Free Republic

 Jan. 21, 2003 – Houston's Mission Control will play a diminished role in future space flights as new ships are equipped with advanced supercomputers from Purdue University. With a $15 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Purdue will establish a center to design a new generation of compact, high-performance computers that will free spaceships from their dependence on ground-based intelligence. The NASA center is one of two being created at the Birck Nanotechnology Center planned on Purdue's campus in West Lafayette, Ind. The other collaboration will be funded with $10.5 million from the National Science Foundation...

<p>PRINCETON, N.J., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- The United States will join negotiations to build and operate a major international fusion research project, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Thursday.</p> <p>Known as ITER -- from the Latin word meaning "the way" -- the project is intended to build on previous fusion concepts involving magnetic containment of high-temperature plasma, a state of matter so hot that even atoms cannot hold together.</p>

Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away. Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles. The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables. "The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and...

A revolutionary new steam engine, described by its inventors as "an underwater jet engine", may soon be powering dinghies and speedboats more efficiently, cleanly and safely than a conventional outboard motor. The Pursuit Marine Drive produces thrust by using the energy from high-pressure steam to draw in water through an intake at the front and expel it at high speed through the rear. The steam emerges at high speed from a rearward-facing ring-shaped nozzle into a cone-shaped chamber, where it mixes with the water (see graphic). Shock waves created as the steam condenses are focused by the chamber to blast...

Santa Barbara, Calif. -- Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and at the University of Pittsburgh have provided "proof of concept that quantum spin information can be locally manipulated using high-speed electrical circuits," according to the abstract of their paper being published Jan. 23 on the "Science Express" website, Science Magazine's rapid portal for publication of significant research findings to appear subsequently in print in Science. The findings are significant because they demonstrate a solid-state quantum logic gate (i.e, control mechanism) that works with gating technologies in today's electronics, today's computers. This research also moves esoteric...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Saturday that a virus-like attack against its key database software, which slowed Internet traffic around the globe, could spread to its other less frequently used programs unless users protected themselves with key software updates. Our Business Section is growing! Check new sections for: Stock Markets, Earnings, Economy and more... Business Front Although the spread of the computer worm had passed its peak and was coming under control, Microsoft Chief Security Strategist Scott Charney urged companies, the main buyers of Microsoft's SQL (pronounced 'sequel') Server 2000 and other related programs, to download security patches...

Monster in a Boxby Stephane Fitch, 02.03.03 William Aho's software easily remakes racy DVDs into family fare--but scares the living %#!$ out of Hollywood. William J. Aho is a fan of Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford and Steven Soderbergh. And he just might get to meet them soon--in court. Aho's Salt Lake City software firm, ClearPlay, is one of several small companies (with names like Clean Flicks and Play It Clean Video) fighting off a suit in U.S. District Court in Denver, brought by 16 famed Hollywood directors and eight large studios, for selling cleaned-up versions of popular videos to squeamish...

<p>Toshiba also had a monster booth, but it always does. While showing off its latest award-winning laptops and other gear, the company also made the most overlooked announcement at the show.</p> <p>Toshiba has teamed up with Unocal and Circle K to provide wireless Internet access points at Union Oil gas stations and Circle K mini-marts around the country.</p>

Sick and tired of a revolving door justice system that lets hackers skate with just a few measly years in prison? Or do you think that the courts are already too hard on online miscreants who sometimes go up the creek for longer than many killers? Either way, the U.S. government wants to hear from you. Last week the presidential-appointed commission responsible for setting federal sentencing rules formally asked the public's advice on the formula used to sentence hackers and virus writers to prison or probation, as part of a review ordered by lawmakers increasingly concerned that computer criminals are...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists are turning to desktop printers in an effort to produce three dimensional tubes of living tissue and possibly even entire organs. Instead of using a degradable scaffold and covering it with cells to produce tissue, scientists in the United States are modifying ink jet printers and using cells to create 3D structures. "The work is a first step toward printing complex tissues or even entire organs," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. Although producing organs is a very long way away, many laboratories are printing arrays of...

HOUSTON -- The people who run this city recently heard a familiar pitch from Microsoft: Sign up for a multiyear, $12 million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of software it hadn't paid for. Microsoft warned that the city could be slapped with stiff fines for using any Microsoft software for which it could not produce receipts. Scores of other businesses and public agencies, facing a similar dilemma, have agreed to the new licensing deals -- a linchpin of Microsoft's growth strategy. Not Houston. The nation's fourth-largest city rebuffed the offer and has embraced an...

Folks, I bet you didn't know there is a "super secret" collection of files on your computer that contains all the websites you have ever visited. Even if you think you have cleand out your surfing history, you are wrong. Windows stores the data in index.dat file and leaves the data there EVEN if you clean out the history, temporary internet folders, and cookies. (If you use Outlook or Office products, that history is also stored -- even deleted messages!.) While I'm a big advocate of "if you have nothing to hide don't worry" I'm also an advocate of keeping...

The authorites said that 44 per cent - 323 voters - cast their ballot through the Internet, and 349 (50 per cent) by post. Only 48 (six per cent) actually went to the polling station. "It's a referendum on voting via the Internet," said Robert Hensler, the Geneva offical who oversees voting. More than 60 per cent of voters in Anières came out in favour of giving the go-ahead to funding the renovation of a building in the town. Under Switzerland's direct democracy system, voters are allowed to cast their ballots on national questions and local issues, such as funding....

IT IS a case of life imitating art, or in this case, science fiction. In Michael Crichton’s latest book, Prey, a swarm of molecular-sized computer chips escapes from a laboratory. The chips grow in intelligence and threaten to take over the human race. While this chilling scenario remains confined to the realms of imagination, the technology behind the novel could soon become reality through ground-breaking work being carried out by Scottish scientists. A team at Edinburgh University, led by DK Arvind, a reader in informatics and director of the school of informatics, is being funded by the US military to...

Linux firm seeks bankruptcy protection By Peter Williams [17-01-2003] Paris-based MandrakeSoft files for French equivalent of Chapter 11 French Linux specialist MandrakeSoft has hit the buffers but is trying to escape using France's equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Using the declaration de cessation des paiements, the Paris-based company can reorganise its liabilities, thought to be around €2m (£1.3m), and continue current operations under court control. But although the company claimed it had reduced expenses and increased revenues recently, it could face an uphill struggle to survive against larger and better-known competitors Red Hat and the UnitedLinux consortium. Earlier...

I just downloaded and installed Mozilla and it seems to be better than the Explorer 5.5 I had been using. What is the downside to this? It seems to do everything I used explorer for, plus it has killed all unrequested popups, yet permits popups that I request (like tvguide). Is there something I'm missing here?

DUBLIN--A computer web browser that is said to least quadruple surfing speeds on the Internet has won the top prize at an Irish exhibition for young scientists, it was announced on Saturday. Adnan Osmani, 16, a student at Saint Finian's College in Mullingar, central Ireland spent 18 months writing 780,000 lines of computer code to develop the browser. Known as "XWEBS", the system works with an ordinary Internet connection using a 56K modem on a normal telephone line. The software was tested by scientists at University College, Dublin last week and they found it boosted surfing speeds by between 100...

MPEG-4 backers protest Microsoft license By Stefanie Olsen Special to ZDNet News January 10, 2003, 6:52 AM PT Proponents of MPEG-4 are decrying Microsoft's new licensing fees for rival technology, saying that the pricing poses unfair competition and threatens consumer choice. In a first-ever move for Microsoft, it set pricing this week for licensing of its audio and video compression technology, or codecs, for use on non-Windows operating systems. The company says it will charge 10 cents per decoder, 20 cents per encoder, and 25 cents for both. In comparison, MPEG LA--a consortium of companies holding patents attached to implementations...

Inevitably, consumers griped about the high cost of replacement cartridges from Lexmark and other printer firms. And the used cartridges were perfectly good, except for needing a refill. So an industry was born - companies that collected the old cartridges, refilled them, and resold them for much less than the printer companies.

Hyper-Threading Technology Intel's P4 3.06 chip is the first with Hyper-Threading technology built-in. What is this and is it worth it? By Kevin Rice | Jan. 9, 2003 Hyper-Threading: Taking processors to the next level. Technology moves faster than most of us can keep up with. In just the past year, we've seen Intel's processors gain over a 50% speed increase (from 2.0 GHz to 3.06 GHz) and we've seen AMD aggressively market and sell it's very competitive XP line of chips. We've seen bus speeds go from 400 MHz to 533 MHz on the Intel platform with RDRAM, and...