas VRML was ostensibly an open standard. -Hannibal
04/09/2001
Shaking out the big players
Posted 04/09/2001 - 10:11pm EST [Discussion]
Lest anyone think that the dot com shakeout is only affecting
fly-by-night operations, here's a couple of stories on how some of the big guys
are faring. First of all, there's this
News.com article on the fortunes of one of the "old boys" in Web time,
Yahoo. Much speculation about potential reorganizations and layoffs.
Then, reader Jeremiah sends
word of NBC's subsidiary NBC Internet getting itself folded back into the
mother company.
NBC is shutting down its loss-ridden Internet subsidiary, acknowledging
that any hopes of it becoming profitable had vaporized along with the online
advertising market.
The Ars Technica Distributed Computing "Food Court"
Posted 04/09/2001 - 9:30pm EST [Discussion]
Distributed Computing started back in 1997 with the RC5 project and recently,
the number of different projects has grown by leaps and bounds. Several
million people have donated their idle CPU time to crack code, search for
aliens, fold proteins, create genes, and most recently, help search for a cancer
cure. The readers of Ars Technica have their hands (and computers) in
many of these projects. Arguably, teams formed by Ars Technica readers,
combined, are the world's leader in distributed computing. Here is a brief
rundown of the distinctive flavors of Ars Technica distributed computing teams.
They form a 4-star menu that will entice even the most discriminating palate.
Team Lamb Chop - Even though the SETI@Home
project wasn't the first, it is currently the largest. Members use their
computers help process radio telescope signals in search signs of
extra-terrestrial intelligence. In the past week, after a long and bumpy
ride, Team Lamb Chop surpassed the 4,000 member mark and passed Sun Microsystems
for the #1 team overall in the S@H project. The reign at #1 should last
quite some time, since there are no teams with the work unit totals and
production numbers to make a run at TLC.
Team Egg Roll - Egg Rolls are
normally known as a Chinese appetizer, but this team is definitely a main course
item. Folding@Home
is a computationally intensive project that simulates the folding of native
proteins into their final three-dimensional structure. Knowing how a
protein folds will help in understanding a variety of diseases which involve
improper protein folding. Team Egg Roll is currently sitting in the #1
spot in the project, ahead of team nerdz. There is a charge
lead by Kyle in which team [H]ardOCP is burning up the charts and will soon
threaten the #1 spot for TER. Currently [H]ardOCP is in 4th place but is
cranking out almost 9 times the work units as TER. The TER lead will not
last long unless they can recruit some new members to help hold off Kyle and his
minions.
Team Beef Roast - Once known as
the "long forgotten menu item" Team Beef Roast is enjoying a new
resurgence in this distributed computing era. TBR is Ars' entrant in the distributed.net
RC5 arena. RC5 basically uses a "brute force" method to help
crack high level encryption keys. In the grand RC5 scheme of things, TBR
is sitting pretty in the #21 team position, and will soon push ahead into the
#20 spot. It may take some heavy firepower to reach the top 10 in teams
since TBR ranks in the 5-7 range in overall daily production. Note: Team
Beef Roast also participates in the distributed.net OGR-24/25 projects, although
to a lesser degree.
Team Primordial Soup - Soup is usually
served first, but unfortunately, Team Primordial Soup is served up second in the
Genome@Home project. TPS is not too
far off from the #1 spot which is currently being held by
Genome_Research_Group_Italy. Hopefully TBR can help close the gap and soon
be sitting in the #1 spot. G@H is the sister project being concurrently
run with Folding@Home by Stanford University. While F@H is involved in the
dynamics of protein folding, G@H goes a step backwards and looks at the genes
that are encoding proteins. The project manipulates the coding sequences
for the protein and tests to see how these new proteins will fold. End
results will help in the production of "designer genes" and also aid
in the design of new pharmaceuticals.
Team Crab Cake - The newest item on
the Ars menu, Team Crab Cake, is helping search for a cancer
cure. In this project, different potential molecules are tested to
check their interactivity with target proteins involved in the proliferation of
cancer. The THINK client tests molecules and their conformers in
hope that possible candidates may be found for use in the treatment of cancer.
Since the project only began last week, the team is in its formative stages and
the website has yet to be posted. For more more information on joining
Team Crab Cake please check out this forum
thread.
There you have it....the Ars Food Court. There are several different
distributed computing projects that are just waiting for your spare CPU cycles.
Join the Ars juggernaut, and help the Ars Teams stay the leader in distributed
computing. For more information on joining teams, check out the team web
pages. If there are still questions/concerns, you can post your questions
over at the Distributed
Computing Arcana. A word of thanks go out to hanser, Poof, TheJet and
key0868! -zAmboni
Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2.0
Posted 04/09/2001 - 1:33am EST [Discussion]
While we're on the good news for humankind tip, here's another one to give you
hope. The Egyptians are going back to the drawing board and rebuilding
the famous library of Alexandria.
Later this year, a state-of-the-art research facility opens in Alexandria,
transforming legend back into reality. Announcing the project, Egyptian first
lady Suzanne Mubarak vowed the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina would be "a
digital lighthouse for the world." Many countries are contributing precious
archival holdings on microfilm or CD-ROM and returning documents confiscated
during wars and occupations.
[...snip...]
The extraordinary facility will have reading rooms larger than Grand Central
Station, architecture that fuses ancient symbols with futuristic structures, and
a computer catalogue that enables searches in multiple languages. It will also
incorporate a planetarium, an Information Studies school, and museums of
archaeology, calligraphy and science. Its stacks will be open to scholars and
the general public.
My fantasy is that someone will one day decide to invest the massive amount
of money that it would take to digitally archive the millions of out-of-print
books that are decaying on library shelves all over the world. Sort of like the Terraserver,
but for books. Also, high-res digital copies of the world's manuscripts would be
nice, too. And I need a car and a laptop, so while I'm making requests I'll go
ahead and put those two in, too. -Hannibal
Broadband over power lines moves closer
Posted 04/09/2001 - 1:33am EST [Discussion]
The EET is running a story
that details the actual products of two companies that are trying to launch a
low cost, broadband over power lines solution sometime soon.
Executives at nSine (Reading, England) claim the company's nPlug technology
eventually could scale up to 40 Mbits/s. But Cyan (Cambridge, England) is
aiming at command-and-control networks for domestic appliances because it
believes home power wiring's trees and rings are too noisy for high-data-rate
communications. NSine said it has hit first silicon on a mixed-signal modem
and a digital baseband that implement nPlug, developed over three years by a
team now numbering 30 engineers. The two chips, fabricated in 0.35-micron
technology at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., will sell for $5 in
volume when mounted on a board with about 15 passive components, said Peter
Norman, president and chief executive officer of nSine. "Even at low
volume, it will be just $7 or $8" for the board, which will be available
late this year, Norman said.
I hope it gets here soon, because with the way the DSL world is heading... -Hannibal
04/08/2001
Game.Ars has the shakes
Posted 04/08/2001 - 1:55am EST [Discussion] Moving
always sucks (I'm still not fully unpacked from my move in October), but for
some people (like Carl), absence away from a gaming-rig can produce clinically
significant tremors, mild sweats, and a strong desire to live real life as if a
Sim. Fortunately, Carl did manage to get his
weekly to us, even if it was scribble on a paper towel and covered with what
looks to be tears. Rest assured, Carl is reported recovering in the safety of
his new abode, having rectified his addiction by simply going back to his old
habit. Enjoy.
-Cæsar
04/07/2001
OpenForum upgrade
Posted 04/07/2001 - 2:08pm EST [Discussion]
Just a quick note: the forum is being updated to 1.5.15 today, and it may take a
while to get all the performance issues and whatnot worked out. This is a minor
update, with most things changed being behind the scene, or with respects to WAP.
-Cæsar
04/06/2001
Ars Boston Party: RSVP
Posted 04/06/2001 - 2:30am EST [Discussion]
We're getting ready to kick our planning into high gear for the upcoming Ars
Boston Party on April 28th. I'm going to try to secure Jillian's again as a
location for the event, so I'll need to tell them how many will be there when I
call them. To that end, we've set up an email
address that you can use to RSVP and let us know if you plan on coming.
Please try to give us a feel for your level of certainty. Also, since this is
for tally purposes, even if you've already said you'd be there in one of the
other forum threads dedicated to this event, fire off a quick email anyway. -Hannibal
MIT for free
Posted 04/06/2001 - 12:09am EST [Discussion]
This just rocks. MIT has placed itself at the forefront of furthering the cause
of greater human good by announcing that they plan to make all of the materials
for all of their courses--notes, simulations, videos of lectures, etc.--freely
available online. This initiative will make course material from one of the best
universities in the world accessible to anyone, anywhere with an Internet
connection. Here's a noteworthy clip from the NYT
coverage:
Another difference between the M.I.T. plan and other Internet initiatives
is that it makes no effort to offer full-fledged, for-credit courses online.
Rather, it will offer course materials as ingredients of learning that can
then be combined with teacher-student interaction somewhere else � or simply
explored by, say, professors in Chile or precocious high school students in
Bangladesh.
Still, is the institute worried that M.I.T. students will balk at paying
about $26,000 a year in tuition when they can get all their materials online?
"Absolutely not," Dr. Vest said. "Our central value is people
and the human experience of faculty working with students in classrooms and
laboratories, and students learning from each other, and the kind of intensive
environment we create in our residential university." "I don't think
we are giving away the direct value, by any means, that we give to
students," he said. "But I think we will help other institutions
around the world."
This is the kind of knowledge sharing that the Internet was architected for,
and hopefully more universities will have the courage and foresight to follow
MIT's lead. Imagine if all the lectures, notes, and syllabi from even just a few
of the top tier universities were freely available online. With resources like
that available to high schools and colleges the world over, it could quite
literally change the face of education like nothing since the GI bill and
Federal Student Loan programs. -Hannibal
P2P for a good cause
Posted 04/06/2001 - 12:09am EST [Discussion]
Continuing the medical technology theme, a whole raft of people have been
submitting links relating to the new Intel Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer program,
which harnesses the power of distributed computing (ala SETI@Home, RC5, etc.)
for medical research. From their
site:
Intel Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program was designed as a focal point
where anyone can come to learn about and take part in PC philanthropy. The
long-range vision is for the site to host a number of life science research
programs dedicated to specific diseases, from prostate cancer to Parkinson's
disease, that cause suffering for people. By urging other computer users to
join this collaborative effort, you help raise awareness about landmark
medical research. In addition, you help unharness more power for discoveries
that are otherwise constrained by the lack of processing capabilities.
There have been a number of different links submitted about this, one of
which is this
article on the cancer research component of the program. Intel plans to
expand the program to provide computing resources to teams working on other
diseases as well.
The Register has good
coverage of the program that highlights the controversy surrounding the
whole thing. Intel is partnering with USD to provide the clients, and since USD
is in the business of selling CPU cycles there have been some
questions there. Also, users are wanting to know who exactly is going to
profit from the fruits of the research that gets done using the machine
time that they donate. -Hannibal
IP, international law, and medicine
Posted 04/06/2001 - 12:09am EST [Discussion]
This probably looks a bit off-topic, but since we cover lots of patent disputes
over different types of PC technology, I figured you guys might like to take a
look at a patent dispute where millions of lives are potentially at stake. New
Scientist is running a must-read
interview with Yusuf Hamied, the chairman of Indian drug manufacturer Cipla.
What Cipla does is take drugs developed by Western pharmaceutical giants like
Pfizer and Glaxo, copy them, and sell them at greatly reduced prices to
developing nations like those in Africa who can't afford to pay the premiums that
companies like Pfizer charge. Almost all of the drugs that Cipla copies are
aimed at treating or preventing diseases that are epidemic in the Third
World--diseases like AIDS, Hepatitis, etc.
India doesn't currently recognize patents on food and health technologies, so
Cipla can continue this practice of copying patented drugs and reselling them to
poor countries for the time being. Glaxo and Pfizer don't like this, of course,
and they've been doing everything in their power to stop
the import of these discount AIDS drugs into Africa. According to the
interview, Cipla will probably be screwed in 2010 when India comes up for
membership in the WTO. If India wants in, they'll have to harmonize their patent
laws to fit with the West's, which means Glaxo and Pfizer will be able to
enforce their patents in India.
Anyway, whether you agree with what Cipla is doing or not, Hamied represents
a voice on the ethical dimensions of IP law that deserves to be heard. The
interview raises questions not just about medical ethics and IP, but about
broader issues like whether or not the Third World has a "right to
develop" and what that right should look like. -Hannibal
04/05/2001
Quantum Computation using Fiber Optics?
Posted 04/05/2001 - 11:29pm EST [Discussion]
An interesting article by M. A.
Man'ko, V. I. Man'ko, R. Vilela Mendes was published on the arXiv.org e-Print archive. Manko et al. discuss a way to implement quantum information processing using fiber optics - in other words, to construct a kind of quantum-like computer using optical fibers. In their own words:
Using a quantumlike description for light propagation in nonhomogeneous optical fibers, quantum information processing can be implemented by optical means. Quantum-like bits (qulbits) are associated to light modes in the optical fiber and quantum gates to segments of the fiber providing an unitary transformation of the mode structure along a space direction. Simulation of nonlinear quantum effects is also discussed.
As I understand it, they think they have found a way to encode 'quantum-like bits', which they call 'qulbits', into the light traveling inside the fiber. The reason this classical system then works as a quantum computer is that they do a clever trick as a result of which the time variable from quantum equations is represented by position - a space variable - in the fiber. (For a more precise - and mathematical - explanation, please see the article itself).
It should be noted that this is a pre-print article. In other words, they may well be wrong somehow, and it has not yet been peer-reviewed. But if the result holds up, it appears that it could lead to some exciting advances in the development of quantum computers. -Geon
04/04/2001
Boo! Clive Barker's Undying
Posted 04/04/2001 - 11:12pm EST [Discussion]
Carl
is a rather tall, Viking-ish man. It's hard for me to imagine him being freaked
out by a game, but alas, Carl's
review of Clive Barker's Undying reveals that sometimes, when the
setting is just right, things that go bump in DirectX can make him just a
little unnerved.
One of the coolest things in Undying is the ability to use your power of second sight
(scrye) to see and hear into the past. Look at a portrait and it appears normal, but look using your special sight and it turns demonic. You may hear conversations from years before or possibly babies crying and arguments that lead to violence. These audible moments are the most frightening because they leave the details to your imagination, which can scare you more than anything else.
Boo-ya! I've had this game recommended to me by a load of people. I
love freaky stuff like this (The Exorcist is one of my favorite movies),
so once I'm free from grad work for the spring, I'll have to check it out. -Cæsar
04/03/2001
Bandwidth in the news
Posted 04/03/2001 - 1:49am EST [Discussion]
There's nothing like a good, old-fashioned standards war to get competition (or
confusion) brewin' again, and that seems to be what Intel is proposing. They've
thrown down the gauntlet to AMD's HyperTransport, with a rival, as yet undefined
specification intended to replace PCI in desktop computers. From the EET
coverage (see also the CNET coverage here):
At the recent Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Louis Burns, general manager of
Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, detonated a silent bomb when he announced
that Intel was working on its third-generation I/O spec, a replacement for
PCI. The spec, which looks to prepare I/O technology for the coming age of
10-GHz processors, will move away from shared buses, as in the Infiniband
initiative for servers.
"Third-generation I/O architecture has to be full serial; it has to be
a point-to-point connection to support the hyperspeeds we're going to be
driving this at," Burns said at the time. "We want to have the
absolute smallest number of pins with the absolute maximum bandwidth."
Also, he said, the bus "has to be scalable to greater than 10 GHz, and it
has to be flexible to really adopt the needs of the end user, the OEM and the
industry at large."
Notice the bit about the smallest number of pins at the maximum bandwidth.
What does that remind
you of? If you said Rambus, then you were right on. I wonder how closely Rambus
will be involved in the drafting of this spec--will they use any Rambus IP? The
spec is purported to be open, and I don't imagine that they'll want to charge
royalties for its use (since they're competing directly with the royalty-free
HyperTransport); so for those reasons you'd think that they'd stay away from
Rambus' IP. But the way this is being described sounds right up Rambus' alley.
Anyway, time will tell.
And speaking of AMD's HyperTransport, their affiliate, API NetWorks, just
released a bridge chip that lets a HyperTransport-based system use a legacy
PCI bus. This fits in with AMD's stated goal of maintaining backwards
compatibility with existing PCI devices and software, a goal that Intel doesn't
share for its new spec.
-Hannibal
04/02/2001
PassPort Terms of Use
Posted 04/02/2001 - 9:45pm EST [Discussion]
The discussion surrounding the announcement of Microsoft's HailStorm initiative
has often taken a turn towards "I don't trust anyone with that much of my
information" or, for some, "I don't trust Microsoft with that
much of my information." Well, to the people who say the latter, the
Register has dug up
a treat for you. They analyze the current Terms of Use for Microsoft's
PassPort services, which give Microsoft incredibly broad license for use of any
material that passes through PassPort services. In fact, I'd be surprised
if all of the guarantees they grant themselves could stand up in a lawsuit, but
of course, what do I know? What does this mean for HailStorm? Well,
one could argue that Microsoft will have to tread much more carefully with
financial information than with simple text communication, but the Terms of
Service will definitely bear some close reading. -Ator
CPRM takes a hit
Posted 04/02/2001 - 8:51pm EST [Discussion]
Reader Martin Stolle linked us up with this
News.com article that reports the failure of CPRM to win acceptance from the
National Committee on Information Technology Standards. So, the technology
is still around, but it hasn't been accepted as any sort of standard. One
hopes that the tech was rejected because of concerns about fair use, but I'd say
it probably had something to do with the fact that one of its sponsors pulled
out late last month. The quote the article has from an IBM (the
aforementioned company that pulled out of the CPRM push) member of the committee
certainly implies that another CPRM-like technology could be in our future. -Ator
Mac OS X 10.0 review
Posted 04/02/2001 - 12:01am EST [Discussion]
After almost fifteen years of abortive efforts, and
a string of
defunct code-names that would make the Pentagon blush, Apple has finally
released a successor to the classic Macintosh operating system that has
defined the Mac user experience since 1984. Yes, that's right, I said
released. You can go to your local software store and
pick up a cardboard box containing an actual CD, upon which is written
(presumably in fiery runes) the
bits and bytes that represent the end of one of the industry's longest
(and strangest) product development efforts. The wait is over...or has it just begun?-Cæsar
04/01/2001
Epidemics on the Net
Posted 04/01/2001 - 11:15pm EST [Discussion]
In a paper (subscription required for full text access, I'm afraid) to be published in
the April 2, 2001 Physical Review Letters, Romualdo Pastor-Sattoras and Allessandro Vespignani investigate how epidemics - of computer viruses, say
- spread across networks like the Internet. Pastor-Sattoras and Vespignani point out some problems with the current standard virus model (called the
SIS epidemiological model), arguing that while it is instructive, it is not quite as accurate as could be desired when applied to real-world
situations. They argue that the Internet is something called a scale-free network. What this means is that on the Internet, "each node has a
statistically significant probability of having a very large number of connections compared to the average connectivity of the network." This
is different from a so-called random network, in which each node has about the same number of connections.
They then study the SIS model in the case of scale-free networks. The results are quite striking. It turns out that with a scale-free network, there is no epidemic threshold. In random
networks, if the number of infected nodes is less than the epidemic threshold, "the infection dies out exponentially fast" (the infection
threshold is determined by such things as infection spreading rate, and how quickly nodes are cured, by anti-viral software, say). If the number of
infected nodes is higher than the threshold, "the infection spreads and becomes persistent." But the infection threshold is zero for a scale-free
network, so an infection will spread at whatever spreading rate it may have. The theoretical predictions are shown to match real world data on
computer virus epidemics. This is doubtless rather alarming news, but it turns out to be tempered by the finding that on technological networks like
the Internet, most infections have very low effective spreading rates. -Geon
Five Questions With... Vint Cerf
Posted 04/01/2001 - 11:08pm EST [Discussion]
Long hailed by some as the "father of the Internet," ICANN's chairman
sat down with Business
2.0 Online and discussed the issued of determining Top Level Domains (TLDs),
the digital divide, and the Interplanetary Internet. Err, what?
You've been in touch with NASA's
Jet Propulsion Lab recently on the subject of an Interplanetary Internet. Does
that possibility seem as far off to you now as the current Internet did 25
years ago?
It seems quite near now that we have understood the technical requirements in
large measure. The development team has written prototype software and has
made significant progress on the design. We are hopeful that some terrestrial
trials may begin in the next year or so and that the resulting software might
find its way onto one or more of the upcoming Mars missions in 2003 and
beyond.
It's good to know that readers won't have to deal with OpenForum withdrawal
when staying at the Martian Hilton. Thanks to Ed Homich for the heads-up. -Cæsar
Game.Ars on-time, and it's no joke
Posted 04/01/2001 - 9:55pm EST [Discussion] It's
a great time to be a gamer right now. There are so many compelling games
out there at this moment that I'm almost tempted to expose myself to some contagious
illness just to have an excuse to stay in and game. I don't know how Carl is
going to manage the season, since his addiction is nearly life threatening even
at slow periods. Unfortunately for him, his Tribes 2 quest has hit a snag, and
he's got several other games waiting in the wings! Nevertheless, he's here with
the buttermilk biscuits, so dig in as usual. -Cæsar
Be in serious trouble?
Posted 04/01/2001 - 1:40pm EST [Discussion] Praising reviews not
withstanding, Be inc. is apparently still in financial trouble. According
to Excite, the company needs to raise additional capital, or scale back its
workforce.
In its annual report filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, the company said it believes existing cash and cash equivalents
won't be enough to meet its operating and capital requirements at anticipated
levels beyond the end of the second quarter of 2001.
What kind of scale-backs could there be? Since their chief focus is now in
the Internet Appliance department, my guess is that we'll see even less
attention to the desktop version of the BeOS. That's a just a guess though, so
don't flame me with the "they always said they would update the OS"
stuff. Always != bankruptcy proof, and Be sounds like they are going to have to
take drastic measures to get this ship sailing right. Meanwhile, BeNews
has raised the question of whether or not Be will ultimately opensource the
OS. I doubt it. -Cæsar
The Lone Geekmen
Posted 04/01/2001 - 1:20pm EST [Discussion]
What happens when 2 armed men venture into the woods with some spare
computer parts and some AOL discs? "Bang bang, bang bang." If you've
ever felt the need to bust a cap in your videocard, live vicariously through the
Lone Geekman. Warning: the thread is loaded with images, and may take a
while to download. -Cæsar
Moving
always sucks (I'm still not fully unpacked from my move in October), but for
some people (like Carl), absence away from a gaming-rig can produce clinically
significant tremors, mild sweats, and a strong desire to live real life as if a
Sim. Fortunately, Carl did manage to get 