Digerati and creative minds of all stripes and backgrounds are gathered in Maine this week for Pop!Tech, one of the coolest conferences around. (You might call it TED before it got too focused on established celebrities at the expense of bold new ideas.)
This isn't just some talkfest in which smart, important people meet other smart, important people, exchange business cards, and pat each other on the back. Today, Pop!Tech launched a carbon offset initiative with eBay. At a special eBay online store, you can calculate the rough amount of carbon you put into the Earth's atmosphere and then choose between three projects that will not only compensate for your pollution, but also do some good in their own right. Learn more about the initiative here or just head straight to the checkout counter.
For the past several years, visitors to Google search page have smiled at the scribbles of Dennis Hwang, the graphic designer who comes up with the creative sketches that are incorporated into the Google logo on special occasions. The first doodle Hwang created for Google was on Bastille Day back in 2000, when he incorporated a French flag and some fireworks into the company logo. Other notable Google doodles have been the double helix to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, a sketch of Einstein to commemorate the scientist's birthday, and "Google" spelled out in dots in honor of Louis Braille's birthday.
For the most part, Hwang's doodles have been viewed as a public expression of Google whimsy, a way to have a little fun and inject some levity into what would otherwise be a dull, minimalist home page. But last week, this seemingly harmless logo offended some people:
The doodle was intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. But some conservative bloggers are angry that Google honored an achievement of the United States' totalitarian archenemy during the Cold War, the Los Angeles Times reports. They're especially pissed that Google has never posted a doodle to honor American troops' achievements on Veteran's Day or Memorial Day. (Never mind that Google regularly drapes its logo with the American flag every July 4.)
It's actually not the first time that Google has come under fire for its doodles. On past Thanksgivings, Google's incorporation of a turkey into its logo has drawn criticism from Brazil, Australia, and other parts of the southern hemisphere, with claims that Google is too focused on the north. Google has altered its logo for non-Western holidays like Persian New Year and Chinese New Year, but I'm afraid we're getting to the point where Google will be scrutinized for every single doodle it publishes. It's a pity that this politicization of the Google logo will only work to dampen down the tiny bit of creativity we have left in the corporate world.
I'm in Brussels this week, making the rounds at the EU and NATO. Yesterday, I had a meeting with Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner for Justice, Peace, and Security. Turns out he's getting ready to introduce a series of counterterrorism proposals to the European Parliament next month. His action plan, which he plans on officially introducing on November 6, will have three parts:
1. Tracking explosive materials: Frattini will make a series of recommendations for public institutions and private companies to work together to better track explosive materials. He also thinks that there needs to be a more specific definition of "conspiracy."
2. Creating a register of non-EU visitors: Frattini wants to create a Passenger Name Record (PNR), similar to the one that the United States has, with information about non-EU citizens on flights in and out of the EU.
3. Blocking certain Web sites: Frattini thinks Internet providers should shut down sites that provide information about making bombs or otherwise incite violence.
Get my take after the jump.
One fascinating aspect of Israel's mysterious September 6th airstrike on Syria is just how Israel's jet fighters evaded Syria's Russian-made radar system. David A. Fulgham at Aviation Week's defense technology blog has an informed guess: The Israelis hacked it (perhaps it was these guys).
U.S. aerospace industry and retired military officials indicated today that a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. unmanned aircraft by L-3 Communications was used by the Israelis. The system has been used or at least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last year.
The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages algorithms that allow a number of activities including control.
Fulgham relays a report in a Kuwaiti newspaper saying that the Russians are scratching their heads trying to figure out just what the Israelis did, while the Iranians, who use the same anti-aircraft systems, are equally befuddled. Fulgham's post suggests that the real mission of the Israeli raid wasn't knocking out North Korean nuclear supplies (and obviously, speculation about that didn't derail the six-party talks), but making clear that Iran's air defenses won't protect its nuclear sites from Israeli bombs.
(Hat tip: Danger Room)
Russians must be feeling a tinge of nostalgia today, the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. But while the days of immense public curiosity and excitement for space exploration are about as over as the Soviet Union, the space race is still alive and kicking. In this week's list, FP takes a look at some of latest frontiers in space research and the unexpected cosmic challengers who are gearing up to take on American space dominance. From Mars to space weapon, the race is on.
But we left off a few out-of-this-world ideas that might just belong on the pages of a science fiction novel:
Going up? Forget loud, jarring rockets. Imagine taking a smooth ride up a 62,000-mile cable into space on a cosmic elevator. Although I couldn't explain the physics behind it for the life of me, scientists have been looking at possible plans for a space elevator constructed of carbon nanotubes. NASA and the Spaceward Foundation are holding a competition in Utah this month for the best design.
Greening outer-space Despite the rush to wean the world off dirty energy sources, space-based solar power is still waiting on the sidelines. The vision is quite simple: Platforms that capture sunlight are put in space and the resulting energy is then beamed down to Earth. Col. M.V. "Coyote" Smith, space-based solar panels' biggest fan, spearheaded a study (without any funding) for the National Security Space Office in an attempt to convince the Pentagon of the technology's feasibility. To add to the geek appeal, he then gave his presentation in Second Life.
Five-star accommodation $4 million for a three-night hotel stay? Only if it's in orbit. Xavier Claramunt plans to have Galactic Suite, the first space hotel, up and running by 2012. Of course, there is a lot of planning that goes into accommodating people in a zero-gravity atmosphere, like figuring out how guests can shower. Claramunt's solution: a spa room where bubbles of water will float around you.
Of course, we can debate whether spending millions of dollars and unquantifiable amounts of brain-power into these kinds of space endeavors is really the most prudent use of our resources. And for countries like China and India, there are countless terrestrial causes that could benefit from the investment otherwise going into establishing massive space programs. But if anyone is offering a free ride on a space elevator and a stay at the nearest galactic hotel, sign me up.
A clever entrepreneur in India is selling plane tickets for just $4. The catch: The Airbus 300 never takes off!
Passengers just get to experience what it's like to sit on a plane. They get to fasten their seat belts, watch the safety demonstration, be waited on by stewardesses with drink carts, and hear announcements such as, "We will soon be passing through a zone of turbulence." The plane, by the way, has only one wing; a chunk of the tail is missing; and the bathrooms are out of service.
The "virtual journeys" are turning out to be a success in a country where only 1 percent of the population has ever experienced real off-the-ground air travel. Commenters have pointed out that it's not much different from city folks who take their kids for pony rides (or to petting zoos, for that matter) at county fairs, or people who pay to spend the night in a cabin of the Queen Mary ship docked in Long Beach, California. People will pay for simulated experiences; just look at some of the most popular video games.
The "virtual journeys" could serve a practical purpose, though. With India's rapid economic growth, more people are flying for the first time. A report about unruly Indian passengers quoted an airport manager as saying that many are first-time fliers who don't understand airplane etiquette. One tried to open the door right before takeoff, for example. The report recommends that Indians be taught the do's and don'ts of plane travel. "Virtual jouneys" may be the place to start.
There's no word yet, though, on whether long security lines, lost luggage, and getting bumped for a free ticket later will be added to the experience.
In an effort to kick-start its nascent space program, Malaysia is set to launch its first space-bound national into orbit on Oct. 10. In addition to the usual scientific studies and research assignments, the government of the predominantly Muslim country wants to make sure that its novice angkasawan (Malay for astronaut) does not forgo his duties as a devout Muslim. Thirty five year old Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor (who is a doctor and part-time model), was chosen from among 11,000 eager hopefuls to accompany two Russian cosmonauts on a ten-day mission in the International Space Station. While he has been fasting for the month of Ramadan throughout his training, the strains of a zero-gravity environment might mean our astronaut will have to adjust his daily rituals during the mission. For a practicing Muslim who prays five times a day, would he have to pray 80 times every 24 hours, since the ISS will be circling the Earth 16 times each day? Plus, figuring out where Mecca is while you are in space must be no easy task.
In order to avoid confusion, Malaysia's Department of Islamic Development laid down some guidelines on how to observe Islam correctly while in space. For example:
During the prayer ritual, if you can't stand up straight, you can hunch. If you can't stand, you can sit. If you can't sit, you should lie down.
The guidelines also include useful tidbits on what to do if there is no water for washing rituals, or on the ill-fated chance that there is a death on board. And Malaysian Science Minister Jamaluddin Jarjis recently declared that Muszaphar is allowed to postpone his fasting until he returns back to earth.
So as he prepares to be his country's first galaxy representative, the thoughtful Muszaphar plans on bringing Malaysian food on board to share with his Russian shuttle cohabitants. But don't worry, he says:
We've made sure it's not very spicy so the Russians can eat it very well.
Visions of the future generally reveal more about the time in which they are created than the time they are predicting. Take for example this film of rocket pioneer Werner von Braun describing humanity's space-bound future, made during the early days of the space race. Or this article from the rapidly industrializing America of 1900 predicting that all wild animals would be extinct by 2000 and that Nicaragua and Mexico would join the union after the completion of the Great Nicaragua Canal. (Both of these examples can be found on the fantastic Paleo-Future blog, which specializes in this sort of thing.)
It is with this history in mind that I approach the World Future Society's just released Forecasts for the Next 25 Years. The predictions are quite interesting, and about as plausible as the ones above probably seemed when they were made. Not surprisingly, wariness about the rise of China is prevalent. The WFS predicts that a water shortage in China will cause the price of commodities around the world to increase. They also believe that India's future development is more viable than China's because of its greater political transparency and democratic institutions. All this reflects traditional wisdom in political economy, but I'm not so sure. For the past few years, China has specialized in disproving the traditional wisdom. The WFS also reflects current fears about global warming in forecasting, "The costs of global-warming-related disasters will reach $150 billion per year." As the Times pointed out this week, 20 years ago, the depletion of the ozone layer was leading scientists toward similarly gloomy predictions. Admittedly, global warming will be a much tougher problem to address, but the future may surprise us.
Here's the best prediction, though:
Forecast #4: We’ll incorporate wireless technology into our thought processing by 2030. In the next 25 years, we'll learn how to augment our 100 trillion very slow interneuronal connections with high-speed virtual connections via nanorobotics. This will allow us to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of computer intelligence and to each other. By the end of the 2030s, we will be able to move beyond the basic architecture of the brain’s neural regions.
As I sit here using this primitive input system to create this post, the thought of being able to use my vastly improved interneuronal connections to research foreign policy and find links for blog posts (I imagine it would look something like the above postcard from 1910) gives me a supremely nerdy glimmer of hope about an otherwise bleak-seeming future. And maybe that's what futurism is really about.
Over the weekend, people in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca saw a fireball fall from the sky. When they went to investigate, they found what appears to be a crater that is 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep. Check out the video:
They also found themselves becoming ill with vomiting, headaches, irritated throats, and itchy noses. Around 600 people sought medical help, and animals have reportedly become sick as well.
The supposed crater, which may have been created by a meteorite, seems to be passing some fetid, noxious gases. One geologist said a chemical reaction between a meteorite and elements in the Earth's surface could have unleashed noxious gases.
Geologists from Peru's Geophysics Institute are planning to present a report about the mystery meteor later today, but meanwhile, Peruvians near the apparent crater are crying foul.
NASA is seeking astronaut candidates to staff up the International Space Station and to carry out future missions to the moon (and beyond). Here are some highlights from the want ad posted on USAJobs.com:
In what sounds like a breakthrough in the diagnosis of genetic disorders, British scientists announced this week that they would be able to forgo expensive genetic testing in favor of simply looking at patients' faces for signs of disorders like Asperger's, fragile X syndrome, and others.
Hundreds of documented genetic disorders result in subtle alterations to facial features. Doctors, using 3D mapping imagery for a handful of these, will be able to spot tell-tale features in patients as young as two years old. One of the disorders they've been able to map is Williams syndrome, which causes those afflicted to be uncommonly friendly toward strangers and was the subject of a fascinating NYT Magazine piece this summer. Williams is "characterized by a short, upturned nose and a small jaw," and with the new facial mapping program, doctors were able to accurately diagnose 98 percent of cases.
There will no doubt be some who call this phrenology for the 21st century. But with 25,000 different facial points mapped on each child for comparison, the new technology hardly sounds like the pseudoscience of yore. What's crucially important for the testing—if it indeed is as accurate as is being claimed—is that children can be diagnosed younger and at far lower costs.
Last week, the Pentagon admitted that a B-52 had mistakenly flown nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the United States. And worse, for almost fourteen hours no one—at the base of departure, on the bomber itself, or at the base of arrival—had any idea something was wrong. Officials have assured the public that there was no danger of a nuclear explosion, even if the plane had crashed.
The specific warheads carried by U.S. cruise missiles belong to the W80 family, in this case the W80-1. (Other versions of the W80 are designed for use with Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are launched from submarines.) There are about 1,450 of these warheads in the active stockpile, with another 360 or so in the inactive stockpile. They have "dialable" (variable) yields of up to 150 kilotons, or about 10 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. And, as mentioned by the Pentagon, they have several safety measures built in to prevent accidental detonation.
First, the actual detonation system is physically protected by an "exclusion zone," which isolates it from electric (and to some extent physical) shocks. The exclusion zone can be connected to the rest of the warhead’s electronics by a "strong link," which does not physically connect until the warhead is armed.
An accident—fire, lighting strike, crash, etc.—could breach either or both of these safeguards, so the electronics inside the exclusion zone also contain safeguards, called "weak links." These are electronic links designed to fail under lower stress than either the exclusion zone or the strong link. This ensures that, for instance, if the exclusion zone collapses, the weak links will as well and the nuclear core will remain inert.
And beyond those nested safety systems, most U.S. warheads have other safeguards, including insensitive high explosives that will not detonate easily due to mechanical shock. The biggest worry with this incident was not technical, but organizational: How did nuclear warheads get loaded onto a plane and flown across the country before anyone even noticed they were gone?
It may not be shocking news that Apple's vaunted iPhone is currently on sale in Chinese electronics stores despite the fact that Apple doesn’t plan to sell them there until 2008. What is more surprising is that Chinese consumers are willing to pay $1,170, twice the already steep U.S. price, for a phone that doesn't even work properly. According to the AP, the phone can make calls but not receive them and has no functioning voice mail. In spite of these seemingly major drawbacks, one Beijing shop owner claims to be getting about 30 inquiries about the phone every day.
This type of unauthorized sale, when a manufacturer makes more of a product than the client requests in order to sell it on the black market, is known as "third-shift" counterfeiting and has become increasingly common as more companies outsource their production overseas. The iPhone is assembled in Shenzen, which is likely the source of the unauthorized models. To sum up: Chinese citizens are willingly paying twice as much for an inferior, illegal version of a product that is made in their own country. Oh, what a tangled supply chain we weave.
(Oh, and in case you're wondering what the latest Apple hoopla is all about, Steve Jobs introduced a new iPod nano today that he dubbed "the fatty".
This passage from a recent piece by Joshua Davis in Wired concerning last spring's cyber attack on Estonia's Internet infrastructure reads like a deleted scene from The Matrix:
Across the dinner table from Aarelaid sat Kurtis Lindqvist, the man in charge of running Stockholm-based Netnod, one of the world's 13 root DNS servers, which direct global Internet traffic. That makes Lindqvist a sort of Olympian in the IT crowd. He is a handsome 32-year-old with a dimpled chin and close-cropped hair. By day, he wears a trench coat and shades, but the geek in him is just below the surface. He loves to play badminton and often programs late into the night. And, befitting the trench-coat-and-shades look, he belongs to a clandestine alliance of Internet elite with the power to cut off global Internet flows. He's one of the so-called Vetted: the select few who are trusted by the world's largest ISPs and can ask them to kick rogue computers off the network.
The Vetted constantly crisscross the globe to expand their network of trusted members, and by a stroke of luck, Lindqvist and some others were in Tallinn that week for what was referred to as a BOF — a birds-of-a-feather — meeting with European network operators.
So what is this mysterious geek Illuminati?
As far as I can tell, "the Vetted" refers to the Internet Architecture Board. The IAB traces its origins back to DARPA, the tech-research division of the U.S. Department of Defense that created an early precursor of the Internet in the 1970s. Today, the IAB, no longer under DoD control, is responsible for overseeing "aspects of the architecture for the protocols and procedures used by the Internet." The IAB also oversees the Internet Engineering Task Force, of which Lindqvist is a member. The IETF oversees global TCP/IP protocols and does indeed hold regular "Birds-of-a-Feather" meetings. Far from being a clandestine society, however, the IETF is an open community whose meetings are open to anyone who happens to be interested.
No, I don't like staying up at night. I even told Wired to correct this. I like to sleep at night. Also, I don't think I have done serious programming for years...
I also believe that I have never owned a trench-coat. I do own a half-long beige jacket though...:-)
I'm still not sure I trust a guy who uses emoticons to protect us from Russian cyber terrorists.
UPDATE: In an e-mail exchange with Blake, Passport's editor, Lindqvist writes:
Actually, exactly what [the Vetted] refers to I suggest you ask Wired about, I have never attributed this term to anyone - and I am not exactly sure myself. Second guessing the author of the Wired article, I would assume this does not refer to the IAB as the IAB has no operational role at all. It has an oversight function inside the IETF, that sets the technical standards for the Internet. It's members are appointed by a well defined process inside the IETF.
No word yet from the folks at Wired, however.
Simon Romero reports on the latest developments in the Bolívaran Revolution:
Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chávez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008. He announced the change on his Sunday television program, accompanied by his highest-ranking science adviser, Héctor Navarro, the minister of science and technology. "This is about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight," Mr. Navarro said in comments reported by Venezuela’s official news agency. Mr. Chávez said he was "certain" that the time change, which would be accompanied by a move to a six-hour workday, would be accepted.
(Thanks to KH for sending this in.)
Guests will get to enjoy "space sports," "surreal sleeping arrangements," and—you guessed it—stargazing. They will see the sun rise 15 times a day as they travel around the world in 80 minutes. To move about in zero gravity, they will wear Velcro suits that let them stick to the walls of their pod rooms. To take a shower, they will go to a spa room with floating bubbles of water. (Accommodating other bathroom activities, however, is still proving to be a challenge.)
The three-bedroom hotel is already taking reservations (seriously, just check out the Web site) at $4 million for a three-day stay and eight-week training at a James Bond-style space camp on a tropical island. It's a steal of a deal considering that Virgin Galactic is charging $200,000 for a mere seven minutes in space.
Of course, those with even more money can shoot for the moon. Space Adventures, a space tourism company, will be charging $100 million to take people around the moon as early as 2009. (Lunar tourists won't actually land on the moon; they'll just get incredible views.)
Unfortunately, the nascent space tourism industry will remain out of the reach of most of us Earthlings until prices come more down to Earth. But it's still pretty cool.
This month marks the 66th birthday of the Jeep. During WWII, more than 600,000 of the little green 4-wheelers helped the Allies win. In fact, the Jeep became synonymous with that conflict. Look at any news coverage from the war, and a Jeep is bound to be featured prominently. The image of the Jeep, historian Paul Fussell has noted, "conveyed the firm impression of purposeful, resourceful intelligence going somewhere significant, and going there with speed, agility, delicacy -- almost wit."
Nearly seven decades later, the Jeep's great-grandson—the Humvee—has become synonymous with the conflict in Iraq. But the two vehicles couldn't be more different. The Jeep was small, light, and open. The Humvee is massive, twice as heavy, and fortified. So what do these two vehicles say about America's changing perceptions of war? A lot, argues military historian Jon Grinspan over at AmericanHeritage.com:
American troops, many military theorists now argue, are too removed in their vehicles, fighting for Iraqi hearts and minds with a drive-through mentality. The open-air jeep meant that soldiers could, and had to, interact with the people of occupied nations; the closed, air-conditioned Humvee has only isolated American forces from Iraqis.... Though the tactics of the current surge seek to get troops out of their vehicles more often, many politicians involved in the debate over Humvees assume—perhaps erroneously—that more armor means more safety and success."
Maybe. But wars rarely turn out the way they are envisioned at the start. Is the Humvee perfect? Hardly. But neither was the Jeep. If the Humvee is overly isolating, the Jeep was certainly overly optimistic. It is often forgotten that at the outset of WWII many thought the fight would be, in Fussell's words, "fast-moving, mechanized, remote-controlled, and perhaps even rather easy." What followed, of course, were merciless battles such as Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Normandy, and the Bulge. Sound familiar? Iraq turned out just as unpredictable. My guess is that rather than revealing a great transformation in American strategic thinking over the last 70 years, the evolution from Jeep to Humvee mostly sheds light on the unchanging nature of war.
Need any more proof that markets are value-neutral?
Take a look at the share price of China Public Security Technology (CPST), which jumped over 20 percent following Sunday's article in the New York Times. In the article, the Times called out the Florida-based company for providing technology that will help the Chinese government monitor its citizens even closer than before:
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
It's not something I'd want to be associated with, but investors who bought shares in CPST today are just behaving rationally. After all, electronic surveillance is a growth market—and nowhere more so than in China.
Piracy of intellectual property--including software, music and movies--is a huge point of contention between the US and less IP-sensitive countries. Last year, for instance, a Russian website accused of illegally distributing music files fueled a dispute between Russian authorities and the US Trade Representative's office.
Enforcement of IP laws is lax but getting better in many parts of the developing world, especially in countries that are cleaning up their act in hopes of gaining WTO membership (Ukraine, China). Beyond poor enforcement, another reason why piracy is so rampant is because the price of software in developing countries is just too high for the local market. It's easier for many to just buy priated copies at reasonable prices and take the gamble of breaking the law. Even if they are caught, the legal consequences are usually minimal.
Microsoft's South African division is hoping to gain market share and combat piracy at the same time with the introduction of a pay-as-you-go software subscription. Instead of forking over $700 for a legal copy of Microsoft Office, users can subscribe to Office for as little as $10 per month. Microsoft will also open up the subscription service to users in Romania.
Beyond just combatting piracy, Microsoft's move could also be a first strike to prevent the developing world from embracing Google Apps, a $50/year web-based software package offering many features similar to Microsoft Office.
Last week, The Economist posed the question: Why is Japan the source of so many bright ideas? At 1,200 patents per million people, Japan has the highest rate of patents in the world—even when you account for multiple counting.
But Japan's success in patenting only tells part of the story. Patents are often awarded for incremental achievements; for instance, improving the clarity of photos on a cell phone camera rather than coming up with a unique new design. So it's likely that incremental innovations inflate Japan's patent figures. Another reason for Japan's patent performance could be its concentration of manufacturing and particularly electronics industries. The "clustering" of competitors and demanding clients means that not only do companies have an incentive to come up with constantly improving products, but they also have a strong incentive to make sure they patent each improvement so as to avoid copying by competitors. Switzerland is the second highest patent-awarding country after Japan, no doubt bolstered by its cluster of big pharmaceutical companies.
Perhaps it's an issue of quantity over quality. As John T. Preston, the former director of MIT's Entrepreneurship Center, states, "The radical breakthrough patents that we see mainly come out of laboratories in the United States." A number of truly innovative and useful inventions—such as cell phones, the Internet, and Windows—all have their origins in the United States. The Japanese may have plenty of ideas, but the real question should be, are they really that smart?
There is a world that came into existence only 2 years and 8 months ago. In this world, at least 7 languages are spoken. There are villages and metropolises. There's trade and commerce. There are wars and treaties. And there's been a population explosion. This week, that world hit a milestone—reaching 9 million inhabitants. That's more than the entire population of Somalia, and only slightly smaller than Sweden.
What is this world of which I speak? It's World of Warcraft (WoW), what's known as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Launched in November 2004, WoW has become one of the most popular PC games in the world, and will soon release an expansion pack in China, swelling its ranks even further. To take a look at how WoW's population of 9 million stacks up against real life countries, click here.
As the numbers show, this ain't no mere fantasy game, catering to a small niche of die-hard geeks. No, this is an insanely lucrative business, involving masses of people and masses of cash. Let's do some rudimentary math. The pricing varies from country to country, but each subscriber must pay at least $20 just to get started. Thereafter, subscription fees are, at the very minimum, $13 per month. Multiply all that by 9 million, and also the monthly subscription times 12 months, and what do you get? $180 million in initiation revenues, plus an additional $1.4 billion per year from one game alone!
As Christine points out elsewhere today on Passport, it's been a stormy summer for sports. Europeans are busy booing doped-up cyclists, but American sports fans have their fair share of things to complain about, too. After the Barry Bonds scandal, for instance, a chemist who worked with BALCO told USA Today that he believes baseball's culture of doping is still very much alive:
What they're doing is taking steroids in the offseason, and then using HGH and EPO during the season. There's testing now, but I'm sure somebody has already designed an undetectable steroid."
Undetectable steroids may soon be obsolete. A team of medical researchers at the University of Milan has found a way to reduce mental and perhaps physical fatigue through small electric shocks to the brain. The shocks are imperceptible and have no collateral effects, the scientists claim in a study soon to be published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. The discovery could herald the end of doping ... or perhaps the start of a new trend of artificial performance-boosting, and this time among nerds as well as jocks.
Copies of a strange, enormous, beautiful book arrived unsolicited at Foreign Policy magazine and its publisher, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last month. The Atlas of Creation uses 759 heavy, glossy pages to illustrate its author's view that the scientific theory of evolution is just plain wrong. The thick, 11-by-15-inch tome, with hologram-like images on its cover, was written by a mysterious Turkish man, Harun Yahya (whose real name is Adnan Oktar). Nearly every page features brilliant color photos of fossils and animals, all which supposedly prove that creationism is correct, and evolution is balderdash.
On page after page, the same formulaic argument appears, which is typified by this quote from a page with a photo of a 150-million-year-old shrimp fossil:
Since shrimp first came into existence, they have always displayed all the same organs and characteristics as they have today and have undergone no changes in all that time. This shrimp fossil shows plainly that evolution is an imaginary scenario. (p. 110)
The book has been mailed unsolicited—at undoubtedly ludicrously high postage costs—to scientists, academics, members of Congress, museums, and now apparently think tanks across the United States. Copies have also turned up in France.
If Yahya wants to do something positive for the world that also promotes Islam as a religion of genuine peace, he might want to mail Muslims and non-Muslims alike copies of his more promisingly titled books (listed at the end of the Atlas of Creation), including Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism and Islam Denounces Terrorism, or direct people to some of his websites such as Islam Denounces Antisemitism and Islam Denounces Terrorism.
Using an array of sensitive, sophisticated techniques, scientists have discovered that our rotund planet Earth is a bit smaller than previously thought: a whole 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) smaller from surface to center on average.
Some of the other updated measurements the scientists made after two years of measuring include:
So what? Well, the more accurate measurements give scientists a better baseline against which to measure and track environmental changes such as melting ice caps and evaporation from the Amazon Basin. If the sea level is rising somewhere, it's important to know whether that change is due to a sinking continent, or due to, say, global warming. Regardless of the important implications of the new measurements, we at least now know for sure that it's a smaller world after all.
According to a new study (PDF) conducted by the Communications Workers for America, a union for telecom employees, the United States is a sluggish 16th among industrialized nations in terms of Internet speed. The CWA crunched numbers for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and found that the median download speed in the U.S. was 1.9 megabits per second (mbps). It compared that to data from other countries provided by the International Telecommunications Union.
In Japan, which topped the list, the median download speed is 61 mpbs, 30 times faster than in the United States. That means a movie that would take 2 hours to download in the U.S. would only take 2 minutes in Japan.
But never mind entertainment. What about more vital uses for the Internet, such as telemedicine in hospitals, education, and business? The United States needs to do much better. In fact, that 1.9 mbps number probably overstates the speed of American connections. The study claims 80,000 respondents, "nearly all" of whom had cable or DSL connections. Other studies, however, estimate that 30 to 40 percent of Americans are still rockin' dial-up.
A new computer virus was identified last week that spreads via USB flash drives and other removable media on Windows PCs. This method of propagation is about as old as computers themselves. So what's the big deal? It's the content of the program that makes this particular virus so special.
The worm doesn't infect a computer with maladjusted software or erase important system files. Instead, it spreads educational information about HIV/AIDS. Security experts have been quick to point out that the worm, called "liarVB-a," does no explicit harm to the user's computer, but it's still a potential security threat. Graham Cluley, a senior senior technology consultant at the security firm Sophos, explains:
Even though the hackers responsible for this worm aren't set on filling their pockets with cash, and may feel that they are spreading an important message, they are still breaking the law. In the future we might see more graffiti-style malware being written on behalf of political, religious and other groups looking for a soapbox to broadcast their opinions."
Personally, I'm very curious to see the contents of this worm. Is the information contained in the worm about HIV/AIDS accurate? What was its original source? Wikipedia? So far, copies of the program are hard to find. If your computer becomes infected with the worm, let us know.
It's no secret that ramping up (pdf) corn ethanol production has been rife with problems. The net energy gain from corn-based ethanol is pretty small at best—its corrosive impact on most pipelines usually requires you to truck it to market. And, of course, the use of corn for fuel has been driving up food and feed prices.
But I think it's best to think of corn as the beginning of the ethanol journey, not the destination. There is a furious R&D effort to develop enzymes—the bug or bugs—that can be used to break down cellulosic materials cheaply.
Now, Craig Venter, the man best known for his controversial for-profit contribution to the human genome mapping race, claims to be on the brink of producing a synthetic bug that can do just that, and more. BusinessWeek reported last week that Venter "believes he is within weeks or months of creating the world's first free-living artificial organism in his laboratory." His bug could potentially clean up dirty fossil fuels and help make ethanol.
In his typical down-to-earth fashion, Venter jokes that he's "going from the gene king to the oil king." It's unlikely, though, that any concrete application for his new bug will emerge for quite some time.
But this is about much more than any particular technology, or even the energy business as a whole. Some say Venter is out to become the "Bill Gates" of artificial life, which has huge ethical and legal implications. Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, tells BusinessWeek that synthetic biologists may be "manipulating nature without knowing where they are going.... There are arrogant scientists, and our friend Venter may be one of them." Time will tell if Caplan's fears are vindicated.
Check out this gorgeous map of the Internet, compiled by thousands of
geeks researchers studying the Web's connectivity. The dense nodes in the center represent the core of the Web through which most traffic flows. The study's novel finding: Taking away these core connections wouldn't crash the net. The 'mantle' and 'crust' of connections would keep humming, albeit a little slower, through peer-to-peer connections.
Yesterday, we learned that within Washington's Republican powerbase, bloggers don't wield very much influence. That's according to Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, who yesterday in a moment of frustration over the fledgling immigration bill proclaimed:
Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
One has to assume that Lott was talking about conservative America, because the liberal talking heads over Air America sure as heck aren't "running" anything. Passport sends its condolences to Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Sullivan, and the rest of our conservative blogger pals, who have apparently been trumped within their party by the technologies of the last century. Sorry guys. Here's hoping the GOP joins 21st century sometime soon.
Passport, FP’s flagship blog, brings you news and hidden angles on the biggest stories of the day, as well as insights and under-the-radar gems from around the world.