Jules Verne anticipated man’s first trip to the moon in his 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon. Arthur C Clarke foresaw space stations and sentient computers in his classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ray Bradbury wrote about extraterrestrial civilisation in The Martian Chronicles decades before NASA’s Mars Rover surveyed the planet. These accounts, written before space travel was possible, have inspired generations of space scientists and explorers. Now, the European Space Agency hopes to recognise young writers and inspire future astrophysicists and astronauts by sponsoring the Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition — via Wired
Brian Thomas, a PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University, has done an ecological analysis of humans and vampires in Sunnydale, the home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He took some initial assumptions on rates of population growth, vampire feeding, etc and plugged them into a differential equations model. What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable. His conclusion was that even though the show’s designers are not ecologists, they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense — via Slashdot
Relatives of Ray Wallace, the man behind the legend of Bigfoot, which became the US equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster, have finally confirmed it was a hoax after his death at the age of 84
Phil Lelyveld, a Vice President for Disney, has written to the FCC to tell them to ignore Digital Consumer‘s comments on the Broadcast Flag issue. The Broadcast Flag is an inter-industry conspiracy to turn over the keys to general-purpose computing to Hollywood studio execs — under this proposal, no one will be able to ship digital television technology (like DVD recorders and FireWire) without Hollywood’s permission. Lelyveld wrote to the FCC — who are taking comments on the proposal — without mentioning his day-job, to tell them that Digital Consumer, a civil liberties groups with more than 40,000 members, is nothing more than a two dot.com millionaires
working to create a world where we are all artist/waiters
— via Slashdot
The Japanese consumers in the Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures of Japan have filed a lawsuit against Walt Disney Japan over the red tint on the Japanese DVD release of Spirited Away. Japanese consumers who purchased the Spirited Away DVD were very disappointed when they discovered a red tint to the film. A hundred thousand consumers complained, but Buena Vista Home Entertainment Japan, a subsidiary of Walt Disney, pretended nothing was wrong with the disc
West Bloomfield spammer Alan Ralsky, who just may be the world’s biggest sender of Internet spam, is getting a taste of his own medicine. Ever since an article was written on him a couple of weeks ago, he says he’s been inundated with ads, catalogues and brochures delivered by the US Postal Service to his brand-new US$740,000 home
The release of the Internet Industry Association’s cybercrime code has been delayed because of concerns raised by the Privacy Commissioner
Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals are to be offered the same rights as married couples under revolutionary UK Government plans to create legally-recognised civil partnerships
NASA is threatening to mothball the International Space Station unless Russia coughs up its share of the money for maintenance and support missions — via Slashdot
The PlayStation 2 continues to dominate hardware sales in the UK, with over 90,000 units of the console sold in the last week of November — three times the sales of Xbox and GameCube combined
According to recommendations of an Internet task force, the standards body for Internet domain names should ratchet up efforts to ensure the accuracy of domain-name owner data and eliminate bulk marketing that uses domain-name information
An Edinburgh University team has received a grant to research Wind-Powered rainmaking machines. As a cautionary note, there is the instance of a 1952 cloud-seeding experiment gone terribly wrong
If you’re tired of your television set looking like a lump of black plastic, then Predicta have the telly for you. Or maybe a Hellraiser puzzle box PC is more to your liking
Power surges and sags caused by bush fires in the Sydney basin have done untold damage to computing infrastructure, and highlighted the need for business continuity protection
Praemium Portfolio Services, a Melbourne-based online investment company, has savaged what it claims to be a lax response from the Australian Federal Police to a series of denial-of-service attacks on the company’s site
Solar power is set for a boost with the help of a material that can soak up energy from almost all of the Sun’s spectrum. It should allow solar cells to jump in efficiency from today’s best of 30 per cent to 50 per cent or higher
Richard Gere has won the unwelcome accolade of being declared the year’s worst celebrity waffler by Britain’s Plain English Campaign. And British author Wendy Perriam won the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Prize with her description of a patient fantasising about her foot surgeon in the darkly comic novel Tread Softly
Antivirus companies are warning of a damaging new e-mail worm, which, when activated, deletes all files on drives labeled D, E, F and G
Advocates of royalty-free policies in standards are slowly but surely turning the tide against intellectual property owners. But the battle isn’t over. While the World Wide Web Consortium will no longer allow its process to be manipulated in a way that turns royalty-encumbered technology patents into standards and patent holders into jackpot winners, other standards bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force are not following the W3C’s lead just yet
The Digital Domesday project which had become unusable has now been revived thanks to the successful emulation of a 1980’s era Acorn computer. Folks at Leeds University and University of Michigan did the emulation work. This is just one early indication of how difficult it will be to maintain our digital heritage. Note that the printed Domesday Book, on which the digital project was modelled, is still quite accessible after almost 1000 year
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