Google: going for the big money This came a big suprise for me: Google has said it will censor its search services in China in order to gain greater access to China’s fast-growing market. It seems that the company that prides itself in its motto “don’t be evil”, is giving in to the big money. The Chinese Google site wil be available under http://www.google.cn and will be censored. Google’s decision on China comes less than a week after it resisted efforts by the US Department of Justice to make it disclose data on what people were searching for. According to […]
Sex sells. For $14 million in fact…
Sex.com: $14 million? It’s an old marketing wisdom: sex sells. But according to (as yet unverfied) sources the owner of the domain sex.com (Gary Kremen) has sold that domain to a company called Escom LLC. Allegdly he gets $14 million for it. As The Register reports: (…)Kremen had originally registered Sex.com in May 1994 but it was stolen by lifelong con-man Stephen Cohen from under his nose in October 1995. Cohen spent the next five years battling to regain control of the domain. (…)Eventually, however, Kremen won the case and with it $65m in damages. Rather than pay, Cohen fled […]
Beyond mankind: The singularity (Rise of the Machines)
Rise of the machines Last week I wrote about the Fermi paradox (if there is intelligent life besides us in this universe, then where are they?). As I explained in that article, there are several explanations for the paradox and one of them is that these outer civilizations are so weird (from our current perspective) there’s no way to interact with them. One of the people that believe in this theory is Vernor Vinge, a mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction author. In 1993 he wrote an essay called “The Technological Singularity”, in which he argues that exponential growth in […]
Reflections on Fermi’s paradox
While reading some interesting articles on Fermi’s paradox for my previous Blog “Were are they?”, I came across this interesting little video on the Space.com website. It explains why researchers, dr. Jill C. Tarter (director, Project Phoenix SETI institute) does not put to much value into the Fermi paradox. Basically she adheres to the Drake equation and just believes we haven’t found ‘them’ yet. It is not a really ‘indepth’ coverage of the whole Fermi paradox and all, but I thought it was nice to share it anyway.
Do no harm
Google resists True to it’s company policy “do no harm” Google is resisting efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for online. The department wants the data to try to show in court it has the right approach in enforcing the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been blocked by the Supreme Court because of legal challenges over how it is enforced. Google’s refusal to comply has prompted the deparment of Justice to ask a federal judge in the state of California for an order to hand […]
“Where are they?” (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence)
Space.. The final frontier I have been involved in the Seti@home program since 1999: so far without any results. For those who have no idea what SETI is: it is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and SETI@home (“SETI at home”) is a grid computing (distributed computing in the project’s own terminology) project using Internet-connected computers, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. The purpose of SETI@home is to analyze data incoming from the Arecibo radio telescope (located in Puerto Rico), searching for possible evidence of radio transmissions from […]
Don’t get mad. Get even
Pesky telemarketers Don’t you hate it when you just walked into your home after a long day and the phone rings and it’s one of those pesky telemarketers trying to sell you something? Usually I recognize them from a mile away because 99 out of a 100 times they do not show up on my caller-ID. In case I do pick-up accidentally, I just act like I can’t here them: “Hello?!, Hello!? Who is this? I can’t hear you, I’m hanging up now”. That always works and it is also hilarious to hear the person on the other end of […]
Stardust returns safely to earth
Stardust launch, 1999 It was May 1998 when I read about this cool NASA endevour called Project Stardust. The idea of this mission was to launch a capsule that would fly through the tail of the Comet P/Wild 2 and collect some interstellar dust. The collected dust would then return to earth in a capsule so it could be studied here. Now, what was special about the mission is the fact that in a public outreach effort, over 1 million names of people were collected and placed on two chips inside the Stardust spacecraft: the first one has 136,000 names […]
When pigs fly
Pigs in space? Get this: Taiwanese scientists (I wonder if they are related to Dr. Frankenstein) have bred “fluorescent green pigs”. Researchers hope it will boost their stem cell research. Previously (2003) they bred the world’s first transgenic glowing fish; a big hit with fishlovers. The transgenic pigs, commonly used to study human diseases, would help researchers monitor and trace changes of the tissues during the physical development, researchers said. In neighbouring South Korea, disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk apologised on Thursday for wrongdoing at his laboratory, but hinted at a conspiracy to discredit him and said he was […]
It feels good to be a winner
Done it again What can I say; Apple pulled it off once more: a flawless Apple Macworld event. Jobs was really going at it again this time (see the streaming webcast here – quicktime needed). Sixty percent of his show was aimed at the new versions of existing Apple software, in particular iLife. Once again Apple has added ton’s of new features, most notable podcasting capabilities for all applications: iPhoto, iVideo and even Garageband can be used. Or just simply put: your life…. Digital. And now also on Intel. I’m quite sure Jobs has many reasons to be very pleased […]