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How hackers could tamper with the 2008 elections
Campaigns and voting rights activists are anticipating all kinds of Internet dirty tricks to spread misinformation. Here are five they are most worried about—and how they can be stopped.
In the late 1800s, during the heyday of Tammany Hall, New Yorkers would often show up to vote with a full beard. "When you've voted them with their whiskers on, you take them to a barber and scrape off the chin fringe," explained Democratic boss Big Tim Sullivan. If the political machine needed still more votes, the voter would return with nothing but a mustache, and then once again clean-shaven. "That makes one of them good for four votes," according to Sullivan.
Technology has cleaned up elections since then. Voting machines ensure one person casts only one vote. Electronic databases let secretaries of state compare their rolls to avoid double registration. Hotlines tell voters where and when to show up on Election Day.
This year, campaigns are relying more than ever on e-mail, texting, and the Web to get their message out and raise cash. But high-speed communication also means more opportunities for electronic skullduggery. Just as new technology lets voters get good information faster than ever in 2008, mischief-makers can spread bad information quickly.
Election tricksters—perhaps working for campaigns, perhaps freelancing—disseminate false polling locations and closing times. They spread rumors that Democrats vote Tuesday, Republicans vote Wednesday, or that anyone with outstanding parking tickets, unpaid rent, or family members in prison can't vote. Voters also get misled about ID laws, believing they're stricter than they really are. (A recent Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law could be misinterpreted as applying to other states as well.)
1. Fake e-mails. In 2004, Democrats were duped by an official-looking e-mail soliciting donations to the Kerry campaign. Researchers exposed it as a phishing scam, but many donors had already lost their money. Now most contributions to the presidential candidates are given online. And supporters are eager to give—a fake solicitation from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe could rake in cash before the campaign had time shut it down. (Just look how accurately tricksters were able to replicate bank Web sites.) Such fraud doesn't have to be about money: In November, an e-mail falsely attributed to the Mitt Romney campaign called out Rudy Giuliani and "his pedophile friends," reflecting poorly on both candidates.
Defense: Rapid response. Campaigns need an early-warning system that lets them counter false claims as soon as they occur. Branding also helps—the more distinctive campaign e-mails are, the more likely supporters will recognize a fake. Notice that Obama's donation page has a security seal at the bottom designating it an "authentic site." Notice, also, that you can easily copy the seal and post it on your own site.
2. Dummy Web sites. In 1999, a Web site appeared depicting George Bush with a straw up his nose inhaling lines of coke. It was clearly satire, but the GOP sued and the site was taken down. More threatening is the prospect of fake candidate sites that look real. Some weak points have already been exposed: A team from Symantec registered 124 domain names with various misspellings of the candidates' names and attracted 21,000 hits over two months. In April, a hacker redirected anyone who clicked on the "Community Blogs" section of MyBarackObama.com to Hillary Clinton's home page, then posted an apparent confession. (One online security expert recently discovered a flaw in the Domain Name System that could allow hackers to redirect visitors to other pages.) Particularly vulnerable are Secretary of State sites, where many voters go to find polling locations and to preview their ballots. Campaigns and voting rights activists are anticipating all kinds of Internet dirty tricks to spread misinformation. Here are five they... more -
Hydrogen energy breakthrough replicates photosynthesis
Researchers have split water into hydrogen and oxygen by replicating how plants use photosynthesis to make carbohydrates.
The breakthrough could revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen, touted as the clean, green fuel of the future, cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.
The team of Australian and US researchers says their findings, published in the latest Angewandte Chemie International Edition could lead to a cheap and easy way of making hydrogen, which many experts believe is the green fuel of the future.
Fuel cells currently used as alternatives to gasoline-powered engines in vehicles run on hydrogen that is mostly produced from refining fossil fuels. The new process would rely on renewable sources, rather than oil or natural gas, and use no electricity, said the scientists.
Professor Leone Spiccia, of Monash University's School of Chemistry says the team has mimicked the process of photosynthesis, whereby plants convert light and atmospheric carbon dioxide into energy.
Although scientists have been able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for years, current techniques use expensive chemicals as the catalyst which prohibits any move to a commercial product.
The new system involves an electrode coated with a proton conductor that is then impregnated with a form of manganese.
Nature's recipe
Manganese clusters are essential to a plant's ability to use water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to make carbohydrates, Spiccia says.However instead of creating carbohydrates, the team have used nature's recipe to split water into its two elements, oxygen and hydrogen.
"We have copied nature, taking the elements and mechanisms found in plant life that have evolved over three billion years and recreated one of those processes in the laboratory," he says.
The system uses manufactured copies of these manganese clusters, known as cubanes, which were developed by co-author Princetown University Professor of Chemistry Charles Dismukes.
Spiccia says they discovered when the cubanes, which are about 1.5 nanometres square, were contained within the proton conductor they became more stable and less likely to deteriorate.
"When you take water and start to oxidise it you get radical matter that is very reactive and destructive and generally kills off the catalyst," Spiccia says."We've hit on something that's stopped that side of the reaction." He says the mechanism by which the hydrogen gas is created is still being studied.
Tests have shown the catalyst assembly is still active after three days of continuous use, producing oxygen and hydrogen gas with the help of sunlight and 1.2 volts of electricity.
Spiccia says their research is different in its approach to other water splitting research because it copies nature by using similar processes and chemicals to those used in plants.
The team plans to further that connection by using chlorophyll-like molecules to harvest light rather than an electric current. Researchers have split water into hydrogen and oxygen by replicating how plants use photosynthesis to make carbohydrates. ... more -
Making solar cells without using fossil fuels
Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world's energy woes. But the process of making the various components requires fossil fuels, both for power and for the components themselves, some of which are based on petroleum.
A new company, BioSolar, aims to kick petroleum to the curb, at least in the realm of building solar photovoltaics, cells of crystalline silicon that turn sunlight into electricity. Such photovoltaic cells rely on conventional plastic polymers to provide a protective backing, also known as backsheets. Those plastics are made from—you guessed it—petroleum.
"It's renewable and you don't use any petroleum," says electrical engineer David Lee, president and CEO of the California-based company about the new product. "The real merit is that we can actually reduce the cost of the backsheet compared to conventional petroleum-based backsheet." Lee claims their backsheets will cost 25 percent less than conventional backsheets, which cost between $0.70 and $1 per square foot.
Already, such backsheets are rising in price, thanks to the recent run-up in world oil costs, at a time when the solar industry is trying to bring down costs to make their technology more competitive with other forms of power generation, such as cheap, plentiful and extremely polluting coal.
BioSolar starts with used cotton rags and turns them into a film of cellulose, a natural fiber. They then blend this film with a type of nylon made from castor beans by Philadephia-based Arkema, Inc. to make the so-called BioBacksheet. Initial testing by the company at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that this flexible plastic backsheet lasts as long or longer than conventional ones, and keeps out just as much moisture.
In addition to keeping away from petroleum plastics, BioSolar also claims not to be using any genetically modified crops in its product—a further boost to its green credibility. But nearly 90 percent of the U.S. cotton crop is so altered, either to resist insects, herbicides or both, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And cotton cultivation still requires tons of pesticides and fertilizers, both of which are derived, in part, from petroleum.
Regardless, if the cotton and castor-based backsheet proves cheaper than the petroleum version it may help remove a bit more fossil sunshine from the new solar energy. "Our goal is to replace all the petroleum plastic out of the solar cells with this bio-based one," Lee says. Solar energy is touted by some as the solution to the world's energy woes. But the process of making the various components requi... more -
Parallax semantic web browser actually understands what you want
Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Written up by ZDNet's Oliver Marks, the video Huynh recorded demonstrating Parallax will knock your socks off. The idea is to allow you to apply multiple filters for your searches and embed live charts in a blog. It's a beautiful idea, check out the video.
This ought to work. Freebase has taken more than $50 million in venture investments, they have a small army of volunteer and computer scientist contributors, they've got robots pumping their database with information automatically. There are now 60% more articles in Freebase than there are in English Wikipedia.
For an alternate view see Alex Iskold's Freebase: Dispelling the Skepticism, and some fault here may lay in the coolness ratio of the video to the Parallax app. Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Paralla... more -
Obama's Vice President pick leaked
Did Kathleen Sebelius accidentally 'leak' to the press who exactly might be Obama's VP pick?
'There's been some breaking news that Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas's Governor—and a highly touted possible VP candidate for Barack Obama—may have inadvertently slipped information regarding Obama's vice presidential pick. Early Monday morning, Sebelius held a press conference to discuss schedules and events planned for the Democratic National Convention that is coming in two weeks.
The topic of discussion for the conference was specifically what Wednesday of convention week will look like. Sebelius told reporters, "Wednesday night is thematically about securing America's future, it is about honoring our veterans and the families of our veterans... and how to make us safer and move past the divisiveness and into the future."
She then went on to make an intriguing announcement: the Vice Presidential nominee is slated to address the convention on Wednesday night. Typically, this statement would be a standard disbursement of information. However, some reporters who had been paying close attention to Obama's campaign and it tendencies in the past year followed up with a very keen question. They asked if there was a connection between who the VP nominee is and the "theme" of Wednesday night, which again, focuses on national security and veterans/foreign affairs.
Perhaps catching her own slip-up, Sebelius did a small song and dance and then ended by stating, "I think anyone Sen. Obama picks as Vice President will be more than prepared to address those issues."
This is certainly an interesting development. Obama's presidential campaign has demonstrated incredible discipline, an excellent sense of timing and a deft grasp of symbolism. Slotting in the potential VP nominee on Wednesday night cannot be a mistake or unintentional. Nothing about the Obama campaign has been has been done as accidental, fortuitous or haphazard.
There must be a reason for the VP candidate speaking on Wednesday. The timing is more than compelling considering the theme of the night. Obama's camp carved out a prime time speaking time for the vanquished Hillary Clinton. Symbolically, this is a smart move as it portends togetherness and mutual support.
Additionally, it is also monumentally symbolic for Clinton to speak on Tuesday night as August 26th is the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which finally gave women the right to vote.
Clinton's Tuesday night slot is emblematic. The VP's Wednesday night slot is foretelling.
At this point, it is still all speculation. However, if it is true that Obama's VP pick will in fact hold gravitas in the areas of military/national security issues, then I would recommend to Obama to go with Joe Biden.
Biden is undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable Senators when it comes to foreign affairs and national security issues. He is well-respected by both sides of the aisle, and he will not take any kind of uppity questioning or blatant character assassination Republicans are bound to throw Obama's way. If all of this speculation is indeed true about Obama's VP having a tie-in to national security and foreign affairs, Biden would be a very strong candidate for VP.' Did Kathleen Sebelius accidentally 'leak' to the press who exactly might be Obama's VP pick? ... more -
Please tip good bloggers generously
Online magazine Salon.com opened up its new hosted blog network, Open Salon, which not only allows its readers (or anybody else for that matter) to create their own blogs, but also has a built-in tipping mechanism to reward writers for their best content. As a blog host, Open Salon's feature set is similar to that of Wordpress.com or Blogger, but the differentiating feature for Open Salon is clearly the 'Tippem' tip jar which is prominently featured on every page.
As a blogging platform, Open Salon is about as standard as they come. The front page features a number of especially interesting posts as determined by the editors, as well as the ability to see the top rated, most read, and latest posts. Users can comment, rate, and save the posts on popular bookmarking sites like delicious, digg, and reddit. Open Salon also provides profiles and RSS feeds for every user.
To process micropayments from the Tippem jar, Salon.com has chosen Revolution MoneyExchange, which is still officially in beta, but must have proven stable enough by now to be chosen by Salon.com over competitors like PayPal or OboPay. Salon.com has set the default tip amount to $1, with $0.10 being the minimum and $1000 the maximum amount one can tip (for tips of $1000, Open Salon advises you to contact the author directly).
It's important to note here that everybody who signs up from a Revolution MoneyExchange account from Open Salon immediately gets $10 to give away as tips from Open Salon. While this will surely seed the system at the beginning, the real question, as Caroline McCarthy also points out, will be if users will keep tipping after those first $10 have been exhausted. After all, it's easy to tip if it doesn't cost you anything.
Given that most users on the web consider content to be free, it will be hard for Salon to foster a culture where paying for blog content becomes a regular event. But then, Salon.com is, of course, one of the few sites where a lot of the content is not free, but only available to subscribers or after being forced to watch a 15-second full screen advertisement. Because of this, Salon.com's audience might be more willing to pay for content than the average Internet user.
Check out Joan Walsh's (editor-in-chief) blog entry about Open Salon where she mentions a few featured threads:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/salon/2008/08/11/ope... Online magazine Salon.com opened up its new hosted blog network, Open Salon, which not only allows its readers (or anybody else for th... more -
Home cooked pet diets for cats and dogs
For thousands of years the "art" of eating food to preserve health and prolong life was practiced in the Orient and in Ancient Greece. The consumption of food evolved beyond just eating for pleasure or survival, it became a treatment for imbalances in the body. The basis for health and happiness is the Chinese aphorism: "You become what you eat". I believe this is true for animals as well as humans.
Coreen and Neezer, Kauai Clients Animals come into our lives as gifts from God, for companionship, to teach us, and to heal us. They deserve our very best efforts in caring for them.
Dr. Ihor Basko, DVM For thousands of years the "art" of eating food to preserve health and prolong life was practiced in the Orient and in Ancie... more -
Hospital food goes green: pleasing patients and helping them heal
Despite a wealth of research over the past three decades showing that fresh, well-prepared food is packed with natural disease-fighting nutrients to speed healing and prevent illness, hospital food has hardly been a model of healthy eating. “There’s been a bit of a disconnect between what the medical literature says about nutrition and what you get served in the hospital,” says Carolyn Lammersfeld, director of nutrition at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Studies indicate that many hospitalized patients don’t eat enough of the food to adequately nourish their bodies. A 2003 article in the journal Nutrition, for example, showed that hospitalized patients worldwide are malnourished, and rates of undernourishment in some U.S. hospitals were as high as 41 percent.
Today, however, nutrition experts, doctors, hospital administrators, food service companies and patient advocates are working together to make hospital food healthier, better-tasting and a key part of the healing process. Ronald M. Davis, M.D., president of the American Medical Association, in an article for the AMA’s April newsletter, called on hospitals to “buy meat and poultry raised without nontherapeutic antibiotics, use milk produced without recombinant bovine growth hormones, and replace unhealthy snacks found in many vending machines with healthy choices.” Despite a wealth of research over the past three decades showing that fresh, well-prepared food is packed with natural disease-fightin... more -
US military to be 30% robotic in 12 years
The US military is being taken over by robots. Clearing buildings, recovering unexploded munitions and searching for bombs are some of the deadliest tasks a soldier can face in Iraq, and most of them can be done by robots. Plus, the Pentagon has plans to introduce even more robotic troops into military ranks in the coming decade. But will there be a human finger on the button, or are we talking about fully-autonomous weapons systems?
Today's military robots don't walk on two legs or look remotely human - they mostly look like miniature radio-controlled tanks. There's always a human somewhere with a laptop and a joystick controlling all of the robot's action. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are experimenting with the use of a controller from a Nintendo Wii to manipulate the bots. This gives the soldiers more freedom of movement and situational awareness than if they're staring into a laptop computer. While advances in robot technology will probably result in more radical robot designs and allow for the military's goal of a 30-percent robotic force, there will always be human involvement in the control process. The US military is being taken over by robots. Clearing buildings, recovering unexploded munitions and searching for bombs are some of... more -
Should schools ban hot dogs?
The Cancer Project, a national cancer prevention group, wants processed meats such as hot dogs to be banned from school cafeterias.
To communicate the message, the group is running a TV ad that features schoolchildren dining on cafeteria hot dogs and pepperoni pizza. One little boy says, "I thought I'd live forever. I was dumbfounded when the doctor told me I have late-stage colon cancer."
It's certainly attention-grabbing. Jennifer Reilly, senior nutritionist for the Cancer Project, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the point of the ad was not to alarm but to teach parents and school food directors about the importance of healthy choices.
The inspiration behind the campaign is the latest news from the American Institute for Cancer Research, which recently published a report concluding diets high in red meat (beef, pork and lamb) and especially processed meats (such as hot dogs) are a convincing cause of colorectal cancer.
According to the Inquirer, The Cancer Project says that eating hot dogs, sausage patties and similar foods increases a person's risk of colorectal cancer by 21 percent for every 50 grams eaten daily. The article says 50 grams is the size of one hot dog.
The Cancer Project looked at menus in 38 school districts around the country, and launched its ad campaign in "failing districts" - Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago.
But as usual, others suggest moderation is the key.
The paper quotes Paul Lyons, professor of family medicine at Temple University School of Medicine: "There are lots of reasons not to give your children large quantities of processed meats - cancer is one, but there are better ones, like high calories, high sodium, and high fat. If your child eats hot dogs once in a while, I don't think that you need to worry that they'll get cancer." The Cancer Project, a national cancer prevention group, wants processed meats such as hot dogs to be banned from school cafeterias. ... more -
MIT scientists mimic plant's energy storage system
In a revolutionary discovery that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun In a revolutionary discovery that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, M... more
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Skip business school and get your "Personal MBA"
Self-educator Josh Kaufman says you can bypass business school and earn a "Personal MBA" by reading the best books in business—and he offers 77 of his picks. Kaufman writes:
'Top MBA programs don't have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List features only the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. So skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.'
Books fall under various categories from Productivity & Effectiveness, Marketing, Sales, & Negotiation, Entrepreneurship, to Strategy & Innovation. The PMBA reading list looks like a fantastic resource for motivated autodidacts looking to get into business. Self-educator Josh Kaufman says you can bypass business school and earn a "Personal MBA" by reading the best books in busine... more -
Speculators trying to buy control of food supply?
Gasoline prices didn't decline until Congress started to act on speculators. Will Congress wait until we are all struggling to eat, to act? If history is any indication, we are in deep doodoo!
Posted by George Washington at George Washington's Blog
According to the New York Times, Financial Times, and others, hedge funds and other investors are buying up farms, farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators, shipping equipment and other necessities for producing food.
Given the meltdown in the housing and financial sectors and the weakness in the U.S. economy, large investors figure that everyone has to eat, and so investing in food production is a sure thing.
That means that speculators will drive up food prices.
As Jim Hightower puts it:
"By 'owning structure,' they mean centralizing control of food in the hands of financial manipulators who have only one crop in mind: fat profits.
***
Price? Aha! That's what consolidation of farms and storage facilities is all about. If you can lock down production and stockpile the supply, you can control price. If corn prices are lower than what investors want them to be, simply store the corn and force prices up. Or, if corn prices are down in the U.S., ship it to Japan or wherever else might be more profitable. And if these distortments cause a food crash? Hey, the speculators will already have sucked out billions in profits, and they will just move to the next hot investment.
Hedge funds bring nothing but greed and grief to the farm economy and our food supply, and they should be banned from 'owning structure.'"
Hightower may be right: we should demand that Congress prevent speculators from buying up one of the main necessities.
Moreover, this just strengthens my conviction that we should guarantee our access to inexpensive and healthy food. . Gasoline prices didn't decline until Congress started to act on speculators. Will Congress wait until we are all struggling to e... more -
Hardware/software co-design comes of age
The concurrent design and verification of hardware and software has become a reality thanks to a plethora of resources in ESL flows, emulation, modeling and standards, and more.
There once was a time when system design was completely serial. Entire hardware platforms were designed, prototyped, debugged, and virtually completed before any software development began. Of course, such methodologies corresponded to the days of much broader market windows. The very idea of such a quaint approach is enough to make one snicker.
Today, it’s quite different. Those market windows have narrowed to a sliver. Hardware development typically lags far behind software, but no one can afford to wait for hardware prototypes to begin shaking out the system’s drivers, operating system, and bus protocols. It’s become imperative for the software-development process to begin as early as possible so the software and hardware can be verified together.
But how is this to be done when silicon is essentially unavailable, or at best difficult to gain access to? Additionally, in this early stage of a system design cycle, the final specifications are a moving target. There’s the problem of setting up a testbench for the device. Often, the information on which you’ll base debug and performance analysis is incomplete. And on top of all of that, the hardware platform itself includes heterogeneous multicores with complex interconnect, memory hierarchy, and multiple dependent software stacks.
Fortunately for design teams, the means by which software can be effectively verified for a substantially non-existent hardware platform have come a long way. To be sure, one part of the solution has been an increased reliance on so-called platform systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), a genericized hardware architecture that draws from an established, known-good IP portfolio. Such methodologies can help stack the deck in favor of the design team when it comes to software development.
But for those intrepid souls looking to build on a customized hardware platform, hardware/software co-design generally entails assembling a highly abstract model of the hardware platform. There are a number of approaches to this methodology. Additionally, emulation technology has improved substantially in recent years, making it easier to run more clock cycles’ worth of simulation with slightly more detailed models. And, standardization activity of late has helped the industry get on the same page with its modeling. The concurrent design and verification of hardware and software has become a reality thanks to a plethora of resources in ESL flows, e... more -
Beijing takes dog off the menu for Olympics
Beijing has asked hotels and restaurants in the city to take dog meat off the menu for the duration of next month's Olympics and September's Paralympics.
Dog is eaten not only by the large Korean community in China's capital but is also popular in Yunnan and Guizhou restaurants.
A directive from the Beijing Food Safety Office issued last month ordered Olympic contractor hotels not to provide any dishes made with dog meat and said any canine material used in traditional medicated diets must be clearly labeled.
Concerned that canine dishes might offend animal rights groups and Western visitors, Beijing said restaurants expected to be popular among foreign visitors must stop serving dog meat "to respect the dining customs of different countries".
The directive "advocated" that all restaurants serving dog suspend it during the Olympics but made no mention of the many popular establishments with donkey on the menu.
Criticism from Westerners caused the dog meat-loving South Koreans to ban canine dishes for a period of time during the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Beijing has asked hotels and restaurants in the city to take dog meat off the menu for the duration of next month's Olympics and ... more -
Open-source video marketplace
Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon is probably best known as being the creative mind behind Wallstrip, the financial podcast that was later famously sold to CBS Interactive for a tidy sum.
Through his experience in New Media production Selling-Entertainment-Online Jan-08 as well as the experience of taking a show like that from concept to completion to exit, he was made aware of the wide variety of issues that arise for successful independent video producers that we’re just not equipped to deal with. Legal issues abound, as do business decisions Neuroeconomics-How-Executives-Think , odd technical issues, and sales situations; most of the time indie producers just want to, well, produce.
Plentitube is a marketplace built with that in mind. It’s currently still in an invite only beta situation, but their goal is to take top notch producers and pair them with advertisers, resources and potential investors and owners for the content. In this interview, we explore the history that led Jon to this venture, as well as the intracies of the marketplace, and how it can benefit the New Media video producer set. Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon... more -
Is Money Tight? Fake a Heart Attack!
Photo by Gregor Rohrig: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorrohrig/414586310/
This totally reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, instead this guy gets out of paying the tab by faking a heart attack.
Here's a snippet:
"Authorities say the man then ran up a $23 bill when he had a steak dinner at Applebee's. He again pretended to have a heart attack." Photo by Gregor Rohrig: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregorrohrig/414586310/ ... more -
Robot babies
The idea of a machine that could produce a copy of itself has intrigued some of the greatest minds in history. Rene Descartes heads a list of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists who have long pondered the potential of a self-replicating machine. As have writers of science fiction, who have been also quick to warn of the dangers of unleashing such a powerful technology upon the world. But for both sets of thinkers, the reality of a self-replicating machine has lain somewhere just beyond our reach.
Sitting in his office at the University of Bath, Dr Adrian Bowyer doesn't look like an evil mastermind. Bowyer is a quietly spoken, slightly podgy, twinkle-eyed 55-year-old senior lecturer at the school of mechanical engineering and inventor of the RepRap machine. Earlier this month at Cheltenham's Science Festival, Bowyer and New Zealand scientist Vik Oliver unveiled a RepRap that had the majority of its working parts "printed out" from an earlier prototype. Although the RepRap was first assembled in 2006, this was the first time a parent and child machine had appeared side by side.
Technically, the RepRap is a form of rapid prototyper, the kind used by designers and engineers to streamline everything from aircraft to hairdryers, but it's easier to think of it as a printer of three-dimensional objects. Essentially, the RepRap works like the desktop printer you might have at home, but instead of printing on paper, the RepRap makes hard copy in three dimensions out of plastic from models designed on a computer.
Even before you get into the benefits of self-replication, the RepRap is already an impressive achievement. Bowyer and an army of international helpers - all operating under an open-source license that lets them adapt and develop the blueprint collectively - have managed to scale down the cost of rapid prototypers from tens of thousands of pounds to around £250.
Bowyer describes his RepRap as "potentially an extremely powerful technology" that could "give everybody - ultimately - the ability to make virtually anything for themselves in return for being helped to reproduce". For the moment it makes crude plastic knick-knacks (sandals, coat hooks, door handles and fly-swatters), but it has the potential to develop into something that could make much more sophisticated artifacts, including the ability to lay its own circuitry.
The RepRap itself is a humble thing to see. It's small, little bigger in volume than a portable television, barely more than a frame assembled from long pieces of screw-grooved studding and a large number of plastic parts. At its heart is the all important extruder, which is poised to squeeze out a small film of molten plastic from a nozzle that is fed from a coil of white filament. It looks vaguely like a cut-price textile machine.
Bowyer sets the nozzle to work, producing a simple coathook. Line by line, layer upon layer, the RepRap begins its task. It is an agonizingly tedious process that will take it almost two hours to "print out" each small part. It will take hundreds of hours to make the parts for a "child" machine. Not that that should temper your enthusiasm. If you think back, the first digitised images took hours to process. Now, 20 years later, such things are commonplace, done in a flash on a mobile phone.
The RepRap needs to get much faster before it can even begin to realize its potential, but it is still early days for a device - even though it has been dreamt of since the dawn of the enlightenment - and Bowyer is not done yet. Soon, he plans to design a shredder for the machine, so old items created on the RepRap can be returned to granules of plastic to be reused. Think about it, he says: "You could shred your milk bottles and make a pair of sandals. What's more, when the child grows out of the shoes, you shred them, add another milk bottle, rescale the design and you have a new pair." If nothing else, the RepRap could be the ultimate recycling machine. The idea of a machine that could produce a copy of itself has intrigued some of the greatest minds in history. Rene Descartes heads a ... more -
Bringing semantic technology to the enterprise
As seen at the recent 2008 Semantic Technology conference in San Jose, serious interest in corporate use of semantic technology continues to grow rapidly. Semantically-enabled applications are increasingly seen as fertile ground for Web 2.0 applications such as mash ups as well as the basis for innovative business intelligence strategies, internal collaboration wikis, and rich canonical models for service-oriented architectures (SOA).
What’s lacking, however, is a clear understanding of where semantic technology fits in enterprise architectures. Should it be thought of primarily as purely a web technology to integrate information on the presentation layer? Should it be seen as closer to the data layer of the application because of its potential to bring disparate sets of data together? Alternatively, should semantic technology be focused on the increasingly important middle layer of enterprise architectures where messaging and service implementations live?
Semantic technology's perennial problem is to gain enough traction to be taken seriously in the corporate world—lest it suffer the fate of object databases—exciting ideas with only niche adoption. Currently, semantic technology is all about “critical mass,” for example, having broad enough adoption that it becomes ubiquitous. Its place in enterprise architecture needs to be clarified; if we don’t know ourselves where it fits, we’re going to have a hard time explaining it to anyone else and an even harder time getting anyone to finance the dollars to make it happen!
First, let’s look at a typical current corporate architecture. With rare exceptions, nearly every real corporate architecture has grown organically. Most mature companies have multiple databases and multiple programming paradigms. People who are new to the field would be shocked at how many major systems continue to run on mainframes accessed via a “green screen” (a dumb terminal that connects to the mainfraime and nothing else). Most of us who’ve been around a while thought these would be long gone, but the reality is that a huge proportion of corporate computing continue to run on mainframes. These systems are simply too complex to rebuild. Newer systems tend to be built on more open platforms—but real architectures are nearly always hybrids—they mix the most modern Web 2.0 features with systems that are at least a decade old.
Many applications in a real corporate environment remain as two-tiered applications, connecting directly from the data layer to the presentation layer. Applications built since 1990 are commonly comprised of three tiers with either a J2EE, .Web server, or a .NET application intervening between the data and the UI. As service-oriented architectures have proliferated and enterprise service buses become common, the intervening layers have become “thicker,” decoupling the entire presentation layer and application layer from the underlying data stores.
Semantic technology is a collection of technologies, rather than a single model, so it can fit into more than one place. For simple data aggregation “on the glass” or in a thin application close on the UI—in the mode of Web 2.0 applications—the presentation layer is an appropriate target. Using XSLT or other presentation tools, information can be mashed directly on this layer. A corporate collaboration wiki could use this layer to interconnect data from a wide range of sources. As seen at the recent 2008 Semantic Technology conference in San Jose, serious interest in corporate use of semantic technology contin... more -
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