... the much-ballyhooed "orbital space plane" ... [is] the wrong sort of craft ... [and NASA has] shut the door on some of the most innovative current thinking on space technology.

Buzz Aldrin weighs in on the future of NASA.

Fly Me to L 1

My contributions are made in what I believe to be the common interest.

George Soros defends his campaign contributions.

Why I Gave

] You may recall our post on Monday about a Florida woman
] who was trampled in a mad stampede of people scrambling
] to buy a $30 DVD player at the local Wal-Mart. It was one
] of those stories that perfectly symbolized our nation's
] unhealthy obsession with shopping, right? Well, we might
] be unheathily obsessed with shopping, but there is
] growing evidence that the woman, who is a "frequent
] faller" who has managed to injure herself nine times
] before at various Wal-Marts around Florida, is faking it.
] Over the years she's also filed injury claims against six
] other businesses, as well

Not only are we unheathily obsessed with shopping, we are also unheathily obsessed with liability!!

Gizmodo : Woman injured in Wal-Mart $30 DVD player stampede might have faked it

] BIT ENGINEERS REPORT the Antiterror line has concluded
] public testing and is ready for use. This service enables
] every phone [home/cell/booth] to act as a networked
] microphone. For collecting live audio data on civil
] liberty infringements and other anti-terror events.

I've been wondering when something like this was going to happen. Getting harassed? Blackmailed? Get the goods on them with your cellphone in your pocket! I've played around with this before. Newer Nokia's have a recording mode that works quite well sitting in your pocket picking up a conversation in a quiet room. Works for a lot more then ratting on anti-terror police. In fact, anti-terror police might find it useful, as stupid criminals are likely to overlook the ubiquitous cellphone while searching for a wire.

My next prediction is that a super sophisticated cellphone will have a security vulnerability that enables me to hack in, turn on the mic, and spy on you...

If you have a cellphone you are wearing a wire...

norfzorf wrote:
] I'm not sure if you've heard of adiabatic computing, but
] here's a wired.com link about it which might affect moore's
] law: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61118,00.html

Very cool technology... (No pun intended. :)

The recent slashdot discussion on this annoyed me. The assumption that this particular scientific vein will be mined for improving power forever is the misconception. Intel has warned and warned about this for years. The date hasn't moved. Moore's law will end. This doesn't mean that computers are going to stop getting faster, but that the rate at which they will get faster will decrease. The engine of Moore's law has had far reaching impacts on the rate of economic growth in the past 20 years. If we wish to sustain such growth we must find a new engine in time. Otherwise the speed of computers is not the only thing thats going to stagnate.

As need is the mother of invention, one can predict with reasonable safety that nothing will be done until the situation is dire. There may be an economic recession around the time that Moore's law stops. If you are ready you can manage your investments appropriately. Conversely, one can expect short "y2k" like bursts in computer/telecom spending around the time that the IPv4 space runs out, and the time when UNIX clocks stop working. All of this is less then 30 years out.

] Hugo De Garis also predicts computers will become "trillions
] of trillions" of times more powerful than the human brain
] using molecular electronics, a subfield of nanotechnology.
] Actually, I think he mentioned using quantum mechanics to do
] this or something, but I can't make heads or tails of quantum
] mechanics.

Its nonlinear. Its not a standard computing architecture. It solves NP in P. Trouble is its extremely unstable. Like a truck driving 50 miles away will destroy it unstable. Whether that is a solvable problem is unknown.

Cool thing is that we are starting so see quantum crypto systems on the market. They really aren't all that interesting from a security standpoint, but improving the technology will eventually allow information to be transmitted across unlimited distances instantly. (Yes, I mean faster then the speed of light.) There are practical limits to the bandwidth of such systems, but there could be some interesting applications. (However, the first applications that come to mind are military... Cache enough tied photons in a remote UAV to allow the final seconds of targeting and weapon firing to be controlled in realtime for increased accuracy.)

RE: Intel scientists find wall for Moore's Law | CNET News.com

] "Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere
] and it is a very dangerous phenomenon."

Damn these people are ignorant!

Intellectual property piracy is form of terrorism: WIPO chief

Maybe I'm the last person on earth to get the memo on this, but I've had several horrible experiences in my life where I've picked up a permanent marker on my way over to the whiteboard, drawn all over the thing, and then realized what I was doing. Its usually possible to clean permanent marker off, but in the past is has entailed a LOT of work. Today a small bit of information that I was missing was dropping to my lap. Apparently if you draw over the permanent marker with a dry erase marker, you can then erase the marks! It works amazingly well.

This is an advent calendar with a perl technique tip for each day of the Christmas season. Get into the holiday spirit (because you know you spend your vacation time working on projects)... Now, anybody got one of these for C?

The 2003 Perl Advent Calendar

] A new nonprofit organization aimed at welding
] file-swapping and open-source computing advocates into a
] political force is launching online this week.
]
] Dubbed "Click The Vote," an allusion to the successful
] Rock the Vote efforts focused at the MTV generation, the
] group hopes to make digital copyright and computing
] matters an issue in the 2004 election campaigns.

Of interest...

Group seeks political power for P2P | CNET News.com

] In recent years, there have been quite a few
] entrepreneurs wandering around with good ideas (at least
] in their heads), but unable to raise capital. There are
] no more angels willing to invest hundreds of thousands of
] dollars. The number of venture capital funds making seed
] investments has sharply contracted, and those still
] willing to invest do so only after long and painstaking
] study, especially in cases of entrepreneurs without prior
] experience.

Interesting interview with the founders of Huminity...

Globes [online] - No favors