PETE'S SOMETIME NEWSLETTER
March 2, 2002

What you possess can only be lost
but what you are will be yours forever

Hi Ya'll,

I have another beautiful Sun Explosion Movie for you. The Caption page states "The complexity and structure ... amazed even experienced solar physicists...."

The movie requires QuickTime (click here if you don't have it,) runs in your browser, and for some reason, won't run properly unless your browser is at Full Screen (kiosk) size; Internet Explorer users press F11. The movie doesn't stream so you have to wait for the whole thing to download, which is going to take a while over dial-up connections, but it's worth the wait (you can continue reading this wonderful Newsletter  ;-)   while you're waiting.)

If you're not familiar with the QuickTime control bar at the bottom of the picture, click the far left right-pointing dart to start or replay the movie. This movie goes by so quickly you'll probably want to watch it frame by frame. Click and pull the slider back to the beginning, then start clicking the far right right-pointing dart to move through the frames. You can back up by clicking the left-facing dart next to it.

Science magazine's January 4, 2002, edition is a Special Issue on Star Formation. Scientists do not know (yet) how stars are born, but there are lots of ideas and hypothsies on parts of the process, and observations of what are believed to be "star formation regions" in the universe.

Access to all of Science's online content is only available to AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) members, but a free registration will let you read abstracts, summeries, and a few short "introductory" articles. One year after publication, though, the full articles become available to those with free registration, and then to everyone after seven years. Occasionally, as in the Star Formation issue, they have "supplemental material" available to all. If you have any interest in "what's going on out there," or in any conceivalbe scientific subject, take advantage of the free registration; they aren't nosy, won't e-mail anything you don't request, and won't stuff your snail-mail box.

After registration, you'll be able to access all of the 1997 Special Issue on Stellar Birth and Death. The Introduction contains a wonderful encapsulation:

A star is born by the gravitational collapse of a cloud of dust and gas. If the condensing spherical mass cannot grow large enough, then it slowly gets colder and fades, becoming a brown dwarf. If it grows enough to sustain hydrogen fusion, a main sequence star, like our sun, is formed. Eventually hydrogen is exhausted, the star expands to a red giant as it feeds off other nuclear reactions, and finally the red giant collapses into a small, dense white dwarf, when these reactions cease. In some cases, the collapsing star throws off excess mass as a gaseous envelope, called a planetary nebula. More massive stars tend to die in rapid energetic outbursts called supernovae explosions that produce white dwarfs; or if the remnant core is too massive, collapse continues until most energetic particles are converted to neutrons that stabilize the core into a neutron star. The most massive stars, with the shortest lifetimes and the most energetic supernovae explosions, cannot collapse into white dwarfs or neutron stars; instead, they collapse into an even smaller, denser core from which not even light can escape: a black hole.

In the Jan 4 2002 issue on Star Birth is a humongous Supplemental page of links to other Web sites. You may want to Bookmark it for easy visiting if you get wrapped up in this subject. Some of the links are to somewhat specialized sites, but many are aimed at the lay person. Some of these are

• Hubble Image Gallery Visible Light Images.
• Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center X-Ray Wave Length Images show details Hubble can't see and give some temperature and shape information.
• Stellar Nurseries University of Illinois. Radio telescopes yield even more information.
• A Star Is Born Penn State University. Nice short pages outline steps of star birth.
• The Discovery of Brown Dwarfs Scientific American magazine. Not discovered until about 1995, these are bodies that began forming as stars do, but didn't quite make it.

Those links will get you started on your journey toward a concept of how those white dots up there got there. See the Supplemental page for more. Hope you enjoy your trip to the stars!

Bionic Eyes may be a reality one day if something a company here in Houston has invented works out. If you harken back to your high school biology, you may recall the area at the back of the eye is called the retina. In the retina are microscopic structures called rods and cones which convert light waves into electrical impulses which travel up the optic nerve to the "seeing" portions of the brain. There is a retinal disease called macular degeneration for which there is no magic pill and is very common in older folks (my eye doctor says I have it) which can lead to total blindness as the rods and cones slowly deteriorate.

Beginning with experiements the company, Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center, flew in a space shuttle in 1996, they developed an implant they hope will be accommodated by the human eye as replacements for the rods and cones. Trial implantations in humans will begin this year lead by a surgen at the University of Texas Medical School, Houston. The really big question remaining is whether the brain can adapt to the device's electrical output and relearn how to "see." The primary goal of these first implantations it to determine whether some semblance of partial sight can be restored. All this is ariving too late to help me, I'm pretty sure, but if it works maybe it will be an accepted procedure by the time my daughter or my grand children fall victim to macular degeneration.

At the bottom of the hyperlinked page (above) are links to information on macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa (an hereditary retinal disease similar to macular degeneration often striking the young,) and the eye in general.

On December 5, 2001, a Federal Judge ordered the Department of the Interior (DOI) and all of its agencies — National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Afairs, US Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Minerals Management Service, Office of Surface Mining — to immediately disconnect from the Internet due to poor Web site security.

It all stems from a 5 year ongoing lawsuit between the American Native peoples and the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs.) The Natives are claiming the BIA has been mismanaging their Trust Fund for 100 years and a whole bunch of money that's supposed to be in the fund, isn't. The Judge decided to test the Interior Department's Internet security (why not? hackers have been getting into FBI, CIA, Army, NASA, etc., sites which one would expect to be tight as a drum) and, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article, a "court-appointed hacker" walked right in the front door; through the DOI's home page. The article doesn't say how much progress the "hacker" made toward the Trust databases, but indicates just getting in the front door was enough to convince the Judge that if the periphery has holes, the interior quite likely is wide open and he ordered the complete Internet disconnect until the DOI got its security up to snuff.

It appears the Judge had reason to be concerned. At least some Trust Fund maniplation theoretically could have been possible through unauthorized outside access via the Internet. In a December 6 memorandum to all DOI employees, the Deputy Director states "the Department has moved quickly to ensure that trust management related information has been isolated. As a result of the actions that we have taken, all inbound and outbound Internet network traffic should be unable to get through." Should? Isn't that hedging a bit?

As of this writing, the Judge has cleared the US Geological Survey to go back online. The BIA has a few pages up, but you have to go through the USGS home page to get to them. Oh - a DOI home page is back up but only has a few links to some press releases. Trying to go to any Park Service site yields a single yellow page saying they don't have a clue as to when they'll be back.

Way to go, Government!

UPDATE: National Park Service is back.

UPDATE: A later S.F.Chronicle story has more detail of the court-ordered hacking. They got so deep into the Indian Trust computer system they were able to set up an account through which Trust Fund payments were made to them.

At the end of 2001, AOL Time Warner claimed AOL/Compuserve had amassed over 33 million paying subscribers. Let's see: 33,000,000 × $24 × 12 months = ~$1.5 billion for running an ISP operation with mediocre e-mail and a nearly escape proof portal. No wonder they had the cash to buy Time Warner.

On top of that, online merchandise sales to that captive audience was $33 billion. Many of those purchases were at AOL Time Warner owned companies, and AOL got a commission from the other companies it steered people to. It's not all roses, though. AOL Time Warner as a whole lost $1.8 billion last year.

Has anyone read AOL's Pricing Plans? One of them reads:

$14.95 per month "bring-your-own-access" plan providing unlimited access to thousands of unique AOL features*, including access to the Internet, for individuals who already have an Internet connection or access through the work or school environment.

*Much of which costs extra.

My interpretation: "Oh? You figured out there were Internet Service Providers (ISPs) other than AOL? And you chose to use one of them instead of us? Well, smarty, you still must pay AOL $14.95 a month to actually 'use' the Internet. All you have is a 'connection' to the Internet."

Sorry, AOLers -- I know some of you have no choice; it's all you can get where you live. Actually, I do like some AOL products, such as AOL Messenger and Spinner (and not just because they're free). I gave AOL two months to prove its worth to me a couple years ago, but found it cost more, offered less, and ran slower, than a combination of any old ISP (free back then, but starting at about $10 these days for unlimited 56K dial-up), and Internet Explorer (the same one AOL charges you to use), Outlook Express (fully HTML capable e-mail send/receive), and Yahoo (personal Web sites, photo sharing, additional e-mail accounts), all of which are free and do not change when you switch ISP's or your ISP suddenly cuts you off when it goes bankrupt.

Look at the System Requirements for McAfee Online and one discovers it does not work with any non-XP version of Internet Explorer 6. When I clicked the Test My System link below the Requirements, the browser test said my Windows 98 Internet Explorer 6 is totally acceptable. Is the Sales Department out of step, or is the Browser Test program faulty? Another reason I've left McAfee after being a customer for many years; stuff like that, and because they stopped answering customer e-mails.

UPDATE: System requirements page updated. Now only requires Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher with Windows 95 through XP.

Well, not really, but if you go here you can enter your name (complete full name recommended [by me]) onto a CD which will be carried on one of the 2003 Mars Mission Rovers. You'll also be presented (online) with an Official NASA Mars Mission Participation Certificate you can print out now and show to little kids in five years to prove you've been to Mars.

Microsoft has a little demonstration of what your browser tells about your computer and about you when you visit a Web site. Click on the link at the beginning of the second paragraph to start the demo, then click the tabs at the top of the demo panel to walk through it. There isn't much you can do to control your browser's revelations until you get to the last tab, Profile Info.

The purpose of the Personal Profile in Internet Explorer has always escaped me. Intially I had thought it's only purpose was to help me fill in online forms. But later I learned the info in it could be read without my knowledge — which may explain why I suddenly get spam from a site I visited just once (they "stole" my email address from the Profile) — and that the profile can be "turned off": Control Panel/Internet Options/Advanced tab, at the bottom under Security, uncheck Enable Profile.

I prefer to run with the Profile turned off, but sometimes I get bored and turn it on so sneak thieves get my Special New Profile. It is totally blank except for First, Middle, and Last Names, which are Doggy BowWow DooDoo (maybe they'll think I'm a Rap star!)

The Associated Press claims arsnic treated wood (see Jan 3, 2002 isssue) may soon be removed from the market. The EPA says "We are working on an agreement," but the pressure treated wood industry says it's far from a done deal.

Deleting Image Files: If Windows won't let you delete an image file from the My Pictures or other folder, this Hot Tip may have the answer and a simple fix to the problem.

Save BioGems, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is asking all like-minded persons to read about their Declaration of Energy Independence and sign it if they agree. The NRDC appears to have at least a modicum of clout — I get an e-mail reply from one of my Senators when I signed a NRDC letter opposing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Employee's Frequent Flyer Miles: Have you ever had the queasy feeling that some day, when you least expect it, someone will come up to you and say, "Grimace - This is the IRS. You didn't declare the value of the frequent flyer miles you earned on your business trips."? Well, after years of saying, but not enforcing, that employee-retained frequent flyer miles were taxable as income, the IRS has officially stated you can smile -- they are not taxable! The main reason for the reversal? IRS concedes there is no way to establish an absolute monetary value on them.

Microsoft Offers $50 Rebate for switching to MSN Internet Access (Sorry Macaroons; only works with Windows.) I have no experience with it, but I understand it is similar to AOL, with the added benefit of full POP3 email via Outlook Express. This is something current AOL users may want to look into if MSN has a local phone number where you are. The 1^st month is free (cancel at no charge if you don't like it,) then $22/mo. With the rebate, this come to 4 months of ISP service for $16. The link has all the details. Rebate offer ends May 31, 2002.

How Different  and  Silly.    Ni! Ni!

'Til next time,
Pete

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