What happened the past years over the Software Patents (SP) was just a warm up. The promoters of SPs aren't weakened and will use more fowl (instilling fear*) tactics. It is time we knock them out for good. J. * "If we want to win the war against terrorism..." *** Soft sell The defeat of the EU software patenting directive only provides a breathing space, in which programmersby archive - Archive
Kenya pilots handheld education By Richard Taylor Editor, BBC Click Online 29 July 2005 Source In the final report of Click Online's Africa season, we visit Kenya where a trial project using handheld computers could help reduce the costs of education in poor communities. Mbita Point, on the eastern shores of Lake Victoria, hosts a small rural community. A few minutes walk from the maiby archive - Archive
The South Korean Firehosep By Clyde Prestowitz | Monday, July 25, 2005 The Globalist Source Some think of South Korea as a developing country — an "Asian tiger" defended by 30,000 U.S. troops and locked in a tense standoff with its counterpart to the North. But Clyde Prestowitz says that stereotype could not be further from the truth. As he contends, a trip to South Korea proveby archive - Archive
HIV/AIDS: The Modern-Day Plague? By Laurie Garrett | Wednesday, July 27, 2005 The Globalist Source While the Black Death wreaked havoc on 14th century Europe, HIV/AIDS is claiming more lives today in terms of both absolute numbers and percentages of populations slain. Given those staggering statistics, Laurie Garrett, author of the Council on Foreign Relations report “HIV and National Seby archive - Archive
Dimethylsulfide Emission: Climate Control by Marine Algae? by Katina Bucher Norri Released November 2003 Source Introduction Ever notice the salty sea smell when you're out on or near the ocean? It's the salt spray tossed from wind-driven white caps and breaking waves, but the smell isn't from the salt alone. Gases diffuse across the air-sea interface, many of which are synthby archive - Archive
The Sniffer vs. the Cybercrooks By GARY RIVLIN July 31, 2005 Source THE investment bank, despite billions in annual revenue and the small squadron of former police, military and security officers on its payroll, was no match for Mark Seiden. "Tell me the things you most want to keep secret," Mr. Seiden challenged a top executive at the bank a few years back. The executive listed two.by archive - Archive
New software can help people make better decisions in time-stressed situations Friday, July 29, 2005 Source and here: Software Agents Can Help Time-Stressed Teams University Park, Pa. --- Human teams aided by a software system can make decisions more accurately and quickly in time-stressed situations than teams of just people, according to the Penn State researchers who developed the new softwaby archive - Archive
Why Bill Gates wants 3,000 new patents By Randall Stross July 31 2005 Source "EXCITING," "uninteresting" and "not exciting" don't seem like technical terms, but they show up a lot in United States patent application No. 20,050,160,457, titled "Annotating Programs for Automatic Summary Generation." It seems to be about baseball. The inventors have aby archive - Archive
'Free' Danish beer makes a splash By Clark Boyd Technology correspondent BBC 28 July, 2005 Source The Danes love their beer, but increasingly they are looking beyond the old Danish standby, Carlsberg, to quench their thirst Students from the Information Technology University in Copenhagen are trying to help by releasing what they are calling the world's first open source beer rby archive - Archive
Stem Cells Mend Spinal Cords Reuters Source 12:52 PM Jul. 27, 2005 PT Genetically engineered stem cells can help rats’ severed spinal cords grow back together, according to a study published Tuesday. Rats given the treatment, using stem cells taken from rat embryos, could move their legs again after their spines were severed in the lab, said the researchers’ report in the Journal of Neuroscienby archive - Archive
Richard Branson and Burt Rutan Form Spacecraft Building Company By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 27 July 2005 03:09 pm ET Source British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, has teamed up with aerospace designer, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to form a new aerospace production company. The new firm will build a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft. Called Tby archive - Archive
The Daily Reckoning London, England Wednesday, July 27, 2005 The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: Two weeks ago, a Chinese general stated that if the U.S. intervenes in any conflict with Taiwan, they would be forced to retaliate with nukes. Dan Denning looks at the factors surrounding the situation and wonders if this threat could become a reality... DECAPITATION STRATEGY by Dan Denning The biggesby archive - Archive
First a Slashdot comment, than the 'new planet discovered' news. J. *** Perhaps a New King of the Kuiper Belt (Score:5, Informative) by rwllama (587787) Friday July 29, 2005 Source Amongst professional astronomers (which includes me), Pluto is generally not considered a planet. It is the largest member of the Kuiper Belt. It is historical accident that Pluto was discovered almostby archive - Archive
We Are the Web The Netscape IPO wasn't really about dot-commerce. At its heart was a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer - behold the power of the people. By Kevin Kelly August 2005 Source Ten years ago, Netscape's explosive IPO ignited huge piles of money. The brilliant flash revealed what had been invisible only a moment beforby archive - Archive
China Unpegs Itself By PAUL KRUGMAN July 22, 2005 Source Thursday's statement from the People's Bank of China, announcing that the yuan is no longer pegged to the dollar, was terse and uninformative - you might say inscrutable. There's a good chance that this is simply a piece of theater designed to buy a few months' respite from protectionist pressures in the U.S. Congress.by archive - Archive
Toyota, Moving Northward By PAUL KRUGMAN July 25, 2005 Source Modern American politics is dominated by the doctrine that government is the problem, not the solution. In practice, this doctrine translates into policies that make low taxes on the rich the highest priority, even if lack of revenue undermines basic public services. You don't have to be a liberal to realize that this is wby archive - Archive
Cool Light on Hot Days: Fiber Optics Bring the Sun Indoors Piping in sunlight without using electricity is a win-win proposition for the ecosystem and human society. Both home and business customers anticipate energy savings and a more pleasant indoor environment. by Mary-Sue Haliburton Pure Energy Systems News Copyright © 2005 Source CANADA TABLE OF CONTENTS A. FULL-SPECTRUM LIGHTING B. THEby archive - Archive
Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes? Source I'm sure you've read dozens of stories about how our cell phones could be dangerous to our health, causing brain tumors for example. But so far, there is not a definitive answer. But now, according to IsraCast, a team of Israeli researchers has discovered that the microwave radiation used by our cell phones could destroy our eyes by causinby archive - Archive
Expats return aids Israel biotech By Loolwa Khazzoom In Tel Aviv, Israel 26 July, 2005 Source Guy Malchi is at his weekly meeting with Professor Zvia Agur, the founder and chair of Optimata, an Israeli bio-simulation company working on cancer treatment. They are sitting at the home office of the Institute for Medical Biomathematics, the non-profit research organisation, located on the outskirby archive - Archive
USA to Pass Science Crown to China Contributed by editorone Tuesday, 26 July 2005 Source According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to dby archive - Archive
The Cost of Software Monopoly July 25, 2005 Executive Summary Source Over the past decade, the personal computer industry has seen a major reduction in competition in the operating system platform market. A computer operating system platform is the software which computer users learn to operate their computer with, the software that independent software vendors develop applications for and theby archive - Archive
Financial companies lead Linux charge By Carol Sliwa 22/07/2005 15:31:20 Source Open-source zealots may continue to play a part in instigating the spread of Linux across the European continent, nearly 14 years after Linus Torvalds hatched the operating system in Finland. But private corporations and public-sector users in Europe typically cite pragmatic reasons for taking up the open-source opeby archive - Archive
washingtonpost.com Greenspan Concerned About Pension Issues By JEANNINE AVERSA The Associated Press Thursday, July 21, 2005; 12:45 PM Source WASHINGTON -- Any more moves by companies to dump troubled pension plans on the financially strapped agency that insures them for working men and women would be troubling but shouldn't threaten the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saiby archive - Archive
FAMOUS FIRST BUBBLES? -- SOUTH SEA BUBBLE Source The South Sea Company was proposed in 1710 by George Caswall, London merchant, financier, and stock broker, and John Blunt, London scrivener turned stock broker. They proposed to the government of Robert Harley that the 9.47 million pounds of outstanding short-term war debts, not funded by a specific tax, be converted into equity in a nby archive - Archive
"...Most recently, Gerard helped demonstrate that climate changes over the last 10,000 years have been driven largely by solar variability. He did this by analyzing the effect of cosmic rays, which fluctuates inversely with solar activity, on sediment cores and comparing that to the climate record he had pried out of the North Atlantic. At the time of Gerard’s death, the paper he and his colby archive - Archive
Sunday, March 27, 2005 Dark Passage: PNAC's Blueprint for Empire Source (Original version published Sept. 20, 2002 in the Moscow Times. This is the expanded version from the book, Empire Burlesque.) Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow. Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquestby archive - Archive
Microsoft frowned at for smiley patent By Ingrid Marson ZDNet UK July 22, 2005, 17:15 BST Source Various organisations have criticised Microsoft for attempting to patent the creation of custom emoticons. The patent, which was published by the US patent office on Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing theby archive - Archive
Instill fear... The Cathedralmodel way. J. *** House votes to extend Patriot Act Democrats voice civil liberties concerns Friday, July 22, 2005 CNN Source WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House voted Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the nation's main anti-terrorism tool, just hours after televisions in the Capitol beamed images of a new attack in London. As similar legislation worked iby archive - Archive
Big time trouble America continues to weaken, but why worry? By Molly Ivins 07.21.05 Source AUSTIN -- If you had done a poll in November 2000, or in November 2004, I don't think you would have gotten out of single digits with this proposition: "George W. Bush wants to radically revise American law, including complete repeal of the New Deal, and take us back to the economic leby archive - Archive
America's Truth Deficit By WILLIAM GREIDER July 18, 2005 Source Washington DURING the cold war, as the Soviet economic system slowly unraveled, internal reform was impossible because highly placed officials who recognized the systemic disorders could not talk about them honestly. The United States is now in an equivalent predicament. Its weakening position in the global trading system isby archive - Archive