Hacker Gary McKinnon will receive no pity, insists US

American officials have made clear that they regard Mr McKinnon, 43, an unemployed computer programmer who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, as a serious offender whose case must be pursued rigorously in the US courts.

Following a recent explosion of cyber assaults on US military, intelligence and government networks, the authorities say they are more determined than ever to prosecute national security hackers vigorously.

A senior military officer at the Pentagon told The Sunday Telegraph: “US policy is to fight these attacks as strongly as possible. As a result of Mr McKinnon’s actions, we suffered serious damage and lost a lot of time and money.

“This was not some harmless incident. He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-American messages. All the evidence was that someone was staging a very serious attack on US systems.”

A US intelligence official echoed those comments. “He really caused us a lot of trouble,” he said last week.

Mr McKinnon’s lawyers contend that he encountered minimal security as hacked into the computers in 2001 and 2002 in search of evidence to prove his belief in UFOs and alien life, making little effort to hide his actions.

His case has become a cause célèbre in Britain, especially since he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that leaves him particularly vulnerable to changes in his environment.

It has also become a lightning rod for frustrations about the UK-US extradition treaty, which British critics claim is one-sided – making it easier for the US to extradite suspects from Britain than it is for UK authorities to secure the return of accused criminals from America.

via Hacker Gary McKinnon will receive no pity, insists US – Telegraph.

Based on the fact that secret government computers are not even connected to the Internet, (they have their own separate network, I’ve read) my pet theory is that the whole thing is a ploy of some kind. Perhaps McKinnon is playing a part:  A poster boy to discourage hackers and convince people that NASA has UFOs.

Here is an angle I never considered until now…

What if I’m right about the fact that there is a secret government disinformation project world wide regarding UFOs, but what if… the project goal is not to make people think that military craft are alien UFOs  (as I’ve always assumed), but what if aliens ARE real and the disinformation is to make people like me THINK that the aliens are just secret US craft?

All of the inside tidbits I’ve learned over the years about fastwalkers, underground bases, supposed Nazi UFOs could point to a reality that differs from mine: real aliens on earth.  Gary could be part of the cover up, yes, but perhaps the real goal is to keep people from panicking. An event happens and they swing into action to sow the seeds of doubt. Fun job. I know, the Men in Black movies have already been made … but this would explain real events such as the flares shot up after the massive Phoenix triangle sighting, the absurd Roswell balloon debris after the crash of a disk, perhaps some crop circles, abductions, and most recently the hurling of something huge at Jupiter timed with the Apollo landings.

Am I actually starting to believe in aliens, that we’ve already made contact?  Not yet. But what if I’ve been fooled after all? Perhaps the Disclosure Project is the real deal and not disinformation.

Mantle Hydrocarbons: Can they form in the deep Earth?

The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth’s crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced on-line issue of Nature Geoscience.

Methane (CH4) is the main constituent of natural gas, while ethane (C2H6) is used as a petrochemical feedstock. Both of these hydrocarbons, and others associated with fuel, are called saturated hydrocarbons because they have simple, single bonds and are saturated with hydrogen. Using a diamond anvil cell and a laser heat source, the scientists first subjected methane to pressures exceeding 20 thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level and temperatures ranging from 1,300 F° to over 2,240 F°. These conditions mimic those found 40 to 95 miles deep inside the Earth. The methane reacted and formed ethane, propane, butane, molecular hydrogen, and graphite. The scientists then subjected ethane to the same conditions and it produced methane. The transformations suggest heavier hydrocarbons could exist deep down. The reversibility implies that the synthesis of saturated hydrocarbons is thermodynamically controlled and does not require organic matter.

… This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Agency through the Carnegie/DOE Alliance Center, the National Science Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Carnegie Institution.

via Mantle Hydrocarbons: Can they form in the deep Earth?.

See abiogenic petroleum.

Final frontier: Crowd sees spaceship launcher fly

Hundreds of earthlings turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead.

The twin-fuselage craft named WhiteKnightTwo, looking like two planes connected at the wing tips, circled the runway several times before touching down at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Air Venture annual gathering.

It was the first glimpse the public had of the plane, which was made by Virgin Galactic as part of its effort to jump-start commercial space travel. Its designers, engineer Burt Rutan and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, watched and smiled from the edge of the tarmac.

It was “majestic,” said 13-year-old Alura Law of Reddick, Fla.

Her mother, 45-year-old Kim Law, is blind but aimed her camera at the sound of the WhiteKnightTwo. She said it offers hope that scientific experiments in weightlessness might someday restore her sight.

“I’m telling you, (I’m) real hopeful. Inspired,” she said.

Virgin Galactic’s plan calls for WhiteKnightTwo to lift SpaceShipTwo, a pressurized spacecraft, into the atmosphere from a base in New Mexico. When they reach 50,000 feet, the spaceship would detach and blast into space at four times the speed of sound.

The six passengers would experience about five minutes of weightlessness and get a glimpse of Earth. The spaceship would glide back to Earth much like the space shuttle. Take-off to landing is expected to take about 2 1/2 hours.

Virgin Galactic doesn’t have a launch date yet, but has taken 300 reservations at $200,000 each and is holding $40 million in deposits. Customers include scientist Stephen Hawking and “Superman Returns” director Bryan Singer, according to Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn.

“Superman Returns” even features a sequence involving two aircraft much like WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. In the movie, Lois Lane boards a launcher jet with a space shuttle-like vehicle attached. The jet lifts the shuttle into the atmosphere, but the plane ends up plunging to Earth and Superman must race to save it.

Virgin Galactic officials say safety will be their “guiding star.”

via Final frontier: Crowd sees spaceship launcher fly – Yahoo! News.

Make a little extra money: Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing.

With the economy reeling and California’s unemployment rate moving toward 12 percent, many people are looking at all possible options for earning an extra buck or two.

Amazon Mechanical Turk – an online site based on the evolving concept of “crowdsourcing” – is emerging as a way Web site visitors can make a few dollars, without the hassle of launching a formal search for a job or freelance work.

“I’m saving up for some Christmas presents for my wife,” said Rob Allshouse, of Sacramento, a casual user of the Web site run by Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s foray into computer technology.

Crowdsourcing was coined in 2006 by Wired magazine to mean taking work that would traditionally be performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a large group of people on the Internet as an open invitation for work.

Via Mechanical Turk, Amazon has established a marketplace where firms – known online as requesters – can post tasks that they want crowdsourced. Looking for HITs – human intelligence tasks – is a vast pool of about 200,000 people – called turkers – ready and willing to do small tasks for small amounts of money – say 10 cents apiece. Amazon collects a percentage from each transaction.

The name Mechanical Turk refers to a chess-playing machine in the 18th century that turned out to be a trick using a hidden human.

A typical task posted by a requester at Mechanical Turk is something that’s hard for computers to do, but easy for humans to complete in a few minutes. Often these are image-related tasks according to Chris Van Pelt of San Francisco-based Dolores Labs – a requester who uses Mechanical Turk extensively.

“The classic example would be inappropriate image detection,” Van Pelt said. Current automatic scanning and computing technology can’t accurately distinguish between – for example – the flesh of a baby from pornographic skin-tones.

You still need people to look at and OK the images that go up on Web sites, Van Pelt said.

Other sites using crowdsourcing have put out calls for information and photos about events, or answers to vexing questions. Mechanical Turk is the best known among those that pay for online tasks.

So just how much can you make as a turker?

Joel Ross, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, studies Mechanical Turk and found that most people use the site casually – not as a full-time job.

Earnings, on average, are about $2 to $5 a week. Some people do earn $50 to $100 or more. A typical hourly wage can range from $1 to about $3.

Van Pelt says that when he creates tasks he shoots for about $3 per hour but can tweak the rate if clients need results faster.

Ross’ studies have shown something else too: People aren’t there just for the money.

“A lot of workers don’t necessarily view it as work,” Ross said. “It’s a hobby and activity that’s almost like a game, yet you make money on the side.” The entertainment of the experience may be part of what makes people willing to work for less. …

- via SacBee

Living things glow with visible light

Japanese scientist have shown how the human body glows with visible light. The quantity of light emitted is 1000 times too dim for our eyes to see, but the researchers imaged the glow with special cameras. The light is tied to metabolism, suggesting that measuring it could have medical applications, says Tohoku Institute of Technology scientist Masaki Kobayashi. Meanwhile, New Age aura-seers everywhere scream with “vindication.” From LiveScience:

In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)

To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

via Living things glow with visible light – Boing Boing.

Ohio witness photographs triangle UFO

A triangle-shaped craft was spotted over Ohio and photographed by a witness there, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The Ohio witness was quick to grab a camera when a silent object was seen crossing the sky.

The “object appears to be a triangle with a light at each point. The brightest light in the picture was at the rear of the craft.”

The very next night, this witness and his wife saw “orange or red glowing orbs in the sky” that resembled the Phoenix Lights.

… the object appears to be a triangle with a light at each point. the brightest light in the picture was at the rear of the craft.  in a somewhat related incident  the next night my wife and myself saw to the east again, around 2200hrs what can only be described as an orange or red glowing orbs in the sky.

these lights resembled the phoenix lights. this incident lasted about 15min which i was also able to capture with a hd camera. a total of about six light were captured but only once were to captured at one time about 20deg east both at the same altitude with maybe 1/4 mile between them. the lights moved south to north the appeared to vanish then another would appear in the same place as the first. again, i was able to capture the event on high def video..

via Ohio witness photographs triangle UFO.

Vitamin D instead of a flu shot?

Offbeat and quirky, World Games make their mark in Taiwan

The World Games, an Olympics-sanctioned event, showcases 31 sports that have regional appeal but globally fly under the radar.

Televised in 20 countries, viewers saw mermaid-like swimmers glide down lanes without surfacing in the hunt for finswimming medals. They also saw sword duels and female sumo wrestlers. Korfball and lifesaving also got their 15 minutes of fame.

And when female Brazilian athletes went topless on a Kaohsiung beach, police simply asked them to wear more clothes.

As of Friday, Russia led 97 other countries with 33 World Games medals including 15 golds.

via Offbeat and quirky, World Games make their mark in Taiwan | Oddly Enough | Reuters.

The events on the official World Games Site include Aikido and something called “Orienteering”.

Game utilizes human intuition to help computers solve complex problems

A new computer game prototype combines work and play to help solve a fundamental problem underlying many computer hardware design tasks.

The online logic puzzle is called FunSAT, and it could help integrated circuit designers select and arrange transistors and their connections on silicon microchips, among other applications.

Designing chip architecture for the best performance and smallest size is an exceedingly difficult task that’s outsourced to computers these days. But computers simply flip through possible arrangements in their search. They lack the human capacities for intuition and visual pattern recognition that could yield a better or even optimal design. That’s where FunSAT comes in.

Developed by University of Michigan computer science researchers Valeria Bertacco and Andrew DeOrio, FunSAT is designed to harness humans’ abilities to strategize, visualize and understand complex systems.

“Computer games can be more than a fun diversion,” said Bertacco, an associate professor in computer science and engineering. “Humans are good at playing games and they enjoy dedicating time to it. We hope that we can use their strengths to improve chip designs, databases and even robotics.”

…A single-player prototype exists at http://funsat.eecs.umich.edu, implemented in Java by U-M undergraduate Erica Christensen. Bertacco and DeOrio are working on growing it to a multi-player game, which would allow more complicated problems to be solved.

via Game utilizes human intuition to help computers solve complex problems.

Is Pluto a planet after all?

HOW many planets are in the solar system? The official answer is eight – unless you happen to live in Illinois. Earlier this year, defiant Illinois state governors declared that Pluto had been unfairly demoted by the International Astronomical Union, the authority that sets the rules on all matters planetary.

Three years ago, the IAU decided to draw up the first scientific definition of the term planet. After days of stormy arguments at its general assembly in Prague, the delegates voted for a definition that excluded Pluto, downgrading it to the new category of dwarf planet.

The decision caused outrage among many members of the public who had grown up with nine planets, and among some astronomers who pointed out that only 4 per cent of the IAU’s 10,000 members took part in the vote. The governors of Illinois saw the decision as a snub to Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, who was born in the state.

Next week the IAU’s general assembly will convene for the first time since Pluto was axed from the list of planets. Surprisingly, IAU chief Karel van der Hucht does not expect anyone to challenge the ruling made in Prague, but Pluto fans can take heart: resistance remains strong.

If Pluto is reinstated, it will probably be thanks to discovery rather than debate. Mark Sykes of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, believes that revelations within and beyond our solar system over the coming years will make the IAU’s controversial definition of a planet untenable (see diagram). “We are in the midst of a conceptual revolution,” he says. “We are shaking off the last vestiges of the mythological view of planets as special objects in the sky – and the idea that there has to be a small number of them because they’re special.”

via Is Pluto a planet after all? – space – 27 July 2009 – New Scientist.