The launch of Beagle 2, the "British-led expedition of Mars" will lift off in less than 10 days aboard a Soyuz rocket. Scheduled to arrive in December, the Beagle 2 will search for life on Mars.

An article carried by Wired originating from Reuters says that the Chinese now believe that the SARS virus crossed over to humans from civet cats. The cats are considered a delicacy in certain parts of China (yes, that's delicacy, as in food, not pets). They are believed to be a …

An article on SpaceToday.net says that the board investigating the Columbia disaster believes that a rescue (involving sending the shuttle Atlantis after the crew) would have been possible. This report raises questions about the decision by NASA not to pursue assistance in gaining satellite imagery of the damaged shuttle …

In honor of (and possibly in reference to) my grandfather and my brother (known collectively as the Doctors Paulsen), here is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education about the habits of our fine professors.

My old cohorts at NCSA have decided to play around with the Sony PlayStation/2 in a manner the inventors never intended: using them as a Linux cluster for scientific computing. The home page for the project gives more details.

An article on CNET reports that Microsoft is preparing to enhance their existing DRM capabilities in Windows Media Player in order to compete better against Apple's new service. The enhancements will allow restricted-rights tunes to be downloaded to music players compatible with Microsoft's DRM capabilities (in other words, the industry-leading …

This story from BBC News is absolutely amazing. The fetus grew outside of the uterus, inside of the liver. Needless to say, the child was not born vaginally. However, mother and child appear to be doing well.

Once again, a new entry from the so-wrong-it's-right category: an enterprising Macintosh programmer has created a HID (Human Interface Device) driver for using XBOX controllers on a Mac. To use it, you will need to have a USB to XBOX cable, and an XBOX controller.

My old school chum, John O'Fallon, and his company Maxum have released iAssist, their software to help you manage your Macintosh servers. It's a bit pricey at $250/user, but if you are managing Macintosh OS X servers and aren't intimately familiar with Unix, you might want to give it …

A victorious article on the EFF website announces that Colorado's Governor Owens has vetoed a state-level super-DMCA bill passed by the legislature. For those unfamiliar, the EFF has an extensive resource page on super- DMCA bills, but they are basically the RIAA and MPAA looking to extend the DMCA further …

There's a good article on O'Reilly's MacDevCenter about programming Macintosh software to take full advantage of multiple processors under Apple's OSX. It covers Cocoa and straight C programming and uses some good examples.

An article from CNET reports that some hospitals are turning to WiFi phones as an alternative to hard-line telephones so that nurses (and presumedly doctors) can carry around a telephone instead of having to run to the nearest desk when paged.

An article from CNET indicates that MIT has just opened the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies in conjunction with the US Army. According to the home page, their charter is "to pursue a long-range vision for how technology can make soldiers less vulnerable to enemy and environmental threats. The ultimate goal …

Infoworld reports that the FCC is proposing to fit an additional 255MHz into the free 5GHz band (where 802.11a lives), which would be an 80% expansion of the frequencies available. This would bring the number of 802.11a channels to 24 and make the US and Europe more similar …

Apparently, they're just better than the rest of us... this story from Yahoo! tells us that neither of these two big wigs managed to pay the bill on the way out of the coffee shop they had sat in for their interview. At least this story gave the owners some …

An article on CNET shows HP demonstrating a new technology that places the faces of distant videoconference participants on the "heads" of robots. Although the article makes one literary allusion (to the movie Short Circuit), I thought instead of a second movie that the concept reminded me of: Demolition Man …

Microsoft's PowerPoint is such a de facto standard that it is often referred to as a common noun ("I'll ship you a powerpoint", "We should do a powerpoint on that") replacing the previous word "deck" that used to symbolize a presentation.Here is a presentation that takes the presentation …

So, just how do you override DNS for a hosts file under OS X? This was the question I was asked yesterday when trying to debug a problem for some friends, and I had to go do some research, because I wasn't sure of the answer. The root of the …

Wired reports that the new owners of ReplayTV are looking at removing the Commercial Advance (30-second Skip) and Send Show (deliver a copy of the show to another box) features from future models.

ZDNet UK is reporting that there is strong interest in providing WiFi access on train cars throughout the UK. Today, there is already a company rolling out 802.11 access in the stations, but the future may include the rolling stock as well. Frankly, I would appreciate it as an …