Bell Labs scientists find potential improvements to optical lenses... Researchers at Bell Labs may have discovered a new way to design lenses for optical networks and thereby boost traffic speeds. The skeleton of the brittlestar, an invertebrate starfish, contains calcite crystals that both provide structural support and act as optical receptors for the starfish.

Sony unleashes robotic puppies... This is the latest evolution of Sony's original Aibo robo-dog, which created a sensation and sold out in 20 minutes in Tokyo when it first went on sale for $2,500 in 1999. "The idea is to expand the appeal to a broader demographic," said Stuart Wallock, director of marketing and business planning at Sony's Entertainment Robot America unit. (MSN Tech & Gadgets)

As Big PC Brother Watches, Users Encounter Frustration Although the use of cookies is generally benign, the fact that they can be used for detailed tracking of Web users and their activities has upset many consumers. But when it comes to protecting privacy online, most consumers still do not even know where to start. (NY Times)

Consumer Privacy—A Free Choice Approach... Privacy is one of the most contentious issues that the 107th Congress and state legislatures are considering. The pressure is mounting for legislators to act, but hasty reactions to polls and privacy doomsayers could lead policymakers down the wrong path. Since privacy demands fluctuate widely among individuals and different situations, it is essential that privacy remains a matter of individual choice. (Pacific Research Institute)

Study: Who Needs Privacy Laws?... The PRI study lauds privacy-protecting technologies -- call it the "self help" approach -- such as Anonymizer.com, SafeWeb, Pretty Good Privacy and Zero Knowledge's Freedom software, saying those are better at protecting privacy than laws and don't suffer from the same negative side effects. (Wired)

Scripting News:Is Education The Next Revolution- - - "... the role of computers in education is simple. Make the tools available to students, teachers, administrators and families. Teach them how to use the tools (there's something educators should be able to do!) and kick back and just let them use them. See what skills each of the tools develops and provide that information to the people who create the software." (Dave Winer)

Distance Learning Yet to Hit Home... The University of Phoenix Online, the nation's largest private university serving working professionals, tops the list of survivors. Other thriving ventures include DeVry and Renaissance Learning, which both address real needs among the vocational and K-12 markets. (Wired)

A Tale of Two Classrooms... Scoble : Yeah, I gotta admit, "real" classrooms do teach, but I've found that my best learning was done either outside of the classroom, or in an innovative way inside the classroom (For instance, I'll never forget the day -- or the lessons from -- a couple of Holocaust victims visited my classroom in high school).

SatireWire | THE TOUGHEST DECISION: Assisted Computing Facilities... It is often the most difficult and painful decision you will face: to accept that a co-worker or a loved one — a parent, a spouse, perhaps a sibling — is technologically impaired and should no longer be allowed to live independently, or come near a computer or electronic device without direct supervision. The time has come to place that loved one into the care of an Assisted Computing Facility. But you have questions. So many questions. We at Silicon Pines want to help. ROTFLOL

The Color Wheel... The Color Wheel shows how colors are related. Red, yellow and blue are primary colors. Orange, green and purple are secondary colors made by combining two primary colors. All colors are made from some combination of white, black and primary colors. Other terms explained and demonstrated: related colors; complementary colors; neutral colors.

Big Brother Logs On... Police departments, government agencies, banks, merchants, amusement parks, sports arenas, nanny-watching homeowners, swimming-pool operators, and employers are deploying cameras, pattern recognition algorithms, databases of information, and biometric tools that when taken as a whole can be combined into automated surveillance networks able to track just about anyone, just about anywhere.

CHIPS AND CHEATING... Teachers are looking out for tech-assisted academic dishonesty, even using software to detect plagiarism.

Class keeps cyber-sleuths current... People in computer forensics can earn $200 to $500 an hour, or up to $200,000 a year for hard-working full-timers

Daypop is a current events search engine. Daypop crawls the living web at least once a day to bring you the latest information relevant to your searches.

Famous Name Changes... On this site you will find out who the stars were before they were stars, and a few not so well known surprises too.

InternetWeek >The Real Lesson Of Code Red: Insecurity Is A Way of Life Bruce Schneier: The Internet moves too fast for static defenses. You can't install every possible patch, and you don't know which ones will be important. Likewise, viruses and worms appear all the time, and you don't know ahead of time which ones to worry about. If we're going to make Internet security work, we need to think differently. I've put my effort into detection and response, instead of protection, because detection and response are resilient. I've put my effort into people instead of software because people are resilient.

Lawyer Lessig raps new copyright laws - Tech News - CNET.com The desire of entrenched commercial interests to control information is crushing the spirit of innovation that allowed the Internet to blossom, Stanford Law School professor and technology pundit Lawrence Lessig said Wednesday.

StarDate Online... Cassiopeia, the queen, stands well up in the northeast a couple of hours after sunset tonight. It looks like a bright letter "W," with the tips pointing upward.

Location, Location, Location... Scientists review geographic factors to learn why wealth concentrates predominantly in temperate zones. In 1990, 35 percent of the world's population lived on 1 percent of the ice-free land according to data from SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center operated by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University.

Don't Lose Contact... KEEP IN TOUCH: Ever Changed Your E-mail Address? Don’t Lose Touch! Veripost, an e-mail change of address service, makes it easier for you to stay connected with family, friends and e-mail newsletters after an E-address change. You control who gets your address, for free

SpamCon Foundation... Unsolicited email ("spam") forces unwanted and objectionable materials into our mailboxes, impairs our ability to communicate freely, and costs Internet users billions of dollars annually. The SpamCon Foundation protects email as a viable communication and commerce medium by supporting measures to reduce the amount of unsolicited email that crosses private networks, while ensuring that valid email reaches its destination.

Rules fight over FBI cyber-spying... Government officials might agree among themselves that snooping technology should meet one legal standard rather than another, but given the inroads into personal privacy likely to result from eased controls, a public debate seems in order.

Human Spare Tires... Spare tires, according to the U.S. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (CDC), are responsible for more than 300,000 premature deaths each year in the United States. Reducing the prevalence of these dangerous objects is not, as researchers have found, an easy task. Central obesity (referred to, in slang, as a human spare tire) refers to the buildup of adipose storage inside and surrounding the abdominal region of the body. This excess fat, in many cases, changes body shape and increases risks for associated chronic diseases.

Anything you code can and will be used against you ... It looks like the now-infamous case of until recently jailed Russian software developer Dmitry Sklyarov was just the beginning of a broader trend to cast IT professionals in the role of info cop. Software developers like Sklyarov and even help desk and system administration workers, it appears, are being deputized to enforce ill-conceived laws aimed at perceived Web-borne threats to society.

The Undefended Airwaves... For more than a decade, cryptographers have possessed strong encryption techniques that could virtually guarantee that data falling into the wrong hands—through a stolen laptop, say, or an intercepted radio signal—would be impossible to decode. Unfortunately, these techniques have not made it from the lab into the mainstream.

J. Edgar's Finest At Their Worst... One family’s ordeal at the hands of the FBI, which fingered the wrong man in its quest to unmask a spy, upending the lives of the CIA officer and his three children for the next two years. The accusations leveled in August 1999 prompted the CIA to suspend the officer for 21 months. He remained under surveillance, and his daughter was denied a promotion. His ex-wife, two sons and two sisters were interrogated at work and at home by FBI agents who cast doubt on the man they thought they knew. Friends and colleagues whispered about the traitor in their midst.

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.