Free Republic

The American newspaper business as we know it was born on September 3, 1833, when a twenty-three-year-old publisher named Benjamin Day put out the first edition of the New York Sun. Whereas other papers sold for five or six cents, the Sun cost just a penny. For revenue, Day relied on advertising rather than on subscriptions. Above all, he revolutionized the way papers were distributed. He sold them to newsboys in lots of a hundred to hawk in the street. Before long, Day was the most important publisher in New York. One thing that Day did not do was patent...

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The recession's toll notwithstanding, the upcoming 15th annual Hot Chips conference drew a near-record number of paper submissions. But the scheduled lineup shows that Hot Chips, like the industry it examines, has distinctly changed its flavor. "The focus in design now is on applications and their solutions, not on general-purpose CPUs for everything," said Pradeep Dubey, manager of innovative platform architecture at Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and program co-chairman for the conference, which will convene Aug. 17-19 on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif.Hot Chips traditionally has been a showcase for general-purpose CPU...

From atomic-scale "carbon nanotubes," Motorola Inc. has sprouted a new technology that will make it possible for the first time for manufacturers to easily grow and inexpensively produce the material to make large-scale TV and computer display tubes, the Schaumburg technology company announced Tuesday. In addition to its use in producing 60-inch and larger displays at a retail price potentially below $1,000--a fraction of the current cost for plasma displays--the new Motorola process will have a variety of other applications, researchers said. It could be used in devices to detect and eradicate infectious microbes, such as that causing the...

The Brisbane maker of chips to let Xbox owners run software not sanctioned by Microsoft is goading the software behemoth to litigate or leave them alone. Aussiechip released for free to the internet last week details of how to make "mod chips" - microprocessors that alter the internal workings of a console - under a licence that requires anyone downloading the plans to issue proceedings in its home jurisdiction of Queensland, should they wish to sue. Aussiechip founder Grant Sparks says there have been several downloads of the plans from Microsoft's corporate network in Redmond, Washington, agreeing to the click-wrap...

By TED BRIDIS AP TECHNOLOGY WRITER WASHINGTON -- The government and private technology experts warned Wednesday that hackers plan to attack thousands of Web sites Sunday in a loosely coordinated "contest" that could disrupt Internet traffic. An early-warning network for the technology industry, operating with the Department of Homeland Security, notified companies that it received "credible information" about the planned attacks and already has detected surveillance probes by hackers looking for weaknesses in corporate and government networks. "We emphasize that all Web site administrators should ensure that their sites are not vulnerable," wrote Peter Allor of Internet Security Systems Inc.,...

LONDON, July 1 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced a trio of European government contract wins on Tuesday, the latest salvo in the growing turf battle between the software giant and vendors of the upstart Linux software. The U.S. software giant would not disclose financial terms of the deals, which it said it won after competing head-to-head for the business with various Linux vendors. Microsoft said it would deploy its signature Windows server and desktop software on thousands of computers for the city governments in Frankfurt, the Latvian capital of Riga and Turku in Finland. For the past year, an...

Tracing all the genetic changes that flow from a single mutation, UCSF scientists have identified the kinds of genes and systems in the body that ultimately allow a doubling of lifespan in the roundworm, C. elegans. Humans share many of these genes, and the researchers think the new findings offer clues to increasing human youthfulness and longevity as well. Using DNA microarray technology, the researchers found that the single life-extending mutation ? a change in the gene known as daf-2 -- exerts its influence through antimicrobial and metabolic genes, through genes controlling the cellular stress response, and by dampening the...

Buoyed by successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator unmanned air vehicle (UAV) goes from strength to strength in the US, where the company has quietly begun construction of a classified addition to the Predator family that is aimed at deep-penetration missions in high-threat environments. Senior company officials have expressed frustration, however, at the UK's decision to press ahead with its £800 million ($1.3 billion) Watchkeeper UAV development and production programme, when the capability, they say, already exists and could be bought largely off-the-shelf. Tom Cassidy, president and chief executive officer of General Atomics, visited the...

The United States is planning to build an unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of striking any target in the world within two hours. The initial description of the concept - called the "reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle" (HCV) - has recently been placed on the website of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). A conference of companies interested in the project is to be held soon. The idea is that the HCV would take off from a conventional airfield in the continental United States carrying a 12,000 pound (5,500 kilogram) payload. This payload would be made up from a variety of...

America to build super weapons US-based missiles to cover world Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday July 1, 2003 The Guardian The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that will allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory. Over the next 25 years, the new technology would free the US from dependence on forward bases and the cooperation of regional allies, part of the drive towards self-sufficiency spurred by the difficulties of gaining international cooperation for the invasion of Iraq. The new weapons are...

ARLINGTON, Va. ? Scientists have developed a hydrogen-making catalyst that uses cheaper materials and yields fewer contaminants than do current processes, while extracting the element from common renewable plant sources. Further, the new catalyst lies at the heart of a chemical process the authors say is a significant advance in producing alternate fuels from domestic sources. In the June 27 issue of the journal Science, James Dumesic, John Shabaker and George Huber, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, report developing the catalyst from nickel, tin and aluminum and using it in a process called aqueous-phase reforming (APR), which converts...

FOR millions of web users, Google is the friendly face of the Internet, the brisk, clean and efficient pathway to exactly what you want. Whether you search for "deep sea diving" or "Deep Purple" -- it depends, after all, on your interest in reefs or riffs -- within seconds you will have an array of thousands of websites to choose from. Google is an amazing search engine with an amazing history. It is already an indispensable web tool, despite this year celebrating only its fifth birthday. But questions are now being asked about the power it wields over the Internet,...

FSF Statement on SCO v. IBM Eben Moglen June 25, 2003 The lawsuit brought by the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) against IBM has generated many requests for comment by FSF. The Foundation has refrained from making official comments on the litigation because only the plaintiff's allegations have been reported; comment on unverified allegations would ordinarily be premature. More disturbing than the lawsuit itself, however, have been public statements by representatives of SCO, which have irresponsibly suggested doubts about the legitimacy of free software overall. These statements require response. SCO's lawsuit asserts that IBM has breached contractual obligations between the two...

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's NTT Data Corp. said it has successfully linked thousands of computers on the Internet to finish a task in 132 days that would take a single computer 611 years. AFP/File Photo   It marked Japan's first test of "grid computing" -- where linked computers share small parts of mammoth calculations -- and meant sales of the processing power would go ahead by next March, the company said Thursday. "The project went just according to plan," said NTT Data spokesman Yoshinori Munekata. "We are already in talks with several customers for the product." In the test that...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Organic wastes such as paper mill sludge or cheese whey can be converted into hydrogen using an inexpensive metal catalyst, researchers say, in a process that could boost efforts to replace oil and gas fuels.</p> <p>Researchers at the University of Wisconsin tested more than 300 metal combinations before finding that a mix of nickel, tin and aluminum could separate hydrogen from a mixture rich in glucose, a sugar common in many organic wastes. A report on the study appears today in the journal Science.</p>

IBM Flips the Switch on Deep Computing on Demand; GX Technology Plans to Transform Business with Supercomputing On Demand 26 Jun 2003, 09:43am ET - - - - - ARMONK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 26, 2003--IBM today ushered in the era of deep computing on demand with the start up of its first facility designed to deliver supercomputing power to customers over the Internet, helping to free them from the fixed costs and management responsibility of owning a supercomputer. Additional facilities are planned nationally and internationally. IBM's deep computing on demand will offer scalable, highly secure systems that customers can access...

AN OBSCURE GEEK was refused entrance to the White House because he couldn't put his hands on his identification. The Drudge Report said harmless bespectacled Bill Gates had a meeting with the Homeland Security Dept Supreme Tom Ridge but left his ID in his humble vehicle. And that meant that the Secret Service stopped him from coming in while one of his minions rushed to retrieve the missing document from his little Fiat Panda, or whatever he was in that day. But the minion ran like the wind, or the clappers as the Brits say, and got it in about...

ARLINGTON, Va. ? Scientists from Columbia University, IBM and the University of New Orleans today announced a new, three-dimensional designer material assembled from two different types of particles only billionths of a meter across. In the June 26 issue of the journal Nature, the team describes the precision chemistry methods developed to tune the particles' sizes in increments of less than one nanometer and to tailor the experimental conditions so the particles would assemble themselves into repeating 3-D patterns. The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the independent agency that supports basic research in all fields...

Ashton was a macaw that lived in the lunch room at George Tate's software company, Ashton-Tate, home of dBase II, the first successful microcomputer database.  There is a lot about that long-gone company that was unusual.  There was the macaw, of course, which was named for the company, not the other way around.  There was George Tate, himself, who died at his desk when he was only 40, but still managed to get married two weeks later (by proxy -- please explain that one to me).  And later there was Ashton-Tate's copyright infringement lawsuit against Fox Software that pretty much...

<p>Linus Torvalds, the founder and lead developer of the Linux open-source operating system, has some strong views about the legal dispute between The SCO Group and IBM, which he shared with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli in an e-mail exchange last week. Torvalds also last week announced he was taking a leave of absence from Transmeta Corp. and becoming the first full-time fellow at the Open Source Development Lab, where he will continue to drive the next version of the Linux kernel, 2.6, due later this summer.</p>