 |
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate September 2001 |
|
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate September 2001 |
 |
OFFICIAL
NEWS |
|
|
The month was dominated by the tragic events of September 11. In place of the usual Chronicle, we printed a special issue on September 16, dedicated to those who lost their lives on that terrible day. In Fed, another event season ended, and old favorite events Mystery Guest, Duchy Safari, Blood Zone, Galactic Lost and Found and Scavenger Hunt returned. The Federation Chronicle started a new weekly feature - Winding Down, a run-down of the week's technology news and comment. See Alan's web site at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html for past issues of Winding Down. A new Fed Chat mailing list was set up - see http://www.ibgames.net/federation/subscribe.html. A new viruses started doing the rounds on the net - Nimda. And unlike previously viruses, this one could take advantage of scripting facilities in Microsoft Outlook to run itself even if you didn't open the attached file. Scary!
This is a case of life imitating art. A few months ago I started to write a jokey news story for the Chronicle, about a clandestine organisation that was cloning celebrities... either so that Fedders could be "reincarnated" in famous bodies when they died, or that people could have look-alikes to use as slaves. I struggled with the article for a while but it never came together so I abandoned the idea. Now real life has overtaken my attempt. A few weeks back, a Californian company announced it was offering celebrities the chance to establish copyright over their DNA, to prevent unauthorised duplication. So how likely is it that this is necessary? There has been some publicity in recent months about human cloning, with various countries banning it outright. Then some scientists announced that they planned to go ahead and clone a human, which provoked a huge outcry. Other scientists were horrified because they don't think the technology is up to producing clones without problems, both for both the pregnant mother, and the resulting baby. But science probably will overcome those problems eventually. One day, it may well be possible to clone a human - ten years, fifty years or a hundred years down the line. Whether it's desirable, or ethical, is another matter. So should celebrities be taking steps to protect their DNA? Well, no. Not using copyright laws anyway. By merely existing, any person proves that their DNA belongs to them. Nobody should have to actually register themselves to prove they exist! We're not talking about a work of art, where there could be a dispute over who created it in the first place. When it comes to human beings, it seems to me there is no question: the oldest version of a human has to be the owner of the DNA. Of course there may well be disputes about whether clones were authorised or not, but that is a completely different matter. Quite likely, the company offering to copyright celebrity DNA is simply trying to make money from gullible celebrities. There's some doubt over the real identity of the people behind this scheme... or perhaps I should say scam... so it probably shouldn't be taken too seriously. I don't think we're in any danger of seeing duplicate Britney Spears or Michael Jacksons running around just yet.
On Sunday September 9, early in the morning, the clock that keeps Universal Time - what used to be known as Greenwich Mean Time - struck 01:46:40 - the 40th second of the 46th minute in the second hour. That may not sound like a particularly meaningful time, but for any computer running the Unix operating system - which includes Fed - it was significant. That time was one billion seconds since midnight on January 1, 1970. And that time and date is, for Unix computers, the beginning of the universe, being the time they recognize as zero. This isn't Unix's birthday... the operating system, in rough form, was in use during the sixties. But at some time in the early seventies, this date was programmed into the system because it was convenient. The programmers had to pick some date to use as the time the seconds would be counted from, and that's what they picked. There are approximately 32 million seconds in a year, which means that it takes about 31 years for a billion seconds to pass. The fact that computer time has passed the one billion mark doesn't actually mean anything, because computers count in binary not in base ten. To them, a billion isn't 1,000,000,000, it's 00111011100110101100101000000000 (phew, I think I've got that right!). There was no danger of computers failing to work, as there was with the Y2K problem. But still, it's one of those neat things.
FED
PUBLIC DEMANDS THE RETURN OF DANNY (Mars: Galactic Administration HQ) In a stunningly unexpected development, the populace of Fed DataSpace has revolted against the dull, boring blah of channel 9 in the absence of Squire Danny of Raptorian. Officials of the Campaign to Save Fed from Danny called an emergency plenary session to discuss this shocking change of popular opinion. Kidnapped by the VLA over 2 weeks ago, Danny was the bon vivant and chief gadfly of the DataSpace comms. The VLA had demanded a ransom of 100 giga-groats be paid them or they would return him to Fed. The GA hastily formed the Save Fed From Danny Fund campaign and began collecting groats. Nightdroid, the chief financial officer of the SFFDF campaign, has been compiling donations and had only recently commented on how the initial overwhelmingly generous response had turned into a trickle. Meanwhile, in the absence of Danny, denizens of DataSpace began crawling out from under rocks and onto the comms. It slowly became apparent that perhaps Danny wasn't the worst thing Fed could have on its comms. The final straw came this Friday night and resulted in a petition being nailed to the front doors of the Galactic Administration Palace doors. This petition demanded the return of Danny and directed the GA to negotiate with the VLA any terms necessary to secure his return. This reporter was present during the climactic final moments in channel 9 when the landslide opinion change occurred: Your comm unit relays a message
from Rude, "Another thrilling evening on 9 I
see."
REAL LIFE NEWS: THE DANGERS OF COMPUTING A new computer disorder has been discovered... or invented... or at least, given a snappy name. "Mouse fingers" is what you get if you spend too much time pushing your mouse about, apparently. Two dutch doctors have reported the case of a computer programmer who developed eczema on the tips of his thumb and little finger, caused by his hands rubbing against the mouse mat. So along with RSI, we now have something else to worry about! Just as well Fed is a text game and doesn't require you to operate a mouse.
REAL LIFE NEWS: VENUSIAN ODDITY Venus has one feature which is unique in the Solar System. It rotates backwards. Although all of the planets move around the sun in the same direction, Venus actually rotates on its axis in the opposite direction to all the other planets. Astronomers are not really sure why this is so. They assume that the planet started out spinning in the same directions as its fellow planets, but that something happened to reverse the spin. an early theory was that Venus was hit by a massive object billions of years ago which flipped it upside down. More recent theories suggest less violent means of making the planet spin backwards. It could be due to the tidal influcence of the Sun. The Sun raises bulges in Venus' very dense atmosphere, much like the tides in our seas. The heat of the Sun also creates bulges. As the bulges progress around the planet, they exert a twisting force. This could very gradually have tilted the planet until it was upside down. Originally it was thought that in order for the bulges to tip Venus over, the planet would have had to start out with a pretty pronounced tilt, so that it was practically on its side. But recently researchers have shown that this needn't be the case. Take those bulges, they say, and add in the occasional gentle tugs from passing planets such as Earth, and the combination of irregular tugging in all kinds of directions makes the whole system chaotic and unpredictable. It is possible that the forces could have flipped the planet right over. Alternatively, if Venus never spun particularly fast, these chaotic forces could have slowed its rotation down and down and down... until it actually began to spin the other way. Whatever was the exact cause of Venus' reverse rotation, it's not something that could happen to any other planet in the Solar System. It's the combination of its closeness to the Sun, and its very thick atmosphere, that did the trick.
REAL LIFE NEWS: A JOB FOR SLOBS Now this does sound appealing... the European Space Agency are asking people to stay in bed for science. "Bed rest" studies are used to research the effect of weightlessness on the body over long periods. Volunteers spend long periods lying titled with their heads slightly lower than their feet. This simulates the reduced amount of work that the muscles and heart do in space. The new three-month study will look at counter-measures, such as exercise and drugs, to combat the bone and muscle loss encountered in space. Well, so long as those participating in the study are allowed to watch TV while lying in bed, it sounds like a coach potatoes' dream job!
|
