New Scientist reports that an answer to why cosimic inflation occured has been proposed by Prof Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, working with Prof Thomas Hertog of the Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory in Paris and formerly(?) the European Laboratory for Particle Physics at CERN.

A representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.7 billion years. The far left depicts the earliest moment we can now probe, when a period of “inflation” produced a burst of exponential growth in the universe. (Size is depicted by the vertical extent of the grid in this graphic.) For the next several billion years, the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe pulled on itself via gravity. More recently, the expansion has begun to speed up again as the repulsive effects of dark energy have come to dominate the expansion of the universe. The afterglow light seen by WMAP was emitted about 380,000 years after inflation and has traversed the universe largely unimpeded since then. The conditions of earlier times are imprinted on this light; it also forms a backlight for later developments of the universe. Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team

The new theory believes original estimates of Big Bang expansion are wrong, and that the universe did not have just one unique beginning and history but a multitude of different ones and that it has experienced them all. The new theory fits in with string theory - the most popular candidate for a “theory of everything.”

via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml

The Home Office has been preparing a new Communications Data Bill to be published in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny later this year.

Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, from ICO (the Information Commissioner’s Office – the independant UK authority on information access rights, said: “This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen.”

via: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/108305

The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.

via: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article3965033.ece

Other recent examples of new information sources being collected without proper debate were the expansion of the DNA database and the centralised collection of data from number plate recognition cameras…

via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/15/privacy.internet?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Finjan Inc. today announced the latest findings by its Malicious Code Research Center. In its latest trends report for Q2 2008, the MCRC identifies and analyzes the latest Crimeware business operations, and provides a first-of-its-kind insider’s look at the organizational structure of Cybercrime organizations.

Andre Lopez - camera
Tim Nackashi - producer / editor

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

The Making-of “House of Cards” video

Explore data visualization through a 3D viewer and use your mouse to further manipulate the data and create your own visualizations.

Download the data and instructions on how to create your own visualizations.

If you manage to create a data visualization that you’d wish to share, the band would love to see it. You can share your videos on the House of Cards YouTube group.

via: http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/#the-making-of

Image source: http://cmsinfo.cern.ch/outreach/CMSmedia/CMSphotos.html

Somewhat less mind blowing as creating a Time Machine on the border between Switzerland and France, The Large Hadron Collider has another much less discussed, highly innovative, component called the grid or as some experts are referring to it as a “parallel internet.”

The LHC has been over twenty years in the making and has the support of 10,000 scientists in 85 countries behind its goal: to recreate the environment of our universe as it was less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and hence to reveal, among other things, the fundamental nature of matter.

When the largest scientific instrument in the world starts running thousands of scientists across the planet will need access to it’s streams of data. The LHC will produce about 15 Petabytes of data every year, which is more than 1000x the amount of information in book form printed every year around the world.

launched in 2002 The LHC Computing Grid integrates thousands of computers worldwide into a global computing resource that will be used to store and analyze the huge amounts of data that will soon be produced by the LHC at CERN. This fiber-optic network is 10,000 times faster than the fastest existing broadband.

In his writings, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge, no uncertain proponent of the ever-developing Technological Singularity theory, noted that “every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.” What he meant was that the end of the human era (which he argued would occur “[not before ] 2005 or after 2030″) would come with a whimper, not a bang — “even the largest avalanches are triggered by small things,” he added. I don’t imagine that the Grid will go all Skynet on us, but if the history of the Internet tells us anything, it’s that we can’t predict, nor can we place enough expectations, on the exponential nature of its evolution. Besides, Vinge wasn’t spooking us when he wrote, in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post−Human Era, that “even the egalitarian view of an Internet that wakes up along with all mankind can be viewed as a nightmare.” It is a nightmare, not least because it is strangely probable, but also because the Grid is so inextricably linked to the Large Hadron Collider, this fountainhead of certain scientific revolution, the two projects so potent with possibility, sinister and otherwise. Fellow science fiction heads will recognize this kind of setup from so many novels. The audacity of man is unbreakable. via: http://www.urbanhonking.com/universe/2008/05/the-grid.html

One very interesting point that makes all this seem so much less science fiction to me is that the World Wide Web began as a CERN project called ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1989. So while searching for the higgs boson particle and possibly developing means of time travel, the technological singularity is nearing. What will happen when humans are also jackedin to the world wide mind?

Privacy Implications of Online Advertising

Individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent upon the Internet for social, entertainment, research and business activities. This has created the incentive and opportunity for companies to collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users. There is concern, however, that tracking individuals’ Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. Individuals often are unaware what information is being collected about them, how it is being used and to whom it is disseminated.

In this hearing, the Committee will consider the current state of the online advertising industry and that market’s impact on users’ privacy. Witnesses are expected to focus on the key factors driving online behavioral advertising, the methods of online behavioral advertising employed by industry, and the protections the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should adopt to protect consumers from unwanted or unnecessary invasions of their privacy

via: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=e46b0d9f-562e-41a6-b460-a714bf370171

The hottest topic will be proposed systems by which Internet service providers can watch users and sell information about their surfing habits to advertising companies. The Center for Democracy and Technology — whose chief executive, Leslie Harris, will testify — issued a report suggesting that these systems may violate federal law.

via: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/ad-targeting-companies-and-critics-prepare-for-senate-scrutiny

Researchers from IBM and Linden Lab® gathered in an experimental area of the 3D virtual world, Second Life. Together they prepared to teleport outside Second Life to another virtual world, called OpenSim. It was a journey no avatar had taken before. Distributed by Tubemogul.

More info:
http://zhaewry.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/happy-jumpy-ruths-interop-takes-a-step/
http://eightbar.co.uk/2008/07/08/teleporting-across-virtual-worlds/
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/

TinyURL is a web service that provides short aliases to redirect long URLs which was created by Kevin Gilbertson and launched in January 2002. I think this was the first free URL truncation service created?

This past Friday TinyURL added the ability to create custom aliases instead of having to use an string of letters and numbers. Like I CAN HAZ, SnipURL and MetaMark, you can now select a nickname to be added after the URL.

Seymour Hersh on CNN’s Late Edition, June 29, 2008 via TALKINGPOINTSMEMO

comic by xkcd

A followup to Hurling Earth into parallel universe?

Particle smasher ‘not a threat to the Earth’

Campaigners in the US are attempting to delay the start-up of the world’s most powerful particle smasher with a lawsuit claiming it could spawn dangerous particles or mini black holes that will destroy the entire Earth.

via: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13555-particle-smasher-not-a-threat-to-the-earth.html

CERN to Morons: Large Hadron Collider Won’t Destroy Earth. Morons.

Contrary to the somewhat feverish claims laid out in an recent lawsuit, when our favorite particle-smashing, Force-finding Large Hadron Collider is switched on soon it will not result in the destruction of life as we know it.

via: http://gizmodo.com/374066/cern-to-morons-large-hadron-collider-wont-destroy-earth-morons