A potential problem with the emergency reactor core cooling system at the nation's largest nuclear power plant went undetected from 1986, when the plant began producing electricity, until last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the plant operator confirmed Thursday.

Nuclear Plant Has Flaw Undetected for 19 Years

Japan's parliament approved the privatization of the country's postal service Friday, setting in motion the creation of the world's largest private bank and delivering a crucial victory in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reform program.

The upper house passed the closely watched legislation on a vote of 134 to 100, paving the way for its enactment. The powerful lower house overwhelmingly passed the package on Tuesday.

The bills authorize splitting up and selling off Japan Post's delivery, savings deposit and insurance services by 2017. The system controls some 330 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) in savings and insurance deposits.

Japan Parliament Passes Postal Reform Bills

Poly1305-AES is a state-of-the-art secret-key message-authentication code suitable for a wide variety of applications.

DJB's MAC. I hadn't seen this before -- it looks like its just being published this year.

Poly1305-AES: a state-of-the-art message-authentication code

In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple's success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan's music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods.

If you think of this like the old UK "TV license" that was used to fund the BBC, this isn't all that outrageous. Another flavor of "flat rate, all you can eat," plus the price discrimination falls out naturally -- if your fee is 5% of the sale price of your device, for example.

Japan's Music Industry Wants Fee on Sales of Latest Digital Players

From the rbike list at work ... They get these things up to 80mph!

World Human Powered Speed Championships 2005 photos

This architecture has been out in the public view for a month or so. The media has already had its way with its initial presentation. Congress will soon weigh in on whether they think it is the right thing to do, whether it is supportable, and whether they will sign on to support it. There is some valid skepticism on the financial aspects of how Mike Griffin wants to pull this off. However, based on the technical aspects of the architecture itself, while it is more bare bones than many would have liked to see, it is a frugal, well thought out way to pick up where Apollo left off - and then move ahead with the personal exploration of the world closest to our own. Hopefully, if NASA is able to pull it off, it will both restore the confidence in NASA's ability to mount large space projects and hopefully whet the appetite of a new generation for the personal exploration of planets beyond - i.e. Mars.

Let's just hope none of the subsequent administrations give it the budget axe...

A Closer Look at NASA's New Exploration Architecture | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded Monday to a pair of American and Israeli researchers who defined chess-like strategies in politics and business that can be applied to arms races, price wars and actual warfare.

Game Theorists Win Nobel Prize for Economics

- Stanley, a robotic vehicle designed by a Stanford University team, appeared to earn its creators a $2 million prize on Saturday by being the fastest finisher on a 132-mile course through the Nevada desert.

The race, called the Grand Challenge, was a Pentagon project meant to promote the development of technologies for 21st-century automated warfare. The car was not immediately declared the winner because officials were doing final calculations, but race times on the event's Web site indicated that it had come in several minutes ahead of two entries from Carnegie Mellon University.

Every last member of Red Team was compelled to commit seppuku...

In a Grueling Desert Race, a Winner, but Not a Driver

The wisest course for journalists might be to begin sustained investigations of why leading Democrats have failed so miserably to challenge the US occupation of Iraq. The first step, of course, is to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the US interest and has not become so. It is such an obvious case to make that I find it difficult to believe many pundits and political leaders have not already made it repeatedly.

A year or two ago, my sentiment about the Iraq war was something like "I'd like to know the real reason why we invaded since its come to light that the WMDs aren't there." Now, I don't think there ever was a "real reason" ... it was just a total policy fuckup. A bunch of folks -- CIA, neocons, oil, etc, sat down and each told a different story but they all ended with "overthrow Saddam Hussein." So we went and did it. It took 3 weeks and minimal casualties.

The problem is that historically, "Iraq" doesn't exist. The administration's commitment to a "one state solution" doomed the whole thing from the start. For example, there probably ought to be a free and independent Kurdistan. That would absorb some of Turkey. Oops.

Nieman Watchdog - What’s wrong with cutting and running?

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

Lessig has remarked on this point before, as well. There is some cause for hope when the FCC in record short time made some local telco/dsl provider stop blocking Vonage earlier this year.

Overall, really good.

Al Gore tells it like it is