This snow-white frond was hidden under green masses of my bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum). Obviously, there is no hint of chlorophyll in this part of the plant. It only could survive thanks to the enormous vitality of this fern. Here's another image of this frond after pruning.

If it was a company I'd say: Wow, another Web2.0 try. But no, GeoGreeting is free and absolutely geeky: Tell your message with rooftops from buildings all over the world that are formed like letters. Funny! (Source)

Remember Pong? Sure you do. Here's a fine example of melting science and games: Stephen Taylor, student at George Mason University added realtime fluid dynamics to the classic video game and developed Plasma Pong. A fine sample of the valuation game engineering gets at universities today. (Source)

"It is important for a digital marketing agency to be aware of the psychology of the search landscape."

Uh, thanks. Deleted.

Finding out software errors and security problems on a web site may become a problem: if not only for the site maintainer but also for the person who exposes the flaw. The CSI (not Crime Scene Investigation, but the Computer Security Institute investigates how actual laws increase the danger of getting sued by site owners when somebody detects a vulnerability and talks about that. In fact, there are security researchers who don't inform the site maintainer for fear of prosecution. In a very true statement CSI declares that laws prohibiting security tests will only hamper serious security researchers and not the black hats. CSI's next objectives include exploration of disclosure policy guidelines and mirrored-site guidelines for Web site owners as well as creating a list of research methods for lawmakers' understanding. (Source)

Compared to Germany's planned tightening of security laws, where sheer usage of hacker tools will be punished, this seems to be still a comfortable situation to me.

Writing about Poker isn't that easy these days. There's kind of disgust when bloggers write about companies advertizing Poker communities or companies making money with this type of game. For a change, we present a new scientific project: Polaris is a poker-playing computer program created by University of Alberta researchers, meaning a new milestone in artificial intelligence. The goal is to provide a Poker software that is better than any human opponent. In fact, Polaris is just one in a group of programs, each working with a different strategy, that is able to bluff. I guess the only missing feature is the poker face. A match between the software and two prominent Poker players takes place at July 23 - 24, in conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Ever failed reading these nasty distorted numbers and symbols while creating a new account or entering a comment on your favourite blog? Captchas are a quite efficient way to separate spamming bots from real users because the last one usually would be able to read the letters while the first one should be not. Unfortunately, times changed. An increasing number of bots acquired the ability to examine even twisted letters in a captcha image and continued spamming. As a consequence of this, captchas got more and more unreadable, even to the common human reader, thus rendering captcha protection impossible. New captchas will present pictures instead of text, and in the near future you'll be presented pictures with cats and dogs where you have to choose the right images. This kind of task is extremely difficult for software (i.e. bots) and so the next turn in this neverending fight between them and us is being heralded. Hope they provide a Perl module soon! (Source)

If you ever wondered if there are black holes in the Internet - you're right. Ethan Katz-Bassett, a computer science Ph.D. candidate from the University of Washington used his tool Hubble to detect that 10% of all sites on the Internet are unreachable, day by day. Problems reach from total unavailability up to various routing problems. 75% of these problems get fixed within an hour, some last for several days. If only the right sites would die everyday... (Source)

This is the tip of our very own Wollemi Pine. This is very exciting and we'll note our explorations of this remarkable tree on our green pages.

Thanksgiving in spring: my crop of Asplenium bulbiferum.

So that's a big amount of money for Africa, as G8 leaders scheduled and approved at the summit. Hopefully, this money will not be bound to expensive contracts with multinational companies that bring the money back even before it's been being sent to Africa. And I hope that use of generics will save lots of money instead of buying overpriced pharmaceuticals against whatever.

Having read this article about the Department of Home Security's (DHS) efforts "to find, fund and push potentially ground-breaking [security] software into the commercial market", I just thought about Goethe's line Amerika, Du hast es besser.
DHS states that increasing cybersecurity threats are as bad as bombing terrorists. Instead of waiting for the industry they just start a million dollars program and do their own. Additionally, "plans to transition the technologies to the open-source community are acceptable".

And what's up in our exemplary German democracy? Our ministry of the interior draws a dark picture of increasing terrorist threats and takes it to give reason to cut our civil rights. Far in excess of a real threat situation it's planning "online investigations", meaning eavesdropping people's IP traffic, with the so-called "Bundestrojan".

The DHS surely isn't America's most popular ministry. But can you see the difference?

Next SIGGRAPH will feature more information about Spiderman 3 than the ordinary "Make Of" documentation. ("Spider-Man 3" featured fully-articulated, performing CG characters composed only of dynamically-generated particles and fluids for the first time.) (Source)

Securitycartoon.com is the right place for explaining threats and tricks of the Internet to the normal user. Indiana University School of Informatics researchers professor Markus Jakobsson and research associate Sukamol Srikwan launched this site "to be accessible to anyone who uses the Internet ... That's why the cartoon format is perfect--everybody can relate to it."
Without a warning finger held up, the site broaches the issues of phishing, pharming, malware, spoofing, and password protection. The cartoons are well drawn and the stories come to the point.
According to Jacobson, an increasing number (5 percent and more) of American adults are victims of identity theft every year. It surely would make sense to offer this service in different languages. (Source)

Reproduced with permission; for more material, please see www.SecurityCartoon.com

Researchers of the University of Nottingham observed Second Life as testbed for kind of virtual bullying. According to the study, Second Life newcomers are often targets of bullies. The people around Dr. Thomas Chesney were interested in the question whether bullying is similar to real world conflicts and discovered that in real and in virtual life reasons for bullying can be found in the victim's "naivety and inability to stop the griefing". Also the power imbalance between victim and bully, "focused on knowledge and experience", is an important reason for bullying. Results like these show once more that platforms like SL don't set any boundaries to one's phantasies, but obviously there's a lot of people just copying their usual behaviour from their real life. Or do victims themselves become bullies because there's nothing to fear about? Anyway, doesn't sound like fun. (Source)

Maintaining a search engine, like Google, is sheer rocket science. Besides the mathematics, engineers have to deal with changing demands from users as well as from the continuously changing Internet. Permanent challenges from spammers and 'optimizers' constantly try to circumvent the algorithms to top it all. This article sneaks a peak into the Googleplex and gives insight into common challenges, their mode of operation, and other interesting findings.

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Please read on, everything's fine.

Who of our German readers doesn't recall the affairs of Facebook-Clone StudiVZ and the general discussions about the pros and cons of social networks and community web sites? The times are a-changing and American universities are exploring the possibilities of such networks. Also an increasing demand coming from the industry is noted. This approves the fears of growing possibilities for x-raying candidates by HR and other interested parties. So wtach your step and think twice before you type: you're entering a public place at your community site. (Source)

These days I am often reminded of Chernobyl when I'm listening to news about the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. This will take place in a few days and our gouvernment's bids for security are without precedent in Germany's post-war history. What's the deal with Chernobyl? All references to the G8 convention center are expressed by distances. If the convention center is placed into the middle of everyting, the surrounding zones can be seen as security buffers, supported by fences, police (and the army, if our minister of the interior would have prevailed). Every other location around Heiligendamm is related to this center. The security fence: 200 meters away from the center. A street where demonstrations are mercifully allowed: 5 km away from the center. The initially suggested security zone where demonstrations should be forbidden: 6 km around the center. Location of the pressroom (only for tolerated journalists): 8 km away from the center.
Located inmidst the Chernobyl zone is this contaminated reactor, a dangerous threat for any creature coming too close. Security measurements around the conference center in Heiligendamm in their effect are likely for our democratic basic rights and our dignity as citizens of a democratic political system, that is afraid of its own people.