The Egg and Sperm

At today`s rates of compression, you could download the entire 3 billion digits of your DNA onto about four CDs. That 3 gigabyte genome sequence represents the prime coding information of a human body your life as numbers. Biology, that pulsating mass of plant and animal flesh, is conceived by science today as an information process. As computers keep shrinking, we can imagine our complex bodies being numerically condensed to the size of two tiny cells. These micro-memory devices are called the egg and sperm. They are packed with information. That life might be information, as biologists propose, is far more intuitive than the corresponding idea that hard matter is information as well. When we bang a knee against a table leg, it sure doesn`t feel like we knocked into information. But that`s the idea many physicists are formulating. The spooky nature of material things is not new. Once science examined matter below the level of fleeting quarks and muons, it knew the world was incorporeal. What could be less substantial than a realm built out of waves of quantum probabilities. And what could be weirder. Digital physics is both. It suggests that those strange and insubstantial quantum wavicles, along with everything else in the universe, are themselves made of nothing but 1s and 0s. The physical world itself is digital.

The scientist John Archibald Wheeler (coiner of the term "black hole") was onto this in the '80s. He claimed that, fundamentally, atoms are made up of of bits of information. As he put it in a 1989 lecture, "Its are from bits." He elaborated: "Every it every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely from binary choices, bits. What we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes/no questions." To get a sense of the challenge of describing physics as a software program, picture three atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Put on the magic glasses of digital physics and watch as the three atoms bind together to form a water molecule. As they merge, each seems to be calculating the optimal angle and distance at which to attach itself to the others. The oxygen atom uses yes/no decisions to evaluate all possible courses toward the hydrogen atom, then usually selects the optimal 104.45 degrees by moving toward the other hydrogen at that very angle. Every chemical bond is thus calculated. If this sounds like a simulation of physics, then you understand perfectly, because in a world made up of bits, physics is exactly the same as a simulation of physics. There's no difference in kind, just in degree of exactness. In the movie The Matrix, simulations are so good you can't tell if you're in one. In a universe run on bits, everything is a simulation.

An ultimate simulation needs an ultimate computer, and the new science of digitalism says that the universe itself is the ultimate computer actually the only computer. Further, it says, all the computation of the human world, especially our puny little PCs, merely piggybacks on cycles of the great computer. Weaving together the esoteric teachings of quantum physics with the latest theories in computer science, pioneering digital thinkers are outlining a way of understanding all of physics as a form of computation. From this perspective, computation seems almost a theological process. It takes as its fodder the primeval choice between yes or no, the fundamental state of 1 or 0. After stripping away all externalities, all material embellishments, what remains is the purest state of existence: here/not here. Am/not am. In the Old Testament, when Moses asks the Creator, "Who are you?" the being says, in effect, "Am." One bit. One almighty bit. Yes. One. Exist. It is the simplest statement possible. All creation, from this perch, is made from this irreducible foundation. Every mountain, every star, the smallest salamander or woodland tick, each thought in our mind, each flight of a ball is but a web of elemental yes/nos woven together. If the theory of digital physics holds up, movement (f = ma), energy (E = mc²), gravity, dark matter, and antimatter can all be explained by elaborate programs of 1/0 decisions. Bits can be seen as a digital version of the "atoms" of classical Greece: the tiniest constituent of existence. But these new digital atoms are the basis not only of matter, as the Greeks thought, but of energy, motion, mind, and life. From this perspective, computation, which juggles and manipulates these primal bits, is a silent reckoning that uses a small amount of energy to rearrange symbols. And its result is a signal that makes a difference a difference that can be felt as a bruised knee. The input of computation is energy and information; the output is order, structure, extropy.

Our awakening to the true power of computation rests on two suspicions. The first is that computation can describe all things. To date, computer scientists have been able to encapsulate every logical argument, scientific equation, and literary work that we know about into the basic notation of computation. Now, with the advent of digital signal processing, we can capture video, music, and art in the same form. Even emotion is not immune. Researchers Cynthia Breazeal at MIT and Charles Guerin and Albert Mehrabian in Quebec have built Kismet and EMIR (Emotional Model for Intelligent Response), two systems that exhibit primitive feelings. The second supposition is that all things can compute. We have begun to see that almost any kind of material can serve as a computer. Human brains, which are mostly water, compute fairly well. (The first "calculators" were clerical workers figuring mathematical tables by hand.) So can sticks and strings. In 1975, as an undergraduate student, engineer Danny Hillis constructed a digital computer out of skinny Tinkertoys. In 2000, Hillis designed a digital computer made of only steel and tungsten that is indirectly powered by human muscle. This slow-moving device turns a clock intended to tick for 10,000 years. He hasn't made a computer with pipes and pumps, but, he says, he could. Recently, scientists have used both quantum particles and minute strands of DNA to perform computations.

Unicode Transforms Web Dev and Communication

Without much fanfare, Unicode has completely transformed the foundation of software and communications over the past decade. Whenever you read or write anything on a computer, you�re using Unicode. Whenever you search on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Wikipedia, or many other Web sites, you are using Unicode. Unicode 5.0 marks a major milestone in providing people everywhere the ability to use their own languages on computers. We began Unicode with a simple goal: to unify the many hundreds of conflicting ways to encode characters, replacing them with a single, universal standard. Those existing legacy character encodings were both incomplete and inconsistent: Two encodings could use the same internal codes for two different characters and use different internal codes for the same characters; none of the encodings handled any more than a small fraction of the world`s languages. Whenever textual data was converted between different programs or platforms, there was a substantial risk of corruption. Programs were hard-coded to support particular encodings, making development of international versions expensive, testing a nightmare, and support costs prohibitive. As a result, product launches in foreign markets were expensive and late unsatisfactory both for companies and their customers. Developing countries were especially hard-hit; it was not feasible to support smaller markets. Technical fields such as mathematics were also disadvantaged; they were forced to use special fonts to represent arbitrary characters, but when those fonts were unavailable, the content became garbled.

Unicode changed that situation radically. Now, for all text, programs only need to use a single representation one that supports all the world s languages. Programs could be easily structured with all translatable material separated from the program code and put into a single representation, providing the basis for rapid deployment in multiple languages. Thus, multiple-language versions of a program can be developed almost simultaneously at a much smaller incremental cost, even for complex programs like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. The assignment of characters is only a small fraction of what the Unicode Standard and its associated specifications provide. They give programmers extensive descriptions and a vast amount of data about how characters function: how to form words and break lines; how to sort text in different languages; how to format numbers, dates, times, and other elements appropriate to different languages; how to display languages whose written form flows from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, or whose written form splits, combines, and reorders, such as languages of South Asia.

And how to deal with security concerns regarding the many �look-alike� characters from alphabets around the world. Without the properties, algorithms, and other specifications in the Unicode Standard and its associated specifications, interoperability between different implementations would be impossible. With the rise of the Web, a single representation for text became absolutely vital for seamless global communication. Thus the textual content of HTML and XML is defined in terms of Unicode�every program handling XML must use Unicode internally. The search engines all use Unicode for good reason; even if a Web page is in a legacy character encoding, the only effective way to index that page for searching is to translate it into the lingua franca, Unicode. All of the text on the Web thus can be stored, searched, and matched with the same program code. Since all of the search engines translate Web pages into Unicode, the most reliable way to have pages searched is to have them be in Unicode in the first place. This edition of The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0, supersedes and obsoletes all previous versions of the standard.

The book is smaller in size, less expensive, and yet has hundreds of pages of new material and hundreds more of revised material. Like any human enterprise, Unicode is not without its flaws, of course. This book will help you work around some of the �gotchas� introduced into Unicode over the course of its development. Importantly, it will help you to understand which features may change in the future, and which cannot, so that you can appropriately optimize your implementations. You will also find a wealth of other information on the Unicode Web site (www.unicode.org). If you are interested in having a voice in determining directions for future development of Unicode, or want to follow closely the ongoing work, you will find information there on joining the Consortium. What you have in your hands is the culmination of many years of experience from experts around the globe. I am sure you will find it very useful.

India animated Freefonix - Cinnamon Entertainment

London - India has long been known as an outsourcing hub for call centres and computer support. Now a BBC children`s series will cement its position as a global centre for animators. With a 10 million budget, India-animated Freefonix is one of the BBC`s biggest ever projects. The futuristic tale of mismatched musicians was two years in the making across three continents and involved more than 200 people. The Bollywood-BBC tie-up is the first of many, according to the series U.K. based producers Cinnamon Entertainment.

Managing director Anthony Bouchier says more readily available funding and skilled animation teams are drawing TV show-makers to India. We saw that there were opportunities not only to outsource but to actually get investment for animation out of India. In the U.K. there is a major problem with animation for children because the broadcasters do not have sufficient budgets to finance animation, so it all has to come from private sources, he says. Mr. Bouchier believes that the 40-episode series launching on Friday, is the first of its kind for the 7-11 age group. The BBC are involved in some very exciting projects and the majority of those are financed out of India.

India is coming to the rescue of BBC animation. Cinnamon is part of a new breed of media companies specialising in making the most of tax breaks and subsidies available in various countries. Created by Magnus Fiennes, brother of Joseph and Ralph, Freefonix was financed with funding from sources including Indian private equity investment, The Isle of Man Film Fund and the BBC. The scripts were written in the U.S. and the U.K., the voices were recorded in the U.K., the music and general production work was done in the U.K. and the Isle of Man and then a team in Paris modelled the characters and backgrounds. The whole thing was then sent to Thiruvananthapuram, where it was animated. The final post-production was done in Ireland. Freefonix is testament to the way the production process for animation projects has been revolutionised by the internet, which allows teams in various countries to swap files instantly and to communicate on videolink services such as Skype.

Exploring The Coast of Central America What Columbus Found

On the night of Feb. 20, the full moon will pass into Earth's shadow in an event that will be visible across all of the United States and Canada. Last month, researchers reported that when Columbus reached the Americas, he traded diseases with the natives, who soon became decimated with smallpox. But apparently there was one ailment the Indians gave the newcomers: syphilis. The total lunar eclipse will be made even more striking by the presence of the nearby planet Saturn and the bright bluish star, Regulus. Eclipses in the distant past often terrified viewers who took them as evil omens. Certain lunar eclipses had an overwhelming effect on historic events. One of the most famous examples is the trick pulled by Christopher Columbus.

Shipwrecked

On Oct. 12, 1492, as every schoolchild has been taught, Columbus came ashore on an island northeast of Cuba. He later named it San Salvador (Holy Savior). Over the next ten years Columbus would make three more voyages to the "New World," which only bolstered his belief that he reached the Far East by sailing West. It was on his fourth and final voyage, while exploring the coast of Central America that Columbus found himself in dire straits. He left Cadiz, Spain on May 11, 1502, with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos. Unfortunately, thanks to an epidemic of shipworms eating holes in the planking of his fleet, Columbus' was forced to abandon two of his ships and finally had to beach his last two caravels on the north coast of Jamaica on June 25, 1503.

Initially, the Jamaican natives welcomed the castaways, providing them with food and shelter, but as the days dragged into weeks, tensions mounted. Finally, after being stranded for more than six months, half of Columbus' crew mutinied, robbing and murdering some of the natives, who, themselves grew weary of supplying cassava, corn and fish in exchange for little tin whistles, trinkets, hawk's bells and other rubbishy goods. With famine now threatening, Columbus formulated a desperate, albeit ingenious plan.

Almanac to the rescue

Coming to the Admiral's rescue was Johannes Muller von Konigsberg (1436-1476), known by his Latin pseudonym Regiomontanus. He was an important German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. Before his death, Regiomontanus published an almanac containing astronomical tables covering the years 1475-1506. Regiomontanus' almanac turned out to be of great value, for his astronomical tables provided detailed information about the sun, moon and planets, as well as the more important stars and constellations by which to navigate. After it was published, no sailor dared set out without a copy. With its help, explorers were able to leave their customary routes and venture out into the unknown seas in search of new frontiers.

Columbus, of course, had a copy of the Almanac with him when he was stranded on Jamaica. And he soon discovered from studying its tables that on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 29, 1504, a total eclipse of the moon would take place soon after the time of moonrise. Armed with this knowledge, three days before the eclipse, Columbus asked for a meeting with the natives Cacique ("chief") and announced to him that his Christian god was angry with his people for no longer supplying Columbus and his men with food. Therefore, he was about to provide a clear sign of his displeasure: Three nights hence, he would all but obliterate the rising full moon, making it appear "inflamed with wrath," which would signify the evils that would soon be inflicted upon all of them.

Bad moon rising

On the appointed evening, as the Sun set in the West and the moon started emerging from beyond the eastern horizon, it was plainly obvious to all that something was terribly wrong. By the time the moon appeared in full view, its lower edge was missing! And, just over an hour later, as full darkness descended, the moon indeed exhibited an eerily inflamed and "bloody" appearance: In place of the normally brilliant late winter full moon there now hung a dim red ball in the eastern sky.

According to Columbus' son, Ferdinand, the natives were terrified at this sight and with great howling and lamentation came running from every direction to the ships laden with provisions, praying to the Admiral to intercede with his god on their behalf." They promised that they would gladly cooperate with Columbus and his men if only he would restore the moon back to its normal self. The great explorer told the natives that he would have to retire to confer privately with his god. He then shut himself in his cabin for about fifty minutes.

King Arthur's Court

"His god" was a sandglass that Columbus turned every half hour to time the various stages of the eclipse, based on the calculations provided by Regiomontanus' almanac. Just moments before the end of the total phase Columbus reappeared, announcing to the natives that his god had pardoned them and would now allow the moon to gradually return. And at that moment, true to Columbus' word, the moon slowly began to reappear and as it emerged from the Earth's shadow, the grateful natives hurried away. They then kept Columbus and his men well supplied and well fed until a relief caravel from Hispaniola finally arrived on June 29, 1504. Columbus and his men returned to Spain on Nov. 7.

In an interesting postscript to this story, in 1889, Mark Twain, likely influenced by the eclipse trick, wrote the novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In it, his main character, Hank Morgan, used a gambit similar to Columbus'. Morgan is about to be burned at the stake, so he "predicts" a solar eclipse he knows will occur, and in the process, claimed power over the sun. He gladly offers to return the sun to the sky in return for his freedom and a position as "perpetual minister and executive" to the king. The only problem with this story is that on the date that Mark Twain quoted -- June 21, 528 A.D. -- no such eclipse took place. In fact, the moon was three days past full, a setup that can't generate an eclipse. Perhaps he should have consulted an almanac!

Vodafone Fiji Ltd Has Achieved 500k Mobile Connections

Vodafone Fiji Ltd has achieved a milestone by capturing more than 500,000 mobile connections, which is over half of Fiji`s population. In a statement, parent company Amalgamated Telecom Holdings Ltd highlighted that Vodafone increased connections to its network by 59.6 per cent for the recent financial year ended March 31, 2008. It takes total connections to more than half of Fiji`s population. This translated to a 19 per cent increase in operating revenue during the period, and a 12.5 per cent increase in net profit after tax, ATH chief executive Tomasi Vakatora said. Consequently VFL declared an increased dividend for its shareholders, including ATH. This is another impressive result and a record that was achieved despite relatively subdued economic conditions last calendar year, and a further 10 per cent reduction in mobile call rates from October 2007.

The ATH yesterday announced that it has acquired majority 51 per cent ownership of Vodafone (Fiji) from Telecom Fiji Ltd, which is also a subsidiary of ATH. Vodafone (Fiji) now comes directly under ATH. The change of ownership was effective from the close of business in March 31, 2008. Vakatora said the ownership change was a strategic decision and does not make any difference at the operational level, and which will continue as it is. But he said that under deregulation (of the telecommunications market), there was a need to separate the two. To some extent there is a degree of competition between Telecom and Vodafone so it would be against the principles of competition if one continues to be the direct parent of another.

“This (change) will allow them to deal at arms length because there are issues within the company in terms of interconnections and so on. (With this arrangement) they will be independent of each other. VFL was established in 1994 as a joint venture between Fiji Post and Telecommunications Limited (TFL`s predecessor) and Vodafone International Holdings BV of the United Kingdom, which held the minority 49 per cent shareholding. Vodafone International Holdings BV retains its interest in VFL under the restructure.

Live from Google I/O Google Android

Integrate lets you use existing Google code, such as Maps, and share data, for example between the browser and Google Maps. Extend lets you build on existing Google apps, such as Google Maps, and enhance their functionality. The example shown lets you use Google Maps to locate taxi cabs near you. The app uses the built-in Google Maps app and extends it, adding its own functionality on top of Maps to create a brand new app.

Replace - you can easily replace components. For example, if you don't like the existing contact manager, you can replace it with a different one from a third party. Not just add a new contacts manager, but completely replace the default one that Google provides. This makes developing apps much easier, and should let the end user customize their phone to the n-th degree, and get access to a rich ecosystem of new apps that will constantly be developed.

I'm live here at Google I/O at the first Google Android session. So far we're going fairly tecccie into the software guts of Android, which I appreciate some of you may not be that interested in, but we've been promised the latest news on Android at the end of the session - watch for a separate post on that in about 40 minutes' time or so. In the meantime, for those of you interested in Android under the hood, there's loads more info after the jump.

Google have been showing off more of the Google Android mobile platform at the Google I/O conference at San Francisco, which just happens to be where I am now! A working model of an Android handset has just been shown, and it look fantastic. Of course it comes with a touchscreen - what mobile phone doesn't these days. But the ease of use of the touchscreen rivals iPhone in terms of its ease of use and genuine capability.

Google have attempted to replicate the desktop on the mobile phone. An Android phone lets you create shortcuts to your apps just like you can on the desktop. You can move your icons around on the desktop with your finger, and switch between different running applications just by touching your finger on the screen and swiping it left and right. There's a status bar at the top of the screen that provides common functions to your phone. Simply place your finger on this bar and drag it down, and a new screen slides down showing all the main functions of your phone.

Android phones use the WebKit browser, but not just for viewing web pages. You can use what Google calls Views to create new apps using the functionality of WebKit. So you get the browser view, for example, and the Maps view, which obviously lets you work with Google Maps.

And it's the maps that brought the biggest round of applause at today's opening keynote. Not only was an Android handset shown with standard Google maps on it, in both map and satellite view (both of which rendered very quickly); Google also demonstrated StreetView on an Adroid handset. StreetView, for those who don't know, is Google's technology that lets you see photos of a city or town. Not just any photos - they've taken literally millions of photos of inidividual locations, letting you scroll forward and move left and right 1 metre at a timne, effectively seeing what the place looks like through a series of photos.

What Andoid adds to the mix is GPS and a compass. Yes, just like Nokia's forthcoming 6220 Navigator phone, Google's Android handsets will come with compasses. One was demonstrated with a compass built-in. Google StreetView was called up, with a photo of the street being displayed. As the phone was turned left and right, so the photo turned left and right in real time. This brought a huge round of applause, and looked seriously cool. You can literally move around a city thousands of miles away in real time just by moving around with your Android phone in your hand.

Imagine how useful this could be. Like the look of a hotel in a brochure? Great, but as we all know, brochures are never exactly accurate! What's next door, for example, or round the corner? With StreetView and an Android phone, simply locate the hotel and get a picture of it. Turn round with your phone in hand, and see a 360 degree sweep of what's around it. Move forwards and backwards, and see what buildings (or building sites!) are to the left and right of it. How close is it to the beach? Have a walk and find out!

Android looks glorious. It works as well as the iPhone, it's more functional than the iPhone, it's entirely open source, and it's going to be a hugely disruptive technology. I could be being blinded by the Google hype, but I really do think I've just seen the future! I'm now attending the dedicated Google Android track, and will have more updates for you shortly. Oh, an dloads of Android pictures too!

Windows Media Center Edition is to be known as Windows Fiji

It`s been revealed that the next version of the Windows Media Center Edition is to be known as Windows Fiji. While no word has been given as to how the bigwigs at Microsoft came up with the name, it`s understood that testing for the product began early May last year. Ars Technica, a technology related website that caters to PC enthusiasts, reports that it has in its possession screenshots which purport to show that Windows has agreed on Fiji as the name of the product.

Other screenshots show the model working well and build design similar to the Windows Vista model. Microsoft has been tight lipped about Fiji but according to industry insiders the software giant plans to add DirecTV support and a separate from Windows Update built in updating engine dubbed Windows Media Center Update. Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition has been around for a few years but the latest generation built into Windows Vista mated with a new Media Center Extender makes significant progress towards bridging the gap between the home office and the living room.

Essentially an attractive full screen application which runs on top of Windows, Media Center allows you to browse your digital photos, listen to music, play a DVD as well as watch and record television all on your computer. Insiders told Ars Technica that the last anyone heard, Fiji was supposed to build on the functionality that Microsoft delivered as part of Vista Service Pack 1. Some potential testers said they heard that Fiji would deliver some of the fit and finish that was missing in the Vista release.