pnotequalsnp writes to note that physicists at Fermilab have discovered a new heavy particle called the Cascade B. This is the first particle ever seen that is made up of quarks representing all three quark families. A team of 610 physicists from 88 institutions reported the discovery in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters last week. This must be the discovery that triggered rumors that the Higgs had been found.

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xseedit writes "The RIAA has moved their main Web site www.riaa.com from IIS on Win2003 to Apache 2.2.3 on Red Hat. It appears that the move did not go smoothly as it resulted in an 8-hour downtime starting yesterday around noon, according to Netcraft. And the RIAA is still showing a 'temporarily under construction' page. They also moved their DNS from the small company that had been hosting them for the past 4 years, Tomorrow's Solutions Today (TST Inc.), to Mindshift Technologies. One can only guess what happened here, but the move seems to have been sudden and unplanned. They still haven't moved the riaa.org, riaa.net, and musicunited.org domains — those are still pointing to the TST nameservers that no longer accept queries for those domains. TST Inc. deserves credit, however. They seem to have managed to host the RIAA quite successfully for the past 4 years. Will Mindshift do a better job hosting one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world? I wonder if anybody at the RIAA or TST would care to comment on the reasons behind this sudden move. Could it be that the RIAA is being sued by its hosting provider? Or perhaps the sue-happy organizaiton is suing its provider?"

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bobbocanfly writes "Another crack in the Windows Genuine Advantage wall. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate an Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. (Here is an OGG video of the process.) Along with the advancement of LiveCD technology, this could spell the end of Microsoft's control over who gets their updates."

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Nom du Keyboard writes "When The Consumerist published 22 tips for getting the best deal from Dell Computers, according to a self-described former Dell sales manager, Dell fired back with a take-down notice. You might want to look quickly, in the event it does get taken down. The Consumerist's lawyer's initial response was to deny the takedown request."

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myspace-cn sends us to Bo Lipari's blog where it is revealed that Microsoft has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes to NY state election law drafted by Microsoft attorneys. A document has been circulating (PDF) among the legislators for a while now. The proposed changes would gut the source-code escrow and review provisions in current law that were hard-fought-for and passed in New York in 2005. Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn't want its code inspected by outsiders. From the article: "Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying 'we won't comply with your law' but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests... Adding insult to injury, these changes are being slipped into a bill that may be voted on Monday or Tuesday, June 18 or 19."

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mforbes writes "Like many geeks, I enjoy watching TV, movies, and streamed video. However, in company with 2%-3% of the population, I suffer from a problem known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder, which essentially means that I have difficulty separating the sounds of human voices from various background noises. When watching TV and when watching movies at home, this isn't a problem, as I can simply turn on the closed captioning. (I find radio to be simply an annoyance.) How much effort would it take the major purveyors of Internet video (the broadcasting majors, etc.) to include an option for CCTV? I doubt the bandwidth required would be more than 1% of that required for the video already being presented. As a social libertarian, I would never ask for government regulation of such an enterprise; I ask only that the major studios be aware of the difficulties that those of us with auditory disorders face. If it's rough for me, how much more difficult can it be for someone who can't hear at all?"

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Last week I had a meeting with a serial entrepreneur who's working on a new company whose product is a calendar for social networks, or a social network of calendars, depending on which thread you pick up. It's basically a good idea, a no-brainer, because time and networking relate to each other. I have relationships with individuals, or any group of people I choose to meet with. Of course systems can work better if there's a way to express those relationships.

Earlier today I signed up for a service a friend works for, to try it out and give feedback. It's the 20th new service I've signed up for in the month of June (I made up the number, I don't know how many I've signed up for, but it's not far from 20). Every time I sign up, I have to enter the same pieces of information. We all know the drill, we all do it. There is even a social network of people who meet a few times a year to discuss this, but progress comes slowly, if at all.

Everyone is going ga-ga over Facebook, but like the people who hold out on Twitter, I'm not ready to give my life to a service that views me as a college student. My relationships are adult relationships. Okay, I probably won't even use Facebook when they offer me some realistic choices on labels for the arcs that connect me with people in my network, because what we really need is an architecture that allows anyone to add a tag to an arc, the same way we add tags to pictures on Flickr.

All these things point in one direction, esp Facebook. Closed systems are fine in the early stages of a new technology. They're the training wheels for a new layer of users and uses. But, as we always see, the training wheels eventually come off, explosively, creating new systems that throw out the assumptions of the old. Oddly, I think this is what's really behind the Fred Wilson thread, it has little to do with the age of the people, and has more to do with the age of the technology. (The personal computer was "invented" by a group of people, with wide ranging ages. Bill Gates was a teen, but many of the other people were adults. How old were Chuck Geschke, John Warnock and Paul Brainerd when Desktop Publishing came online? Tim Berners-Lee was in his 30s when he created the web.)

Eventually, soon I think, we'll see an explosive unbundling of the services that make up social networks. What was centralized in the form of Facebook, Linked-in, even YouTube, is going to blow up and reconstitute itself. How exactly it will happen is something the historians can argue about 25 years from now. It hasn't happened yet, but it will, unless the rules of technology evolution have been repealed (and they haven't, trust me).

OriginalArlen writes "The science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonization of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonization seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain't gonna happen without a 'magic wand' or two. Nevertheless it would be interesting to see reasoned responses from the community who believe that colonization is not merely possible, but inevitable — and even, as Hawking has said, vital for the survival of the species. So, who's right — Hawking or Stross?"

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Re the current thread about entrepreneurship and aging...

1. I think Fred Wilson's intentions are good.

2. I think it's great that VCs have blogs now, so they can post ideas like the one he did, so we can respond to them, and hopefully figure out how to bridge the gap between our understanding of the world and theirs.

3. I am not the entrepreneur I was in my 20s, and that's where I'd like to begin today's story.

When I was young, I had an incredible drive to prove myself and that caused me to invent something new, want to use it to change the world, and made it possible for me to go through some horrible stuff to make it work. Really horrible stuff.

Once, I remember having a thought, at work very late at night, the ony person in the office (I had been the first in the office that morning too) wondering what my last day at Living Videotext would be like. I couldn't visualize it. I was so dug in, so committed, and the situation was so hopeless, I just couldn't see a positive outcome. But in my 20s, I didn't give up. I kept going.

Later, when my board of directors, most of whom were a generation older than me, told me to shut the company down, I told them to fuck off. I knew I had a hit product in the pipe, we just had to get through a couple of months of hell and then the sun would shine. (BTW, thanks to Guy Kawasaki, a VC who blogs, for believing in me, and helping us dig out of that hole.)

Today's Dave would never do any of that. I would give up long before I made my investors their 20x return. Fred's theory is correct, when applied to me. I am a cashed out 50-something ex-entrepreneur. But the problem with Fred's theory is that it flushes away the biggest opportunities in front of him, the ones that could make him an investor in the next Apple, Nikon, CNN or Sony -- at their startup. All it takes is a little flexibility. In other words, our pair of posts present an opportunity to close a big gap, and create a new kind of entrepreneurship that takes advantage of the power of youth, and also takes advantage of the rarest of things, a 50-something person who has spent a life studying creativity, and knows how to keep the wheels moving, even if experience has taught him some very hard lessons about what to try and what not to try (in other words Clay Shirky's thesis is correct too, even though it's only a sliver of the whole picture).

Here's a challenging question. If age is such a killer, why is today's Steve Jobs doing so incredibly well, where the young Steve Jobs shipped a loser (Lisa), then an almost loser (Mac) which was saved over his objections (he had some very wrong ideas about users and stubbornly held to them) and then was either fired or quit in a rage (depending on whose story you believe). Today, people seriously consider the possibility that Jobs's vision of the future may prevail over Gates's. I only use Macs these days. Did I think that would be possible, even five years ago? Never. So did we underestimate Jobs? Absolutely! The 50-something Steve Jobs disproves Wilson's hypothesis.

Me, I'm discovering not only new ideas that are world-shakers, at an incredible pace, but I'm also learning how to make them work in the real world in ways I never could have before. In the 80s, with all my focus and intensity and will to succeed, I only managed to make a modest success, and when we flipped the company, the products died shortly after I left. I suspect that will be true of many of today's flips as well.

But in my 40s, I learned how to make three things work, all non-commercial, but all huge, and all will eventually create commercial opportunities and wealth for people like Fred Wilson. And in the last year, I have openly proposed four more ideas that I believe are all world shakers, each of which could turn into an Apple-sized company, and while I would never volunteer to be the CEO of the company (I'd leave that to a younger person) I would like to play a key role, akin to that of a producer or a director of a movie or HBO series, in the creative side of the work. That's where a guy like me shines. And if there had been a better talent system when I was younger, I would have been cast in that role then too.

So maybe that's the point. Maybe this is the beginning of a conversation that can last a few years (long blocks of time are something older people understand much better than younger people). I've sure had my complaints about venture capitalists. Now we're hearing their complaints about us. Does Fred have an open enough mind to consider Hypercamp, Checkbox News, Podcast Player or Social Camera as possibile businesses? Does he know enough young possible CEO types who could contribute their talents to such ventures? Does he have the vision to help create a system that can take advantage of all our talents?

BTW, I could never have written a post like this when I was in my 20s. While in my heart I knew the answer was "working together" I didn't know how to actually do it.

Cory Doctorow: I could not be happier right now! My novella, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (published in my collection Overclocked) just won the Locus Award for best novelette of 2006. A million thanks to everyone who voted for it -- I've got a 12h plane ride coming up, and this'll keep me warm the whole way.

Also: check out the awesome company I'm in: Vernor Vinge and Ellen Kushner and Charlie Stross and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and Naomi Novik!

This is the third Locus Award I've won in a row. A million thanks to Eileen Gunn for delivering this acceptance speech on my behalf: "Systems administrators are the unsung heroes of the twenty first century, our tireless morlocks who keep the entire universe running. The best sysadmins I've met treat their jobs as holy callings. They understand that they're keeping the infrastructure of the information age alive and functional. Many thanks to my sysadmin, Ken Snider, and to all the other sysadmins who make my life possible. And many thanks to Jim Baen and Eric Flint for publishing this. "

Best Science Fiction Novel: Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel: The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra)

Best First Novel: Temeraire: His Majesty's Dragon/Throne of Jade/Black Powder, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Voyager); as Temeraire: In the Service of the King (SFBC)

Best Young Adult Book: Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperTempest)

Best Novella: "Missile Gap", Charles Stross (One Million A.D.)

Best Novelette: "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth", Cory Doctorow (Baen's Universe 8/06)

Best Short Story: "How to Talk to Girls at Parties", Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

Link

An anonymous reader writes "The AP reports on the opening of a vault in Tulsa, OK which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by the Russians. 50 years ago they put a Plymouth Belvedere in the vault to preserve it so that we could get a good look at it in the (for that time) magical year of 2007. Unfortunately it turns out that the vault wasn't even waterproof. The once beautiful car is now a literal rust bucket."

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Doc Searls has an analysis of the end of The Sopranos that's actually new. I thought I had heard every possible angle, and was bored with it. That's why it's good to have a guy like Doc around, he finds something to talk about even when you think it's been talked to death.

Ian Lamont writes "Mike Elgan has an analysis of Apple's successes and concludes that the release of the Safari browser for Windows not only goes against the Apple success formula, but is doomed to a vicious failure: 'The insular Apple universe is a relatively gentle place, an Athenian utopia where Apple's occasional missteps are forgiven, all partake of the many blessings of citizenship, and everyone feels like they're part of an Apple-created golden age of lofty ideas and superior design. But the Windows world isn't like that. It's a cold, unforgiving place where nothing is sacred, users turn like rabid wolves on any company that makes even the smallest error, and no prisoners are taken. Especially the Windows browser market. ... While security nerds were ripping Apple for a buggy beta, the UI enthusiasts started going after Apple for the look and feel. Here's a small sample. Apple can expect much more of this in the future. The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough.' Elgan also expects that the Firefox faithful will fight the Safari influx — a theory that has been supported by comments from Mozilla executive John Lilly, who criticized Steve Jobs' 'blurry view of real world' just after Jobs announced Safari for Windows."

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NewsCloud writes "After reading about the Facebook platform launch, I spent the next week learning the API and building my application. Facebook's platform has been pretty successful despite complaints of poor documentation, instability and outcries over its application approval process. I've been waiting two weeks for my application to be approved for their directory and had my account disabled (temporarily) after I invited a large number of colleagues. While I'm impressed with the potential of the platform, the experience has made me more concerned about the lack of transparency in privately held social networks and the risks we take as developers when we invest time in a company's platform. Facebook's home page advertises itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." My concern with Facebook is that there's no one regulating the utility."

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An anonymous reader writes sends us to Ars Technica for a dissertation on how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming. "NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. 'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'" Ars points out how completely specious that "hundreds of billions" is.

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Martin writes "Microsoft has agreed to change the terms of its school agreement contract with Norwegian regional municipalities, following a complaint by Norwegian open-source software company Linpro to the Norwegian Competition Authority. Microsoft 'introduced two kinds of flexibility in the agreement, that were previously missing,' the head of the company's Norway operations said. One of these 'kinds of flexibility' involved Microsoft not getting paid a license fee for each Linux and Mac computer in schools."

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Al Feldzamen writes in with a blog post on the fallacious math behind many specialist examinations. "'The test was very hard,' the medical specialist said. 'Only 35 percent passed.' 'How did they grade it?' I asked. 'Multiple choice,' he said. 'They count the number right.' As a former mathematician, I immediately knew the test results were meaningless. It was typical of the very hard test, like bar exams or medical license exams, where very often the well-qualified and knowledgeable fail the exam. But that's because the exam itself is a fraud."

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