Crazy Taco writes "It looks as though the next meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum is about to descend into another heated debate about US control of key Internet systems. Although the initial purpose of this year's summit was to cover such issues as spam, free speech and cheaper access, it appears that nations such as China, Iran, and Russia, among others, would rather discuss US control of the Internet. In meetings leading to up to the second annual meeting of the IGF in Rio de Janiero on Monday, these nations won the right to hold an opening-day panel devoted to 'critical Internet resources.' While a number of countries wanting to internationalize Internet control simply want to have more say over policies such as creating domain names in languages other than English, we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dork writes in with word of a study that contradicts, at least for the highest-energy events, the recent conclusion that cosmic rays are probably formed in supernova remnants. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has announced that active galactic nuclei are the most likely candidates for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. The researchers found that the sources of these highly energetic events are not distributed uniformly across the sky, linking their origins to the locations of nearby galaxies hosting active nuclei in their centers. These galaxies are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes that are devouring large amounts of matter. The exact mechanism of how particles get accelerated to energies 100 million times higher than achievable by the most powerful particle accelerators on Earth is still unknown. The observatory has made 1% of its events available through a public online event display."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love Wii bowling.

My arm and shoulder are sore.



There must be good exercise games for the Wii.

Got any recommendations?

I noted that Mike Arrington is going to Davos this year. I know another blogger who got an invite (not sure if he wants me to say). Now I wish I was a little less fame-averse. I had a great time in Davos in 2000. I'd love to go again. Oh well.

The official answer: I wouldn't go if they invited me. If you believe that, I have a nice bridge to sell you. Cheap!

I became a fan of the NY Times on Facebook.

This is very interesting!

I should have a fan page for Scripting News.

Wonder how to do?

I took their news quiz, got all the answers right. They said I guessed, but I didn't, I knew all the answers.

Truth be told you don't have to read the Times to know these things. I got the answers from watching Countdown a couple of nights this week.

AceCaseOR writes "In Los Angeles criminal court, security consultant John Schiefer, 26, has admitted infecting the systems of his clients with viruses to form a botnet containing a maximum of 250,000 systems. Schiefer used his zombies to steal users' PayPal usernames and passwords to make unauthorized purchases, as well as to install adware on their computers without their consent. Schiefer agreed to plead guilty to four felony charges of accessing protected computers to commit fraud, disclosing illegally intercepted electronic communications, wire fraud, and bank fraud. He will be sentenced Dec. 3 and faces up to 60 years in prison and a fine of $1.75 million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech.Luver writes with news from IBM Global Business Services about its new report, The End of Advertising as We Know It (report PDF, summary PDF). It forecasts greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than has occurred over the previous 50. Among the conclusions: broadcasters will have to change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments. Distributors will need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must become brokers of consumer insights and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Albrecht writes "The bippedy-bippedy-bippedy sound you hear when using 1-800-GOOG-411 is actually a senior voice designer at Google. (Here's the sound.) The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, the voice of GOOG-411 talks about how he came up with it, how important that sound is, and how people now ask him to 'perform' it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eweekhickins writes "The US Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a scheduled vote on whether telecommunications carriers should be granted immunity for cooperating with the White House's domestic spying program of telephone wiretapping and e-mail surveillance. The panel hopes to vote on the provision as soon as next week. Senator Pat Leahy said that immunity would make it impossible for Americans to seek redress for 'illegal' violations of their privacy." The article points out the confused state of the immunity measure: the House is considering a version of FISA renewal that has no immunity; in the Senate, two committees are working on different versions, one with immunity, one without.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KentuckyFC writes "MRI machines are about to get smaller, much smaller. Most of their bulk is taken up by the huge superconducting magnets required to generate fields of a few Teslas. Now a team at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico has built a machine that can produce images using a field of only a few microTesla (PDF, abstract here). So giant superconducting magnets aren't necessary, a development that has the potential to make MRI machines much smaller, perhaps even suitcase-sized. The one-page paper shows sections of the first 3D brain image taken with the device."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "With the first anniversary of open-source Java coming up November 13, a Sun official believes the project could bear a fruit much sought-after in the Java community: a Java port to the Apple iPhone. Apple has not released a version of Java capable of running on the popular device. But Sun's Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for the Java mobile and embedded community, believes Apple's plans to release an SDK for iPhone in early 2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME winding up on iPhone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Lindemann is a glassblower who sculpts a wide range of tropical sea-dwellers, including this fellow, the mighty lionfish. Link (Thanks, Oscar!)

See also:
Glass jellyfish sculptures
Glass octopus sculpture

The Dvorak Zine has a free comic that narrates the storied history of the miserable QWERTY layout and its superior cousin, Dvorak, which practically no one uses, despite that fact that QWERTY is slow, gives you RSI, and is the keyboard layout most frequently employed by baby-eating sociopaths.

Seriously, the comic makes a great case, after the fashion of all people who do stuff that is empirically better but that no one else does (eating healthy food, taking regular exercise, and yes, switching to free software, cough cough).

I type QWERTY really goddamned fast, and it's really baked in for me. I even have dreams in which I type in QWERTY. My old roommate was a Dvorak convert and he tried to bring me over to the side of sweet reason more than once, without success, I'm afraid. Maybe it's time to try again. Link (Thanks, Andrea!)

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Complaints of the non-existence of flying cars as expressions of disappointment in the failure of the present to measure up to the glory of past predictions have long been a staple of popular culture but all that is about to change when Terrafugia introduces their $148,000 "Transition," a 19-foot, two-seater that the company describes as a roadable light-sport aircraft. The problem is that the U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure in place to make landing in front of your house a viable alternative yet and a sky filled with people who don't have pilot's licenses could also be a problem. The idea is to take advantage of the 6,000 public airports in the U.S. so a pilot can fly into a small airport (video) and instead of getting a rental car, just fold up the wings on the aircraft and drive away. Terrafugia expects the first production model to be ready in 2009 and says they've already received advanced orders for 30 to 50 Transitions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

doug141 writes "NASA spends between $400,000 and $1.3 million on a party at every shuttle launch, according to CBS. Select personnel are treated to 5 days at a 4 star hotel. This year alone, they've spent $4 million on parties. NASA asked for, and was given, $1 billion more from the Senate this year. NASA proponents argue it makes more sense to give money to talented, productive people in exchange for scientific knowledge, than spend in on unproductive people in the form of straight welfare."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rachel sez, "I found these paperweights earlier this year and thought they were amazing, i would love to buy one someday!They are made by artist Richard Satava, a master glassblower who was introduced to glassblowing in 1969 while attending Ocean High School in Pacifica, CA." Link (Thanks, Rachel!)

See also: Glass octopus sculpture

An anonymous reader sent in this article which opens, "Apple fans lined up through Yesterday night in Germany and Britain to be among the first in Europe to buy an iPhone, the must-have gadget that is set to shake up the mobile industry." Over 10,000 phones were sold in Germany by Friday afternoon. In France, however, the iPhone doesn't arrive until the end of month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Henning Nelms's 1969 "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers" is a classic of the genre, a book whose auction price spiralled out of control until it was reprinted in a fine facisimile edition by Dover Books in 2000. I discovered the book thanks to James D Macdonald, who uses it as a teaching aid in the Viable Paradise science fiction writing workshop, held annually on Martha's Vineyard.

Nelms was a conjurer who doubled as a stage-director of serious plays, and in Magic and Showmanship, he fused these two disciplines in a single coherent whole, explaining the business of stagecraft, acting, storytelling, costuming, posture, body-language and the thousand tiny disciplines of the stage for magicians, showing them how to turn the "tricks" they performed into bona fide illusions that caused the audience to suspend their disbelief long enough to believe that they were witnessing magic, not trickery.

Nelms accomplishes this by means of detailed descriptions for dozens of illusions, building on them to illustrate each of his points clearly and forcefully. There's plenty to be learned here for anyone who seeks to entertain and interest the public, from speakers to musicians to dancers to writers who give readings of their work.

But that's not why Macdonald recommends this book to his writing-students. Magic and Showmanship is a detailed dissection of stories and entertainment and suspension of disbelief, three key arts of any fiction writer (and they are especially important to science fiction and fantasy writers).

Opening Magic and Showmanship to practically any page yields real insight that can be applied to fiction composition. My copy just fell open on page 64, the middle of the chapter on "Making the Most of Assistants," and this passage leapt out at me:

Stars shine by contrast. Audiences realize that you deserve no credit for outshining a waitress-assistant. The stronger the girl is, the more credit you get for remaining the star. Jack Benny summed this up in a sentence. Someone asked him why he let Rochester steal his scenes. Benny replied, "I'd much rather have him steal my scenes than someone else's."

Many's the writer who can't bear to let his characters outshine his prose -- just when the character is going through her most transformational, difficult moment, the writer is struck by an irresistible urge to throw in a bit of verbal pyrotechnics, to highlight this really smart little turning point the story is going through, when really, this is the character's moment, not the writer's.

Magic and Showmanship is a veritable grimoire of writerly spells and advice -- and it doesn't hurt that the nominal subject, stage conjuring, is a fascinating art all its own, and reading about the theory and practice of it is interesting in its own right. Parts of Magic and Showmanship read like "How to Win Friends and Influence People," and parts of it read like a text on neurolinguistic programming, because both are focused on persuasion, on directing attention, on convincing strangers and friends (and the line-drawing diagrams in Magic and Showmanship are wonderful examples of the illustrative style of the late 60s, instantly recognizable to anyone who's ever stared in wonder and horror at a 60s-era text on posture and deportment, cooking, kung-fu, or any other physical discipline). But Magic and Showmanship transcends hokey advice books and really shines as a text that can be read on many levels, and many times. Link