Nerval's Lobster writes "This week, Egypt caught three men in the process of severing an undersea fiber-optic cable. But Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi told the private TV network CBC that the reason for the region's slowdowns was not the alleged saboteurs — it was damage previously caused by a ship. On March 22, cable provider Seacom reported a cut in its Mediterranean cable connecting Southern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East and Asia to Europe; it later suggested that the most likely cause of the incident was a ship anchor, and that traffic was being routed around the cut, through other providers. But repairs to the cable took longer than expected, with the Seacom CEO announcing March 23 that the physical capability to connect additional capacity to services in Europe was "neither adequate nor stable enough," and that it was competing with other providers. The repairs continued through March 27, after faults were found on the restoration system; that same day, Seacom denied that the outage could have been the work of the Egyptian divers, but said that the true cause won't be known for weeks. 'We think it is unlikely that the damage to our system was caused by sabotage,' the CEO wrote in a statement. 'The reasons for this are the specific location, distance from shore, much greater depth, the presence of a large anchored vessel on the fault site which appears to be the cause of the damage and other characteristics of the event.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A campaign started by HelloFax, Google, Expensify, and others has challenged businesses to get rid of physical paper from their office environment in 2013. According to the EPA, the average office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of paper each year, and the Paperless 2013 project wants to move all of those documents online. HelloFax CEO Joseph Walla said, 'The digital tools that are available today blow what we had even five years ago out of the water. For the first time, it's easy to sign, fax, and store documents without ever printing a piece of paper. It's finally fast and simple to complete paperwork and expense reports, to manage accounting, pay bills and invoice others. The paperless office is here – we just need to use it.' The companies involved all have a pretty obvious dog in this fight, but I can't say I'd mind getting rid of the stacks of paper HR sends me."

jg21 writes "This AJAXWorld Magazine article indicates how far AJAX has come since devs complained here two years ago that it sucked all the time. Eight experts were asked what questions we should now all be asking about where AJAX is headed next. The suggested questions are refreshingly hard-headed, including: 'How are we to fix the web?'; 'When will AJAX development finally be easy?'; and 'Do we really need JavaScript 2.0? Won't it be somewhat irrelevant by the time it becomes commonplace and thus usable?' One of the most interesting questions came from Kevin Hakman, co-founder of TIBCO's General Interface: 'On what timeline will AJAX skills become commoditized like HTML skills became?'"

Frosty Piss writes "We all know by now that you can't trust magazine covers and advertisements for skin-care products. The power of Photoshop is startling when you see it in action, and realize how much the representations of reality we see all around us are distorted and "improved" according to whatever the current standards of blemish-free beauty are. While we learn how to detect the tell-tale smudges, spots of flat color, inconsistencies in lighting, and pixelated artifacts left behind by digital manipulation, Dr. Ariel Shamir has developed a technique called Seam Carving that will make detection of Photoshopping much more difficult in the near future. As shown in this video, it's astonishing and almost disturbing how easy and fast it is to distort distances or remove objects entirely with this new tool."

Aloriel writes to point out a story in the Guardian (UK) about the opening next year of the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border. From the article: "The Creation Museum — motto: 'Prepare to Believe!' — will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake. It is dedicated to the proposition that the account of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis is completely correct... The museum is costing $25 million and all but $3 million has already been raised from private donations." A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall. According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this. The museum has a Web presence in the Answersingenesis.org site.

brian0918 writes, "A seven-member international consortium has signed a formal agreement to build the $12.8 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). From the article: 'Representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States signed the pact, sealing a decade of negotiations. The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves, although nuclear fusion remains an unproven technology.' ITER will be built 'in Cadarache, southern France, over the course of a decade, starting in 2008.'" If ITER is successful, a commercial reactor could be built by 2040. Funny, I seem to remember fusion researchers from Livermore in the 70s say that commercial power was 20 years away...

Jeff writes "The New York Times is reporting that the feds have shut down the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal' due to concerns from weapons experts that the 'papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.' One diplomat is quoted as saying, 'If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.' Indexes to older (less sensitive) documents (and some html from pdfs) are still cached at Google today. Rep. Pete Hoekstra pushed for the public release of the archive to help determine 'whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them'. Critics have said the archive was created to perpetuate misinformation about WMDs."

Gamasutra has the story (by way of the currently-down GamePolitics) that Jack Thompson could be facing a contempt charge over his antics during the Bully fiasco. From the article: "According to the report, the contempt of court request could find Thompson facing jail time, though it is more likely that 'fines, judicial admonishment or censure' would result from this most recent turn of events. The report also notes that attorneys representing the Philadelphia law firm Blank-Rome have filed a 'Petition for Order to Show Cause,' which requires Thompson to illustrate to a judge why he should not be held in contempt."

dptalia writes "In an attempt to suck up to the European Union, Microsoft has announced that it will give away software allowing multiple operating systems to run simultaneously. Microsoft says this is part of their strategy to make more software available through OSS." From the article: "Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, said he had not seen the details of Microsoft's giveaway but cautioned against assuming it was motivated only by pragmatism or a new spirit of cooperation. 'If Microsoft were doing this for altruistic reasons, it would be a first,' Greve said. 'I think they are probably trying to get more machines on the Windows platform, and they may also be trying to improve relations in Brussels.'"