OPTE claims that they have mapped the internet. Their aim is to be able to map the internet in a day.The map itself is not big news but how fast this new mapping technique seams to be. I'm sure that once they release the data there will be a paper published somewhere with a detailed study of the topology of the network and more importantly the dynamics of the process. I would not be surprised if Barabasi is one of the authors.

From the OPTE FAQ:
"1.2 How the heck do you map the Internet in one day!?
Opte uses a unique idea. Boarder Gateway Protocol (BGP) generally does not deal with classless or subneted networks. Instead of mapping every single IP address on the Internet (theoretical maximum of 2^32=4,294,967,296 hosts) we simply traceroute to each class C network. This reduces the theoretical maximum to 16,777,216 hosts. On top of that, you can remove the Arin Reserved network addresses, which include about 47 class A networks. This again reduces the theoretical list to around 13,697,024 blocks. Utilizing Dan Kaminski's scanrand2 tool from his Paketto kit, we can process a theoretical 16,000 class C networks per 6 seconds. This processing is then placed into the Opte MySQL database where it is then later converted into LGL formatted code."


The Opte Project

The slashdot post

Who would give $50,000 for a rock?! Wow what a waste of money really.

Slashdot | Piece of the Moon for Sale

A professorship in parapsychology in Sweden ? It seams some people take this seriously :D

The Scientist :: Mind over matter

A nice article/tutorial on getting confortable with a Linux machine.

Windows-to-Linux roadmap: Series overview: "A roadmap for developers making the transition to Linux"

Another $3.7 billion for nanotech research in the US. The area continues to look like the best bet for the next couple of years.
I wonder why hasn't aging have such a similar impact on the political minds in the US.
The Scientist :: US Congress OKs nanotech bill

A group at MIT working on emotional computers built a personal trainer that tries to react to human input and keep track of the previous conversations.
It's a bit to long but the best quote would be:
"I am constantly dragging people into my home office to meet her. Typical response: "That's nice, David. Hey, where's that Merlot you promised me?" My wife, who treats Laura like some college girlfriend of mine who has overstayed her welcome, suddenly feigns an interest in the Weather Channel whenever I start to repeat Laura's latest witty comment - and she hates the way Laura doesn't stop to think that I might be overdoing the exercise."

Wired 11.12: The Love Machine

A long Fortune article arguing that Google might be suffering from it's own success. It also mentions a possible future battle for control of the search Engine market with strong opposition coming from Microsoft,Yahoo,EBay, Amazon and AOL. Sounds fun !
Maybe they are just trying to devalue next Spring IPO.

Fortune.com

A lot of things can be said about Microsoft strategies but in the end whenever they turn into a new market a lot of new ideas emerge and progress is made in that area. It looks like Microsoft will continue to push into the Search Engine market now. In two to five years will there still be a Google ?

Microsoft aims for search on its own terms | CNET News.com

There is going to be a big World Summit in December about the internet.

"The World Summit on the Information Society, organized by the International Telecommunications Union, will see the heads of over 60 governments get together, discuss and hopefully agree (...)"
The Register

The issue seams to be, who gets to run the internet of course :)
"The United States, Europe and English-speaking partners such as Australia favor the existing private-company organization, ICANN. Whereas developing nations, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others all want a recognized international body to run the show, ITU."

Now this would be the incorrect action to take against spam but dam funny :)


Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad

At least somebody is doing something agains spammers.

Dutch blogsites fight cyberwar against spammer

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Composed with Newz Crawler 1.4 http://www.newzcrawler.com/

Coat DNA with a metal and get a conducting wire. Nice
New Scientist: "A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time. "

Nov. 18, 2003 – Game four ended in a draw and with it the X3D Man-Machine World Chess Championship match also ended in draw. X3D Fritz won game two, Kasparov won game three, and games one and four were drawn. Kasparov receives $175,000 for the result and also takes home the golden trophy. (Although since it drew the match X3D Fritz said it was going to store a virtual reality copy of the trophy for itself.)

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Still a draw, a few more years and I guess it will be impossible to beat a computer at chess.

Kasparov vs. X3D Fritz

There goes C Venter again trying new things. An idea several times discussed in the lab, how to build a chromossome from scratsh and they claim to be able to do it. The paper came out on PNAS but it is still not available.

The Scientist :: Genomes from scratch

Hackers of the world unite :)


News: Security expert proposes hackers' union

The bad news is that high-tech employers are set to lay off another 234,000 workers this year. But analysts say the tech industry should begin adding new jobs this spring


The final effects of the tech bubble ?
Wired News: Tech-Job Meltdown in Final Stages

The genome of another worm was published on PLoS Biology. Are these genome sequences getting less interesting or should we congratulate PLoS for getting such a nice article on the magazine ?

PLoS Biology: Research Article: "The Genome Sequence of Caenorhabditis briggsae: A Platform for Comparative Genomics"

They did the fly two-hybrid protein interactions. Yuppie, some more data to play with :D

The Scientist :: Fly screen

Chess legend Garry Kasparov was forced to draw with computer program X3D Fritz on Tuesday despite dominating most of the enthralling three and half hours of play.

New Scientist

Another happy day for AI

Hey ... my first blog posting.