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File technew.txt
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=// Copyright (C) 2001-2002 by Xenakis Consulting Services Inc.
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<div class="technew"><dl>
<dt>European Union To Start Charging Online Taxes on July 1, 2003</dt>
<dd>In a controversial new regulation targeted mainly at United
States vendors, the European Union will start charging VAT (value
added taxes) on "electronically delivered" products and services,
starting on July 1, 2003. The new rules will apply to digital
delivery of software and computer services generally, plus information
and cultural, artistic, sporting, scientific, educational,
entertainment or similar services as well as to broadcasting
services.
For example, if an internet customer in Belgium purchases an MP3 music
file from a New York vendor's web site, then the New York vendor will
have to determine (somehow) that the purchaser is in Belgium, and then
will have to charge the appropriate VAT amount to that customer.
I always have to chuckle at these things. There must be a million
ways for a purchaser to get around this -- hiding the fact that he's
in Belgium when he makes the purchase. I'll be interested in seeing
how the politicians work this one out.(See <#redir
"http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/02/673|0|RAPID&lg=EN&display="#>
European Union 5/7/02 press release</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Is it "Observational Research" or "Big Brother"?</dt>
<dd>The Once Famous boutique at One Financial Plaza in Minneapolis is
no ordinary store. A customer is tracked by a bevy of cameras from
the time she enters to the time she leaves. All her movements are
noted and analyzed, in order to do market research on what turns
customers off or on, and how customers move from item to item.
We now have cameras watching us all the time anyway -- whether we're
walking or driving down the street in many cities -- and some will
send us traffic tickets if we go a little too fast. So it's not
surprising that this technique is now moving to the retail industry.
(See
<#redir
"http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2001/10/15/story3.html"#>
10/12/01 Minneapolis/St. Paul <i>Business Journal</i> story</a>, and
also <#redir
"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-050102spy.story"#>
5/1/02 Los Angeles <i>Times</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>UBS Warburg Acquires Enron's IT Infrastructure</dt>
<dd>Enron's loss is UBS Warburg's gain: The financial services firm
has acquired Enron's leading edge IT infrastructure for no money
down. The complex deal, which includes USB's hiring of 800 of Enron's
employees, has been approved by the bankruptcy court.
Since 1996, Enron spared no expense not only for leading edge
computers, but also SAP's financial software and Siebel's customer
relationship management software.
But the real jewels are Enron's extremely sophisticated analytical
software: It analyzes business conditions, weather, energy commodity
prices, political strife, and other factors that affect energy
markets, along with real-time information on the markets, and spot
buying or selling opportunities well in advance of competitors,
according to analysts. The information was fed wirelessly to a mobile
workforce that could make buying and selling decisions from the side
of the road. (See
<#redir "http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020118S0065"#> 1/21/02
<i>InformationWeek</i> article</a>, and also the
<#redir "http://www.computerworld.com/q?26546"#> 1/21/02
<i>Computerworld</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Passwords Are Almost Useless</dt>
<dd>People who use passwords to protect their computers and data
actually have almost no protection at all, according to an article in
the 2/12/02 issue of <i>PC Magazine</i>. The magazine reviewed
password cracking software from several companies:
<#redir "http://www.lostpassword.com"#>Passware</a>,
<#redir "http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com"#>Sunbelt Software</a>,
<#redir "http://www.winternals.com"#>Winternals Software</a>, and
<#redir "http://www.crak.com"#>CRAK Software</a>. The programs are used
to crack word processing, spreadsheet, database, accounting software
files, as well as the Windows operating system.
These programs use several different techniques to crack passwords.
Some use brute force (trying billions and billions of passwords,
until one is found that works). Other programs go into the protected
file or operating system and simply change the stored password to a
known value.
Most people use password cracking software to recover their own data
in cases where they've forgotten the passwords, but these products'
availability means that anybody's password-protected data or operating
systems may have very little protection at all.</dd>
<dt>Gartner Group's Top 10 Predictions for 2002</dt>
<dd>The Gartner Group has published its top ten technology
predictions for 2002:
External Forces predictions:
<ul><li>The IT industry will remain challenged, facing accelerated
job losses and significant vendor consolidation.</li>
<li>Safeguarding people, knowledge, systems and nations will take
priority.</li>
<li>Consumers will go online, finally, with the number using online
account management doubling by 2005.</li></ul>
Business Behavior predictions:
<ul><li>Short-term focus on expenses will squeeze IS organizations in
2002 as business demand for IT increases.</li>
<li>Outsourcing and trusted suppliers will take more control as
capital spending reduces in favor of operating budgets.</li>
<li>Through 2004, businesses will continue to view the discipline of
CRM as a critical component of corporate strategy.</li></ul>
Applications and Technology Trends predictions:
<ul><li>During 2002, despite budget restraints, operational IT
infrastructure will still need to anticipate and fulfill critical IT
initiatives.</li>
<li>More than 50 percent of mobile applications deployed at the start
of 2002 will be obsolete by the end of 2002.</li>
<li>By 2004, Web services will dominate deployment of new application
solutions for Fortune 2000 companies.</li>
<li>During 2002, leading-edge businesses will exploit application
integration to generate business innovation.</li></ul>
(See
<#redir "http://www4.gartner.com/1_researchanalysis/focus/predictions2002.html"#>
January, 2002, research analysis from Gartner Group</a>.)
Gartner's predictions paint a bleak picture for the computer
industry. It seems like only a short time ago that we were
developing "client/server" applications, and our major worry was that
all computers would stop working on January 1, 2000.
A lot of people expected to make money from the Y2K problem, but
almost no one did (except for some consulting firms who provided
conversion services). People who focused too hard on Y2K ended up
losing time to get on e-commerce bandwagon. Still, everyone did
great on e-commerce in 2000 until the Nasdaq crashed early in 2001.
Since then, things have been bad, and 9/11 made them worse. We've
already had consolidations from client/server and Y2K shakeouts, and
Gartner seems to be predicting e-commerce predictions this year, as
the recession continues.
Gartner's predictions do point the way for new business, however.
Customer relationship management (CRM) applications are an important
part of the e-commerce revolution that we'll be in the middle of
for several years to come. However, it's fairly clear that IT
managers will no longer tolerate bloated development projects in CRM
or anything else. Quick, low-cost solutions will be funded in 2002,
and the you'll have to wait until at least 2003 for the bloated
projects to start up again.</dd>
<dt>Al-Qaeda Operatives Protection Foiled by Cracking DES</dt>
<dd>American investigators have been reaping a wealth of information
about al-Qaeda operations by examining files on the hard disk of a
used computer purchased by a <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reporter
several weeks ago. Some of those files were encrypted using DES, the
old Data Encryption Standard, which was thoroughly hacked in the
1970s. The al-Qaeda files were decrypting using a brute force
technique. (See
<#redir "http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991804"#>
1/17/02 <i>New Scientist</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Microsoft Makes Security its Top Goal</dt>
<dd>Stung by numerous security flaws found in Windows XP and Outlook,
Microsoft has changed its strategy to make its products more
"trustworthy." (See
<#redir "http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/17SECU.html"#>
1/17/02 <i>New York Times</i> article</a>.)
Meanwhile, some computer experts are questioning the multi-billion
dollar estimates that appear in the media as the costs of recovering
from various virus attacks. For example, the Code Red virus was
serious, but did it really cost $2.62 billion to fix it? These
figures always come from
<#redir "http://www.computereconomics.com/cei/press/pr92101.html"#>
Computer Economics</a>, a California-based research firm whose
primary business is to advise companies on technology investment and
marketing strategies. These experts claim that Computer Economics is
hyping the figures. (See
<#redir "http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,49681,00.html"#>
1/14/02 <i>Wired News</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Do Computers Analysts Require an Indian Passport?</dt>
<dd>Having been a computer consultant for over 25 years, I've had
clients that demanded all sorts of skills or had other strange
requires before they would hire me, but this is a new one on me!
There was a flap last week over an ad that referred to CNN news
reporter Paula Zahn as "a little bit sexy." In a
<#redir "http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=95001714"#> 1/11/02
<i>Wall Street Journal</i> article by Tunku Varadarajan</a>, the
following paragraph appears:
<ul>It is always painful to see people rated solely by physical
appearance, and devalued -- whether by virtue of their beauty or
their plainness -- because of it. But it was disingenuous of Ms.
Zahn, a master-hand in a milieu where pleasing looks are a
precondition of employment (just as strength is for firefighters or an
Indian passport for computer analysts), to play the role of slandered
female, her professional dignity besmirched by the male chauvinist
pigs in the CNN publicity department.</ul>
Well, I thought I'd been doing systems and computer analysis all
these years, but I guess I must have been doing something else. Well,
Tunku, I'm ready to advance to the next level. Tell me -- what do I
have to do to get that passport?</dd>
<dt>Napster Replacements Acting as Trojan Horses for Impenetrable
DLDER.exe</dt>
<dd>Four "P2P" file-sharing services that allow users to download MP3
and other files turn out to be unwitting Trojan horses for a program
that's surreptiously collecting information about users and sending
it to an unknown computer.
The developers of
<#redir "http://www.grokster.com"#>Grokster</a>,
<#redir "http://www.limewire.com"#>LimeWire</a>,
<#redir "http://www.kazaa.com"#>KaZaa</a> and
<#redir "http://www.bearshare.com"#>BearShare</a>
all took
advantage of a free installation software tool called
"Clicktilluwin." Using this free software saved them the trouble of
developing their own installation software. (Any software application
needs to include installation software, so that the application can be
installed on a user's computer.)
However, ClickTillUWin surreptiously installs DLDER.exe, a "spyware"
program that track's the users' web pages. Evidently, the program
does not damage the computer's hard disk, although neither the
developer of the program nor the full purpose of the program is yet
known. (See
<#redir "http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2002/nf2002013_5627.htm"#>
1/3/02 <i>Business Week</i> article</a>. People familiar with the
<#redir "http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html"#> ancient Greek
classic, Homer's <i>Iliad</i>,</a> will know that this article makes
a mistake by calling DLDER.exe the "Trojan Horse"; actually,
Grokster, LimeWire, KaZaa and BearShare are the "Trojan Horses."
Also see the
<#redir "http://www.grokster.com/dlderinformation.html"#>Grokster
press release</a>, and the
<#redir "http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/trojan"#>LimeWire press
release</a>.
)
There's a lot of free software available these days, and this
incident illustrates an important lesson for corporate IT
departments, as well as companies that develop software. If you
include someone else's free software in your own software product,
make sure that the source code for the free software has been
published, so that there's a way of checking for little tricks like
DLDER.exe.</dd>
<dt>Judge OK's FBI's Use of "Magic Lantern"</dt>
<dd>"Magic Lantern" is the FBI's virus software that collects your
keystrokes, including your passwords, and sends them to the FBI. The
FBI surreptiously installs the virus on your computer, and then uses
it to monitor anything you type.
A federal judge has given the FBI the green light to use Magic
Lantern, saying that it "suffers from no constitutional infirmity."
(See <#redir "http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49455,00.html"#>
the 1/4/02 <i>Wired News</i> story.</a>)</dd>
<dt>New Euro Coins Favor Heads</dt>
<dd>The new euro coins favor heads over tails when spun, or at least
the Belgian ones do, according to Polish mathematicians who got 140
heads in 250 spins. Euro coins, unlike bills, are different from
country to country. (<i>Wall Street Journal</i>, page A1,
1/4/02.)</dd>
<dt>Bush Administration Loosens Export Controls on Computer
Power</dt>
<dd>One of the most bizarre legacies of the cold war is the
government's restrictions on advanced computer technology to other
countries. It may have made sense to restrict the sale of Cray
supercomputers to the Soviet Union in 1979, but the restrictions were
broadened to all sorts of technology and application software that
was readily available from numerous sources outside the United
States. Some restrictions were placed by U.S. government bureaucrats
who evidently understood nothing more about computers than how to
operate the on/off switch.
Now the Bush administration has increased the computer power that may
be sold to certain countries (like North Korea). However, limits
still exist, and so these countries will still have to purchase the
most powerful computers from outside the United States. (See
<#redir "http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020102/tc/tech_export_dc_2.html"#>
Reuters news article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Expansion of the Universe May Be Speeding Up</dt>
<dd>We know that the universe has been expanding ever since the "Big
Bang" that occurred about 13 billion years ago. For years,
physicists had speculated that the expansion would continue for many
billions more years, but then the universe would start contracting,
collapsing in on itself, and possibly producing a new Big Bang
immediately afterwards. Other theories speculated that expansion would
continue forever, albeit at a slower rate, but there would be no
contraction.
However, in the last four years astronomers have reported evidence
that the expansion of the universe is not just continuing but is
speeding up, under the influence of a mysterious "dark energy," an
antigravity force that seems to be embedded in space itself. If that
is true and the universe goes on accelerating, astronomers say, rather
than coasting gently into the night, distant galaxies will eventually
be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one
another. In effect, it would be like living in the middle of a black
hole that kept getting emptier and colder.
(See <#hreftext "technew.new.story&arg2=story020101"
"See 10/23/01 AP article."#>
1/1/02<i>New York Times</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>The Top Ten Words of 2001</dt>
<dd>The web site <#stdurl www.yourdictionary.com#> has released its
lists of the overall Top Ten Words, September 11, People's Names,
California YouthSpeak, Top Phrases, Corporate Buzzwords, Sports, Best
and Worse of Corporate Names, Internet-related terms, and various
other topics.
The selected top 10 words of 2001 are: Ground Zero, W. (Dubya),
Jihad, God, Anthrax, Euro, Wizard, -stan (the Persian suffix used in
names like Afghanistan), Oprahization, and Foot-and-Mouth. (See
<#redir "http://www.yourdictionary.com/about/topten2001.html"#>
12/26/01 press release</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Windows XP is Setting The Time Incorrectly</dt>
<dd>Every computer seems to keep time poorly -- many lose or gain
several minutes a week. You can install a free utility program on
your computer which will automatically synchronize your computer's
clock to the Holy Grail of timekeeping, the
<#redir "http://www.time.gov/"#> atomic clock at the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST)</a>. There are numerous free
utility programs available to do this -- for example, check out
<#redir "http://softnik.com/products/timesync"#> Time Synchronizer</a>.
=// <#redir "http://www.beaglesoft.com/"#> ClockWatch</a>
If you have a Windows XP system, then Microsoft has already included
a utility program that performs the synchronization automatically,
once a week. However, Microsoft's utility program connects to
Microsoft's own time server, rather than one of NIST's servers, and
Microsoft's server was providing the wrong times, as much as 9
minutes off. However, Microsoft has fixed the bug, and your computer
should set the time correctly within a few days (provided you're
connected to the internet). If you'd like to play around with XP's
time utility, right-click the time display on the taskbar, choose
Adjust Date/Time, click the Internet Time tab. (See
<#redir "http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,76744,00.asp"#>
article in the December, 2001, issue of <i>PC World
Magazine</i></a>.)</dd>
<dt>The Computer Game That "Plays You" Has Flopped After 9/11</dt>
<dd>The most daring computer game of 2001 fell flat on its face.
Majestic was billed as "the game that plays you." It began with a
concept reminiscent of "The X-Files," featuring shadowy corporations
and government agencies involved in secret mind-control experiments.
While most games sit quietly waiting to be played, the Majestic
gaming system never slept. Gamers paid a monthly $10 fee to enter an
environment of all-encompassing paranoia. The game flashed cryptic
instant messages on their computer screens, faxed them mysterious
maps and photographs, even phoned them at 2 a.m. with recorded
threats, all related to the ongoing story line. The idea was to smudge
the dividing line between fantasy and real life, much like the
bizarre pseudo-reality that tormented Michael Douglas in the 1997 film
"The Game."
The game was launched in August, but the number of active players
"dropped like a cliff after 9/11," and now Majestic has been killed
completely. (See
<#redir "http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/358/living/Game_over_for_ill_timed_overambitious_Majestic+.shtml"#>
the 12/24/01 <i>Boston Globe</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>A Chip That Can Be Implanted in Humans</dt>
<dd><#redir "http://www.adsx.com"#>Applied Digital Solutions</a> has
announced the VeriChip, a chip that can be implanted in a human
being, with the ability to receive commands and transmit data
wirelessly. In addition to providing to name, address, and medical
information of its human host, the chip can also monitor implanted
medical devices, such as pacemakers. (See
<#redir "http://www.adsx.com/VeriChip/verichip.html"#>
VeriChip press release.</a>)
The chip is raising privacy concerns if use of the implanted chip
becomes widespread. For example, someone could "scan" an entire room
of people, looking for people to rob. (See
<#redir "http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=JEOXODHYGM1IQCRBAEZSFEYKEEATIIWD?type=technologynews&StoryID=474400"#>
12/22/01 Reuters article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Spam E-mail Increasing Since 9/11</dt>
<dd>Spam e-mail seems to be increasing substantially -- by a factor
of ten or more in the last year, according to some estimates. One
trigger was the anthrax scare following 9/11, which encouraged
marketers to use snail mail less and e-mail more.
Unfortunately, the economics of e-mail is the reverse of what it
should be. It's essentially free for marketers to send out millions
of e-mail spam messages, but it costs the recipients a great deal of
time to sort through all the messages and delete them. Corporate
e-mail servers are being clogged by spam, and worker productivity is
being negatively affected.
The only good news is that spam is almost totally ineffective as a
marketing tool, since people consider it to be almost totally
garbage. (See
<#redir "http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/24/technology/24SPAM.html"#>
12/24/01 <i>New York Times</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Lightweight Portables: Sharp is Bad, Fujitsu is Good</dt>
<dd>The lightest of the lightweight portable computers pack a lot of
functionality into an incredibly light, tiny package. Walter Mossberg,
computer reviewer for the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, has reviewed two
of these systems, and delivered a mixed review.
The Sharp PC-UM10 weighs 2.89 pounds, but has too many minuses,
according to Mossberg: the optional external CD drive is clumsy to
use, and the computer has no ports except a modem, an Ethernet port
and a single USB port.
The Fujitsu LifeBook P weighs 3.4 pounds, has numerous ports and a
built-in DVD drive that doubles as a CD recorder. However, battery
life is poor, and Mossberg recommends purchasing the extra large
external battery with it.
These computers cost $1,500 to $2,000, depending on what optional
hardware you purchase. (See
<#redir "http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20011220.html"#> Walter
Mossberg's 12/20/01 column</a>.)
If those computers are too big, perhaps a flyweight handheld
system using Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system might work for
you.
According to a review in <i>InfoWorld</i>, the Compaq iPaq has been
the industry leader to date, but now the new HP Jordana from
Hewlett-Packard is blowing the iPaq away. The Jordana is smaller,
lighter, and easier to use, and has more application programs
available for it. However, the iPaq does have stronger expansion
capabilities. Both machines cost around $600. (See
<#redir "http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/12/17/011217tcpocket.xml"#>
12/14/01 <i>InfoWorld</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Drive-by Hacking Wireless Network Hole Plugged</dt>
<dd>Companies that use wireless networks should be aware that they
are insecure, because of a weakness in the way the algorithm
generates encryption keys. Hackers with the proper equipment can tap
into the wireless traffic and determine passwords, and then use those
to gain full access to the network.
The weakness was discovered in August, 2001, in the 802.11 wireless
encryption standard.
To solvethe problem, US security companies
<#redir "http://www.rsasecurity.com/"#> RSA Security Inc.</a> and
<#redir "http://www.hifn.com/"#> Hifn Inc.</a> have announced a new key
generation algorithm which makes wireless networks substantially more
secure. (See
<#redir "http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991706"#>
12/18/01 <i>New Scientist</i> article</a>
and also see
<#redir "http://www.rsasecurity.com/news/pr/011217-2.html"#>
12/17/01 press release from RSA Security Inc.</a>)</dd>
=// .............................................
<dt>Experts Say Technology Not Yet Good Enough to Fake bin Laden
Tape</dt>
<dd>Some hard line Muslims are suggesting that the U.S. government
used technology to create a fake bin Laden tape, in which he gloated
over the murder of 4,000 innocent people, and even gloated over how
he had tricked his own disciples into participating in the attack
without knowing that it was a suicide mission.
However, the technology is not yet available to create such a tape.
The biggest hurdle would be mimicking the cadence and rhythm of human
speech. Synchronizing a doctored soundtrack with existing video would
also be tough, and technology that can synthesize Arabic speech is
still in its infancy. (See
<#redir "http://abcnews.go.com/wire/SciTech/ap20011214_1494.html"#>
12/14/01 AP news story</a>.
See also <#redir "http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/tape.transcript/"#>
the CNN transcript of the bin Laden tape.</a>)</dd>
<dt>Motion Picture Court Ruling Could Threaten Online Journalists</dt>
<dd>A recent court victory for the Motion Picture Association of
America presents new threats to online journalists that don't apply to
print journalists, according to an analysis by the <i>New York
Times</i>.
The decision regards computer code known as "DeCSS" which allows
programmers to defeat the copy protection scheme in DVD movies.
Eric Corley and his company, 2600 Enterprises Inc., has been
prohibited by the court in distributing DeCSS code on its web site.
The idea of prohibiting a programmer from distributing his own
computer code is bad enough, but the court decision contains an even
more ominous ruling: Corley cannot even provide a hyperlink from his
web site to another web site containing the code.
This is ominous because it means that any web site containing a
hyperlink to another web site which contains any proprietary material
might be harassed or prosecuted by the owner of the proprietary
material. (See
<#redir "http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/technology/circuits/14CYBERLAW.html"#>
the 12/14/01 <i>New York Times</i> article</a> -- link requires
registration).
Thus, if the <i>New York Times</i> web site happened to contain some
proprietary material, then not only could the <i>New York Times</i>
be prosecuted, but so could any web site which hyperlinked to the
<i>New York Times</i>. This would particularly target online
an nnline journalist who wrote an article about how the <i>New York
Times</i> web site contained proprietary material, and then provided
a hyperlink to the web site.
The same restrictions would apparently not apply to a print
journalist, who would be protected under the First Amendment.
The court used the following reasoning: A hyperlink is not protected
First Amendment text, but is actually HTML computer code, which is to
be prohibited just as much as the original DeCSS code was prohibited.
Incidentally, Eric Corley's web site is at <#stdurl www.2600.com#> .
This kind of nonsense by the courts comes from the fact that judges
don't have much understanding of the technical issues involved.
Consider this: Between 1983 and 2001, a typical high end home computer
hard disk went from 5 megabytes to 50 gigabytes. In another 18 years,
it will have increased to 500 terabytes. Communications bandwidths
will increase similarly. At that point, it will be possible to
package, into a single file, MP3 versions of every song that's ever
been recorded. Within a few more years, it will be possible to
package every movie that's ever been filmed. Instead of swapping an
MP3 file containing a single song, kids will be swapping a single
file containing every song and every movie. There is no way that I
know of for the music and motion picture industries to control this
without Taliban-like laws.
The ominous DeCSS court decision is one step in that direction. Let's
hope that the judges figure out the technical issues before more
people are harassed and jailed.</dd>
<dt>Do you know when <i>alien</i> and <i>warp speed</i> were first
used?</dt>
<dd>What about <i>videophone</i> and <i>zero-g</i>? The
<#redir "http://www.oed.com/"#> Oxford English Dictionary</a> is
searching for the first citation of these and several dozen other
words that appear in science fiction literature and fandom. If you
think you know where the word <i>trekkie</i> was first used, then
check out the
<#redir "http://www.jessesword.com/SF/sf_citations.shtml"#> OED's Science
Fiction Home Page</a>.</dd>
<dt>IT Budgets Next Year to Shrink or Remain Flat</dt>
<dd>A mid-October <i>Computerworld</i> survey of 150 senior IT
executives at midsize and large U.S. companies found that 68% of the
respondents expect their IT budgets next year to shrink or remain
flat. IT managers will be focusing on cost savings, with rigorous
financial analysis back in style, using such techniques as Economic
Value Added (EVA) analysis and a newer measurement called Return on
Opportunity (ROO). (See
<#redir "http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO66357,00.html"#>
12/10/01 <i>Computerworld</i> article</a>, and
<#redir "http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO66356,00.html"#>
another 12/10/01 <i>Computerworld</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Amazon and EBay Named Top B2C E-commerce Site in WSJ Survey</dt>
<dd>A <i>Wall Street Journal</i> survey of 32 retail experts and
average shoppers came up with a list of favorite consumer shopping
sites. The Monday, 12/10/01, article on page R6 lists them as
follows:
<ul><li><#stdurl www.Amazon.com#> -- the clear number one
winner.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.EBay.com#> -- auction site.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.LandsEnd.com#> -- especially because of its "virtual
model," a three-dimensional figure you can careate with our
measurements to see how a particular outfit might look.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.RedEnvelope.com#> -- gift shopping site.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.Gap.com#> -- good quality, great sale prices, online
coupons.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.LLBean.com#> and <#stdurl www.JCrew.com#> -- Good
products, well stocked.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.Expedia.com#> -- Travel site, reliable flight
information.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.1-800-Flowers.com#> -- Offers next day, and
sometimes same day, flower delivery.</li>
<li><#stdurl www.Dell.com#> -- Makes it easy to customize a computer
from millions of different arrangements.</li></ul>
Here are some lesser known web sites, selected from the numerous
runners-up:
<ul><li><#stdurl Bluefly.com#> -- clothing retailer.</li>
<li>Butcher & Packer Supply Co. (<#stdurl www.butcher-packer.com#>) --
variety of specialty food processing items for the home.</li>
<li>Design Within Reach (<#stdurl www.dwr.com#>) -- designer
furniture and accessories.</li>
<li>Emily the Strange (<#stdurl www.emilystrange.com#>) -- Clothing,
accessories and books related to the cartoon character Emily, a
gloomy 13-year-old.</li>
<li>Go-Today (<#stdurl www.go-today.com#>) -- Low-cost, last minute
travel packages.</li>
<li>My Tailor (<#stdurl www.mytailor.com#>) -- Hong Kong tailors
offering custom-made shirts online.</li>
<li>Penzeys Spices (<#stdurl www.penzeys.com#>) -- Spices.</li>
<li>Red Trumpet (<#stdurl www.redtrumpet.com#>) -- Pre-owned records
and CDs, and high-quality audio and video equipment.</li>
<li>Rejuvenation (<#stdurl www.rejuvenation.com#>) -- Period lighting
and decorative hardware.</li>
<li>R. Wood Studio (<#stdurl www.rwoodstudio.com#>) -- Funky pottery
and gift site.</li>
<li>The Writers Store (<#stdurl www.writersstore.com#>) -- Software,
books, seminars for writers, screenwriters and
filmmakers.</li></ul></dd>
<dt>Fleet Bank and Dept. of Interior Web Sites Compromised</dt>
<dd>Anyone who's ever designed a web site application (like the one
running this web site) knows that, unless great care is taken to
avoid web site software bugs, a hacker can compromise the site.
Yesterday (Friday, 12/7) at 3 pm, a Texas consultant called Fleet
Bank to tell them of a flaw in their web site that makes personal
data, including names, addresses and social security numbers of its 9
million users, freely available to hackers. All he got from Fleet
officials was a runaround, and the site remained up, bugs and all,
until almost midnight. (See
<#redir "http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/342/business/Flaw_reveals_private_data_at_Fleet_site+.shtml"#>
12/8/01 <i>Boston Globe</i> article</a>.)
On Thursday, a judge ordered a shutdown of all Dept. of Interior web
sites, in response to a lawsuit by Indian tribes claiming that web
site security was so poor, that hackers could get in and read and
even change data relevant to the tribes.
<#redir "http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000097308dec07.story?coll=la%2Dheadline"#>
12/7/01 <i>LA Times</i> article</a>.)
IT managers for web site development should not miss the obvious
moral of these two stories: that you'd better implement improved
quality assurance procedures for your web site. All software
contains bugs, but if your accounting system cuts an invalid check,
you can always get the money back; but if your web site lets hackers
get your customers' credit card numbers, there's no way to get the
numbers back. (See
<#redir "http://www.metagroup.com/cgi-bin/inetcgi/search/displayArticle.jsp?oid=27715"#>
11/28/01 META Group News Analysis.</a>)</dd>
=// **** Boston Globe article no longer valid
=// **** Meta Group news analysis no longer valid
<dt>Will Virus Protection Vendors Support FBI PC Spying?</dt>
<dd>The FBI is moving ahead with its <i>Magic Lantern</i> project --
a virus that FBI can install on your computer remotely, which tracks
all your computer activity and collects passwords by collecting your
keystrokes and e-mailing them back to the FBI. (See
<#redir "http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2829781,00.html?chkpt=zdnn_nbs_hl"#>
12/4/01 ZDnet article</a> and
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1436-2001Nov22.html"
> 11/22/01 <i>Washington Post</i> article</a>.)
=// *** Washington Post URL no longer valid
Since Green Lantern is essentially a virus, a controversy is
developing over whether anyone can defeat Green Lantern by simply
installing a virus protection program. So far, the two major virus
protection vendors have been flipping around the problem.
According to
<#redir "http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23057.html"#> an
11/27/01 article in the UK <i>Register</i></a>, Symantec's Norton
Antivirus product would contain a backdoor to avoid detecting Green
Lantern, "if it was under the control of the FBI."
=// *** UK Register URL may not be valid
And Network Associates Inc. has been bombarded with angry criticisms
after
<#redir "http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48648,00.html"#>a
<i>Wired News</i> 11/27/01 story</a> reported that its McAfee
Antivirus software may contain a similar FBI backdoor.
This is an ugly situation which could really backfire on both
Symantec and NAI. Many American users, and almost no foreign users,
would want to purchase a product containing an FBI backdoor.
Competitive products, especially from foreign companies, would have a
big competitive advantage. And what happens when some hacker figures
out how to take advantage of the FBI backdoor for his own
advantage?</dd>
<dt>Are the 'Fundamental' Laws of Physics Changing With Time?</dt>
<dd>There's a friendly war going on between particle physicists, the
ones who study photons, electrons, quarks, and other particles
invisible to the human eye, and solid state physicists, the ones who
study lumps of matter large enough to hold in your hand.
For decades, particle physicists have been searching for fundamental
laws and equations of particle behavior. It was thought that once
these particle laws were discovered, they could be used to derive the
laws that solid state physicists use.
The problem is that particle physicists have been searching for these
equations for decades, and have come up with nothing, nada, zip, and
many people are beginning to question whether such equations even
exist.
On the other hand, there are plenty of well-known laws at the solid
state level -- conservation of energy and momentum, laws of
increasing entropy, and of course Einstein's famous equation,
e = mc<sup>2</sup>, relating matter to energy.
If this trend continues, it would mean a major loss of prestige for
particle physicists, and increased cocktail party bragging rights for
solid state physicists, since the laws of the universe could only be
defined at the solid state level, not the particle level.
More important, it might even mean that the fundamental laws of
physics were different at the time of the Big Bang, 12 billion years
ago, and that these fundamental laws are changing continually with
time. (See
<#redir "http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/04/science/physical/04SQUA.html"#>
12/4/01 <i>New York Times</i> article</a>.)</dd>
<dt>Second Annual Poetry Spam Contest Announced</dt>
<dd>Can you write poetry? How about a poem based on spam e-mail
messages? If so, you might win
<#redir "http://www.satirewire.com/features/poetry_spam/poetryintro.shtml"#>
the 2nd annual SatireWire Poetry Spam</a>.
Here's a sample entry:
<ul>THIS IS NOT SPAM
Your name was obtained from an Opt-In Mail List,<br />
Your name was referred to me,<br />
*This message cannot be called SPAM under Senate<br />
Bill: 1618 Title III
This is NOT Spam!<br />
Hey Donna, Hey Sam,<br />
Here's that info you requested!<br />
You were chosen by someone to get this E-Mail,<br />
You're in luck! YOU'VE BEEN SELECTED!!!
You're getting this message because you subscribed,<br />
In response to your submission,<br />
To be unsubscribed there's no need to reply,<br />
This is a one-time transmission.
<#redir "http://www.satirewire.com/features/poetry_spam/nosite.shtml"#>
Click Here </a> to be removed.
(Note: This poem written entirely with actual phrases contained in
Spam emails.)</ul>
<dt>Government Approves Advanced Encryption Standard (Rijndael)</dt>
<dd>The U.S. Dept. of Commerce has approved adoption of a new
encryption standard, dubbed AES, the Advanced Encryption Standard.
A new standard was needed because the old one, DES (Data Encryption
Standard) was thoroughly hacked a few years ago. Any DES-encrypted
message can be recovered by a hacker within a few hours, so many
companies have been using triple-DES, which applies the DES algorithm
3 times. It's secure, but it takes forever.
In 1999, Commerce's National Insitute of Standards (NIST) announced a
worldwide competition to come up with a replacement, and in
<#redir "http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/g00-176.htm"#> a
10/2/2000 press release</a>, NIST announced that it had selected a
winner: Rijndael (pronounced RHINE-doll), named after its two Belgian
inventors, Vincent Rijmen and Joan Daemen (both male), subject to a
year-long review by NIST and anyone else.
In <#redir "http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/frn-fips197.pdf"#> a
11/26/2001 press release</a>, NIST announced that the review was
over, and Rijndael is officially the AES. Rijndael is both secure
and fast.
Anyone interested in more information about AES should check out the
<#redir "http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/rijndael/"#> NIST web
page on Rijndael at http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/rijndael/</a>
. The Rijndael algorithm is in the public domain (a requirement of
the competition), and so NIST provides sample code written in C++,
with other languages available as well.
Although DES lasted only 20 years, AES should last a lot longer.
According to one estimate, if someone built a giant computer using
every particle and atom in the universe, it would still take
trillions of years to hack a Rijndael message.
I did a large "virtual private network" implementation using
Rijndael, and found the public domain code quite easy to work with.
However, if you're thinking of doing a homegrown application using
Rijndael, remember that the most difficult part of the implementation
may be managing the encryption keys securely. No encryption algorithm
is secure if the encryption key is written on a note taped up on your
computer screen!</dd>
<dt>H-1B "Refugees" Are Having Tough Times</dt>
<dd>The IT recession hasn't hit anyone harder than foreign nationals
who came to the U.S. on H-1B visas, hoping to earn a green card and
permanent residency. Those who have lost their jobs are seeing their
dreams dissolve, as they are being forced to pack up their families
and go back to their home countries. (See
<#redir "http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO66185,00.html"#>
12/3/01 <i>ComputerWorld</i> article.</a>)</dd>
<dt>Gartner: Baan May Finally Be Recovering</dt>
<dd>Once upon a time, long, long ago, Baan Co. was sitting beside SAP
and Oracle as a top-tier ERP (enterprise resource management)
product. Then Baan made too many acquisitions, and in 1998, the
founders had to resign because of accounting missteps. Baan has gone
through several years of tough times, sometimes leading to
speculation that the company would be acquired.
However, a recent Gartner Group review of Baan's product roadmap
found that the company is showing renewed strength by focusing on its
strong core markets -- discrete manufacturing firms in these vertical
industries: automotive, electronics, industrial machinery, aerospace
and defense, and logistics. (See
<#redir "http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=102715"#>
11/21/2001 summary by Gartner Group analyst Brian Zrimsek.</a>)</dd>
</dl></div>
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<h1>Women Pilots Flying Combat Missions</h1>
By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday October 23 10:15 AM ET
ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (AP) - After flying an attack
mission on Afghanistan, Lt. j.g. Sara said Tuesday she didn't think
she and other women pilots should be singled out for attention - or
that what she was doing was historic.
Indeed, little attention has been focused on women fighter pilots and
weapons' officers during the war on terrorism, even though it is only
the second major U.S. military campaign since the Navy decided to
allow women to fly combat aircraft in 1993. Kosovo was the first.
``I've never thought that it was a big deal that I was an aviator, I
just go out there and do my job,'' said Sara, 25, from Billings, Mont.
``I don't like to see women singled out, basically.''
For security reasons she can only be identified by her first name -
and her call-sign, ``Goalie.''
Sara, who was surprised by media requests to interview her, said she
is proud of the example the United States has set by allowing her to
fly combat missions.
During the 1991 Gulf War, women sailors flew combat support missions,
earning a lot of press coverage and sparking debate about women in
combat, especially after a woman helicopter pilot was captured by
Iraqi forces. Now women fly the most advanced fighter aircraft,
bombing Taliban and al-Qaida targets while under anti-aircraft fire.
Women sailors were first allowed to train as pilots in 1976, and were
selected to fly cargo and surveillance planes.
Cdr. Diana Cangelosi of Wilmette, Ill. was one of the first women to
join the Navy specifically to be a pilot in 1981 and chose to fly a
spy plane.
Under the military's security rules, commanding officers can be fully
identified if they choose.
Cangelosi started out flying the EA-3 and eventually flew EP-3 spy
planes.
``I flew the most (combat oriented) thing women were allowed in fly in
my time,'' Cangelosi, now the officer in charge of the Combat
Direction Center on the USS Roosevelt. ``What they are flying now is a
bit more exciting.''
Cangelosi, 46, has reached a rank where she no longer flies, but she
enjoys her present assignment in charge of directing the ship's
defenses. ``Frankly, this is a cooler job because it involves weapons'
systems,'' she said, with a glimmer in her eye.
The Roosevelt has been flying night attacks for almost a week,
launching U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters, EA-6B Prowler surveillance
planes and Marine Corps FA-18C Hornet attack jets to bomb Taliban and
al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan.
The planes, airborne for 5 to 8 hours at a time, are refueled by both
Navy and U.S. Air Force tanker planes and directed by air controller
and surveillance aircraft, many of them also flown by women.
Sara, a trained F-14 pilot, works as the fighter jet's navigator and
weapons' officer, directing laser-guided bombs and missiles on to
their targets.
Cangelosi said she was ``very proud'' of and envied the new women
fighter pilots.
``Things have changed a lot in 20 years,'' she said.
Sara praised women like Cangelosi, who she said paved the way and set
an excellent example for women to follow.
``I've always felt very comfortable being a female in the aviation
community ever since I walked into flight school,'' Sara said. ``There
aren't many of us, that's true, but I think (all of) our personalities
mesh, otherwise we wouldn't be in this job.''
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<h1>The Universe Might Last Forever, Astronomers Say, but Life Might
Not</h1>
By DENNIS OVERBYE
January 1, 2002
In the decades that astronomers have debated the fate of the
expanding universe -- whether it will all end one day in a big
crunch, or whether the galaxies will sail apart forever --
aficionados of eternal expansion have always been braced by its
seemingly endless possibilities for development and evolution. As the
Yale cosmologist Dr. Beatrice Tinsley once wrote, "I think I am tied
to the idea of expanding forever."
Life and intelligence could sustain themselves indefinitely in such a
universe, even as the stars winked out and the galaxies were all
swallowed by black holes, Dr. Freeman Dyson, a physicist at the
Institute for Advanced Study, argued in a landmark paper in 1979. "If
my view of the future is correct," he wrote, "it means that the world
of physics and astronomy is also inexhaustible; no matter how far we
go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new
information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding
domain of life, consciousness, and memory."
Now, however, even Dr. Dyson admits that all bets are off. If recent
astronomical observations are correct, the future of life and the
universe will be far bleaker.
In the last four years astronomers have reported evidence that the
expansion of the universe is not just continuing but is speeding up,
under the influence of a mysterious "dark energy," an antigravity
that seems to be embedded in space itself. If that is true and the
universe goes on accelerating, astronomers say, rather than coasting
gently into the night, distant galaxies will eventually be moving
apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. In
effect, it would be like living in the middle of a black hole that
kept getting emptier and colder.
In such a universe, some physicists say, the usual methods of
formulating
physics may not all apply. Instead of new worlds coming into view,
old ones would constantly be disappearing over the horizon, lost from
view forever.
Cosmological knowledge would be fragmented, with different observers
doomed to seeing different pieces of the puzzle and no single
observer able to know the fate of the whole universe or arrive at a
theory of physics that was more than approximate.
"There would be a lot of things about the universe that we simply
couldn't predict," said Dr. Thomas Banks, a physicist at the
University of California at Santa Cruz.
And perhaps most important, starved finally of the energy even to
complete a thought or a computation, the domain of life and
intelligence would not expand, but constrict and eventually vanish
like a dwindling echo into the silence of eternity. "I find the fate
of a universe that is accelerating forever not very appealing," said
Dr. Edward Witten, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study.
That is an understatement, in the view of Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, an
astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who
along with his colleague Dr. Glenn D. Starkman has recently tried to
limn the possibilities of the far future. An accelerating universe
"would be the worst possible universe, both for the quality and
quantity of life," Dr. Krauss said, adding: "All our knowledge,
civilization and culture are destined to be forgotten. There's no
long-term future."
<h3>Einstein's Last Laugh</h3>
Until about four years ago, an overwhelming preponderance of
astronomers subscribed to the view that the cosmic expansion was
probably slowing down because of the collective gravity of the
galaxies and everything else in the universe, the way a handful of
stones tossed in the air gradually slow their ascent. The only
question was whether the universe had enough gravitational oomph to
stop expanding and bring itself back together in a "big crunch," or
whether the galaxies would sail ever more slowly outward forever.
It was to measure that rate of slowing of this outward flight, and
thus find the long- sought and elusive answer to the cosmic question,
that two teams of astronomers started competing projects in the
1990's using distant exploding stars, supernovas, as cosmic beacons.
In 1998 the two teams announced that instead of the expected slowing,
the galaxies actually seem to have speeded up over the last five or
six billion years, as if some "dark energy" was pushing them outward.
"It's definitely the strangest experimental finding since I've been
in physics," Dr. Witten said. "People find it difficult to accept.
I've stopped expecting that the finding will be proved wrong, but
it's an extremely uncomfortable result."
To astronomers this dark energy bears a haunting resemblance to an
idea that Albert Einstein had back in 1917 and then abandoned, later
calling it his biggest blunder. In that year he inserted a
mathematical fudge factor that came to be known as the cosmological
constant into his equations of general relativity in order to
stabilize the universe against collapse; Einstein's constant acted as
a kind of cosmic repulsion to balance the gravitational pull of the
galaxies on one another.
Einstein gave up the cosmological constant after the American
astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding
and thus did not need stabilizing. But his fudge factor refused to
die. It gained a new identity with the advent of quantum mechanics,
the bizarre-sounding rules that govern the subatomic realm. According
to those rules, empty space is not empty, but rather foaming with
energy. Inserted into Einstein's equations, this energy would act like
a cosmological constant, and try to blow the universe apart.
According to astronomers the recently discovered dark energy now
accounts for about two-thirds of the mass of the universe. But is
this Einstein's old fudge factor, the cosmological constant, come home
to roost -- in which case the universe will accelerate eternally? Or
is the presumed acceleration only temporary, driven by one of the
many mysterious force fields, dubbed quintessence, allowed by various
theories of high energy physics?
<h3>Or is the acceleration even real?</h3>
"It's important to find out if the cosmological constant is really
constant," said Dr. Witten.
Because the repulsive force resides in space itself, as the universe
grows, the push from dark energy grows as well. "If dark energy is
the cosmological constant then it is a property of the vacuum that
will always be with us, getting more powerful as the universe gets
bigger and the universe will expand forever," explained Dr. Adam Riess
of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. But if the dark
energy is some form of quintessence, "then there may be more such
fields which arise in the future, possibly of the opposite sign, and
then all bets are off for the future of the universe."
Dr. Krauss said, "The good news is that we can't prove that this is
the worst of all possible universes."
<h3>The Long Goodbye</h3>
It might seem strange or presumptuous for astronomers to try to
describe events all the way to the end of time when physicists are
still groping for a "theory of everything." But to Dr. Krauss, this
is testimony to the power of ordinary physics. "We can still put
ultimate limits on things without even knowing the ultimate theory,"
he said. "We can put limits on things based on ordinary physics."
Dr. Dyson said his venture into eschatology was inspired partly by a
1977 paper on the future of an ever expanding universe by Dr. J. N.
Islam, now at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh, in The
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Dr. Dyson was
also motivated, he wrote in his paper, to provide a counterpoint to a
famously dour statement by Dr. Steven Weinberg, who wrote in his book
"The First Three Minutes," "The more the universe seems
comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
Dr. Dyson wrote, "If Weinberg is speaking for the 20th century, I
prefer the 18th."
If the present trend of acceleration continues this is the forecast:
In about two billion years Earth will become uninhabitable as a
gradually warming Sun produces a runaway greenhouse effect. In five
billion years the Sun will swell up and die, burning the Earth to a
crisp in the process. At about the same time the Milky Way will
collide with its twin the Andromeda galaxy, now about two million
light- years away and closing fast, spewing stars, gas and planets
across intergalactic space.
Any civilization that managed to survive these events would face a
future of increasing ignorance and darkness as the accelerating
cosmic expansion rushes most of the universe away from us. "Our
ability to know about the universe will decrease with time," said Dr.
Krauss. "The longer you wait, the less you see, the opposite of what
we always thought."
As he explains it, the disappearance of the universe is a gradual
process. The faster a galaxy flies away from us, the dimmer and
dimmer it will appear, as its light is "redshifted" to lower
frequencies and energies, the way a police siren sounds lower when it
is receding. When it reaches the speed of light, the galaxy will
appear to "freeze," like a dancer caught in midair in a photograph,
in accordance to Einstein's theory of relativity, and we will never
see it get older, said Dr. Abraham Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard.
Rather it will simply seem dimmer. The farther away an object is in
the sky, he said, the younger it will appear as it fades out of sight.
"There is a finite amount of information we can collect from the
universe," Dr. Loeb said.
About 150 billion years from now almost all of the galaxies in the
universe will be receding fast enough to be invisible from the Milky
Way. The exceptions will be galaxies that are gravitationally bound
to the cloud of galaxies, known as the Local Group, to which the
Milky Way belongs. Within this cloud, life would look much the same
at first. There would be galaxies in the sky. "When you look at the
night the stars will still be there," said Dr. Krauss. "To the
astronomer who wants to see beyond, the sky will be sadly empty.
Lovers won't be disturbed -- scientists will be."
But about 100 trillion years from now, when the interstellar gas and
dust from which new stars condense is finally used up, new stars will
cease to be born. From that time on, the sky will grow darker and
darker. The galaxies themselves, astronomers say, will collapse in
black holes within about 1030 years.
But even a black hole is not forever, as Dr. Stephen Hawking, the
Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author, showed in
path-breaking calculations back in 1973. Applying the principles of
quantum mechanics to these dread-sounding objects, Dr. Hawking
discovered that a black hole's surface, its so-called event horizon,
would fluctuate and exude energy in the form of random bursts of
particles and radiation, growing hotter and hotter until the black
hole eventually exploded and vanished.
Black holes the mass of the sun would take 1064 years to explode. For
black holes the mass of a galaxy those fireworks would light up
space-time 1098 years from now.
<h3>Against the Fall of Night</h3>
Will there be anything or anyone around to see these quantum
fireworks?
Dr. Dyson argued in his 1979 paper that life and intelligence could
survive the desert of darkness and cold in a universe that was
expanding infinitely but ever more slowly by adopting ever slower and
cooler forms of existence. Intelligence, could reside, for example,
in the pattern of electrically charged dust grains in an interstellar
cloud, a situation described in the 1957 science fiction novel "The
Black Cloud," by the British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who died in
August.
As an organism like the black cloud cooled, he argued, it would think
more slowly, but it would always metabolize energy even more slowly,
so its appetite would always be less than its output. In fact, Dr.
Dyson concluded, by making the amount of energy expended per thought
smaller and smaller the cloud could have an infinite number of
thoughts while consuming only a finite amount of energy.
But there was a hitch. Even just thinking requires energy and
generates heat, which is why computers have fans. Dr. Dyson suggested
that creatures would have to stop thinking and hibernate periodically
to radiate away their heat.
In an accelerating universe, however, there is an additional source
of heat that cannot be gotten rid of. The same calculations that
predict black holes should explode also predict that in an
accelerating universe space should be filled with so-called Hawking
radiation. In effect, the horizon -- the farthest distance we can
see -- looks mathematically like the surface of a black hole. The
amount of this radiation is expected to be incredibly small --
corresponding to a fraction of a billionth of a billionth of a
billionth of a degree above absolute zero, but that is enough to doom
sentient life.
"The Hawking radiation kills us because it gives a minimum
temperature below which you cannot cool anything," said Dr. Krauss.
Once an organism cools to that temperature, he explained, it would
dissipate energy at some fixed rate. "Since there is a finite total
energy, this means a finite lifetime."
<h3>Infinity on Trial</h3>
Although Dr. Dyson agrees with this gloomy view of life in an
accelerating universe, he and Dr. Krauss and Dr. Starkman are still
arguing about whether life is also doomed in a universe that is not
accelerating, but just expanding and getting slower and colder.
Quantum theory, the Case Western authors point out, limits how finely
the energy for new thoughts can be shaved. The theory decrees that
energy is emitted and absorbed in tiny indivisible lumps called
"quanta." Any computation must spend at least this much energy out of
a limited supply. Each new thought is a step down an energy ladder
with a finite number of steps. "So you can only have a finite number
of thoughts," said Dr. Krauss.
"If you want to stare at your navel and not think any new thoughts,
you won't dissipate energy, " he explained. But that would be a
boring way to spend eternity. If life is to involve more than the
eternal reshuffling of the same data, he and Dr. Starkman say, it
cannot be eternal.
Dr. Dyson, however, says this argument applies only to so-called
digital life, in which there is a fixed number of quantum states.
Creatures like the black cloud, which could grow along with the
universe, he said, would have an increasing number of quantum states,
and so there would always be more rungs of the ladder to step down.
So the bottom need never be reached and life and thought could go on
indefinitely.
But nobody knows whether such a life form can exist, said Dr. Krauss.
Compared with the sight of the World Trade Center towers collapsing
or the plight of a sick child, this future extinction may seem a
remote concern. Dr. Allan Sandage, an astronomer at Carnegie
Observatories in Pasadena, Calif., who has spent his life
investigating the expansion and fate of the universe, said: "Life on
this earth is going to vanish in 4.5 billion years. I wouldn't get
hung up on the fact that the lights are all going out in 30 billion
years."
Dr. Dyson said he was still an optimist. It is too soon to start
panicking, he counseled in an e-mail message. The observations could
be wrong.
"At present all possibilities are open," he wrote. "The recent
observations are important, not because they answer the big questions
about the history of the universe, but because they give us new tools
with which to explore the history."
Even in an accelerating universe, Dr. Dyson said, humans or their
descendants might one day be able to rearrange the galaxies and save
more of them from disappearing. Another glimmer of hope comes from
the deadly and chilling Hawking radiation itself, said Dr. Raphael
Bousso, from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University
of California at Santa Barbara. Since that radiation is produced by
unpredictable quantum fluctuations, he pointed out, if you wait long
enough anything can appear in it, even a new universe. "Sooner or
later one of those quantum fluctuations will look like a Big Bang,"
he said.
In that case there is the possibility of a future, if not for us, at
least for something or somebody. In the fullness of time, after all,
physics teaches that the improbable and even the seemingly impossible
can become the inevitable. Nature is not done with us yet, nor, as
Dr. Dyson indicates, are we necessarily done with nature.
We all die, and it is up to us to decide who and what to love, but,
as Dr. Weinberg pointed out in a recent article in The New York Review
of Books, there is a certain nobility in that prospect.
"Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any
purpose for humanity," he wrote, "one way that we can find a purpose
is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling
ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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