ANTI-TERRORISM
A draft blueprint on computer security issued by the White House last week makes 57 recommendations aimed at preventing terrorists from disabling the Net. Critics, including Microsoft, say it lacks teeth, as it includes no timetables, mandates, incentives or proposed laws to assure compliance.
CD RECORDING
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It just got easier to copy CDs, much to the music industry鈥檚 chagrin. Disc-storage company Verbatim has developed an ultrafast-acting metallic dye for recordable discs. This reacts so quickly to infrared laser light it allows 80 minutes of music to be recorded on a blank CD in less than two minutes.
COMMUNICATIONS
杏吧原创s in the Antarctic have to rely on antique Internet connections slower than a dial-up modem. So engineers at the US National Science Foundation are studying the feasibility of running a fibre-optic cable across 1400 kilometres of ice. The megafibre will lead to an uplink that uses far faster geostationary communications satellites.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The US could switch off seven electricity power stations if home appliances such as TVs and videos didn鈥檛 run on standby, says Cornell University energy expert Mark Pierce. 鈥淥ff doesn鈥檛 mean off any more,鈥� he laments.
AERO ENGINES
Jumbos normally fly on four engines, but last week a Boeing 747 was kept aloft for two hours by a single General Electric engine. The most powerful commercial jet engine ever built, it will eventually power the long-range version of the twin-engined Boeing 777.
COMPUTER VIRUSES
The latest dastardly virus circulating on the Net sets up a peer-to-peer network, like Napster, so that infected computers can launch a massed attack sometime in the future. Thousands of Internet servers have already been infected by the Slapper worm. But for the moment, it is still said to be spreading only slowly.