Cory Doctorow, on Siva Vaidhyanathan's new article on using technological "tethers" to force customers into using your products, your whole line of products, and nothing but your products: "It's easy to understand why hardware companies love tethering -- it's a license to screw their locked-in customers out of titanic sums of money -- but that's exactly why smart customers need to reject tethered products."
Dan Gillmor, on his decision to stop purchasing iTunes: "Threats to use copyright law against Real are exactly what you'd expect, unfortunately. Apple wants control over online music, and this is just part of the game.
What we customers want is cross-platform compatibility: standards. What the companies want is lock-in. They may win, but they're only locking me out -- because I won't play by those rules. Which means I've bought my last iTunes Music Store song until Apple starts paying more attention to what its customers want."
A German technology consultant warns that item-level use of RFID tags could create some significant security problems: Privacy advocates may not be the only people taking issue with the current crop of radio-frequency identification tags--merchants will likely have problems with a lack of security as well.... Low-cost RFID tags--many which are smaller than a nickel and cost less too--are already being added to packaging by retailers to keep track of inventory but could be abused by hackers and tech-savvy shoplifters, said Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH. While the technology mostly threatens consumer privacy, the new technology could allow thieves to fool merchants by changing the identity of goods, he said. I recently spent a morning with Peter Neumann, a computer scientist and security expert at SRI. One of the things I carried away from that interview was a much deeper sense of how little attention we tend to pay to security (even though we know how to do it right), and just how much trouble that inattention causes. This piece suggests that it might be wise to pay more attention to those issues before enter the penny-tag world, and start thinking seriously about putting RFID on everything....
Here’s a BitTorrent file that will get you, p2p, the video of the Hearings on the INDUCE Act, prepared by Tom Barger. Watch, and blog the substantial noninfringing use.
Direct and Related Links for 'Windows XP Starter Edition'
In an effort to fight Linux with the most effective line of defense they can think of, Microsoft is working to distribute a cheaper version of Windows called Windows XP Starter Edition. This is the beginning of a trend that indicates Microsoft is not going to lay down quietly as Linux use continues to spread worldwide. Man, remember when they used to say the Windows had no real viable competition? Looks like that is beginning…Direct and Related Links for 'Microsoft Demonstrates New Hard Drive Search Tool'
“Microsoft Corp. (, which is challenging market leader Google Inc. in the online search market, demonstrated for the first time on Thursday a search engine that looks for information on computer hard drives as well as information on the Web.”…Links to this week's topics from search engine forums across the web: SEMPO Under Fire - Mike Grehan Stirs Up SEMPO Controversy - What Does SEMPO Mean To You? - Overture to Launch Bid Management Tool - Google's IPO Pricing - Could a Virus Shut down Google?
The official release of Skype 1.0 provides added functionalities including integrated PC-to-phone calling to any landline or mobile phone in the world and direct P2P file transfer among Skype users on any computer platform (for now Windows and Linux. Mac...
saccade.com writes "EE Times has a fascinating article on how electronics companies are being sucked into a profitless spiral by the cell phone market. More and more of the small consumer gadgets are being folded into the phone: camera, music player, PDA, GPS, etc. So the market for non-phone gadgets is slowly going away as the phone picks up more functions. However, consumers don't buy most phones; they are given away (or sold very cheap) by the service providers as hooks to get people to sign up for mobile service. So the service providers are demanding (and getting) rock-bottom prices for fancy phones they can give away, and the micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the phone."
z0ink writes "Picked up off of EFFector today a letter to all US Senators on the topic of IICA (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 -- formerly the INDUCE Act). 'In February, EFF proposed an industry-led collective licensing solution that would ensure compensation for copyright owners while minimizing the need for governmental intrusion into the digital music marketplace,' writes EFF Executive Director Shari Steele in the letter. 'It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.' IICA has been covered here on Slashdot with more information available here."
Freenet, the brainchild of Ian Clarke while a student at the University of Edinburgh, is a free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning...
Back it up, RealDoll, this new pornorealist product plans to kick your 36"-24"-36" synthetic ass. Formed in the image of Playmate Linn Thomas, the "Talking Love Doll" promises to do what none before have: talk back atcha. "Almost seamless, life-like feeling skin, mannequin hands, feet and head with long flowing hair, large breasts and jointed arms with orbital sockets, multi-speed, Batteries included," says the website, along with claims that the "Wireless, Vibrating" Ms. Thomas is molded from all-new "Futurotic Material." You say Futurotic, I say vinyl. Whatever.
One thing is certain: IANALDU (I am not a love doll user), but even more tempting than the off-the-shelf model would be a haxxored version. She could speak everything from Shakespeare to software user manuals, for the man with the right set of tools. And, no, I actually mean tools. Dollmodding, anyone?
Link to Fleshbot post. Figure out a way to install Elizabot on the damn thing for extra credit.
The VCR/DVD industry wouldn't be here without erotica, dollar for dollar, porn rmb
probably still rules Internet commerce and now these guys may have finally found
a way to launch the consumer robotics market!
In today's New York Times:
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near. The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
This is even worse than it seems. The notion of an audit trail in this case is ludicrous to begin with. Even with a digital backup there's still no way you can trust that the votes cast were the votes recorded. That's the big problem with touch-screen voting machines that lack a voter-verifiable paper trail -- paper that can be used to check the machines' accuracy and be the actual ballot in a recount. And this is only the latest strange incident in Florida's sordid elections record. You have to conclude that the people running elections in Florida are buffoons at best. At worst? The thought is frightening.
Ruffin sez: "a New Zealand company is now making a synthetic "skunk gel" called Skunk Shot that is being used by law enforcement to keep vagrants and junkies out of abandoned buildings." Link
Ernest Miller says,
BoingBoing noted yesterday that JibJab, the creators of the hilarious Bush/Kerry/Guthrie parody were facing threat of a copyright lawsuit by the current copyright holders for "This Land is Your Land." Now, the Home Recording Rights Coalition has issued a press release pointing out that when the television news broadcasts promoted the flash animation they were likely "inducing" people to violate copyright, assuming that the animation isn't fair use. Under the INDUCE Act, that could make the broadcasters liable for literally millions of copyright violations. Heh.Link
Xeno sez:
When CERT and other security agencies said to stop using IE, I wasn't too concerned as I use Firefox. However, it was quickly brought to my attention that due to shell calls and all Microsoft products being able to ignore your default browser, this still made your system vulnerable through IE. So I took the long painful journey of finding a simple way to remove IE.Now, I'm getting emails from tons of satisfied people who have followed my instructions and have even their default Microsoft aps (including Windows update) using whatever browser they told it to. Even Microsoft has called me to see how I did it. Unfortunately, they blatantly told me that they won't be including it in their knowledge base 'for obvious reasons'.
(Thanks, Xeno!)
I follow tagging technologies .... Symbol is a strong player in emergent retail technologies. They own a very big part of the handheld barcode scanning market, and have developed hybrid RFID / optical readers. Matrics is one of the premier RFID tag suppliers. This kind of acquisition could accelerate mainstream tagging technology development. Press Release. Symbol Technologies Buys Matrics, Accelerating Its Move Into Radio Tags, BARNABY J. FEDER, NYT 07/28/04 Symbol Technologies, which has been burdened by the fallout from a long-running accounting fraud under previous management, tested the patience of its investors yesterday by announcing an acquisition that is likely to cut into earnings for the next two years at least. Symbol, the nation's leading producer of bar-code systems, said it would pay $230 million to acquire Matrics, a developer of electronic identification tags and wireless devices that read them. Analysts said that the deal should sharply accelerate Symbol's push into the promising field of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, but that Matrics and many other RFID pioneers still faced significant hurdles to becoming profitable .......
Direct and Related Links for '“Global Worming”'
The MyDoom worm certainly kicked the tar out Google the other day. After being nuked with query after query, most of us started getting that annoying Error-27 page instead of the search results that we were hoping for. Google was able to fight back by blocking sources of the infection and made a stand to drive off the MyDoom led attack from their servers….The New York Times reports that the the 9/11 Report has been "a royalty-free windfall" for publisher Norton.
"The 9/11 Commission Report," the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, has remained at the top of the best-seller lists at online bookstores since its release last Thursday.
The report is topping the Amazon charts despite being uncopyrightable and freely available on the web. It's one of the of the few types of works left -- works of government authorship -- that enters the modern public domain.
According to the typical copyright story playing in Washington, this publication and its profits for the publisher shouldn't have happened. What would be the incentive to publish a book that anyone else could freely read and even republish? Yet it seems that some people still want to read on bound paper, and a publisher can still make money by being first to market at a reasonable price. Of course the newsworthiness of the event and subject had plenty to do with this story, but it helps show, as do and
Lawrence Lessig's experience with it, that total control isn't the only workable business model for publishers.
Induce Act.
(Thanks, Donna!)
The Glasgow Sunday Herald has a sobering article on the future of energy consumption in China: Switch on a light in your home. Any light. Then list the other uses of domestic electricity. Fridge, freezer, washing machine, tumble drier, vacuum cleaner, computer, DVD player, TV and video, mobile phone chargers, toaster … And that’s just for starters. Now think of China. At present, this vast nation of 1.3 billion inhabitants – and rising – is using the equivalent of one 100-watt lightbulb per head, per year. But its population is developing an insatiable appetite for consumer goods. Forget global terrorism. One of the scariest stories today is how the Chinese are going to meet their energy demands over the next 20 years. While Scotland fumbles with issues of wind farms blighting the landscape, we should wake up to the potential energy horror story that will impact on everyone....
Direct and Related Links for 'Microsoft delays 64-bit Windows, Windows Server update'
“Microsoft Corp. has further delayed versions of Windows for PCs and servers equipped with x86 processors with 64-bit extensions. Analysts said the extra delay will slow the advent of 64-bit desktop computing and provide a head start for rival operating systems on servers. ” Read more……Direct and Related Links for 'Saying No To The IPO'
Dan Gillmor gives us his take on the Google IPO (Initial Public Offering). He explains that while Google may be doing great now, that is little guarantee that they will continue to show constant financial success. Gilmor explains that “advertisers can be fickle.” Putting all of your chips into that basket is not really the wisest move in the world. While we are on the same topic, I did a couple of articles about Google…Direct and Related Links for 'Unscrambling Digital Music Confusion'
“Due to an ever-growing array of digital rights management (DRM) strategies, incompatible file formats, and disparate portable music devices, the digital music scene has gotten complicated. Nevertheless, digital music is selling briskly online, and innovative new strategies for distributing music and sidestepping proprietary formats are appearing.”…Direct and Related Links for 'Time To Get Off Of The Failure Train'
Deb Shinder of WinXP News discusses how Internet Explorer is bound to catch up with you if use of this problematic browser continues. Heck, even the government has been working to alert people to IE’s shortcomings. I have said it once and I will say it again, stop using IE. Use Opera, Mozilla, or whatever, but stop placing the security of your PC in the hands of a browser with a failing track record….CNN reports that a computer crashes in May and November 2003 erased votes from Miami-Dade County’s first widespread use of touchscreen voting ...
C|Net News is running a very interesting story about a new blog that is posting military and military-related information supposedly found on P2P filesharing networks (Are P2P networks leaking military secrets?). The blog is See What You Share on P2P....
The Mobility Denial System is an oil-slick-in-a-can, a combination of "Drilling Mud Additive, Flocculent and water" that renders surfaces as slippery as wet ice. Lots of tasty acronyms and buzzwords on the sell page, including "Anti-Traction Material (ATM)" and "Non-Lethal Slippery Foam."
Once applied, the material will degrade or impair the adversary's ability to move. For Interior applications it can be applied to flat, smooth, non-porous surfaces such as linoleum, tile, wood floors or staircases. Exterior applications include sloped, rough, porous surfaces such as concrete, asphalt, and grassy areas.
(via Coolhunting)
Among the goodies you'll find on Kate Pemberton's "endfile" geek-art site are "an extensive casio watch camera diary," and a series of embroidered versions of canned short text message. I hope she posts the other 24 SMS embroidery pieces she's working on -- they're great. Link
I'm at PFIR's "Preventing the Internet Meltdown", where today kicked off with a discussion of intellectual property (the other IP). It was a happy surprise to share the stage with Thane Tierney, of Universal Music Group, who shared our horror at the Induce Act and joined a genuine dialogue about the collision between the Internet and the recording industry. He was willing to think about a world in which the record industry shifts its role from controller and distributor to that of filter. I hope we'll be able to continue that conversation with Thane and others in his business, to move toward a solution that leaves the Internet open to innovation and pays artists and copyright holders.
Also on the panel, Ed Felten commented on the one-way ratchet of copyright legislation; Michael Froomkin called on technologists to spec and build speech-enabling technologies (like Tor); and Carrie Lowe of the ALA called our attention to the copyright-driven inaccessibility of material to libraries and the public they serve. I talked about reclaiming the Internet from amid the copyright-dominated debate in Washington.
Link (via The Cartoonist)
Skype has just announced the official launch of its final version 1.0 release. The very popular and free Voice-over-IP software has recruited over 7 million users around the world in just about one year since its first release. The new...
A bored hacker modified an Eliza programme to act as an IRC sex-chat bot that impersonated an eighteen year old girl (or, rather, impersonated a sex-chat afficianodo of indeterminate gender impersonating an eighteen year old girl). He assumed that people would try to have cyber-sex with his bot and get bored, but in fact a surprising number were convinced and even got off with it.
This is a plot element in Bruce Sterling's brilliant "RU486?" a short story collected in Globalhead -- feminist hackers finance their RU486-running operation with a phone-sex line staffed by automated chatterbots.
It turns out that pornbots are among the class of Eliza-derivatives that can pass a Turing Test (or rather, horny sex-chat boys are among the class of human beings that can't tell a chatterbot from a person -- other groups include psychotherapists, who, in one experiment, couldn't distinguish actual transcripts of therapy sessions with schizophrenics from simulated therapy with schizophrenic chatterbots; and the university student who mistook a chatterbot for his prof in the middle of the night when he IMed same for permission to extend deadline on a late paper).
'eliza' is a program that talks to you, pretending to be a psychologist. its script of possible responses is super tiny, so it doesn't fool anyone. or so i thought.IRC is a network full of chat rooms (or "channels") where a lot of scary internet people (or "perverts") hang out. my friend reduz found a version of 'eliza' that could go on IRC. he put it on IRC. a lot of people from other countries thought it was a real woman, so naturally they tried to have sex with it. they got frustrated quickly. reduz is a bad man...
so i replaced eliza's tiny, boring script with a massive dumb blonde script that has like 3,800 responses on all sorts of topics, but mostly sex. jenny18 is very horny and she loves talking to horny guys. and everyone knows the best place to talk to horny guys is on dalnet irc sex channels.
Link (Warning, contains links to transcripts of IM-based sex, NSFW)
(via Waxy)
Everyone’s seen the brilliant JibJab Flash of Bush/Kerry. The piece claims to be a “parody” of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land.”
As any copyright lawyer recognizes, it is not a “parody” in the sense that “fair use” ordinarily recognizes it. A “fair use” “parody” is a work that uses a work to make fun of the author. JibJab is using Guthrie’s work not to make fun of Guthrie, but of the candidates. (For the now classic case on this, see Dr. Suess v. Penguin Press, where a “parody” of O.J. Simpson using The Cat in the Hat was not “fair use.”)
Guthrie’s publisher’s lawyers too recognize this. As CNN’s Allen Wastler reports, Guthrie’s publisher is now threatening JibJab.
What’s great about this story, of course, is the levels of hypocrisy. Guthrie was not much for property rights himself. It’s said that there is a not-often-sung verse:
But whether Guthrie believed in property rights or not, the key thing this story should do is force us to ask generally: Does a law that makes a political parody such as Jibjab illegal (even if it is not a “parody” in the copyright view of the world) make sense?
(Note to citizens: We’re permitted to change the law.)
(Thanks to Paul Puglia!)
Direct and Related Links for 'Wireless devices a DNC hazard'
“There’s a gaping hole in the much-hyped security measures taken for this week’s Democratic National Convention: Thousands of wireless devices around the FleetCenter could be used as pawns in a cyberattack. Wireless security provider Newbury Networks Inc. of Boston issued that warning after detecting the heavy concentration of devices during a three-hour ‘war driving’ exercise through the city. Many of the unsecured wireless networks and 802.11 client cards were in a one-block radius of the…NewsBot, the personalized news search and aggregation service that MSN has been testing in a number of countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa has gone live in the United States.
Chris Cohen has been on a roll analyzing whether various derivative works are satires or parodies. The difference can mean one is legal and the other isn't under a fair use analysis. The basic rule is that a parody, which...
The new MyDoom variant scans your HDD for domains (e.g. craphound.com), then hammers on search engines looking for valid email addresses at that domain (e.g., "GET /default.asp?lpv=1&loc=searchhp&tab=web&query=e-mail+example.com"). The traffic got so bad that it actually took Google down for a while.
(via /.)
Apple just announced a new iTunes mobile version that Motorola will load onto their "mass-market music phones" in the first half of next year. TheFeature's Carlo Longino gives his quick take on the deal:
Plenty of handsets today are capable of playing mp3s, but presumably none do it with the ease and grace -- or inherent coolness -- of Apple's products. It's an interesting move for Apple, which has said in the past the iTunes music store is a loss leader designed to help sell iPods. Presumably, they want to take new Moto phone users and turn them into iPod buyers... That, or this is just the first step towards the much-clamored-for wireless iPod.
First of all, we should agree on what the definition of "ready for the desktop" stands for. For some of us it refers to a graphical user interface in which applications have icons and can be launched in an intuitive manner without the need of complex commands. Even a Commodore 64 running Geos could be "ready for the desktop" by this definition, but the fact is that when we read "ready for the desktop" we understand "ready to replace Microsoft Windows".... [OSNews]
'-- most of the ingredients to integrate Linux into a winning operating system exist and are available now. We need standards and sage political decisions to prepare a good product ready for widespread distribution. If Linux continues to be driven by students who believe in freedom of choice and anarchy rather than in standards, with companies fighting to become the de facto standard alongside proposing their own proprietary systems we will never get there. I want to see the day when I can walk into a store and be able to purchase a so called "Linux application" that I will be able to install with the ease of any Windows and Mac OS X application. This is not possible at the moment, because "Linux" is just not ready for the desktop yet. --'
...John
Stefan Bechtold writes that the EU Commission (ok, a staff report) has decided that copyright terms for recordings in Europe should not be increased beyond the current term (50 years after publication), despite the growing pressure of recording labels to increase the term to “save” (as they put it) some of the most important Rock from entering the public domain. The story is getting press in Europe. (Independent, BBC).
This is an extremely important development in this battle. For once, a government-related entity has recognized the truth (or at least, not had its recognition crushed). I’ve already been talking to archives that are working on the idea of releasing all the recordings they can when they pass into the public domain on January 1, as a way of demonstrating the value of a wide range of work becoming available, unencumbered, for widespread use.
Here in the U.S., we’ll be able to celebrate the same in, um, 2019. Till then, for your listening pleasure, an oldie (first posted here last July): a 1937 radio program from the Columbia Workshop about creative works passing from the “copyright lane” into the “public domain“.
Real Networks have reverse-engineered Apple's iPod and written a player for its DRM "Helix" format, which they're giving away. This means that you'll be able to play the Helix files you buy from Real on your Apple iPod.
I'm cautiously glad about this. It's the right idea: tech vendors should be writing tools that allow anyone to play anything on anything: it's insane to own an Apple "record player" that only plays Apple "records" -- meaning that if you buy your records from Real, you need to buy another record player.
My only disappointment is that Real is engaged in the same behaviour: Real's records only play on players licensed by Real: it would be much more customer-friendly if Real went into the business of providing us with music in a patent-free, open standard that could be implemented by anyone.
(Thanks, Jeff!)
Update: Ernie Miller's posted a lengthy analysis of this on his blog:
Note, however, what Real is not doing (and strangely, the news reports
don't seem to mention either). You can convert Real files into
FairPlay files, but you can't convert FairPlay files into Real files.
Real is not allowing people to copy their iTunes into Real's DRM'd
format. Why? Because it would likely be a clear violation of the DMCA.
You may be able to play Real's DRM'd music on an iPod, but you still
won't be able to play iTunes on a portable music player other than an
iPod.
So, this isn't quite the breakthrough the analysts and whatnot seem to
be claiming. If you buy anything from iTunes, you're still locked into
Apple. If you buy an iPod, you can buy from Real's music store, but
what real advantage does that provide? A DRM connoisseur might say
that you will have the option of using other players in the future,
but so what? Anyone who knows anything about DRM knows that you can't
trust any of these competing formats. Perhaps in a few years one might
want to buy another brand of portable music player, but what happens
if Real's DRM fails in the marketplace and is squeezed out? What good
did the flexibility do?
At the BlogOn conference, a Microsoft presenter asked his audience how many of them used Internet Explorer:
Probably 99 times out of 100 when he asks that question all the hands go up, right? Well first there was a pause and then a giggle and then a whoop of laughter as the audience looked around and realized that NO ONE had raised a hand. The presenter was thrown off his mark, but he recovered and said, "Wow! Okay how many of you wish we'd fix IE so you could use it?"Still no hands....
Informal survey afterwards said the Windows users in the crowd were all using the latest Firefox. Wouldn't it be amazing if Mozilla ended up winning in the end?
The House Appropriations Committee apparently wants to see some cuts at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for 2005. Nanotechnology, however, appears to be one small exception. Judging from this quote provided by SpaceRef.com, "nanotechnology" in this instance means the semiconductor industry.
Regarding nanotechnology, the report states, "the Committee remains concerned that researchers are reaching the physical limits of current complementary metal oxide semiconductor process technology and that this will have significant implications for continued productivity growth in the information economy." After commending NSF's activities, the report "encourages NSF to consider increasing research support, where feasible, through this program." More here
The House committee is likely reacting to a request from the Semiconductor Industry Association. In 15 years, the association predicts, it'll be like Midtown Manhattan subways during rush hour on every chip. You just can't pack them in there any tighter. Top down is dying. Bottom-up is on the ascent – whether it's through self-assembly or atomically precise positioning.
So, the group is asking the U.S. government to chip in more money and it's proposing a research institute that will discover what comes next. The goal? Creating an entirely new industry, with new switches, interconnects, materials, memory and manufacturing methods by 2020.
Related News
Chipmakers' Problems Are Speeding Up (BusinessWeek)
Samsung Expands Texas Semiconductor Lines (The Korea Times)
Nano-Imprinting Promises Even Smaller Electronics (Science a GoGo)
NanoBot Backgrounder
Thanks for the nanomemories, Intel
Welcome to our Nano Nightmare
What Would Roger Own? Not Nano
Swatting Millipedes
Abstract Cart
Direct and Related Links for 'Office 2003 vs. OpenOffice.Org'
“In recent years, open-source alternatives to Office have matured to the point where IT managers are beginning to investigate the viability of moving from the Microsoft Corp. suite to a license-free alternative. So when eWEEK Corporate Partner Ed Benincasa shared his desire to perform a user-based comparison between the OpenOffice.org project’s OpenOffice.org suite and Microsoft’s Office 2003, we saw a perfect opportunity to compare the suites under real-world conditions.”…Suw Charman has written an excellent article for the Guardian on my pal Koleman Strumpf's empirical, quantitative research on the effect of downloading on record sales (he concluded that it doesn't really have one), and the music industry's content-free bluster in reply.
"We consider it a very flawed study," says Matt Phillips, a BPI spokesperson. Both the BPI and the International Federation for the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) have criticised the study for including the Christmas period when people are buying CDs as gifts."It's very straightforward to address these kinds of criticisms," says Strumpf. "We got rid of the Christmas season and just looked at the first half of our data. We still find the same effect."...
"Over the period 1999 to 2003, DVD prices fell by 25% and the price of players fell in the US from over $1,000 to almost nothing," says Strumpf. "At the same time, CD prices went up by 10%. Combined DVD and VHS tape sales went up by 500m, while CD sales fell by 200m, so a possible explanation is that people were spending on DVDs instead of CDs."
(Thanks, Suw!)
Great Terra Nova post on the new round of VC funding received by Massive Incorporated, which does in-game product-placement and ads:
** you hack monster for 80pts of damage
** you hack monster for 100pts of damage
>monster: did you know you can get 'monster' discounts at QuickieMart
** you hack monster for 10pts of damage
* you have killed monster
* you gain 1000XP
>would you like to convert these to 1 QuickieMart loyalty point (Y/N)
Glenn Fleishman sez: "Sid Steward is a PDF guru that I've turned to in the past to bookmark and clean up my electronic books. He forwarded a link to a site he's created where he has the 9/11 Commission's report optimized for faster download, and including bookmarks and other PDF add-ons. His site offers a fast full text search of the PDF with links that will open the file and hit those bookmarks." Link
Ernest Miller writes:
Yesterday, Marybeth Peters, the head of the US Copyright Office, testified before the Senate regarding the INDUCE Act. Her testimony was even more radical than the RIAA's. Not only did she (inappropriately) explain what outcome the Appeals Court in the Grokster case should reach and argue (wrongly) that the INDUCE Act wouldn't have a chilling effect on innovation, she actually said she thought the INDUCE Act was not enough. The Register of Copyrights argued that the Betamax decision, which made VCRs legal, should be overturned by Congress. Wow.
The Guardian Unlimited has an article on several recent government or think-tank reports lamenting Britain's low use of renewable energy sources, compared to the rest of Europe. In fact, "Peter Hain, the secretary for Wales, argued this month that every new home should, by law, be fitted with photovoltaic panels to produce solar electricity." Given how cloudy the UK is, such a proposal makes less sense that it would in, say, Greece or the American southwest. But the article also notes that there is another obstacle to the development of renewables in the UK, and by extension many other advanced nations: [A] big hurdle for the UK is that it has a highly developed grid system, one of the world's most advanced, and cheap electricity. [BP executive John] Mogford compares renewables to mobile phones. If a country had no land lines, it would make sense to go straight to mobile phones and skip the huge investment in fixed lines. Similarly, it would be advantageous for a country without a highly developed power grid system to sink resources into solar energy. But in the UK, the incremental cost of adding another power station to the grid is less than putting money into a renewable source such as solar power. This echoes an argument Stuart Hart and Clayton Christensen made in a 2002 Sloan Management Review article on technological innovation and the base of the pyramid, in which they argue that "developing countries... constitute tbe best initial markets for environmentally friendly technologies" and alternative energy: In the developed world, the difficulty facing innovators is the existence of a well-developed, sunk-cost grid system, which... wipes away any cost advantages associated with distributed generation [i.e. solar power, wind turbines, fuel cells, etc.]. In these markets, cost-accounting systems and rate structures that are tailored to the centralized generation of power make it difficult for such technologies to gain a foothold. But distributed generation has much more promise in the developing world. Consider that more than 2 billion people in the world have no access to dependable electric power. For people in distant rural areas, no grid system exists, and the massive capital investments needed to build such systems mean that it could be decades before they are built.... The crucial breakthrough for sustainable energy technologies will not take place in a laboratory. Instead, such technologies must be incubated and refined where they can be profitabily deployed through disruptive strategies, in markets where they do not compete against established systems.......
Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoinger, freelancer and one of my correspondents in a previous life, quoted me in his latest column in the mobile Internet news site The Feature:
Lovy told me the one big advantage of MRAM is instant access. Compared to hard drives and flash memory, which are relatively slow, MRAM is speedy. It's not as fast as SRAM, but unlike SRAM, MRAM is nonvolatile, which means the data doesn't go "poof!" when the power is cut off. MRAM could give mobile phones a much-desired instant-on (and off!) capability.
MRAM also uses a lot less power than solid-state memory since it doesn't have to be continuously refreshed. It only uses power when it is being accessed, and even then, it only needs a small amount. Another advantage is the ultra-high storage capacities that are achievable. "It brings us into the terabyte territory," says Lovy. Were talking not just your entire music library on a chip, but the entire Library of Congress on a sugar cube." More here.
NanoBot Backgrounder
Money for Memory
My 64-bits worth
Thanks for the nanomemories, Intel
Update: Engadget is running a new storage medium roundup. But, then, they blow it by being so hip and more cynical than thou that they fail to see the difference between real technology and chicken sh_t.
Direct and Related Links for 'TiVo To Lead Fight On Copyrights'
(Free registration required to read the linked article) Hollywood studios and the National Football League are freaking out about TiVo’s plan for expanding it’s service so that users can watch copies of shows and movies on other devices outside of their homes. The filings made against TiVo state that this technology will violate the copyrights of TV shows that broadcasters air in their digital form. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I…The China Productivity Miracle
July 16, 2004
By John Mauldin
This week we look at China with a few thoughts that are not part of the conventional wisdom, and throw in a comment or two on global money growth, employment problems in the third quarter, and a comment on the presidential race.
I read with dismay this morning the following item in Dennis Gartman's daily letter:
"Why the US has to try to meddle in international trade as often as it does via trade protection is really quite beyond us here at TGL, but it does. Now the US wants to impose limits on the number of socks that China can export to the US, joining bras, knit fabrics and such that were protected late last year. The textile industry here in the US, long given to tariffs and trade protection, is striking again while it thinks it has an audience asking the government to protect it from Chinese imports.
"The importation of socks into the US is a relatively (no it's a very) small industry, averaging less than $50 million/month. This is not steel; this is not autos; this is not grain... this is but $50 million/month that US companies cannot compete with. If consumers want these cheaper socks and if China's exporters can send them abroad and compete with US producers, then so be it: let the socks walk! But to constantly protect indigenous US businesses from competition is anti-capitalist at the very core. Somewhere, this has just gotta stop. Sadly, in an election year is probably won't."
If the Chinese are stealing our jobs, a brand new study by the Conference Board begs the question, "Who is stealing the jobs from the Chinese?" (As we will see, the Chinese actually lost 9 times more textile jobs than the US.)
Released last week, the study shows that between 1995 and 2002 China lost 7 times more manufacturing jobs than the US. In the off chance you have not seen the latest edition of Asian Labour News, I will quote:
"China is losing more manufacturing jobs than the United States. For the entire economy between 1995 and 2002, China lost 15 million manufacturing jobs, compared with 2 million in the U.S., The Conference Board reports in a study released today. "As its manufacturing productivity accelerates, China is losing jobs in manufacturing - many more than the United States is - and gaining them in services, a pattern that has been playing out in the developed world for many years," concludes The Conference Board study.
"According to Robert H. McGuckin, Director of Economic Research at The Conference Board and co-author of the study: "Increased unemployment has also accompanied the restructuring of the industrial sector, but per capita income has risen over the period."
The new report from The Conference Board, the global research and business membership network, is the result of a joint research project with The National Bureau of Statistics of China. The study is based on data for the 51,000 large and medium sized firms in China's manufacturing, mining and the utilities industries. While the study focuses on the larger firms, according to McGuckin, "the same patterns are observed among smaller firms."
"China is rapidly losing manufacturing jobs in the same industries where the U.S. and other major countries have seen jobs disappear, such as textiles. Matthew Spiegelman, Economist at The Conference Board and co-author of the study, notes: "The U.S. lost 202,000 textile jobs between 1995 and 2002, a tremendous decline by any measure. But China lost far more jobs in this sector--1.8 million. All told, 26 of China's 38 major industries registered job losses between 1995 and 2002."
China's Productivity Miracle
China's industrial labor productivity growth exploded at a 17% annual rate between 1995 and 2002. As in the more developed countries, this rise in productivity comes from improved technologies and the reallocation of resources from lower to higher value activities.
This compares with an average annual growth of 4% in the US, which most observers find to be an off the chart performance. 27 of the 38 industries in China saw annual average productivity growth of over 10%. Steel production saw a job loss of 557,000 jobs, but actual production has soared.
A large part of this "productivity miracle" is simply the government selling large, bloated industries and the new owners down-sizing the employee rolls, yet producing more. Even with private manufacturing industry in China adding 9 million new jobs, there was a net loss of 4 million manufacturing jobs in China in the period.
Chinese labor is now producing 3 times as much as it did a mere 9 years ago. Let's think about that for a moment. It is not just the lower wages in China that helped produce the boom of the last 10 years. It is that they are becoming more efficient. That is one reason why US import prices are stable (or falling[!] as they did last month) even as the dollar is down 20% over the last few years. Those who export to the US are simply making products cheaper. (See more on this below.)
The always astute Caroline Baum, writing for Bloomberg last year, quoted a study that showed that 22 million manufacturing jobs were lost globally between 1995 and 2002, even as manufacturing output soared 30%.
"The angst over the fate of U.S. production workers, whose numbers peaked in 1979, is not unlike the epitaph for farm workers in the early 20th century, says Steve Wieting, senior economist at Citigroup Inc. 'Real manufacturing output has risen 77 percent even though the number of manufacturing workers has fallen 22 percent since the 1979 peak,' Wieting says.
"Similarly, real farm output rose 96 percent since 1979 with 31 percent fewer agricultural workers. Because output equals income, 'something was earned with the gains in manufacturing and farm output during the last 25 years of falling employment in these industries,' Wieting says. A rising supply of food and consumer goods caused prices to rise more slowly than per-capita income, giving consumers more income to spend on other things -- on services that didn't previously exist." (Bloomberg)
Even though manufacturing and farm employment fell by 22% and 33%, respectively, since 1979 total US employment managed to grow 41%.
And then, in what may be one of the best lines I have read in quite awhile, Wieting says, "Our studies suggest that hunter-gatherer societies offer full employment for all, simply providing the basic necessities of food and shelter," Wieting say.
"Of course," Baum concludes, "with all of their resources devoted to providing food and shelter, they have little 'income' left to consume anything else -- made in China or otherwise."
What those who want trade protection really want is protection from change. They want local consumers to pay something extra (over what they would pay for an import) for whatever it is they produce so they can continue in their lifestyle.
Instead of favoring this or that group in an effort to shore up voters for this fall, we should focus on helping people adapt to a changing world. It is unseemly that a country which supposedly espouses free trade should stoop to such nonsense as putting limits on Chinese bras and socks. The Chinese know the political game, and have shown admirable restraint, but this simply undermines whatever free trade leadership we have.
Let us make no mistake, the growing global marketplace has made the world a much better place. Not every boat has risen evenly, but far more enjoy a better life because of a growing world market.
This global marketplace is under enough pressure from trade imbalances, debt, currency manipulation and such without imposing the additional pressures of trade restrictions and other bureaucratic nonsense.
Is China Slowing Down?
Many observers suggest that the Chinese government is tapping on the brakes, trying to slow the economy down. They are raising bank reserve requirements and slowing down the rate of loan growth. Can they simply slow the economy down, or will they overshoot and cause a recession?
Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley posed the question most succinctly:
"And, of course, the debate over the China slowdown rages - not whether it will occur but whether the coming landing will be soft or hard. The latest indications on China's industrial output growth - a further deceleration to a 16.2% year over year gain in June - paint a picture of a Chinese economy that is only in the early stage of either type of landing."
Maybe, and maybe not. Greg Weldon (Weldon's Money Monitor) takes up the debate and truly offers some new thoughts on the debate.
First, he writes this week:
"We note that 24 of the 31 Chinese Provinces reported shortages of electricity, with the government calling the shortfall in supply 'acute', within the coastal manufacturing municipalities. Subsequently, Beijing announced that 6,000 factories will be closed for one-week each, in 'observance' of ... 'high temperature holidays'. Indeed, city hotels have been 'restricted' to keeping thermostats no higher than 26-degrees Celsius, and asked staff to take to the stairs, so as to avoid ... 'power hungry elevators.' Industrial Production might be slowing ... BECAUSE of lop-sided demand for electricity.
"Consider it this way --- Five years ago, the (then) State Development and Planning Agency put forth a five-year plan for the build out of the country's electricity-grid ... envisioning what was, at the time, a RAPID pace of industrial output expansion, forecast at +7% yr-yr over the five year period.
"Oooops, 15% growth ... in a single year ... THREE TIMES the annual growth in demand for electricity that was EXPECTED from the industrial sector. Additionally, we observe that the Steel, Cement, Chemical, and Non-Ferrous Metals industries, together in tandem, account for 29% of the nation's demand for electricity.
"THUS, from the perspective of trying to optimize a pace of expansion that is consistent with a sustainable ability to 'fuel' itself with power ... a slowing in the GROWTH rate of cement and steel, to a STILL DOUBLE-DIGIT pace of expansion ... is NOT a 'bad' thing. So, myth number one is shattered ... Industrial Production is NOT going into ANY landing, soft NOR hard."
Many suggest that a slowing China will see exports decrease, but that has not been the case. But the reality is that exports are soaring, up 48% year over year in May alone.
Finally, I have been writing for years that Chinese leaders face a huge problem. As China sheds its bloated government owned business, it must find jobs for those who will become unemployed. Managing expectations, especially those of the unemployed who see many people around them beginning to see better times, is important. How big a job does the Chinese government have?
Again, we quote from Weldon:
Chinese Unemployment Rate ... 23%
Number of People Unemployed in China, 169 million ... EQUAL to the ENTIRE US LABOR FORCE
Chinese Agriculture employs HALF of the working population, versus less than 3% in the US and 4% in Europe.
"Indeed, the government cannot be TOO UPSET that Industrial Production continues to grow by more than 15% year-over-year, and that Exports have topped $50 billion monthly, expanding at a MIND-NUMBING year-over-year rate near 50% !!!
"The Central Bank may desire less raw material price inflation, and may try and complete the high-wire act in terms of managing capacity constraints in the power-sector ... BUT ... JUST LIKE THE US FED ... they do NOT mind ... a more rapid trend rate of economic growth."
The main problem for China is not necessarily internal to China. China needs to grow its exports and internal demand so that it can create more jobs. It is the global trade imbalance - the undue dependence upon the US - that threatens the global expansion.
If the primary engine of global growth, the US economy and specifically the US consumer, begins to slow, then Chinese export growth will slow. Perhaps it will even recede, if the recession in the US is severe enough. It is that simple.
China has all sorts of problems. Too little water. Not enough power. Pollution levels that are simply alarming. License plates are actually auctioned off in Shanghai in an attempt to control traffic congestions and air pollution. We could create a list that goes on for pages. They are slowly solving many of these problems.
But the opportunities also abound as well. China will not be able to avoid the business cycle forever. Sooner or later they will have a recession, just as we will in the US. In fact, my thought is they, and much of the rest of the world, will in fact have that recession because of a slowdown in the US. For now, the Chinese government is doing what they can to create a dynamic manufacturing machine which creates new employment, which will create internal demand and doing so in a way that is creating a true future economic powerhouse.
Do not look for the Chinese to raise their interest rates or float the yuan anytime soon. They are on a fast-moving treadmill, with the very real need to create jobs at home more important than their need for a floating currency, which much of the world really wants to see happen. Just as the by-word for the Fed raising interest rates is "measured," so any action by China will also be "measured."
Global Productivity and Prices
The dollar has dropped 20% on a trade weighted basis over the past few years, and you would expect import prices to rise. They have not, to any appreciable degree. Because the world (not just China) is producing more and more for less and less, prices are falling as fast as the dollar is dropping.
This is allowing the global trade imbalance, and especially the US trade deficit, to continue without the normal check of rising prices. It is making a troublesome situation (the US trade deficit) more of a problem. The fall of the dollar has produced no real pain in the US, as the "stuff" we buy from abroad is still relatively as cheap as a few years ago, especially the high tech toys (the exception being some European products). But it has made the dollars held in reserve by foreign banks drop, and there is real pain in their balance sheets.
Global productivity is not going to stop, either in China, the US or anywhere else. It is a fact of life. But the trade imbalances cannot continue. By definition, if a trend cannot continue, it will eventually reverse. Just like a stock market bubble, the longer a trend continues, the more out of balance the situation, the worse the eventual reversal.
Over the next few months, we are going to look at this situation quite closely.
Global Liquidity Falls
I know that much of this week's letter has been quotes, but some weeks I find that other people say what needs to be said. And that is the set-up for the piece we are going to look at next. I could ominously and simply say that global liquidity fell for the first time since December of 2001, and leave it at that. Or I could quote Ian Douglas of UBS in London in their Fixed Income Strategy Daily letter and let him give you more insight. I think the following is important, and I suggest you digest it. Under the heading that "The global liquidity cycle turns. Medium-term risk to asset prices" we read:
"Something was reported last week that hasn't been seen since Dec 2001. Global liquidity fell. Before you eject this mail into the filing system known as the recycle bin, let me try and highlight the importance of what has happened.
"The IMF publishes a monthly data series global FX reserves (ex-Gold). As the name suggests, this is a summation of the FX reserves of the world's central banks and is published as a dollar value. It can alternatively be thought of as global M1. It should come as no surprise to readers of this publication that FX reserves have been growing strongly through to the first quarter of this year. In the 12 months to Mar 04, global reserves grew by a staggering $791bn (equivalent to around 7.5% US GDP), a 30.3% year over year increase. The charts below illustrate the growth - in both levels and percentage terms.
"The global economy has obviously strengthened significantly over this period, but at nothing like the pace required to absorb this liquidity explosion. Global nominal GDP growth looks to have been running somewhere around the 5% mark over the same period. When global activity is weaker than the pace of global liquidity creation (or monetary growth) a situation of 'excess liquidity' develops - the scale of which is broadly determined by the GDP growth / monetary growth gap.
"This excess needs a home. If real economic activity is not strong enough to absorb the cash it tends to find its way into asset prices and periods of high levels of liquidity growth are typically associated with asset price inflation. In its most obvious guise, this is the inflation of short-dated US security prices which would surely be at higher yields had the central banks of Asia not been on the bid.
"But the asset price inflation has been and usually is a wider phenomenon than just bidding up short dated risk free asset prices. What also typically characterises periods of high excess liquidity is a fall in risk aversion (the cheaper the money the lower the relative cost of risk) and therefore a strong performance from risks assets. The year long rebound in global equity prices and strong performance of low grade credit and emerging markets need to be seen in this context. (So should strong house price growth in most parts of the world, old master painting prices making new highs, strong fine wine prices, and doubtless many other examples). Note also that previous spikes in liquidity growth have been similarly associated (eg the equity bull market of the 85-87 period).
"The figures released by the IMF are somewhat dated - being for April - but fit with other more timely indications such as the Japanese reserve growth figures we commented upon yesterday. In the year to April the average monthly growth was $65bn, with April's contraction of $8.3bn being the first fall in twenty seven months. If we are right that the rate of reserve accumulation will continue to fade this suggests it will not just be Treasury prices that are vulnerable. It may be prudent to unload some risk more generally - and drink that Bordeaux before the prices start to fall."
Employment Numbers and Uphill Battles
Finally, a little update on the US employment numbers. A few weeks ago I wrote that last year, the employment numbers started to include an estimate for the birth and death of new businesses. There is a time lag between the time these businesses are created (or die) and when the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds out about them. So they have created some fairly elaborate models for estimating the numbers of new businesses. While this does attempt to show more realism in the actual final number, it also throws some subjectivity into the numbers.
As they note on their site (www.bls.gov), "The most significant potential drawback to this or any model-based approach is that time series modeling assumes a predictable continuation of historical patterns and relationships and therefore is likely to have some difficulty producing reliable estimates at economic turning points or during periods when there are sudden changes in trend. BLS will continue researching alternative model-based techniques for the net birth/death component; it is likely to remain as the most problematic part of the estimation process."
Last month, 182,000 jobs were in that category across the entire spectrum of the employment markets. They estimate over 700,000 new businesses have been created in the last four months alone, or more than double the amount created in the preceding 10 months. Were those 182,000 real, or were they the creation of a government agency desperate to show employment growth?
As they note, this model will understate growth at the beginning of recoveries and mask problems at the beginning of downturns. But there is nothing in any of the rest of the economic data which suggests a major change in patterns, so I give some credence to the possibility that 195,000 jobs were created by new businesses. My friend and astute analyst Bill King argues differently, that we are late in the recovery cycle and the jobs are not there. In the US, most new jobs are created by small businesses, and in recoveries, it is normal for lots of new small businesses to be created.
The jobs numbers are all guesstimates anyway, and it is the longer term trend and direction which should concern us, and not the month to month numbers. And lately, the trend has finally been good.
However, that was then, and this is now, as my kids often point out. Last July, the BLS seasonally adjusted the numbers down 83,000 jobs, so one assumes they will adjust things down this year. For the entire 3rd quarter last year, the increase in new jobs from the birth-death cycle was marginal, a mere 74,000.
Let's look at a few quick facts. The economy must grow at 3% just to keep employment steady in the face of rising productivity and population growth. The economy slowed to 3.8% in the first quarter of this year and seems to be slowing the second quarter. Consumer sales are slowing somewhat. Mortgage applications and refinancing are down. As many observers note, this is the first summer in three years without rebate checks and other tax stimulus. Further, the re-fi boom has gone away.
I am in San Diego today, so can only quickly look at the CPI release, but the earnings numbers were ugly. Real wages were down 0.8% in June, and down what looks like 1.4% for the last four months. Average weekly earnings were down as well, because of a drop in the number of hours worked.
Nothing is falling off the table, just slowly, ever so slowly, coming down from the heady economic pace induced by all sorts of stimulus of last year.
This does not bode well for third quarter employment numbers. The economy in theory has to create 83,000 jobs in July just to "stay even" statistically in the seasonally adjusted headline number that everyone is going to focus on. Given the above quote from Douglas, (decreased liquidity), the "anxiety" over another Fed raise in August (if they don't raise rates, what message will that send?) and the summer blahs, I might not want to be long the market indexes in August. Just a thought.
John Mauldin
John@frontlinethoughts.com
Copyright 2004 John Mauldin. All Rights
Representatives of Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and Looksmart offer an inside glimpse of recent developments at the major search engines.
Interesting story in The Star (Canada) about this weekend's launch of Telesat Canada's new Internet broadcast satellite:
Canadians should care about this moment -- about this particular satellite. Anik F2 is more than just the largest and heaviest of commercial satellites in the world, it's also the first to combine cutting edge Ka-band technology with older and less powerful Ku- and C-band transponders. The latter two will continue to carry Canada's television and telecommunications signals, but the powerful Ka-band "spot beams" will, for the first time, let an Anik satellite deliver two-way, broadband Internet service to any location in North America at a price that's competitive with residential cable or DSL high-speed services.
TheyWorkForYou is the best political advocacy site I've ever seen: it scrapes the UK Parliamentary record and then turns the debates into an easily searched means of keep tabs on your MP -- and to turn your MP's deeds into the basis for discussion and political activism. A common question from Americans, Canadians and others is how this system might be adapted for their respective governments.
Well, now the TheyWorkForYou team have released the source-code for their app under the GPL, and they're also publishing raw XML feeds of their data-sources for you to mix and munge.
Get busy!
(Thanks, Danny!)
Here's how nano played in the blogosphere today. Alert level: Jade
Get rich quick #143563433 (New Links)
Public attitudes toward nanotechnology (InstaPundit)
Fantastic Voyage at Amazon (fightaging.org)
Hackers on Planet Earth (TECHPopuli)
Direct and Related Links for 'Is Internet Explorer on its way out?'
An interesting perspective from a fellow Gnomie who believes that IE has finally had it, pure and simple. He even goes so far as to point to what the US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) is suggesting. “It is time for national leaders to get their heads out of the sand and recognize this threat to their [our] national and economic security, [and to begin] cooperating on a global basis to deny access and havens to…
This just in from The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, running a Newhouse News Service story:
Nanotechnology, which sends tiny robots into the body to strike disease, managing molecules and potentially slowing or even stopping aging. More here
Wow. One week out of a nanotech newsroom, and I guess I've missed some important developments. Apparently, the little robots have migrated from the pants to the rest of the body, striking at disease. The "slowing or even stopping aging" phase is only a "potential" benefit.
In reality, nanoparticles are being called into action in the fight against disease. If you want to call them, "tiny robots," that sounds cool, I guess, if you broaden your definition of "robot" a bit. Thanks to the Fresh Prince, robots are again the subject of public fascination and horror, which fits right in with the current state of the nano meme.
Combinex, a product by Advanced Magnetics Inc. (AMEX: AVM, News, Discussion, Web site) doesn't exactly involve "tiny robots," but it does use iron oxide nanoparticles as an imaging agent to help differentiate between healthy and cancerous lymph nodes. AVM is in the process of seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
And you know how some groups have managed to successfully paint buckyballs as an evil cancer-causing agent that damages fish and fetuses. Well, in reality, they hold the key to possible cancer treatments or cures, with companies like C Sixty leading the way with preclinical trials and a partnership with at least one fairly significant drug company.
And Australia-based Starpharma is conducting FDA-approved clinical trials of VivaGel, which contains another kind of manmade molecule called the dendrimer, as a treatment for or precaution against HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases. Last November, the company sought volunteers (PDF, 88 KB) for its Phase I study. Starpharma's dendrimer intellectual property comes courtesy of Michigan's Dendritic Nanotechnologies Inc., headed by dendrimer inventor Donald Tomalia, profiled in a previous NanoBot post.
There's more, but you get the idea.
If the Plain Dealer wants to get the scoop on the real "tiny robots," they should send a reporter to an event in their own town Oct. 25-26. The Cleveland Clinic's NanoMedicine Summit. Yes, Cleveland not only rocks, but it's also a world center for nanobiotechnology. The event is part of NANO Week, Oct. 25-29. Recently added to the lineup is "Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Functionalization and Applications for Targeted Drug Delivery." Translation: "Tiny robots" that "strike disease."
OK, Plain Dealer. I take it back. You're right on target.
NanoBot Backgrounder
Nanobots: Body and antibody
Cancer death to cancer detection
Carlo's just a copycat
ETC Group Executive Director Pat Mooney, in a recent paper discussing nanotechnology regulatory issues, brings up a reasonable point:
It's a question I've posed to a handful of nanotech government, business and academic leaders over the past few years, including Sean Murdock, head of the NanoBusiness Alliance; and Kevin Ausman, executive director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University.
Here's what I asked Ausman:
Kevin Ausman: I think that the technology is developing faster than the impact research. I think that, however, the technology for any new field normally develops faster than the impact research. And compared to that normal curve, we're ahead of it. We are developing impact research far ahead of where you would expect it to happen.
And here's a snippet of my late-2003 interview with Murdock in Chicago, when he was still executive director of regional nano group AtomWorks. I knew at the time that he was a likely successor for NanoBusiness Alliance co-founder Mark Modzelewski and asked my questions with this in mind.
Sean Murdock: Let me disaggregate that. Some things you can test for in advance. Some things you can only test as you see products used. Sometimes products are used in unexpected ways … but it's hard to know what those are until you start to have a product in use until see how people are using it. So, that's what I'm saying. It's the type of risk that we're talking about.
Do I think there should be research that's ongoing in terms of the effects of nanoparticles on toxicity. Yes, I think that's at CBEN, I that's happening elsewhere. In the grand scheme of things, it's not like we have megatons of production of nanoparticles that are getting dispersed all over the world right now. Is there some production that's taking place? Yes.
Lovy: Are you saying it's a nonissue today, or an overblown issue?
Murdock: No, I'm saying it's an issue that we need to look at, balance and try to assess. I'm saying that the way that some people have tried to create fear around it, that it could kill us all and do that kind of thing, doesn't reflect the rate at which these things can propagate.
Lovy: But is the study of environmental and health effects of nanomaterials almost an afterthought?
Murdock: No, I would strongly disagree there because it was embedded within the NNI (National Nanotechnology Initiative) plan from the outset. There was a societal and ethical implications workshop back in 2000.
Lovy: Do you think groups like CBEN would have received as much funding and attention now had the alarm not been sounded by groups like ETC and Greenpeace? Do you think that they fired an opening shot that forced the issue sooner than in might have otherwise been dealt with?
Murdock: I don't know that it forced the issue sooner than it would have been dealt with. People looked at this and said, "Look, there are some issues with AgBioTech, we didn't manage the public, didn't think about unintended consequences and we're going to manage it proactively. We're going to be on top of it." The design, from the outset, of the NNI recognized that and had intended to draw these issues. Now, if you're asking, "Has it heightened attention on the issue?" The CBEN (grant) was awarded before ETC Group came out with anything.
NanoBot Backgrounder
Safety and health group launches nano page
Nano's 'No GMO' Mantra
Meet the new nanoboss
My latest issue of ScienceMatters@Berkeley is now online. While my Lab Notes site highlights interesting engineering research, ScienceMatters explores the physical sciences, biology, and chemistry. Inside this month's issue:
* The Cellular Mechanic
* An Explosive Theory About Volcanoes
* The Mathematics of High-Tech Highways
A pair of articles use problems with Internet Explorer as tea-leaves that reveal the future of the Web: On eWeek, Steve Gillmor argues that "IE's Failings Point Way to RSS:" "When Microsoft abandoned Internet Explorer development to concentrate on fixing the browser's security vulnerabilities, it opened the door to the emerging RSS revolution." Meanwhile, on the Guardian Online, Ben Hammersley asks "[W]hy did Microsoft stop developing Internet Explorer? Why would a company so vocal about innovation cease work on perhaps the most used application in the world, and for nearly three years?" [via del.icio.us]...
A few months ago, a non-profit group called Project Billboard made up of concerned citizens from the Bay Area, who also happen to be women, purchased some prime billboard space in Times Square on the Marriott Marquis just in time for the Republican National Convention and the elections in November. They signed a contract, and wrote a $368,000 check which was accepted, for the two month lease.
Direct and Related Links for 'Disney gets “techie” with new senior VP'
In a move that shows that Disney is getting serious about technology, Bob Lambert has been promoted to senior vp for worldwide media technology and development. The new role for Lambert will have him continuing to lead Disney’s tech initiative, at the same time allowing him to make important decisions regarding Digital Rights and other tech standards….Direct and Related Links for 'P2P is alive and well'
Despite what certain agencies may want you to believe, Peer-to-Peer file sharing is booming big time. To my surprise, video has actually over taken music in the #1 content slot being downloaded. The BBC reports that file-swappers have moved their trust away from the traditional clients on to other set ups like Bittorrent….The Autocorrect feature in Excel (which drives me bonkers across the whole Office suite) has introduced irreversible errors into genetic research that is tabulated in spreadsheets, because Except autocorrects some identifiers to be dates.
Excel is widely used in genetic research to process microarray data. A microarray chip detects amounts of protein produced from thousands of different genes, enabling researchers to see which particular gene is being expressed in a sample of diseased tissue, for example.The errors are introduced because some genetic identifiers look very like dates to Excel. If the spreadsheet is not properly set up, it will convert an identifier, such as SEPT2 to a date: 2-Sep. The conversion, the researchers say, is irreversible: once the error has been introduced, the original data is gone.
