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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 22 declined, 3 accepted (25 total, 12.00% accepted)

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Space

Submission + - Primordial Black Holes

TropicalCoder writes: "Hawking first pointed out in 1971 that gravitationally collapsed objects, formed in the early Universe, could have accumulated at the center of a star like the Sun. At the dawn of the 21st century a principally new scenario of primordial structure formation was proposed in the models of hot Universe. These models predict phase transition in the inflation stage period and the domain walls formation. The wall collapse in the post-inflation epoch results in the formation of microscopic primordial black hole (PHB) clusters. The total mass of PBH amounts to 1% of the contemporary baryonic distribution.

If primordial low-mass black holes (PBH) exist in the Universe, than many stars and planetary bodies appear to be infected by them (pdf). This is also true in regard to the Sun and likely Jupiter and Saturn. These microscopic objects are comparable to the hydrogen atom in size. Perhaps there are even microscopic black holes buzzing inside the earth..

Unlike a solid body, a black hole would suffer very little friction in passing through the stellar material. So it passes practically unobstructed through the body of a star, as through a vacuum. In such a case the black hole may be in an orbit deep inside star, over billion years, until it is brought to rest at its center. Not a single primordial black hole, but more likely, a swarm of them orbit freely inside the planets. One can envision even a planet with the primordial black hole acting as the self-sufficient source of heating, which may explain excess heat radiated from Jupiter. Such a planet does not need the central sun for the maintenance of animal life on its surface. This may last eons. The singular source of energy cannot be exhausted and cannot die out. One may expect some observable signatures of this feature in the Universe. Observations of the Hawking radiation from the globular clusters can provide next observational signature of PBHs. It is also theorized that the new Large Hadron Collider might be capable of creating microscopic black holes through the collision of particles at relativistic velocities."
Space

Submission + - Space Elevator Update: Going Down (spaceelevator.com)

TropicalCoder writes: "The LiftPort Space Elevator, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has reached the end of its tether. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface at the LiftPort Station and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge between earth and space. Elevator cars would be robotic "lifters" which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now Liftport has all but run out of funds, and the Securities Division entered a Statement of Charges and Notice of Intent to Enter an Order to Cease and Desist, Impose Fines and Charge Costs against Liftport Inc. dba Liftport Group and founder Michael Laine.

Will Michael Laine go down in history as visionary, ahead of his time, or as a scam artist who raised at least $117,000 from some 85 investors and did not market a single product in four years?"

The Internet

Submission + - Communique to \. editors

TropicalCoder writes: "TO THE EDITORS

THIS IS NOT A SUBMISSION — rather — it is an attempt to communicate according to Slashdot policy as defined in the Slashdot FAQ "Where do I submit corrections or updates to previous stories?" "The best way to submit follow ups is just as if you were submitting any other news item to Slashdot: please use the web submission form (rather than email)." Text of communique follows...

Dear Editors,

On 007-03-24 18:27:58 I submitted "New Internet to be a soulless beast?" (IT,The Internet) (pending)

In this submission, the first line was a note directed only to the editors . It said:

[To the editors — REMOVE THIS LINE — and please cancel my previous submission 2007-03-16 20:15:28 The Internet is Broken! (IT,The Internet) (pending) on the same subject as my thinking and research has evolved considerably since then.]

It appears that nobody as much as glanced at my request. My new submission ended up in the Firehose with the above line included — and no action taken on my request to cancel my previous submission. Certainly the inadvertent inclusion of this line adversely affected the flow of my submission when reading it.

I beg of you to cancel the previous submission — specifically 2007-03-16 20:15:28 The Internet is Broken! (IT,The Internet) (pending), because in it I make some substantial criticisms of Stanford University without the necessary research to back me up.

After writing the submission I want canceled, I did a great deal of research and wrote the blog "The Internet is Broken!" that forms the bases of my new submission and contains many links to much new material never before vetted on Slashdot.

My submissions are follow ups to a previous Slashdot story "Researchers Scheming to Rebuild Internet From Scratch"

Please drop me a note confirming that you have indeed removed the requested line from the submission On 007-03-24 18:27:58 I submitted "New Internet to be a soulless beast?" (IT,The Internet) (pending) and that you have canceled 2007-03-16 20:15:28 The Internet is Broken! (IT,The Internet) (pending).

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

"TropicalCoder (898500)"

George W. Taylor

gtaylor AT magma DOT ca

PS: You guys are doing a great job and I am sure that the problem above only happened because you are so busy making such a great web site. gt"
The Internet

Submission + - New Internet to be a soulless beast?

TropicalCoder writes: "The Internet is Broken!

[Note to editors — REMOVE THIS LINE — and please cancel my previous submission on this 2007-03-16 20:15:28 The Internet is Broken! (IT,The Internet) (pending), as my thinking and my blog have evolved considerably since then]

So just build a new one! — but there exists a lack of wider perspective in Stanford University's "Clean-Slate Design for the Internet" white paper. They state their research program can be characterized by two research questions: "With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?" and "How should the Internet look in 15 years?"

A new internet architecture such as proposed will open vast new markets and endless business opportunities — in short — a potential gold mine for their seven industrial sponsors. The fear is that the Stanford research program will trade off attention to social and political issues for expediency in the impetus to get the new infrastructure up and running quickly.

How do we ensure that those questions don't get switched around to, "...if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a better conduit to more efficiently funnel revenues to our sponsors?" and "How should their profit margins look in 15 years?""
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet is Broken!

TropicalCoder writes: " The Internet is Broken!

So just build a new one! — but there exists a lack of wider perspective in Stanford University's "Clean-Slate Design for the Internet" initiative


Imagine that your telephone worked like the internet. 90% of all incoming calls would be people trying to sell you pills to enhance your sex life, selling pornography, giving you "hot" stock tips, or calls from Nigeria asking your help in recovering large sums of money for a share of the proceeds. Many of these scam artists calling you will identify themselves using names of people you know.

Your answering machine would soon become infected by a virus, and report to some criminals in Russia who control vast networks of answering machines. It would begin sending recorded messages spamming everybody you know during the night while you sleep.

When you pick up the phone and dial your bank, without realizing it instead you will be connected to an imposter who sounds just like your bank manager, asking you to confirm your account and password details. The next day, you would discover all the money withdrawn from your account.

There may be times when it is impossible to dial out from you company's lines because of endless incoming calls that just hang up when you answer, for days on end. You will then receive a threatening letter in the mail saying that if you ever hope to able to receive calls from clients again you must send money to some offshore account. You will quickly decide to give in and pay the extortion rather than be forced out of business.

Sexual predators will call your children for a "friendly little chat" if you are not constantly watching over their shoulders when they are near the phone.

There will be times when your telephone conversations will be frequently interrupted and times when the line goes suddenly dead in the middle of a call.

Worst of all, we have increasing allowed our entire economy to become dependent on the internet in spite of the fact that it has simply become too vulnerable to be relied upon. The next time there is a serious international conflict, the internet will become a target, and our economy will be crippled in the first attacks. Even a concerted effort by a large group of terrorists could bring down the internet and force our economy to its knees.

We do have a new internet standard coming on line — called "IPv6", but this only addresses a few technical problems like the fact that we are going to run out of internet address in the next seven or eight years. It cannot begin to solve the problems alluded to above and many others too technical to discuss here. The internet is broken.

Why not rebuild the Internet from scratch? Now that we have some thirty years of experience with the old one, what a difference we could make in designing a new one, while at the same time having a much better understanding of how to build a network that will sustain continuing evolution on into the future. Stanford University has come out with exactly this bold and exciting idea (PDF) that I strongly advise everyone to read. (See previuos discussion on Slashdot.) It is just too important to be left up to academics and big business

There are a few essential things missing from the Stanford proposal. I didn't see anything to suggest that they are looking for this to be a truly international collaboration. If it isn't, that would be a very short sighted omission. I only saw the name of one women listed among 17 faculty and staff members dedicated to this research. I would strongly suggest that they could greatly benefit from a more balanced representation of the human race. Also needed are the inclusion of social scientists capable of making some value judgments and decisions about how the proposed new internet can encourage social inclusion and break down the digital divide, and political scientists who can suggest how the proposed new internet can guarantee the free flow of ideas and information, enhance democracy and promote international harmony where this does not conflict with democratic ideals.

Without input from a broader perspective that includes social values and the fact that in the end, the new internet must serve people, we will end up with a technical Frankenstein.

From the overview: "The program will collaborate with, and be funded by, approximately seven industrial partners with interests in networking services, equipment, semiconductors and applications." (such as Cisco Systems and Deutsche Telekom).

This is too important to be left up to big businesses that have no other motive beyond maximizing profits for their shareholders. Certainly I am sure that Stanford would give a fair review to research proposals even if coming from social scientists, but by failing to give a prominent place for the issues I have just mentioned right up front in the preliminary design specification, it seems certain that these questions are doomed to either being given a low priority or even to being completely overlooked. I would encourage people everywhere to discuss the issues widely and make their voices heard, and petition Stanford University to include essential social/political issues at the heart of their research program."
The Internet

Submission + - Root DNS servers under DDoS attack

TropicalCoder writes: Just a probe? By who? For what nefarious reason?

Three out of 13 root DNS servers experienced DDoS attacks that lasted 12 hours. "There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night hours here in California and into the morning," said John Crain, chief technical officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. He said the attack was continuing and so was the hunt for its origin. The attackers were traced to areas of South Korea, security experts report. The attacks targeted UltraDNS, the company that runs several servers managing traffic for domains that end with .org among other domain extensions. Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted for hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Crain said Tuesday's attack was less serious than attacks against the same 13 "root" servers in October 2002 (pdf) because technology innovations in recent years have increasingly distributed their workloads to other computers around the globe.

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