Summary from ICT Today: The University of California in Berkeley has made a breakthrough in its programme to develop a robot fly weighing less than a paper clip which can leave the ground and hover in mid-air. Scientists have constructed a wing mechanism that can flap and rotate at 150 times a second.

Recent discoveries about the way flies use their wings have helped the project considerably. A real fly has a 'delayed stall' which enables the beating wings to have a high angle of attack and high lift at the same time. 'Wing rotation' at the bottom and top of the stroke gives the insect more lift, and 'wake capture' provides even more lift by swishing back through air it set in motion on the previous stroke. The scientists' version of the wing is made from polyester and a stainless steel strut that flaps and rotates. Still to come is a lightweight power source, a gyroscope to tell up from down, and a light sensor. A microprocessor with a small operating system has already been developed. Eventually it would carry sensors chosen for a specific use.

Big brother will be watching you...

Robotic fly gets its buzz

Precrime. It works.

Citizens for a Murder Free America

Except for Tenet's Friday departure, details were not disclosed for security reasons, including even his precise destination.

Off he goes, but what he'll accomplish, nobody knows. Perhaps his actions will serve to strengthen those who might oppose Arafat in the much-talked-about future Palestinian presidential election.

Tenet to Rebuild Palestinian Forces

Attorney General John Ashcroft has a gift for making the most draconian policy changes sound seductively innocuous. He was at it again yesterday, describing new domestic spying powers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as nothing more than the authority to surf the Internet or attend a public gathering. That is profoundly misleading. In reality Mr. Ashcroft, in the name of fighting terrorism, was giving F.B.I. agents nearly unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity.

The New York Times is clearly unhappy with recent changes at the FBI. But they seem to be narrowly focused on the negative privacy implications, while not assessing the likelihood that these changes will prove (in)effective in "preventing" future acts, or that they will disrupt the FBI's responsibilities with regard to law enforcement.

An Erosion of Civil Liberties

GrepLaw is Harvard's answer to LawMeme. Some recent headlines:

New York sues Monster Spammer
Cybersquatter King Nailed With Multi-Million Dollar Judgment
Cross Border Disputes in Internet Law
Registrar Market Share Study Expanded to Forbes International 500
RIAA Goes After Audio Galaxy MP3 Service
Stuart Lynn leaves ICANN and More
FBI Forces ISP to Remove Daniel Pearl Video
Which Registrars Do Fortune 500 Companies Use?
Library of Congress Rejects Webcasting Licensing Plan
Eldred v. Ashcroft Update--Opening Brief Filed, Amici Weigh In

GrepLaw: More cyberlaw than you can fit on a floppy.

... Money will keep talking, the public interest will keep walking. The great battles, in short, are still ahead.

washingtonpost.com: The New Face of Another Gilded Age

A music teacher / MIT Media Lab researcher has developed an innovative new tool for composing music on the computer. He calls it HyperScore, software that would convert expressive gestures -- lines, patterns, textures and colors -- made on the screen into pleasing and variable sounds. The goal, he said, is to let children have "the direct experience of translating their own thoughts and feelings into music."

From a Few Colored Lines Come the Sounds of Music

"The warnings were serious, the information specific and some of it had to do with the use of airplanes to kill the president and foreign leaders."

Be sure to follow the "Listen to Mike Shuster's report" link to hear the audio track for this story. It's the best study I've seen thus far into how close we actually came to having specific advance knowledge of September 11.

NPR : Terrorism Intelligence Timeline

Maybe it is a way to tame a fearsome subject by Hollywoodizing it, or maybe it is a way to drive home the dreadful stakes in the arid-sounding business of nonproliferation, but in several weeks of talking to specialists here and in Russia about the threats an amateur evildoer might pose to the homeland, I found an unnerving abundance of such morbid creativity.

This is a long article, and there is little you can do, but it you are curious...

Nuclear Nightmares

It's not surprising that many officials in Washington are talking about convening an independent panel to investigate the federal government's actions before the Sept. 11 attacks. ... Congressional investigations can calm public anxiety, push reforms upon government agencies and in some cases force out ineffective officials. What they are unlikely to do is give us the kind of understanding that normally comes only decades later from history, when we will have full access to information and the distance to judge it properly.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss explains it all.

Fact-Finding and Its Limits