Limited attack by a 'rogue state' actually limited attack by rogue weather balloon

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2000

A report commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests that the new National Missile Defense system might be -- how can I put this delicately -- easily confused by decoys. Researchers have concluded that $13 billion "hit-to-kill" system, engineered to ... "sublimate" ... incoming missiles more than 300 kilometers above the Earth, could be misled by attackers who cleverly enclose their nuclear warheads in Mylar balloons and then conceal those balloons in the midst of hundreds of similar, but benign, decoy balloons. The NMD is not without its successes, though, having successfully vaporized a large weather balloon. Still, the event doesn't inspire the sort of confidence one would hope to have in these matters. As one researcher pointed out "they had a warhead and a big balloon. Those look very, very different! ." The Pentagon, for its part, says the UCS report exaggerates the problem.

I'm out of order!? 
You, E-judge, are out of order! 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2000

Hoping to offer relief to Brazil's overtaxed legal system, three judges in the state of Espirito Santo are testing an artificial-intelligence program designed to help them dispense justice more efficiently. The Electronic Judge presents judges called to the scene of a crime with multiple choice questions like "had the driver been drinking alcohol above the acceptable limit of the law?" and "did the company improperly leverage its monopoly power in the personal computer market?" Upon completion of this Eliza-esque call-and-response legal analysis (see below), the Electronic Judge will issue a verdict and recommend the appropriate penalties based on evidence and witness accounts collected at the crime site.

  - Hello.
Greetings from Eliza. Please state your problem.
- I am in trouble with the law
 Is it because you are in trouble with the law that you came to me ?
- Why yes it is.
Why do you ask ?
- A federal judge has has ruled that my company is a monopoly.
Your company a monopoly?
- Unfortunately, yes. At least that's what the judge says.
You seem to be quite positive.
- Quite the contrary, I find that I'm a bit more contemplative these days. Now Steve...Steve's certainly upbeat.
How long have you been a bit more contemplative these days?
- I think it all started with Scott McNealy...
You say you think it all started with Scott McNealy?
- Yes, I think so
You are sure.
- Positive. Although Larry Ellison might have had something to do with it as well.
Lets discuss further why your company is a monopoly.

Carl, is a nuclear explosion really the best way of detecting microbial life on the moon? 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2000

A physicist involved with the Cold War-era Armour Research Foundation says the U.S government allegedly planned to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might. Describing the conceit of the effort, Dr Leonard Reiffel said, "It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of oneupmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth. The US was lagging behind in the space race." More unsettling still -- if that's possible -- is corroboration of celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan's involvement in the project (mathematical modelling of the expansion of a malignant exploding dust cloud around the moon) and Sagan's suggestion that a nuclear explosion might present an easy way for scientists to detect microbial life on the moon.

Nice work, "Einstein"... 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 2000

A scientist at the NEC research institute in Princeton, New Jersey has allegedly broken the light barrier by transmitting a pulse of light at about 300 times its normal speed of 186,000 miles per second, effectively allowing it to arrive at its destination prior to its departure. This announcement is unsettling to physicists far and wide because of its implications both for Einstein's theory of relativity -- which states that the speed of light is unsurpassable -- and for one of the basic tenets of physics: causality. As students of, or investors in, fiber optics know, light is capable of transmitting information. If light were able to travel forward in time it would follow that it might also carry information forward in time. This would essentially sack the principle of causality by suggesting that cause doesn't always have to come before effect. For the time being the specific details of the experiment in question are to remained sealed from public view because they have been submitted to the periodical Nature for review prior to possible publication.

Nice work "Einstein", ad nauseam

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com THURSDAY, JUNE 8, 2000

A number of you wrote me Wednesday suggesting that experiments resulting in "Superluminal Behaviors in Wave Propagation" like the one mentioned here Wednesday were, in fact, nothing new. This is resoundly not the case. Although researchers have indeed in the past created light pulses that traveled faster than the speed of light (in a vacuum), those pulses were never able to transmit information faster than the speed of light (in a vacuum). Nor were they able to send them as far. Those who suggested that causality can't be effected by the natural flow of time (forward, presumably), in particular that "transmitting information from this time point to a forward time point is no different than leaving a newspaper on [a] desk and seeing it the next day" would do well to note the following:
A signal transmitted at a speed faster than that of light would allow "an observer traveling in some fast-moving reference frame to see the signal arrive before it was sent." This would essentially allow that observer to predict the future. To hypothesize a real-world example, Salon's David Talbot -- had he transmitted copy of Salon's prospectus into the future -- would have immediately known that stock in the content venture that brokered the Henry Hyde story would someday close at $2.03 a share (as it did this past Monday), and that he along with Salon CEO Michael O'Donnell would be ultimately forced to make some very unpleasant decisions...
It's important to note here that many scientists are disputing the plausibility of anything, even light itself, traveling faster than the speed of light. Some suggest that the pulses of light in question are nothing more than illusions caused by light traveling via "off-axis detour" in the optical testing environment.

Nice work, Einstein...

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 3, 2000

Those of you who remember some discussion here concerning researchers who claimed to have broken the speed of light take note: the basic principle of the universe that appeared to have been upended remains viable. Apparently what the scientists in question succeeded in doing was simply manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light and subsequently altering the way it arrives at its destination, something that has been done in the past but not with quite the same results.

I dunno, Bob. That didn't sound like the "music of the whales" to me

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 2000

The U.S. Navy has completed trials of a new technology that allows submarines to transmit e-mail messages to destinations both on land and sea without ever having to surface or otherwise belie its position. While cruising at a depth of 400 feet, a submarine using an acoustic modem capable of transmitting digital data underwater by using sound energy was able to send e-mail over distances of up to three miles to a facility located onshore.

New high in absurd patent claims reached

By Tara Murphy, SiliconValley.com TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 2000

British Telecom is going after companies it says are using the "hyperlink" technology it patented in 1989. Not any special type of hyperlinking, mind you. Any hyperlinks. All hyperlinks. The company wants U.S. ISPs to pay for using "its technology." Reaction to British Telecom's patent claim has come from far and wide, with some saying turnabout is fair play. One observer said he hopes the company presses forward with its claim, so that he can file a class action suit against it "for every broken link we've ever had to deal with..."

Patently absurd

By Tara Murphy, SiliconValley.com WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2000

Following British Telecom's wacky declaration that it owns the patent on hyperlinks, a Florida telecom company says it owns the patent on "automated lead generation," the very common process by which a company harvests a customer's information and passes it to a third party.

Aibo! Down! Down boy!...bad dog! 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2000

Someone with quite a bit of spare time on their hands has posted a mock CERT advisory to the international BugTRAQ newslist warning of security vulnerability in Sony's Aibo robot that could be exploited to turn the dog on its owner. Masquerading under the title "AIBO Authentication Algorithm Corruption Vulnerability" the advisory explains that a flaw in Aibo's "AttackBite() control" allows "remote intruders within earshot of AIBO" to execute arbitrary code which might cause one or more of the following:
- The AIBO to attack its owner,
- The AIBO to wake, walk off its base station and attack children/pets,
- The AIBO to generate Cyber-Body-Fluid and/or Excretion, and/or
- The AIBO to die.

Give it Gastobot, he eats anything...He likes it! Hey, Mikey...: 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com Thursday, JULY 20, 2000

Stuart Wilkinson, an inventor at the University of South Florida claims to have engineered what may be the first robot powered by food. Chew Chew the gastrobot uses a microbial fuel cell enabled by a proletariat comprised exclusively of E. coli bacteria to break down food and convert chemical energy into electricity. While the gatstrobot is capable of using at least two of the four food groups as a source of energy, it currently relies primarily on vegetation to fuel its endeavors, largely because "meat" is a bit too difficult for it to catch.

Debut of "My Real Baby" heralds future enslavement of humankind to malignant robot kingdom

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 16, 2000

In an announcement that has prompted Bill Joy to set pen to paper in the hopes of having his particular vision of a dystopian future published in Wired, Hasbro and robotics shop iRobot last February announced they had developed an interactive, animated doll that can respond to stimuli with "realistic" behaviors. Indeed, if one were to believe the press releases, the ventures appear poised to deploy one of the most technologically-advanced robots ever targeted at the consumer market -- Aibo be damned. The companies said My Real Baby can react instantly with a "full range of expressions and sounds" to the attention of a child. The responses would reportedly appear to "grow over time through speech development" into "a full menu of unpredictable reactions." It seems the hyperbolic language of the press releases was merited. Soon, the world's first digikinetic babies or "Robo sapiens" -- embellished with multiplexed orientation sensors and internal emotional models developed to trigger "nurturing reactions" in children -- will land on toy store shelves to await the diligent ministrations of their owners.

Robot agents to compete in dynamic, nondeterministic and adversarial environment! 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 24, 2000

Those unable to score tickets for the Olympics in Sydney might consider coughing up a few dollars to attend Melbourne's RoboCup2000. While the purported longterm goals of the event are relatively lofty -- the development of evolvable software and artificial life -- RoboCup2000 should succeed on entertainment value alone. After all, who would balk at the opportunity to watch "a team of fully autonomous robot soccer players win a soccer game (complying with the official FIFA rules) against the human winners of the World Cup..."

Single-electron photonic device around here, somewhere... 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2000

Researchers studying a bacteria that undermines yield on semiconductor lines -- by encasing itself in semiconductor material and thwarting attempts to eradicate it -- may have uncovered a way to transform the bacteria into "biotransistors" that could be used in optical applications. The bacteria in question is apparently photosensitive. When exposed to light it produces an electron that could be used to switch a primitive biotransistor. As researcher Robert Baier explains, "A plant is basically a single-electron photonic device converting light into electricity. If we embed a photosensitive bacteria inside a chip, we have the beginnings of a biotransistor."

Darling would you please remove your "adaptive camouflage"? We need to talk

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 2000

Researchers at NASA are investigating the abilities of lightweight optoelectronic systems capable of reacting to changing scenes and lighting conditions as a way to render objects "effectively invisible". While adaptive camouflage was initially conceived for combat use, its potential commercial uses are apparently legion: home security systems, "mock" office scenery, and of course, imaginary friends.

Researcher inadvertently wraps sandwich in foldable display monitor

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 15, 2000

A University of Arizona researcher is developing flexible thin-film organic light-emitting diodes displays, which he hopes might someday be used to create foldable computer display monitors. The technology at issue apparently permits the fabrication of display screens that are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair using an inexpensive printing technique that imprints LEDs on thin sheets of plastic.

Drop the nanojet and step slowly away...

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 22, 2000

Using a computer-simulation technique, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology hope to develop a viable nanojet -- a minute "squirt gun," that can force liquids through nozzles with orifices smaller than a common virus. Since normal fluid dynamics equations no longer apply at this scale, scientists have been forced to simulate the interactions of thousands of individual molecules in order to predict the nanojet behavior. By doing so they are better able to chart the unfamiliar terrain of the nanoworld, and might someday find themselves able to create nanojet-enabled devices capable of extruding wires only a few nanometers wide in electronic circuits or perhaps even inserting genes into cells.

The nose on that wine is not exactly the color pattern I expected

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 21, 2000

Chemists at the University of Illinois are developing an artificial nose that functions by converting an odor to a color pattern which can be scanned and analyzed on a computer to determine the chemical composition producing the odor. Explaining the technology, chemist Kenneth Suslick said, "Our technique is similar to using litmus paper to determine if a solution is acid by seeing if the paper goes from blue to pink. But we have generalized it so a whole range of chemical properties are being screened by an array of many different dyes that change color when they interact with different chemicals. The resulting changes in the array provides a color fingerprint unique to each vapor."

I assure you, the Russian space program has one of the safest track records in manned space exploration... 

By John Paczkowski, SiliconValley.com AUGUST 25, 2000

Those among you diligently developing a monomania for reality TV take note: MirCorp -- a venture that hopes to commercialize the operations of the Mir space station -- has inked an agreement with Mark Burnett, executive producer of Survivor, to develop a TV program called "Destination Mir". On the program civilians will compete to convince Russian space officials that are worthy of traveling to the... troubled Russian space station. Apparently unable to contain his enthusiasm over the conceit of the program, Mark Burnett explained, "Space provides the ultimate adventure. The fact that we will allow several ordinary people to undergo cosmonaut training at Star City, Russia, and one will be selected to actually travel in a Russian spacecraft to Mir is extremely exciting to me and will make great dramatic television."