Put your computer talents to work

(www.nilesstar.com)

ADULTS AND YOUTH

€ There are a number of local nonprofit organizations that are in the process of building their websites, or would like assistance in maintaining their websites. Because we know many teens and adults enjoy that kind of work, and because it can be done offsite, we are offering this volunteer opportunity.

If you have a solid knowledge of website design and maintenance and would like to support the work of a local organization, please contact the Volunteer Center and we will give you the opportunity to put that knowledge to work.

€ ST. JOSEPH TODAY enhances the image and recognition of the area to assist business and tourism.

Volunteer “Secret Shoppers” are invited to participate in conducting a survey to assess business improvement in the downtown area.

Volunteers may work on their own schedules. For more information or to get involved, call the Volunteer Center.

€ SOUTH HAVEN AREA HOSPICE provides comprehensive supportive palliative care to terminally ill persons and their families through personalized services.

Volunteers aged 16 and older are invited to become office volunteers or patient care volunteers. Hours are very flexible and a 20-hour training series is required.

If you would like to assist in this very important, life-affirming work, please connect with the Volunteer Center.

ADULTS

€ THERAPEUTIC EQUESTRIAN CENTER, a new organization on Red Bud Trail in Buchanan, offers therapeutic equestrian riding and activity programs that are dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with disabilities.

If you enjoy the outdoors, whether or not you are familiar with horsemanship, your time would be warmly welcomed to assist with a variety of duties including checking fences, clearing brush, and preparing the facility for horses arriving very soon.

To connect, call the Volunteer Center.

€ SODUS TOWNSHIP LIBRARY welcomes volunteers interested in working on one weekday afternoon per week beginning at 2 p.m. Volunteers assist with book check-out, straightening shelves, and other tasks as they arise. To connect, call the Volunteer Center.

€ S-O-S of MADISON CENTER is the rape crisis center located in St. Joseph County, Indiana. Volunteer Advocates provide 24-hour crisis intervention in person at area Emergency Departments and on the phone to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

The next training for Volunteer Advocates will begin on Thursday, May 25th from 6-9 p.m. and will continue on consecutive Tuesday and Thursday evenings for six weeks. Interested volunteers must first apply to S-O-S before taking the training.

To start the process, call the Volunteer Center.

€ THE BERRIEN COUNTY CHAPTER OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS reports that Berrien County residents use more blood products than we donate. Let's change that! The next Blood drive will be coming to your area soon:

Thursday, April 27 - Grace Lutheran Church, 404 E. Glenlord, St. Joseph, noon-5:45 p.m.Friday, April 28 - Eau Claire High School, 7450 Hochenberger Road, 10 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

Thursday, May 4 - St. John's United Church of Christ, 601 Sycamore, Niles, noon-5:45 p.m.FAMILIES€ “Spring has come, the grass has riz...” Remember that old rhyme. Well, the time has come to get going and do some spring cleaning outdoors.

If you and your family would like a day out together, there are myriad organizations that would welcome your green thumbs, or just your rakes! There may even be a nonprofit organization in your neighborhood that would like your help.

Or check with elderly or infirm neighbors to see if you can assist them with yard work. Get out there and breathe in some of that great Spring oxygen!YOUTH€ Have you ever thought about volunteering for the U.S. COAST GUARD AUXILIARY in St. Joseph? You could become a member and become qualified through training if you are 17 years of age or older.

Training includes both day and night operations, including Search and Rescue and watchstander/radio operator.

Another opportunity for younger teens aged 13-17 is the Sea Cadet Corps, now being organized.

This program assists youth in developing an interest in, and skills in, basic seamanship and its naval adaptations. For more information, call the Volunteer Center.

€ Do you enjoy coaching? If so, there are a number of summer sports programs that would welcome your support.

Times and days vary, but flexibility is necessary.To connect with any of these volunteer opportunties, call the Volunteer Center of Southwest Michigan in Niles at (269) 683-5464.

Focus in Microsoft hearing shifts to sharing of computer code for its rivals

(www.signonsandiego.com)

LUXEMBOURG – Microsoft Corp. complained Wednesday that the European Commission had forced it to hand over trade secrets to rivals, effectively giving them a “free ride” on the work the software maker did to acquire new customers and develop new technologies.

But Microsoft's rivals said the company was trying to turn the case into a debate over intellectual property rights and skirt the commission's argument that Microsoft has abused its monopoly.

The European Commission's order for Microsoft Corp. to share its code so rivals' software can run smoothly with Windows took center stage Wednesday in the third day of the company's bid to have a landmark antitrust ruling against it overturned.

Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester said the order had been an attempt “to handicap the (market) leader in perpetuity.”

“The decision condemned a company for not saying yes to a company who requests a huge amount of secret technology for the future,” he said.

“The Windows source code is copyright. It is valuable, the fruit of lots of effort,” he said, adding that were it printed on paper, it would take up 12,650 pages.

Thomas Vinje, a lawyer for an industry group supporting the commission – the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, or ECIS – said Microsoft was blowing its patent rights out of proportion.

“Microsoft are trying to turn this into an intellectual property case when it's not,” he said. “This is a case about abuse of a dominant position, about refusing to provide information to vendors.”

Microsoft broke an informal agreement with EU advocates when it brought up the recent dispute over the company's compliance with the order to share its code– earning them a stern reprimand from Judge Bo Vesterdorf, who told Forrester to stick to the issue at stake.

Forrester had claimed that Microsoft was being threatened with 2 million euros ($2.4 million) in daily fines, backdated to Dec. 15, for not creating “a new copyright work” derived from Windows' secret source code.

EU regulators had asked Microsoft to supply a “complete and accurate” support manual for developers to help them make compatible software.

Last December, they charged Microsoft with not obeying the order after an independent monitor branded Microsoft's 12,650-page technical manual as “unfit at this stage for its intended purpose.”

The world's largest software maker says it has the right to guard its valuable intellectual property, and maintains that it has worked strenuously to comply with the 2004 EU ruling that told it to pay a record 497 million euro ($613 million) fine.

The ruling was handed down after a five-year investigation concluded that Microsoft had taken advantage of its dominant position to damage rivals who offered server software and media player programs.

Forrester said Microsoft's server software was compatible with products made by other companies, such as those from Novell and Sun and using Linux and UNIX-based servers.

Microsoft executive John Shewchuk gave a presentation that showed the company's contention that server compatibility was a reality and worked with the Windows operating system, which runs on 95 percent of the world's personal computers.

“Microsoft spends an enormous amount of effort attempting to achieve interoperability,” he said.

Lawyers for both Microsoft and the commission will expound on why the ruling should be lifted, or left unchanged, using evidence from IBM Corp., Novell Inc., Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. on systems compatibility.

None of those companies is currently involved in the legal battle, although they are members of two broad industry coalitions – the ECIS and the Software & Information Industry Association – that have backed the commission.

In a new complaint filed in February, ECIS said times have changed, but Microsoft's behavior has not. It claimed Microsoft is up to the same tricks – but on a wider scale.

Wednesday's focus differs from the first two days of the five-day hearings. On Tuesday, the company brushed off the claims that it tried to squeeze competitors, including RealNetworks Inc., out of the streaming media market.

Instead, it argued before the 13 judges of the Court of First Instance that it merely added extra functions to its operating systems to meet likely demand from consumers – part of a natural process of evolution in the technology sector.

While a court decision on the ruling is not due for months, a decision backing the commission could force Microsoft to change the way it does business in the future and endorse the EU's ability to hold back aggressive corporate behavior.

Who needs a word processor?

(www.reviews.zdnet.co.uk)

It's time to take a close look at online productivity applications as an alternative to the traditional office suite.

Can a modern computer user survive without an office suite, especially a user accustomed to using traditional, installed software? I've used Microsoft Word on every computer I've worked on since 1987. I know Word inside and out, and I have a library of Word files going back 19 years.

But now, with the rise of AJAX and Web 2.0 technologies, and with more and more companies writing applications that are delivered directly over the Web, I'm wondering: Do I really need Word?

So I'm trying an experiment. I am writing this column on Writely, a free word processor that runs completely in a Web browser. Writely is not the only online word processor, but it's one of the most well known, and it was just acquired by Google.

Google has closed new user registration for Writely while it is working out how to scale up the servers to handle Google-level traffic, but all existing users have 50 invitations they can give out.

For a nice collection of other Web 2.0 applications, with reviews, see this page on ITRedux. If you want to get started with an online word processor right away, Zoho Writer is worth experimenting with.

Diving in to Writely

First impressions: Wow! The last time I used browser-delivered productivity software (I think it was a spreadsheet), it was a painful experience. But this word processor makes a mockery of those previous applications.

It's fast and easy to use, and enough of its key commands are identical to Word that my training time with this product is essentially zero. Also, my big fear -- that I'll hit the Back button and lose my work -- is gracefully handled. Writely captures events that would cause you to lose data and pops up a window giving you the chance to save your work.

Second impressions: The differences begin to surface. Minor key commands that I'm used to don't work. For example, my automatic reflex is to save a file every time I pause in thought, with the Alt+F+S command. But in Writely, that pulls up the browser's file menu, not Writely's (the Writely key command is Ctrl-S).

Other little crutches that I've become used to in Word are missing: the autocorrect function that corrects minor misspellings or capitalisation errors is not there, so I need to write more carefully. And the multi-item clipboard isn't there either.

Word, of course, has hundreds of other features, and most people use only a few of them, which means that you won't miss most of the features that Word has and Writely doesn't.

But there will likely be one or two that slow you down. For me, I miss the function that sorts lists of text items. On the other hand, the table creation tool in Writely is quite good.

Furthermore, Google can add functions and features to Writely when it wants, and all users will immediately benefit. Nobody has to deal with installing updates or patches except Google itself.

However, comparing Word to Writely strictly on features and user interface misses the point. After all, for the foreseeable future, you're probably not going to use a computer without a productivity suite. So why bother with a purely online word processor at all?

It's better online

An online application can do some things that Word cannot, at least not easily. First, the Writely program has very strong collaboration features.

Multiple people can edit the same document at the same time, so you can literally keep a whole team of people on the same page. You can also roll back a document to a previous point in time, and you can see who made which revisions. This feature is similar to Word's revision tracking function but I found it simpler and easier to work with.

And since Writely is an online application, it stores your files online. Whenever you log onto Writely, from any computer, all your files appear. You don't have to worry about which computer you stored them on.

For people who use multiple computers, this is very useful, and this is one of the key differentiators between an offline word processor and an online one: online applications are self-contained and portable; they can run on any computer, and your files are always there. You can save your files to local computers, too, if you want.

Writely has strong online publishing tools. Any document can be published as a Web page visible to everybody or just to people you select. Posting a Writely file to a supported blog (Blogger, BlogHarbor, BlogWare, LiveJournal or SquareSpace) takes two clicks.

If you're technically minded, you can also set up a customised connection to a blog site you host. Unfortunately, I got error messages and was unsuccessful at posting to my Blogger account, and I found no easy way to post from Writely to a TypePad blog (competitor Zoho Writer does post to TypePad blogs, but I had problems getting that system to correctly post images).

Not for the print/offline generation

Writely can't be used when you're offline, so if you want to start a long report in Writely and finish it on a plane journey, you'll need to export your file to Word or another word processor to open it on your notebook. If you have an unreliable Internet connection, it's definitely not for you. Fortunately, Writely's export function is quick and reliable. There's also a good import function for editing existing Word documents in Writely.

If your document uses advanced features, these may not come through with 100 percent fidelity, but Writely makes clever decisions about most formatting. For example, it converts footnotes to within-document hyperlinks.

Writely's printing function is rudimentary. The product will print your documents, but if you more need than basic control over page formatting, use something else.

Who's it for?

Compared to Word, there is a fair bit that Writely cannot do. But as I near the end of this column, I've found no strong need for any features the application doesn't have. It's been easy to work on this document from both my home computer and my work computer, since I didn't have to worry about where the file was.

I even asked my editor to check out the file online instead of dealing with the normal cycle of emailing it or putting it on a shared drive for her to access. For the work I do, writing this column online has actually been a faster and easier experience than using Word.

In other words, I am sold. I'm so sold, in fact, that I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when online services companies, such as Google (which now owns Writely), release their own online suites. In the meantime, I'm going to start taking a very close look at complete online suites, such as the Zoho applications, gOffice and ThinkFree.

Online productivity applications like Writely cannot completely replace standalone software programs such as Word. Sometimes you need local and offline access to files, and you may also have complex documents that take fuller advantage of the rich and complex Word feature set than short documents or those intended for an online audience.

But for creating and editing documents that are intended primarily to be read online, it makes a lot of sense to use a word processor that's native to the online medium.

Apple Computer "neutral"

(www.newratings.com)

NEW YORK, (newratings.com) - Analyst Keith Bachman of Banc of America Securities maintains his "neutral" rating on Apple Computer (AAPL.NAS).

The target price is set to $77.In a research note published this morning, the analyst mentions that the company may post its F2Q EPS ahead of expectations, benefiting from the decline in flash pricing.

Apple Computer is likely to post its F2Q ipod units sales at 9.5 million, above the consensus of about 9 million units, the analyst adds.

The company is likely to guide to F3Q revenues below the estimates and the consensus, Banc of America Securities says.

Computer gadgets boost Logitech profits

(www.swissinfo.org)

The Swiss company Logitech, the world's largest computer mouse maker, has posted its eighth consecutive year of record sales and profits.


Sales for the year ending on March 31 were $1.8 billion (SFr2.29 billion), up 21 per cent over the previous fiscal year. Net profit rose to $181 million.

Fourth-quarter sales were $466 million, up 16 percent from $403 million for the same quarter period year ago."We are very pleased with the company's strong performance, and with our record-breaking results in the fourth quarter," Guerrino De Luca, Logitech's president and CEO, said in a statement on Thursday.

However, the maker of computer peripherals has a reputation for beating analysts' forecasts and traders were disappointed that the figures were barely ahead of average expectations.

Logitech benefited from increased popularity of communication over the internet, seeing strong sales of its speakers, headsets and webcams.Retail sales of audio products in the fourth quarter were up 68 per cent. According to analysts, this category of peripherals produces a lower gross margin than mice and keyboards, weighing on the company's profitability.

Audio

De Luca acknowledged that the shift in demand for lower margin audio products (speaker sales were up 116 per cent) had hit the company's performance."The tremendous success of audio was the main driver of a decline in gross margin growth. Audio [compared to] the mix of all our products commands a lower profit," he said.

De Luca also pointed the finger at disappointing sales for its wireless iPod headphone product launched last summer. Sales were hit by an unexpected alteration to the iPod format that meant the headphones needed an adapter to function.

"The product was launched amid great reviews. Without this setback gross margins would have been 32.5 per cent [instead of 32 per cent]," De Luca said.The company said it introduced more than 130 new products in the 2006 fiscal year, and shipped a record 143 million units.

Looking ahead, Logitech said it expected sales and operating income to grow 15 per cent annually.

The company will continue its share buyback programme after spending $241 million acquiring six million shares last year.

Logitech started life in 1981 in canton Vaud in western Switzerland producing computer mice for large PC manufacturers.swissinfo with agencies.

Apple Computer "outperform"

(www.newratings.com)

NEW YORK

- Analyst Andrew J Neff of Bear Stearns mantains his "outperform" rating on Apple Computer Inc (AAPL.NAS).

The target price is set to $100.

In a research note published yesterday, the analyst mentions that the company is likely to post its iPod unit sales for the March quarter at 10.5 million, as compared to the consensus expectation of 8.5 million-9.5 million.

Apple Computer is likely to eventually put the Windows OS on its Mac computers, the analyst adds.

How to back-up your computer and save your digital life

(www.graphic.pepperdine.edu)

You have pined away on those papers, projects, Photoshop collages and music mixes. You are the brilliant Pepperdine student. Everything is a work of your genius, which your computer should only feel honored to harbor.

Unfortunately computers are not always as trusty as Lassie once was in your childhood memories.

In reality they betray and backstab a la Brutus. They crash, leaving you scraping up the bits and pieces of that 20-page research paper due yesterday. The all-too-common computer-crash ranks up there with the common flu and psychotic roommates as far banes to the college existence.

It sadistically sends students hobbling into corners of despair, eyes bloodshot, curled between blankets, madly cursing what little light there is left in the day.

Anyone who has experienced the black computer screen understands that losing documents to a failing computer is like someone taking scissors to that thin thread you have been hanging on all of finals week and — snip — sending you reeling into that cold abyss known so painfully as academic breakdown. There is help however.

You need not wait in anxiety for the day you lose all of your documents.

All it takes to make the inevitable crash less painful is the planning-ahead that got you into college in the first place. That solution is not banging your head against a dead hard drive and throwing a tantrum to your mother. The solution is known as backing up your computer.

Your computer turns on at the push of a button. It plays your Jack Johnson mixes and holds priceless snapshot memories of Spring Break. It has been with you through days and nights of procrastination.

It has even been your comrade in crime when you burned illegal compact discs. But as fancy and trusty as your computer has been, it will break down on you. A wise Web site once told me, “It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.”

The life of a hard drive is an average of two to three years. If you are lucky, your drive may last four to five. Some unfortunate students have lost their loved one in six months.

The best solution is to always be prepared. As invincible as you might feel, be assured that you are not the exception to the unreliable computer rule. Your computer will crash. Repeat that in your head a few times: “My computer will crash.”

This is the introspective, or computer-spectrive, step. You must sit down and analyze, “How important are my documents?” If you are honest with yourself and know that you produce rubbish all of the time, and that most of your work can be re-done by a 12-year-old in a few minutes, well then, you can stop reading this column.

If you only care about a few documents that you may want to refer to in graduate school or share with your grandkids someday, then you may use a CD or DVD. Some people use shared space on the Internet to save their documents, though that option is less safe.

If you are one of those safe people who wants to make sure that you have every update of your paper on Christian existentialism just in case you get an itch to refer to it during summer vacation, then you need a USB port. USBs provide an easy, quick and fluid way to save documents.

If, however, you suspect that the good of the universe, or at least your universe, lies in those one to five years you spent formatting your computer, accruing pictures and projects, then you might want to set up what is known as an external hard drive. An external hard drive will save your documents and settings at set times either every day, week or month — again, depending on how important your work is.

If you’re planning to use an external hard drive, set apart more time than you would for a CD or USB. As with anything, the more time you put into it, the more benefit you will get. You will not only copy larger documents onto your external hard drive but also to your computer’s entire hard drive.

This includes your Windows operating system and other application programs. An external hard drive is great if you are particular about how your computer is set up — if you are attached to software patches, add-ons and special settings that make your computer run like a well-known buddy.

Experts suggest backing up an entire hard drive at least once a month.
Some opt for daily or weekly. iPods can act as hard drives also, though your saved computer work will limit space for music. Most hard drives average $1.50 per gig.

The cheapest you can find would be an 80 gig one for around $115.

The on-campus computer store sells a160 gig one for $145, though a place like Fry’s Electronics holds a larger selection and likely cheaper prices. The computer store is located next to the cafeteria where from 11a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, friendly representatives will gladly instruct you on how to install whichever hard drive you pick, according to your specific needs and computer.

They helped me with this stellar column after all. In about a month, the computer store will sell 20 to 30 models of hard drives online.

Phew. That mess is long gone along with the premonition that once plagued the back of your mind. After a few minutes of insuring your sanity, you can relax, get back to your Jack Johnson and picture surfing and saving the universe.

New Computer Virus Spreads Rapidly

(www.canadaone.com)

Just as Internet users were recovering from the Blaster worm virus of last week, a new threat has arrived to take its place. W32.Sobig.F@mm is a trojan virus that will copy and send itself to email addresses it finds on the infected computer. It may also steal passwords and other system information.

The virus is known to create a sender address from files found in the infected computer, or may also appear as admin@internet.com. To accurately spot W32.Sobig.F@mm look for these warning signs:

Subject:
*Re: Details
*Re: Approved
*Re: Re: My details
*Re: Thank you!
*Re: That movie
*Re: Wicked screensaver
*Re: Your application
*Thank you!
*Your details

Attachment:
*your_document.pif
*document_all.pif
*thank_you.pif
*your_details.pif
*details.pif
*document_9446.pif
*application.pif
*wicked_scr.scr
*movie0045.pif

The virus will de-activate itself on September 10, 2003. If you do become infected Symantec has created a removal tool which you can find here:

. The virus can also be removed by running a full system virus scan using Norton or MacAfee software.

For more information or to learn about other threats visit the Symantec website at .

Survey: Most business PC users never change passwords

(www.scmagazine.com)

More than half of U.S. business computer users admit to never changing their passwords for websites and applications, new research has claimed.

According to the survey conducted by IT security firm Palcott Software, this lax attitude to online security may be attributed to the fact that 69 percent of respondents said they use multiple logins on multiple sites. Therefore, they view changing passwords as too complex.

Another growing problem identified by the poll is how users manage all of these different passwords. The research survey found that 48 percent of respondents manually had to write down passwords either on paper or in computer files.

"Not enough attention is placed on user compliance in regard to password and security best practices," said Eric Constantini, co-founder and president of Palcott Software.

"The survey clearly shows that businesses are not doing all they can to prevent unauthorized access to web sites and applications. We believe this problem will only continue to grow as more and more business is conducted online."

He added that it is not enough for enterprises to tell users what the best security procedures are if many do not implement them.

"What users need is a simple way to secure their sensitive data, thus increasing the likelihood that they will actually comply," Constantini said.

The survey was conducted online with U.S. businesses in February 2006. The breakdown included 52 percent Small Office Home Office (SOHO), 25 percent with five to 25 employees, and 25 percent with more than 50 employees.

New law makes computer, TV makers pay for recycling

(www.seattletimes.nwsource.com)

OLYMPIA — Manufacturers of televisions and computers will foot the bill for recycling and safely disposing of their products once they are discarded under a measure signed into law Friday by Gov. Christine Gregoire.

Under the new law, manufacturers will have to establish a program to collect, transport and dispose of old electronic products. Household consumers, schools, charities, small governments and small businesses will be able to drop off their e-waste without charge once the program is fully implemented, by Jan. 1, 2009.

The proposal was prompted by the state Department of Ecology's two-year study of recycling alternatives for the products.

"With the upcoming switch to high-definition television, now is the time to put this program into place in our state," Gregoire said before signing the measure.

Gregoire vetoed a section in the bill that would prohibit the export of e-waste to certain other countries, saying the state did not have the authority to restrict exports.

Maine recently passed a similar law, though consumers pay $2 a piece to recycle their products. A California law requires payment of a disposal fee when a TV or computer monitor is purchased, while Maryland assesses registration fees from computer makers and disburses the proceeds to municipalities for use in collecting and recycling old computers.

Nineteen other states and New York City have electronic recycling bills pending this year, said Suellen Mele, with Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation.

"This is landmark legislation," said Mo McBroom, with the Washington Environmental Council. "It's the biggest advancement in recycling in over a generation."

Washington residents discard more than 1 million televisions and monitors each year, according to Ecology. Nationally, about 2 million tons of e-junk are disposed of each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

An average computer monitor contains six pounds of lead, which can seep into waterways and poison the environment.

Manufacturers like Philips, Panasonic and Sharp opposed the law and sent several letters to Gregoire urging her to veto it.

The companies argued that the law unfairly burdens them with financing the entire system and puts them at a competitive disadvantage to foreign producers that can be difficult to track down and may not pay for their share of recycling.

"This is a matter of survival for the companies," said Ric Erdheim, senior council for Philips Electronics and spokesman for the Electronics Manufacturers Coalition for Responsible Recycling. "Where are we going to get the money to pay for all of this?"

In her signing letter, Gregoire said she is asking Ecology "to work closely with all affected stakeholders to ensure that this bill is implemented in a fair and equitable manner."

Other bills Gregoire signed Friday include a crackdown on driver-training schools that would strengthen the authority of the Department of Licensing to oversee such operations.

The measure also increases the training requirements for an instructor's license and would require inspection of each driver-training school and its business practices. Staff would have to undergo criminal-background checks.

Gregoire also signed a measure that makes it a felony to have sex with animals. The law was prompted by a widely publicized Washington state case in which a man died of injuries suffered while having sex with a horse. The measure makes bestiality a Class C felony, which is punishable by a maximum five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Anyone videotaping such acts also could be convicted under animal-cruelty laws, as could anyone permitting such acts to take place on his or her property.

COMPUTER CHIPS COULD PREVENT LOSS OF BAGGAGE

(www.morningsentinel.mainetoday.com)

No one who travels by air was surprised at the announcement this week that the airline industry set a record last year for losing more luggage than ever.

An estimated 30 million bags were lost in 2005 and 200,000 of them were never found.

Most of the misconnected suitcases were returned to their owners in little more than a day.

It also should be no surprise that the problem is getting worse, not better, according to SITA, Inc., an international company that tracks this problem.

The answer, SITA says, is baggage tags that include a tiny computer chip to help airlines keep track of bags. They are being used in a few areas, and they work, SITA reports.

Anyone who has had the experience of arriving at a destination without his or her luggage will embrace the proposal.

In the meantime, we suggest extra frequent flier miles for your suitcase if it goes to Hawaii while you land in Omaha.

Dock laptop for desktop comfort

(www.tmcnet.com)

Desktop computers have all of comforts of a full-sized keyboard, mouse, and big monitor. Don't try to slip one into a backpack or brief case, however, when you're on the move.

You can do that easily with a light-weight laptop or notebook computer. With a laptop, you need only one computer for home, office, school, a vacation cottage or anywhere else you can imagine.However, many people don't like the downsized features that come with all but top-of-of-the line "desktop-replacement laptops."

Those include a downsized keyboard, a touchpad pointing device instead of a mouse, and a smaller monitor.I've been using a wonderful solution to that comfort-or-portability dilemma at work. It is a computer docking station that transforms an ultra-light laptop into a full-sized desktop.

A docking station is a platform or frame into which you install a laptop computer. The laptop slides into the docking station and plugs into a master connector. That one connection gives the docking station full access to the computer.

You don't have to connect or disconnect a power cord or Internet cable, for instance, every time you dock and undock the laptop.Docking stations also contain outlets for connecting a full-size keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, printer, and other devices.

Some have built-in CD and DVD drives, enhanced sound systems, and other features.Once inserted in a docking station with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, a laptop essentially becomes a desktop.

Undock, and you've got a portable computer with all the files ready to go.Some people own one laptop computer, but have docking stations at home, in the office, in a dorm room at college, on a vacation home or boat. It's just like owning several desktop computers.

Different kinds of docking ports are available in local stories and online outlets.Basic models cost under $100.

Prices can soar, especially if you have to buy a new monitor, keyboard, speakers, and mouse to use with the docking station.Many old monitors, keyboards, speakers, and mice will work just fine with a new docking station. Keep that in mind when you're trying to decide what to do with old computer gear.

Why not plan on "re-purposing" the gear? Store the old equipment in case you do decide on a laptop and docking station in the future.The old gear may seem clunky.

However, it may be perfect for a second or third docking station in a rarely used location like a summer cottage.Pay special attention to security if you decide on the docking station solution.

I mean the physical security of the hardware. Both the laptop and the docking station can be inviting targets for thieves.Don't make yourself an easy target. Secure the docking station to a desk.

For the laptop, buy a security cable -- a lockable steel cable that connects to a slot in the computer's case.Keep the cable locked whenever you are away from the desk.

Caring For Your Eyes In The Digital World

(www.medicalnewstoday.com)St

udies have found that the majority of people who work at a computer experience some eye or vision problems, and that the level of discomfort appears to increase with the amount of computer use.

But, increased use of smaller, portable work and recreational gadgets such as Personal Digital Assistants, laptops and cell phones used for text messaging and Web access may also be contributing factors to the visual fatigue and discomfort experienced by millions, according to a leading expert.

"The unique characteristics and high visual demands of computer work and play make many individuals susceptible to the development of eye and vision-related problems," notes Dr. Jeffrey Anshel, a practicing optometrist and author of Visual Ergonomics in the Workplace. "With the proliferation of portable electronic devices such as laptops, palm pilots and video game players, it's no surprise that eye care professionals are seeing more patients who complain of ocular discomfort."

Indeed, a national survey of doctors of optometry found that more than 14 percent of their patients present with eye or vision-related symptoms resulting from computer work. Furthermore, in a survey of more than 2,000 current and former contact lens wearers, time spent in front of a computer (41 percent) was the activity most frequently mentioned as causing discomfort while they were wearing their lenses.

Staring at a computer monitor or the small screens on most devices can lead to a variety of ailments, including headaches, eyestrain, blurred vision, dry and irritated eyes, neck and/or backache and sensitivity to light.

"Eye stress and strain may be caused by a combination of individual visual problems, improper viewing habits and poor environmental conditions, such as glare, improper workstation set up, dirty screens, poor lighting and viewing angles," explains Dr. Anshel, who has helped companies and government agencies, including Mitsubishi, American Airlines, 3M and the Department of Labor address the high stress area of vision demands in relation to working with computer monitors.

"Uncorrected or under-corrected vision problems can be major contributing factors to computer related eye stress, affecting visual performance and comfort," cautions Dr. Anshel.

"The good news is that many potential eye and/or vision problems can be reduced or eliminated by appropriate adjustment and placement of computer monitors, lighting control, good preventive vision care habits and regular professional eye care." Dr. Anshel offers the following advice to help prevent or reduce the development of vision-related problems.

For additional tips, take the "Eye Q's and Views" interactive quiz at http://www.computerquiz.jnjvision.com.

-- REDUCE GLARE - Extraneous light, or glare, is the greatest source of eyestrain for computer users. No matter where your computer is relative to a window, adjustable shades, curtains or blinds should be used to effectively control light levels throughout the day. Avoid facing an un-shaded window since the difference in brightness between the screen and the area behind it may be cause eye stress and discomfort. Consider using an anti-glare screen to reduce reflections.

-- CHECK YOUR CONTACTS - When working at a computer, people spend a lot of time concentrating and blink less frequently - about three times less than normally, according to studies. "Computer work is particularly stressful for contact lens wearers," says Dr. Anshel. "Long non-blinking phases may cause the surface of contact lenses to dry out, which can lead to discomfort and a loss of visual clarity." He recommends talking to an eye care professional about ACUVUE® OASYS™ with HYDRACLEAR™ Plus. In a clinical study with 335 contact lens wearers, nine in 10 (89 percent) patients wearing ACUVUE® OASYS™ said that their eyes felt comfortable, even when watching TV or using a computer for a long time.

-- ADJUST YOUR MONITOR - Ideal monitor placement is dependent on several factors including an individual's physical make-up and visual capabilities, work tasks and other workstation design elements. For maximum eye comfort, Dr. Anshel recommends placing the center of the screen five to nine inches below your horizontal line of sight. "You should be looking just over the top of the monitor in your straight-ahead gaze," he says.

-- TAKE A BREAK - "Our eyes were not made to see at a close distance for hours at a time without a break," says Dr. Anshel. A preventive approach to reducing visual stress includes occasionally looking away from the screen of your computer, PDA or portable game player. Dr. Anshel recommends the 20/20/20 rule. "Take a 20-second break every 20 minutes. Focus your eyes on points at least 20 feet from your terminal. Keep your eyes moving while looking at objects at various distances," he says.
-- CONSULT YOUR EYE CARE PROFESSIONAL - The American Optometric Association highly suggests yearly eye exams to ensure ocular health. For individuals whose jobs may require extensive time in front of a monitor, Dr. Anshel suggests a comprehensive eye examination soon after beginning computer work and periodically thereafter. "If, at any time, you experience any vision problems or discomfort, talk to your eye care professional," he adds.

About ACUVUE® OASYS™ Brand Contact Lenses with HYDRACLEAR™ PLUS

ACUVUE® OASYS™ is a breakthrough for contact lens wearers when their eyes feel tired and dry in challenging environments, such as long hours of computer use, frequent ground or air travel, or everyday exposure to heated or air conditioned surroundings. It is the first contact lens made from senofilcon A, a new silicone hydrogel material that is 50 percent smoother than currently available silicone hydrogel lenses. In addition to its smooth feel, the new lens also features an improved formulation of the unique HYDRACLEAR™ technology that combines high performance base materials with a moisture-rich wetting agent. ACUVUE® OASYS™ block greater than 96 percent of UVA rays and 99 percent of UVB rays, meeting the highest UV-blocking standards for contact lenses.† *

ACUVUE® OASYS™ are indicated for daily wear vision correction and approved by the FDA for up to six consecutive nights/seven days of extended wear. As with all contact lenses, eye problems, including corneal ulcers, can develop. Some wearers may also experience mild irritation, itching or discomfort. Lenses should not be prescribed if patients have any eye infection, or experience eye discomfort, excessive tearing, vision changes, redness or other eye problems. Consult the package insert for complete information. For further information, call 1-800-843-2020 or visit http://www.acuvue.com.
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc.
The VISTAKON division of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc., specializes in disposable and frequent replacement contact lens brands, including ACUVUE® ADVANCE™ Brand Contact Lenses with HYDRACLEAR™, ACUVUE® ADVANCE™ Brand Contact Lenses for ASTIGMATISM for people with astigmatism, ACUVUE® OASYS™ Brand Contact Lenses with HYDRACLEAR™ PLUS, ACUVUE® Brand and ACUVUE® 2 Brand Contact Lenses; 1-DAY ACUVUE® Brand Contact Lenses; ACUVUE® Brand BIFOCAL Contact Lenses; ACUVUE® Brand TORIC and ACUVUE® 2 COLOURS™ Brand Contact Lenses. ACUVUE®, ACUVUE® ADVANCE™, HYDRACLEAR™, ACUVUE® OASYS™, ACUVUE® 2 COLOURS™, ULTRA COMFORT SERIES™ and VISTAKON® are trademarks of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc.
† Helps protect against transmission of harmful UV radiation to the cornea and into the eye. * WARNING: UV-absorbing contact lenses are NOT substitutes for protective UV-absorbing eyewear such as UV-absorbing goggles or sunglasses because they do not completely cover the eye and surrounding area. You should continue to use UV-absorbing eyewear as directed.

NOTE: Long term exposure to UV radiation is one of the risk factors associated with cataracts. Exposure is based on a number of factors such as environmental conditions (altitude, geography, cloud cover) and personal factors (extent and nature of outdoor activities).

UV-Blocking contact lenses help provide protection against harmful UV radiation. However, clinical studies have not been done to demonstrate that wearing UV-Blocking contact lenses reduces the risk of developing cataracts or other eye disorders. Consult your eye care practitioner for more information.

NASA computer will peer into concrete

(www.casperstartribune.net)

What do you do with one of the world's fastest computers?

You can forecast hurricane patterns. Or simulate how stars form, how nuclear bombs explode, or how a spacecraft handles solar winds.Or you can learn to mix concrete.Don't laugh.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., are using a million hours of processor time awarded to them on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's fastest supercomputer to analyze the billions of possibilities created by the collisions of tiny particles of sand, gravel and cement whenever a cement truck pours a sidewalk.

The different size and shape of each particle -- which scientists blow up to the size of weather balloons on their projection screens -- have a profound effect on the strength and durability of concrete and the time it takes to harden.

All of these, in turn, are critical factors when engineers create the right recipe for what has become a prime structural material in some of the world's tallest buildings.

The use of concrete dates to the Roman Empire, but thousands of years later, many of the material's properties remain a mystery.

"Several things about it are not really understood -- the durability, for one thing, is really not known how to predict," said Edward J. Garboczi, a member of the NIST team working on the project.

NIST is trying to create concrete that's more durable and easier to pour at construction sites.For the $10 billion concrete industry, the research is vital.

"You'll find steel in buildings, you'll find asphalt in roads and you'll find wood in houses, but you'll find concrete in all of those," said Iyad M. "Ed" Alsamsam, a structural engineer with the Portland Cement Association, an industry group whose members work with concrete and cement.High winds are less likely to sway skyscrapers that use concrete as a framing material, he said.

NIST researchers need NASA's supercomputer because of the nearly incalculable variations that go into making a typical batch of concrete.Concrete is a mixture of sand, gravel and cement.

The cement is made by mixing and heating limestone, clay and other materials.

There are national guidelines for the ingredients of cement, but they are fairly broad. Moreover, the sand and gravel that go into any concrete mix are locally quarried. So the exact mineral content of any two batches can vary, Garboczi said.

The particles that make up the mix also come in all shapes and sizes, which affect the durability of the finished concrete. Cement particles can range from 10 microns to 200 microns across (25,400 microns in an inch). The stones that make up the gravel can be anywhere from a half a millimeter to 2 inches in diameter.

There also are at least 40 types of additive mixtures -- polymers and materials such as corn syrup -- sold commercially to give concrete specific properties, such as strength, durability and curing time.

"Concrete can be different every time you make it, depending on what you're making it from," said William George, the NIST computer scientist who oversees the project.With 10,240 processors, NASA's supercomputer -- named "Columbia" -- is the nation's fourth most powerful in industry rankings, said Bryan Biegel, deputy chief of NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division.

The $120 million computer takes up 15,000 square feet in a temperature-controlled room at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

"The computer's named in honor of the Columbia crew," Biegel said.NIST researchers can already use a smaller cluster of the agency's 3,000 computer processors to simulate what happens when small pieces of concrete are mixed, George said.

But with Columbia, NIST will be able to scale up the work, modeling concrete blocks 10 times bigger and using the supercomputer to see -- for the first time -- how the size, distribution and shape of particles affect the flow and durability of concrete.

NIST will use the models as the basis for computer simulations in its Immersive Visualization Laboratory -- a large, dark room where computer simulations are projected onto garage door-sized screens.

They show what happens when millions of particles of sand, cement or any of concrete's ingredients are mixed and poured.In that lab, micron-sized particles of sand, created during a concrete research project in 2003, look like balls the size of weather balloons on screen.

Polymer fibers, millimeters long in real life, look like huge necklaces of pearls.

With a visor linked to the computer, the images become three dimensional and can be set in motion and manipulated, making viewers feel as if they have stepped onto a futuristic "holodeck."

The detail will be much greater with the help of the Columbia supercomputer.Meanwhile, concrete experts say this project is long overdue.

"There's a lot, lot, lot we have to learn," said Surendra Shah, a civil and environmental engineer at Northwestern University in Illinois.

"We should have been doing this 20 years ago, but people haven't realized the importance of the research.

"Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

Microsoft Calls for Computer Revolution

(www.robots.net)

mmm.bbb sends us a link to an Economist article on a report issued on the future of science over the next 14 years. Among other things it claims that computer science is bringing about a scientific revolution.

Computers, the report says, need to be integrated into every field science and become more than just tools. Intelligent computers "will soon play a role in formulating scientific hypotheses and designing and running experiments to test them." More news on the report can be found in a Techworld.com article.

The report itself, titled Towards 2020 Science (PDF format) was created by a panel of scientists brought together by Microsoft Research Cambridge, so perhaps it's no suprise it calls for scientist everywhere to buy more computers.

In addition to the report, a roadmap of challenges (PDF format) that computer science must meet by 2020 was also created. For a quick summary of the 82 page report's 7 main findings, read on.
The 82 page report provides a one page summary of their seven greatest findings but even the summary reads like a it was produced by one of those Dilbert memo generation scripts.

1. The transition of computers from a tool that supports scientist to a machine that 'does' science represents a revolution in science.

2. Computing has become as important to biology as math is to physics.

3. Computer science "concepts and tools" forms a "golden triangle" with "math and statistics"
and "computing platforms and applications" that will accelerate key breakthroughs in science.

4. It is "vitally important" to integrate conceptual tools from computer science into all sciences.

5. Computers will lead to a "transformation of the scienctific communication paradigm"

6. Better understanding of biological systems will result in new developments in computer science.

7. All scientists should be computer literate so more money should be spent on computers and computer training.

IBM researchers build carbon molecule computer

(www.pcpro.co.uk)

A group of US researchers at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center claim to have built the first computer circuit on a molecule.

Using 12 field effect transistors stretched along a single carbon molecule in the form of a nanotube, the scientists managed to run the logic circuit at some 52MHz.

That will hardly set the world alight with today's Gigahertz PCs. However, the researchers were not interested in building processors at this point, rather they wanted to test the switching speed of their design.

They were impressed with the results. The 52MHz achieved is some 100,000 faster than any previous recorded speeds for carbon nanotube circuits.

Making advances in nanotube technology is seen as the pathway to keeping up with Moore's Law: that the complexity of computer processors will double every 18 months.

Chip makers such as Intel and AMD have taken the manufacture of circuits down to 90nm and smaller in the bid to up the transistor density and complexity of chips in tune with this 'law', but they will at some point reach the limits of the material they are working with: silicon.

When working at such a small scale, electrons can jump from one track or path to another, and resistance is increased.

The researchers said that nanotube circuits offer negligible resistance, and current can flow extremely quickly, while the likelihood of electrons jumping from 'tube' to 'tube' is very low.

DNS servers do hackers' dirty work

(www.news.com.com)

In a twist on distributed denial-of-service attacks, cybercriminals are using DNS servers--the phonebooks of the Internet--to amplify their assaults and disrupt online business.

Earlier this year, VeriSign experienced attacks on its systems that were larger than anything it had ever seen before, it said last week. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which helps companies do business on the Web, discovered that the assaults weren't coming from commandeered "bot" computers, as is common. Instead, its machines were under attack by DNS (domain name system) servers.

"DNS is now a major vector for DDOS," Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher said, referring to distributed denial-of-service attacks. "The bar has been lowered. People with fewer resources can now launch potentially crippling attacks."

Just as in any DDOS attack, the target system--which could be a victim's Web server, name server or mail server--is inundated with a multitude of data coming from multiple systems on the Internet. The goal is to make the target unreachable online by flooding the data connection or by crashing it as it tries to handle the incoming data.

Such attacks were once the tool of bored teenagers who got a kick out of seeing Web sites crumble. But these days, DDOS attacks are sometimes used by criminals looking to extort money from online businesses--especially those on the margins, such as gambling sites and the adult-entertainment industry.

"We're past the era where denial of service simply happens because kids are looking for a good time," Kaminsky said.

Unlike a commandeered PC, a DNS server is a valid and good citizen of the Internet. The systems play a critical role in connecting Web users, mapping text-based domain names such as www.cnet.com to the numerical IP addresses used by computers.

In this new kind of attack, an assailant would typically use a botnet to send a large number of queries to open DNS servers. These queries will be "spoofed" to look like they come from the target of the flooding, and the DNS server will reply to that network address.

Using DNS servers to do their dirty work offers key benefits to attackers.

It hides their systems, making it harder for the victim to find the original source of the attack.

But more important, reflecting an attack through a DNS server also allows the assault to be amplified, delivering a larger amount of malicious traffic to the target.

Amplified response

A single DNS query could trigger a response that is as much as 73 times larger than the request, according to a recent paper by Randal Vaughn, a professor of information systems at Baylor University, and Gadi Evron, the manager of the Computer Emergency Response Team at Israel's ministry of finance.

"Relatively small DNS requests can be employed to cause significantly larger replies from a name server to the spoofed IP address," Vaughn and Evron wrote.

What happens during a DNS reflector and amplification attack could be compared with trying to jam up somebody's mailbox, said Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS and chief scientist at secure DNS provider Nominum. A basic way to do that would be to write and mail a lot of letters. However, those letters would be traceable, and you would also have to spend a lot of time writing.

"A better way to do it would be to send in response-request cards--the kind you find in magazines--circle everything and fill in the target's address," Mockapetris said. "That would make more junk show up in the mailbox and eliminate the obvious link to you." And that's what is happening with this type of DDOS attack, he said.

It is generally possible to stop the more-common bot-delivered attack by blocking traffic from the attacking machines, which are identifiable. But blocking queries from DNS servers brings problems in its wake. A DNS server has a valid role to play in the workings of the Internet. Blocking traffic to a DNS server could also mean blocking legitimate users from sending e-mail or visiting a Web site.

"That's why this is a nasty attack," said Rob Fleischman, the chief technology officer at Simplicita, a Denver-based security start-up. "The DNS system is an area that is going to be under more attack. It is going to have closer scrutiny and more security."

At the heart of the problem are so-called recursive name servers, which are DNS servers that allow queries from anyone on the Net. There are about 7.5 million DNS servers, and estimates on how many are left wide open to queries range from 600,000 to 5.6 million, according to Vaughn and Evron's report.

"People who are running these open servers need to clean up their act. They are--witting or unwitting, lazy or just don't care--participants in these attacks," Mockapetris said. "They are the Typhoid Marys of the Internet."

To protect their systems, organizations with DNS servers can disable the recursive feature that lets anyone look up addresses. Alternatively, they can manage the server settings so that the recursive feature is available only to insiders. Internet service providers, as well as businesses and individuals, are among those who run DNS servers.

Targets of DDOS attacks could protect themselves using technologies to ward of DDOS attacks, which are sold by vendors including Prolexic Technologies.

In the early days of the Internet, recursive DNS servers served mobile users and cached people's requests for Web site addresses, making the Net scale much better, Mockapetris said. An example of the latter was the day Jerry Garcia died in 1995, he said.

"Everybody was going off to find every Grateful Dead Web site everywhere in the world," he said. "The first person to do that would cache it in the DNS server of their access provider, so the next person would not have to go out to Katmandu to look it up."

But fast forward 10 years, and recursive servers should be something of the past, Mockapetris said. "Now people are looking for ways to attack the network, and the open recursive servers can be used as unwitting cat's paws in a denial-of-service attack," he said.

"Once upon a time, everybody just trusted everybody, and you would say, 'Fine, use my server.' Now you have to be more careful about that."

Kaminsky agreed. "If you are a DNS administrator, you shouldn't be providing recursive services to the Internet anymore. It is unfortunately no longer a responsible thing to do," he said.

Increasingly, DNS is going to be used in attacks, experts said, and their administrators can no longer afford to be lazy.

"There are multiple of these kinds of storms that are rising, and service providers and enterprises need to figure out how to make sure that their sea walls, dams and dikes and levees are high enough to withstand them," Mockapetris said.

Computer Solutions achieve Microsoft Gold certification

(www.businesstimes.com.mt)

Computer Solutions, a leading provider in ICT solutions, is proud to announce that it has just been awarded the prestigious Gold Partnership Status by Microsoft.

The Gold Partner benefits will enhance and evolve the service Computer Solutions offers to its customers.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partners are the elite Microsoft Partners who possess the knowledge, skills, experience and commitment to help implement technology solutions that match the customers’ business needs.

Computer Solutions passed the highest level of requirements from Microsoft and has demonstrated the most robust, efficient and scalable implementations of Microsoft technologies.

It has achieved this through its high levels of completed customer reference projects, employee certification and Microsoft Competencies, all of which were independently verified by Microsoft.

The certification recognises a Microsoft Competency in Networking Infrastructure Solutions.

The Gold Partner Status demonstrates Computer Solutions’ commitment to the development of Microsoft technologies.

Furthermore, it is now in a better position to provide its customers with a superior and more powerful level of technical support through its larger skill and knowledge base.

Through its enhanced partnership and in line with its corporate strategy, Computer Solutions can ensure that every customer will receive excellent value from their IT investment.

For further information call Computer Solutions on 2552 2000 or email info@computersolutions.com.mt

The scientific method: Computing the future

(www.economist.com)


The practice of science may be undergoing yet another revolution


WHAT makes a scientific revolution? Thomas Kuhn famously described it as a “paradigm shift”—the change that takes place when one idea is overtaken by another, usually through the replacement over time of the generation of scientists who adhered to an old idea with another that cleaves to a new one.

These revolutions can be triggered by technological breakthroughs, such as the construction of the first telescope (which overthrew the Aristotelian idea that heavenly bodies are perfect and unchanging) and by conceptual breakthroughs such as the invention of calculus (which allowed the laws of motion to be formulated).

This week, a group of computer scientists claimed that developments in their subject will trigger a scientific revolution of similar proportions in the next 15 years.

That claim is not being made lightly. Some 34 of the world's leading biologists, physicists, chemists, Earth scientists and computer scientists, led by Stephen Emmott, of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Britain, have spent the past eight months trying to understand how future developments in computing science might influence science as a whole.

They have concluded, in a report called “Towards 2020 Science”, that computing no longer merely helps scientists with their work. Instead, its concepts, tools and theorems have become integrated into the fabric of science itself. Indeed, computer science produces “an orderly, formal framework and exploratory apparatus for other sciences,” according to George Djorgovski, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.

There is no doubt that computing has become increasingly important to science over the years.

The volume of data produced doubles every year, according to Alexander Szalay, another astrophysicist, who works at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Particle-physics experiments are particularly notorious in this respect. The next big physics experiment will be the Large Hadron Collider currently being built at CERN, a particle-physics laboratory in Geneva. It is expected to produce 800m collisions a second when it starts operations next year.

This will result in a data flow of 1 gigabyte per second, enough to fill a DVD every five seconds.

All this information must be transmitted from CERN to laboratories around the world for analysis. The computer science being put in place to deal with this and similar phenomena forms the technological aspect of the predicted scientific revolution.

Such solutions, however, are merely an extension of the existing paradigm of collecting and ordering data by whatever technological means are available, but leaving the value-added stuff of interpretation to the human brain. What really interested Dr Emmott's team was whether computers could participate meaningfully in this process, too. That truly would be a paradigm shift in scientific method.

And computer science does, indeed, seem to be developing a role not only in handling data, but also in analysing and interpreting them. For example, devices such as “data cubes” organise information as a collection of independent variables (such as the charges and energies of particles involved in collisions) and their dependent measurements (where and when the collisions took place).

This saves physicists a lot of work in deciphering the links between, say, the time elapsed since the initial collision and the types of particle existing at that moment. Meanwhile, in meteorology and epidemiology, computer science is being used to develop models of climate change and the spread of diseases including bird flu, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and malaria.

Roboboffin

Stephen Muggleton, the head of computational bio-informatics at Imperial College, London, has, meanwhile, taken the involvement of computers with data handling one step further. He argues they will soon play a role in formulating scientific hypotheses and designing and running experiments to test them.

The data deluge is such that human beings can no longer be expected to spot patterns in the data. Nor can they grasp the size and complexity of one database and see how it relates to another.

Computers—he dubs them “robot scientists”—can help by learning how to do the job. A couple of years ago, for example, a team led by Ross King of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, demonstrated that a learning machine performed better than humans at selecting experiments that would discriminate between hypotheses about the genetics of yeast.
And it is in biology that computing science is likely to have its greatest impact.

The report argues that cells and complex cellular systems can be seen as information-processing systems, so there is a natural fit between them and computational logic circuits.

That could lead to new developments in biology, biotechnology and medicine, as well as in computer science.

It is, perhaps, hardly unexpected that if 34 scientists with an interest in computing are asked to comment on the importance of computer science, they will find that it is, indeed, “The Future”. Even so, the team's case is a respectable one.

Indeed, this week's issue of Nature has given it “earthquake coverage”—devoting several pages to news and comment about the report. And Microsoft Research Cambridge also announced that it will provide €2.5m ($3m) to support research that addresses policy areas outlined by the report, which include a reform of the education system and the creation of new kinds of research institutes.

This is, admittedly, a small sum. If Microsoft wants the world to take its claims—and those of the scientists it commissioned to think about such things—seriously, then it should put more money where its mouth is. Otherwise the old guard might hang around rather longer than expected.