… For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.” …

• New Scientist: Our world may be a giant hologram – 15 January 2009

“Want to read every single technical detail of the design and construction of the Large Hadron Collider and its six detectors? The whole shebang — seven reports totaling 1600 pages, 115 MB, with contributions from 8000 scientists and engineers — has been published electronically by the Journal of Instrumentation, free to read without a subscription.”

• Slashdot | LHC Fully Documented Online

The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

• iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
• iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
• iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
• iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
• iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner.

“This is the phone that has changed phones forever,” Mr. Jobs said.

We agree. A snake oil salesman not satisfied with his business of pushing proprietary software and Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology into your home, Jobs has set his sights on getting DRM and proprietary software into your pocket as well.

There is a reason so much emphasis was put on the visual design of the iPhone. There is a reason that Apple is so concerned about unsightly seams that they won’t even let you change the battery in your own phone.

Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.

Read the rest of the article at fsf.org:

• 5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G – Free Software Foundation

Enjoy or fear the magnificent math test!!

Warp’s MathTest

Test or train your own biological calculator.

The code will be open sourced if anyone shows interest in it, not that there is much use for that code anymore, it is using somewhat outdated but well proven JavaScript techniques, but feel free to peek – afterall programming is more fun than calcuating numbers…

“The rumors of a fourth OOXML complaint turned out to be true. Denmark has become the fourth nation to protest the ISO’s acceptance of OOXML, and Groklaw has a translation of their complaint. They now join India, Brazil, and South Africa. There are going to be plenty of questions about deadlines, because people have been given two different deadlines for appeals, and the final DIS of OOXML was late in being distributed and not widely available. In fact, that seems to be one of Denmark’s complaints, along with missing XML schemas, contradictory wording, lack of interoperability, and troubles with the maintenance of DIS29500. In other words, we should expect a lot of wrangling over untested rules from here on out, and Microsoft knows how to deal with that.”

The Association for Open Source Vendors [OSL] hereby lodges a formal complaint to ISO over the certification process after the meetings in Dansk Standard’s committee S-445 (former S-142/U34) as well as the decision to change the Danish vote to a yes in connection with the processing of DIS 29500. Thus I write to you in your capacity as vice president for ISO and as your capacity as executive director in Dansk Standard. I will send this complaint in English before the end of the month.

On the 22nd of May, the Association for Open Source Vendors made Dansk Standard aware that the Danish requirements for DIS29500 had not been fulfilled. We summarized our views in the following 5 main points (see attached letter)

1. Microsoft Office formats stand in the way of interoperability
2. XML schemas are missing
3. The finished specification is not available
4. Contradictory wording
5. The maintenance of DIS29500 has not been decided

• Slashdot | Denmark Becomes Fourth Nation To Protest OOXML

• Vodafone acquires ZYB « ZYB blog

Enjoy this nice video clip of a cute swimming penguin. Note that this type of video is very hard to compress properly at lower bitrates because of all the motion in the water. I will upload some of my own flickr vid’s soonish!

“In what can only be considered a bizarre court case, a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible ‘doomsday‘ scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter. CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked.”

• Slashdot | Large Hadron Collider Sparks ‘Doomsday’ Lawsuit

Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.

Also check out Visual Complexity for a huge source of visualized data candy

• The Best Tools for Visualization – ReadWriteWeb
• Visual Complexity