The entire Science section in the New York Times today was devoted to the space age, honoring the 50th anniversary of Sputnik. Russia launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957.

This is really a tremendous spread -- about 10 articles, plus lots of multimedia stuff -- and I can't stop reading it right now, even though it's late in the day and I should be eating or sleeping.

John Schwartz has a wonderful piece in here about what might be ahead for the next 50 years in space travel: Link. About today's special edition, he tells BoingBoing:

The top story is by John Noble Wilford, the NY Times reporter who wrote the story beginning "Men have landed and walked on the Moon." [Ed. note: Oh snap.]

Just about every story in the section is tied to the theme, and there is plenty of video with a beautiful interactive graphic that shows Sputnik inside and out.

Link to the section.

Here's a snip from "New Horizons Beckon, Inspiring Vision if Not Certainty", presented next to a video interview with Schwartz:

NASA has embarked on a program to return to the Moon by 2020, not just for what some critics call “flags and footprints,” but also for a lasting presence with scientific research and preparation for expeditions to asteroids and, eventually, Mars. The space shuttle program is being wound down by 2010 to create the next generation of vehicles.

Other nations, notably Russia and China, have ambitious plans and could spur a space race like the one that sent Americans to the Moon. “It took Sputnik for us to recognize what the Soviet Union was up to,” said Harrison H. Schmitt, who flew the last mission to the Moon, in 1972. “I don’t know what it will take this time.”

Private enterprise is moving ahead, beginning with space tourism and, later, transport services for NASA and other governments to outposts like the International Space Station. Beyond that, ventures could include mining on asteroids and manufacturing drugs in space.

John M. Logsdon, director of the space policy institute at George Washington University, says a big question has yet to be answered. “At the level of government, I think we’re still struggling as to why we’re sending people to space,” Dr. Logsdon said. “It’s a decent question, and I think it’s an unanswered question.”

Our pal Saul Griffith, co-founder of the quintessential "make tank" Squid Labs, open source hardware hacker, co-author of Howtoons, and regular contributor to MAKE: and CRAFT has been awarded one of the 2007 MacArthur Fellowships, aka a "genius" grant. This is an unrestricted $500,000 grant given to "talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." Congratulations, Saul! We're proud of you! From the MacArthur Foundation site:

Saul Griffith is an inventor whose innovations span industrial design, technology, and science education. Through a variety of endeavors at MIT and as a principal in Squid Labs, Griffith demonstrates his boundless energy for inventing across diverse disciplines in the global public interest. While still a graduate student at MIT, he designed a unique membrane-based molding system that can produce a variety of common lenses from a single pair of flexible molding surfaces. This prototype has the potential to change the economics of corrective lenses in rural and underserved communities around the world and continues to be a major focus of research and development energy at Squid Labs. At MIT, Griffith co-founded Thinkcycle.org, a web community that has produced socially conscious engineering solutions, such as novel household water-treatment systems. Thinkcycle.org is the forerunner of Instructables.com, a remarkable do-it-yourself website driven by user contributions. He is also a creative force behind HowToons, an animated educational resource designed to engage children in hands-on science and engineering projects. Through the spin-off company Potenco, Griffith initiated the project design for a hand-held human-powered generator, which has the potential significantly to improve access to electronic devices such as laptops and water purifiers throughout the world. Though still quite young, he holds several patents in optics, textiles, and nanotechnology. In these engineering ventures as well as others yet to be imagined, Griffith is a prodigy of invention in service of the world community.

Link to Saul's home page, Link to Saul's MacArthur page, Link to 2007 MacArthur Fellows

UPDATE: More on Saul and another Bay Area recipient, UC Berkeley professor Claire Kremen, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link

Following the EU's decision to smack down Microsoft for antitrust violation, we had already noted how this could mean trouble for other successful tech companies. Of course, that just means it's an opportunity for less successful companies. The Financial Times notes that small companies that have been unable to get much traction in their attempts to brand their bigger, more established competitors as monopolists, may now try to move those cases to Europe, where they hope to receive more favorable rulings. That seems a bit extreme and, one would hope, unlikely to succeed in most cases. Still, we have seen more questionable IPOs moving to Europe, so why not more questionable antitrust cases as well?

The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"5 full-on days. 9 hands-on workshops. 19 kick-ass speakers. 24 must-see presentations. Truckloads of design, development, user experience, web standards, content, community, innovation & inspiration." It'd be an understatement to say I'm excited to visit (and present in) New Zealand next year. See you there? #

tibbar66 writes with news of a serious multiplication bug in Excel 2007, which has been reported to the company. The example first that came to light is =850*77.1 — which gives a result of 100,000 instead of the correct 65,535. It seems that any formula that should evaluate to 65,535 will act strangely. One poster in the forum noted these behaviors: "Suppose the formula is in A1. =A1+1 returns 100,001, which appears to show the formula is in fact 100,000... =A1*2 returns 131,070, as if A1 had 65,535 (which it should have been). =A1*1 keeps it at 100,000. =A1-1 returns 65,534. =A1/1 is still 100,000. =A1/2 returns 32767.5."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whenever we discuss the issue of copyrights and bring up the fact that copyright is not a welfare system to protect creators, people get upset with us. There seems to be this false assumption that copyrights (and patents) are designed for the sake of protecting the creator of content. That's not true and it's never been true. From the very earliest debates about the concept of intellectual property in the US, it has always been about creating incentives for innovation -- or, as the Constitution so eloquently puts it: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." In thinking over the various debates over copyright, it seems to come down to this particular issue over and over again. Those who are focused on the original purpose of copyrights recognize the problems with the copyright system and are interested in fixing them. Those who believe that the purpose of copyrights is to "protect" don't have a problem with the way things are, or with the idea of strengthening copyrights, even if they weaken the actual market and are a net negative on society.

This is quite clearly indicated in a great article by Julian Sanchez arguing against extending copyright protections to the fashion industry (found via Tim Lee). The question of extending copyrights to the fashion industry has been discussed at length before, but a few key points in Sanchez's piece highlight this split in thinking about the issue. He notes, as many others have, that the industry is constantly innovating and is quite healthy -- which is why the idea that new "incentives" are needed seems laughable. However, if you view things from the position that copyright is about protecting, then it's a different story. Sanchez notes that while individual designers may be harmed, it's only helped the overall industry. From that standpoint, if you believe in protectionism, then you say these new laws are needed to "protect" those who are harmed -- ignoring the greater harm caused to the rest of the industry.

The history of economics is littered with examples of why protectionism is rarely, if ever, a reasonable policy. It tends to backfire badly, in part because it takes away many of the incentives for competition and innovation. In protecting one area, you are inevitably harming another. Indeed, studies have shown that innovation in the fashion industry is often because of the rampant copying, rather than in spite of it. That's the way you want markets to work -- where competition drives innovation by forcing companies to keep innovating to leapfrog each other. Sanchez quotes legal scholar Kal Raustiala to make the point: "When a successful restaurant opens up on a street that's never had a restaurant before, there's a way in which the second business is parasitic on the first. But in the United States, we call that capitalism and competition."

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government's top copyright policy maker has been moved aside after revelations that she was in a personal relationship with Hollywood's top Canadian lobbyist. The development is raising questions about how the MPAA got an anti-camcording bill passed in only three weeks and what it means for the introduction of a Canadian DMCA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I almost hate to post this, because anything that touches on politics tends to dissolve into pointless name calling in the comments, but it is interesting (if sleazy) to find out that political campaign attack ads are now using anonymously posted blog comments to smear opponents. The ad in question has a voice-over announcing "what others are saying..." about the candidates opponent, and then shows some really negative comments that were placed anonymously on a blog post. Yes, this seems incredibly low. In fact, if campaigns are going to do that, they could simply post whatever kind of comment they wanted to any random prominent blog (as long as it has open comments) and then use that quote in their campaign ad. Yet, because it's now on a blog somewhere, they can pretend it's legitimately "sourced." So this is what they meant when people predicted that blogs would revolutionize politics?

mrspin writes in to note the demise of the Virgin Digital music store. Here is Virgin's announcement. It will shut down in stages: the service closed its doors to new subscribers on Friday; current subscribers will lose all access to it when their next monthly payment is due or on Oct. 19, whichever comes first. The store advises customers who have purchased downloads to back them up to CD and re-import them as MP3. It used to discourage such DRM-evading tactics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Symantec's DeepSight threat warning system sent out an erroneous "ThreatCon 4" warning on Friday caused by an errant product test. ThreatCon 4 is the highest level of warning that can be issued by the DeepSight system, and is supposed to indicate times where "extreme global network incident activity is in progress." The level 4 warning has never been issued; the last time level 3 was reached was back in 2004. Symantec issued a retraction of the false alarm approximately an hour after it was issued, and so far, no reports of harm from the false alarm are apparent. Actually, it doesn't even seem like anyone took this warning that seriously at all, considering the lack of any sort of response. And without any sort of response, doesn't that make the early warning system, well, not that useful? After an hour without much of a response, they should have just said: "This was a test of the DeepSite early warning system. Had this been a real warning..."

Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly created a personal countdown clock that shows him how many days of life he has left to him. He made the clock to remind himself to make the best use of his remaining days, all 8500 of them.

I am now 55 years old. Like a lot of people in middle age my late-night thoughts bend to contemplations about how short my remaining time is. Even with increasing longevity there is not enough time to do all that I want. Nowhere close. My friend Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From moment of inception to the last good-riddance, a book, a campaign, a new job, a start-up will take 5 years to play through. So, he asks himself, how many 5 years do I have left? He can count them on one hand even if he is lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than 5 big things he can do, what will they be?

I decided to take the idea of number days seriously, and to revisit my earlier experience of counting down my remaining time on this lovely mortal plane. My hope was that a reckoning of my numbered days would help me account for how I spend each precious 24 hours, and to focus my attention and energy on those few tasks and projects I deem most important to me. Indeed, it might help me decide which ones are most important, which is the harder assignment.

I've been using this system for several months now and it has been very powerful. Day to day I am aware -- and can rattle off if I am asked - how many days I have left. I decided to post my project today because on my clock it shows a handily rounded off sum. So here is the news: As of today I have 8,500 days left to live. That's not much in my book. I can almost hear them ticking away as we speak. I look at my lifelist of current dreams and I realize that in only 8,500 days I won't get to but a few of them. And what of any new dreams?

Note also that Kevin's blog contains all the posts he makes on all the other blogs he's active on -- Cool Tools, Geek Dads, The Technium, etc. He calls this his "Lifestream." Cool idea! Link

DeviceGuru writes to tell us that the first lawsuit centered around the GPL seems to have been quickly resolved outside of the courtroom. Monsoon Multimedia was quick to admit that they had violated the GPLv2 in their modified BusyBox code and will soon be releasing the source to come into full compliance with the license.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every time we hear of yet another plan for the government to set up yet another database of information about people, we wonder about how it will be misused. Supporters always talk about how helpful such databases are (which is debatable), but rarely are willing to take into account how such systems are going to be abused -- and they're always abused. The latest such case involves an employee at the Department of Commerce who used a Department of Homeland Security database to track an ex-girlfriend. This wasn't just a one-off thing either. He apparently used the database 163 times to check up on her. Then he threatened to have the woman deported and her family killed. So, as the government continues to push the boundaries in trying to collect more and more data on everyone, it's at least worth asking if the potential for abuses is taken into consideration and how they're dealt with (if they're dealt with at all).

Matt says:

This is a picture of Ikea's "Optimal" shopping hours. At first glance, it seems like a good idea, and a good chart to follow. If you actually try to figure it out though, it makes no sense. It appears to be a 12 hour clock, but it also appears to reference 24 hour time. What?

Link

Bemopolis writes "Brace yourselves for a shocking revelation: The CEO of Vivendi, parent company of UMG, is not happy with the current deal with the iTunes Store. 'The split between Apple and (music) producers is indecent [...] Our contracts give too good a share to Apple.' The usual argument about older music priced at the same rate as new music is trotted out. No doubt UMG would prefer to make the former cheaper, while maintaining the current pricing for the latter. At least he had the decency not to claim that they were trying to defend their artists against predatory iTunes pricing. Or maybe he just misplaced the index card with that boilerplate on it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It's knitterin' time!"

Knitty-cat made knitted a doll of The Fantastic Four's The Thing for a lucky fellow named Matt. Link (Thanks, Angela!)

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Joel Johnson has been liveblogging the UN Summit on Climate Change today -- check out the posts! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Image: Sez Joel, "The audio console in a U.N. press room. The big cup with the wire is the headphone. It doesn't have much to do with what's below, but is where I'm sitting now."