BBC News | SCI/TECH | Universe at their fingertips,,, The Cosmology Machine, has 128 UltrasparcIII processors, 112 gigabytes of RAM, and 7 terabytes of storage and can perform 10 billion calculations per second. The machine is attempting to re-create the entire evolution of the universe from the big bang to the present.

ASCI White - World's Fastest Computer... Lawrence Livermore National Laboratoy showed of the world's fastest computer yesterday. ASCI White (from IBM) can perform 12.3 trillion calculations per second. Among other things it is being used to simulate nuclear reactions , 3D modeling of atoms, and genetic research.

Scripting News: Beasts of Burden...A very intriguing post from Dave Winer, "I don't remember where I heard this idea, it could have been in NY. It goes like this. We think of ourselves as creatures of free will, the only conscious beings on this planet. We wonder if we're the only conscious beings in the universe. But there's another view of who we are -- beasts of burden for our genes. We carry them and propogate them, or let others propogate into ourselves, only to create more beasts driven to propogate their genes. In that view of the world, the genes are a higher form of life than we are. Who knows what drives them?"

Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene

Big Blue places $1 billion bet on Linux ... BY DAN GILLMOR, Mercury News -- For about an hour at the start of the IBM Technical Developer Conference Tuesday morning, a casual listener might have been forgiven for thinking he or she was at another kind of event entirely: a celebration of the GNU/Linux operating system. IBM is investing a huge amount of money and talent -- a reported $1 billion this year, including the efforts of hundreds of employees -- into Linux, as the software is more generally known. And, as was evident at the San Francisco conference, IBM executives are roaming the globe to boost a technology their company doesn't own and can't possibly control.

Easy Magic for You! ... Here are some very easy, but highly effective magic tricks for you to perform, from your Magic & Illusion Guide. Have fun!

(Wired) "...Octavo Digital Imaging and Preservation... Octavo's advanced digital imaging technology allows average readers to access 500 years of religious, artistic and scientific works that have been essentially inaccessible. Historians can examine Renaissance-age etchings in Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius or Giovanni Battista Braccelli's Bizzarie di Varie Figure, which languished in near-total obscurity until being rediscovered in modern times. The digital editions are produced on CD-ROM in PDF format. Scholars can purchase digitized renditions of 400-year-old texts worth thousands of dollars for $20 to $75. Each book is laid in a custom-built cradle and carefully lit to minimize exposure to light and heat. High-resolution digital cameras capture as much as 750MB of digital data with every scan at resolutions up to 10,600 x 12,800 pixels..."

Joe Burns, Ph.D.... And Remember: College football is going to get underway soon and already people are talking about who will win the Heisman Trophy. I can't comment on that but I can tell you that the model for the trophy was Warren Mulrey of Fordham University. Frank Eliscu sculpted the face. Trouble was, the first sculpture showed a smile on the stature's face. Eliscu changed the face to a snarl because he felt football players were fighters. The uniform Eliscu used for the sculpture was taken from a photo of Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago. Those of you who know football trivia might find that last fact rather interesting past the historical. Jay Berwanger was the first player to win the Heisman. Go figure.

Are You Trying To Find A Spammer?... Query the 200 top-level domain registries and Regional Internet Registries around the world, and returns information about Internet sites. Information available includes owner of domain name, and often owner's mailing address, email address, phone number, and fax number. AND IT'S FREE!

Netscape 6.1 - Software Reviews - CNET.com... The good: Much more stable than Netscape 6; finally launches nearly as quickly as Internet Explorer. The bad: No significant new features. The bottom line: Netscape 6.1 is the browser that 6 should have been, but nine months later. If you're running Netscape 6, upgrade pronto; otherwise, there's no reason to jump the IE ship just yet.

Signs suggest final IE 6 is near... Supposedl Microsoft has told beta tester, "Internet Explorer 6 sets a new level in terms of stability and robustness, providing a quantitative improvement from Internet Explorer 5.0," the e-mail reads. "Also, Internet Explorer 6 provides a high level of support for W3C recommendations, ranging from base technologies, such as CSS and DOM, to brand-new ones such as SMIL 2.0."

AOL launches new Netscape browser... Whether Netscape 6.1 can rally the Netscape faithful remains to be seen. While Netscape 6 encountered first delays and then scathing reviews, Microsoft assembled an overwhelming lead in the browser market.

Privacy: The ugly truth... If anything, privacy is more about the right to remain anonymous. It's the right to know we are not being watched as we walk down the street or attend a public meeting. It's the right to know that facts about our personal lives are revealed only as we decide to release them and that the facts are correct. Privacy is about massive databases, identity theft, and the access to information.

New Hope for Alzheimer’s?... Although the vaccine has shown potential in animal studies, it’s not yet clear how successful it will be in humans. NEWSWEEK’s Laura Fording asked Dale Schenk, the developer of the vaccine and senior vice president at Elan, to elaborate on the work that has been done so far.