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Issue no. 3, 2007 Published: Jan 26, 2007
EC's open-source study wins broad support
'Uncrackable' secure gigabit quantum-encryption scheme created
Breakthrough beams bits onto photons
Scientists create the densest chip ever
Aliens need a lot more time to find us
Microsoft in hot water over Wikipedia edits
US military unveils heat-ray gun
Researchers compete to build real Terminator

EC's open-source study wins broad support
The European Commission-sponsored report which urged organisations to consider deploying open-source software has won widespread support from key industry figures. The report, written by researchers at UNU-MERIT in the Netherlands, said the total cost of ownership of deploying open source was less than the cost of running proprietary software, in 'almost all' cases. The report spelt out many benefits of open-source software and tried to quantify its contribution to the European economy. Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer at Sun, said the report brought 'cold, hard facts' to the debate of whether open source was a feasible alternative for businesses. 'There is a lot to praise in this report, in particular the assertion that the EU seeks to eliminate discrimination against open source, which has unwittingly crept into processes in the EU,' Phipps said. Laurent Lachal, an open-source software analyst with Ovum, shared Phipps's optimistic view of the report. 'It shows that open source is now mainstream and that it's nothing to fear and something to take into account in everyday business decisions in procuring software.' For more information visit http://www.flossimpact.eu.
ZDNet UK Jan 18, 2007	back to top

'Uncrackable' secure gigabit quantum-encryption scheme created
Quantum encryption is uncrackable, but depends on communicating individual photons as encryption keys. That physical limit means individual photons take time to communicate, slowing overall data rates. Now quantum cyptography company id Quantique in Geneva has teamed with Australian cyptography company Senetas to create what the partners claim in the world's first 1- to 10-Gbit/s secure network that combines uncrackable quantum keys with classical encryption. Senetas has delivered high-speed encrypted network hardware. With the claimed added security of id Quantique's quantum cyptography using single-photon encyption keys, the hybrid systems can provide security for sensitive communications, the partners claimed. The joint effort, which took less than a year, has so far produced a 1-Gbit/s Ethernet encryptor prototype. The partners plan to expand speed to 10 Gbits/s before the end of the year. Testing has just been completed and the first customer installations are scheduled to begin by midyear.
Information Week Jan 12, 2007	back to top

Breakthrough beams bits onto photons
Scientists at the University of Rochester, US, say they have made 'an optics breakthrough' that allows them to encode all of the data comprising an image into a single photon. They can slow the image down for storage, and subsequently retrieve the data intact. The scientists said that, while the initial test image consists of only a few hundred pixels, the technique has the potential to store a tremendous amount of information. Squeezing this much information into so small a space, and retrieving it intact, opens the door to so-called 'optical buffering', or storing information as light. Optical buffering is a particularly hot field because engineers are trying to speed up computer processing and network speeds using light.
VNUnet UK Jan 24, 2007	back to top

Scientists create the densest chip ever
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles, have built a tiny memory chip that uses new technology to pack a relatively large amount of information into a square about one-2,000th of an inch on a side. Although the chip is modest in capacity - with 160,000 bits of information - the bits are crammed together so tightly that it is the densest chip ever made. The achievement points to a possible path toward continuing the exponential growth of computing power even after current silicon chip-making technology hits fundamental limits in 10 to 20 years. The density of bits on the chip - about 100 billion per square centimetre - is about 40 times that of current memory chips. Improvements to the technique could increase the density by a factor of 10, according to the researchers. A critical component of the chip is its molecular switch.
International Herald Tribune Jan 25, 2007	back to top

Aliens need a lot more time to find us
'So, where is everybody?' Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi reportedly quipped to fellow physicists in 1950, when discussing why we have not seen any signs of alien civilisations if, as many believe, our galaxy is teeming with life. Now, a maths model may have an answer to Fermi's paradox. Rasmus Bjork of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, has calculated that eight probes - travelling at a tenth of the speed of light and each capable of launching up to eight sub-probes - would take about 100,000 years to explore a region of space containing 40,000 stars. When Bjork scaled up the search to include 260,000 such systems in our galaxy's habitable zone, the probes took almost 10 billion years - three-quarters the age of the universe - to explore just 0.4 per cent of the stars. So, Bjork's answer to the Fermi paradox: aliens haven't contacted us because they haven't had the time to find us yet. He adds that the search could be optimised by visiting only those stars that harbour habitable planets, which could be identified by planet-finding missions such as NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder.
New Scientist Jan 20, 2007	back to top

Microsoft in hot water over Wikipedia edits
Microsoft has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced web encyclopaedia site. While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopaedia that anyone can tweak, it has blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft. Microsoft believes the articles were heavily written by people at IBM, which is a big supporter of the open-source standard. Microsoft said it had gotten nowhere in trying to flag the purported mistakes to Wikipedia's editors, so it sought an independent expert who could determine whether changes were necessary and enter them on Wikipedia.
CNN / AP Jan 24, 2007	back to top

US military unveils heat-ray gun
The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds. Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is said to be harmless. The beam has a reach of up to 500 metres, much further than existing non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets. It can penetrate clothes, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its path to 50C. But it penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth - enough to cause discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military. A journalist who volunteered to be shot with the beam described the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too painful to bear without diving for cover.
BBC News Jan 25, 2007	back to top

Researchers compete to build real Terminator
Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) has started a competition to build a fully autonomous robot for urban warfare. One million Singapore dollars (EUR 502,000) is up for grabs in the TechX Challenge to build a robot that can climb stairs, negotiate obstacles, use lifts and identify human targets without any human control. The competition poses unique challenges for robotics developers, since GPS signals usually used to control remote devices cannot be detected inside most buildings. Sophisticated vision interpretation systems will have to be developed with the appropriate computing power to manage them. While it is possible to program in specific floor plans that allow robots to move around buildings with ease, obstacles in the real world may be left out that cause the robot confusion. Applications must be submitted by the end of May 2007 and a shortlist will be revealed in June. A qualifying round will be held in May 2008, and the final competition is scheduled for August 2008.
VNUnet UK Jan 25, 2007	back to top