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About site: http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml Title: Technology/News and Media - Wired News: Technology Technology stories in RSS format. [RSS]

Acoustics_Society_Job_Bank Acoustic related jobs posted by employers. Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundation_(Cryonics) Site for major cryonics organization in Scottsdale AZ. Contains a lot of information, including an on-line photo-tour of the building and of the cryonics process. Alcor_United_Forum A community discussion site for members of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and anyone interested in cryonics. Created and run by a long time Alcor member. American_Cryonics_Society The oldest Cryonics membership organization; founded in 1969 as the Bay Area Cryonics Society. In Mountain View CA. Offers background information, articles and theories. Anders_Sandberg\'s_cryonics_page An extensive list of links to cryonics articles and to European sites related to cryonics. Ben_Best\'s_Cryonics_Articles Primarily dealing with technical issues in cryonics.   Alexa statistic for http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml Please visit: http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml

Related sites for http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml     BioPreservation,_Inc__-_Cryopreservation_Services A series of technical papers on cryopreservation research.     Brain_Death_and_Technological_Change__Personal_Identity,_Neural_Prostheses_and_Uploading A far-seeing but technical paper by James J. Hughes, prepared for the Second International Symposium on Brain Death. Date unclear, but 1996 or later. Includes discussion of cryonics and nanotechnolo     Can_Cryopreservation_Solve_the_Abortion_Problem? An thoughtful article by Thomas Gramstad which examines the social implications of preserving aborted embryos. From Longevity Report.     Cold_Filter_Cryonics_Chat Lively discussions of cryonics, cryogenics, cryobiology, life extension, transhumanism, death, and related issues.     CryoCare_Foundation_-_Cryonics_Services CryoCare Foundation offers cryonics services. The site includes a good explanation of cryonics, with a large library of articles.     CryoNet_-_Cryonics_Mailing_List A free discussion mailing list on cryonics-related issues. May also be read on-line; posts accepted from subscribers only. Searchable archives are available from the list's beginning in 1988.     Cryonics A slim, but interesting perspective piece on cryonics by Mark Prado, an American living in Thailand.     Cryonics Ralph Merkle's cryonics introduction. Short but requires some knowledge of cryonics already.     Cryonics_--_Frequently_Asked_Questions_(FAQ) Up-to-date answers to basic cryonics questions. A good starting point. By Ben Best.     Cryonics_and_Cryptography "Cryonics, Cryptography, and Maximum Likelihood Estimation," a paper by Ralph Merkle, Ph.D.     Cryonics_Europe Support and discussion group based in Sussex, UK, for people in Britain and the rest of Europe who are signed up for cryopreservation.     Cryonics_Institute__Cryonics_Suspension_Services Cryonic suspension services & information. Much of the text is also available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese by clicking on the appropriate button. This organization was fou     The_Cryonics_Society A non-profit organization that aims to educate and inform the general public about cryonics. Does not provide cryonics services and is not affilated with any service organization.     The_Cryonics_Society_of_Canada For education and to organize cryonics in Canada. Does not provide cryonics services.     Cryonics_UK Site for information and discussion of cryonics in the United Kingdom. The group appears to be associated with Cryonics Institute.     Cryonics_info A new discussion forum on cryonics, attempting to focus on science issues. Also some links to basic information.     Danish_Cryonics_Support_Group The DCSG consists primarily of Danish members of the Cryonics Institute (CI) and those interested in becoming members of a suspension organization. The site is in both English and Danish.     European_Cryonics_Page Information for Europeans interested in cryonics. Includes an extensive list of links to other European cryonics sites and a mailing list/forum for Europeans interested in cryonics, plus a large list     An_Exploratory_Survey_Examining_the_Familiarity_With_and_Attitudes_Toward_Cryonic_Preservation A paper examining the results of a consumer survey on cryonics. By W. Scott Badger, from "The Journal of Evolution and Technology," December, 1998.     Frozen_Dead_Guy_Days_-_Nederland_Area_Chamber_of_Commerce The official site of a winter festival held annually in the mountain town of Nederland, Colorado. A bit weird, since the Nederlands city government actively worked to oust Bredo Morstoel (the "froze     Life_Extension_Society A cryonics public education organization in the Maryland/D.C. area. Not a service provider.     Long_Life_--_The_Cryonics_Institute_E-Newsletter Free news, updates, and links about the latest scientific, medical, health, anti-aging, and social developments relevant to CI's goal of saving, preserving, and extending human lives.     Longevity_Report John DeRivaz's British site for cryonics, life extension, and the future.     New_Zealand_Cryonics_Society A new organization in New Zealand.     The_Society_for_Venturism A non-profit organization with the purpose of promoting "the worldwide conquest of death and the continuation and enhancement of life through technological means, including cryonic suspension." Does     Synthetic_pleasures Home page for documentary film about life extension, cryonics, body decoration, and other aspects of modern technological life.     Timeship_Cryonics Visionary design and project plans by architect Stephen Valentine for a building to house research into life extension, nanotechnology, and cryopreservation of tissue and humans through vitrification.     Trans_Time,_Inc__--_Cryonics_Services A cryonics service provider in San Leandro, California.     Was_Walt_Disney_Frozen? The truth (no, he wasn't) with the legends behind the myth.     Why_Cryosuspension_Makes_Sense A long article by Terry Grossman, reprinted from The Babyboomers Guide to Living Forever (2000).     Yahoo!_Groups___ConsideringCryonics An on-line discussion group for those who are considering joining a cryonics organization but are worried about what their friends and family might think.     Heaven_Can_Wait Article by Michael Park of the Sunday Herald (U.K.), primarily focused on Alcor. (May 1, 2005)     Would_Freezing_Ted_Williams_Work? From ABCNEWS.com, an article on the cryonic suspension of Ted Williams by the Alcor Foundation and asking if the technology might work. (July 9, 2004)     Cryonics_Over_Dead_Geeks\'_Bodies Wired News article by Michelle Delio, based on an interview with Heather Pringle, author of the new book: "The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead". (July 20, 2001)     Dying_to_Know A lengthy cryonics article about Alcor by Audun Taraldsen from Arizona State University's "The Electronic Bulldog" - April 26, 1996. Dated in some respects but highly detailed. (April 26, 199     ArXiv Recent papers in dynamical systems at the ArXiv preprint server.     Chaos,_Limit_Cycles_and_Twisted_Rods Integrability and chaotic attractors. Limit cycles of the Lienard systems. Elastic instabilites : twisted rods. Path and surface following : continuation algorithms.     Climate_Dynamics,_Chaos_and_Quantum_Mechanics A general systems theory for chaos, quantum mechanics and climate dynamics applicable to dynamical systems of all space-time scales.     Crowd_Dynamics Crowd and Egress Dynamics by G. Keith Still.     Dynamical_Systems_Data_Base Data base of around 50,000 planar dynamical systems.

This is sites2007.com cache of m/ as retrieved on 2008.12.02 sites2007.com's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time.

Wired Top Stories http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml Top Stories<img src="http://www.wired.com/rss_views/index.gif"> en-us Copyright 2007 CondeNet Inc. All rights reserved. Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:58:00 GMT Wired.com 2008-12-02T12:58:00Z en-us Copyright 2007 CondeNet Inc. All rights reserved. iTunes: Coldplay, Leona Lewis Top 2008 Sales http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472477940/MUSIC_ITUNES_BESTSELLERS Coldplay was the hottest iTunes album download this year: Its "Viva la Vida" was crowned the best-selling album of 2008, while Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love" was named the top-selling single.<br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b6e361c3b3d10baf7988584c45aae632:4bris1eEq4poyqNAYO6UnbUIGWToZtaEN1YuuIlhY3rl5ROW9cjZLQIuvTHcMaYvK9Hv%2BKWmnl24yw%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:345565bfeccd19b902c2a1abc949710c:%2B0%2BMiVc%2FO5kQ5Y%2BxaTEePxfRcYxPFUgE4prMwtaH1C92Mgc1FGp%2BsK3qj9he0SgrpPTJUjizO4sb"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c1efe0496ef1b2650a499a46ddc31107:66FwA8zqNm62q1bmKZl7H6nI0oyXCK4c79jSri5MHga9Z9k1MLQV7n8e8TSvsnqkKohh7JrBCDuP"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:6663d22bc7347aca483fd7baaedb38f7:srHx79lHK06BKrcH3c9KEntvZTC8t7updJLK744O9rQq%2FZWc8%2FKHLOTIbS2gLTwyvHtVqQlOQi3b"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c88c1a73ac3d6767d7e58abbc6b3e58f&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c88c1a73ac3d6767d7e58abbc6b3e58f&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c88c1a73ac3d6767d7e58abbc6b3e58f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=6mmVqd"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=6mmVqd" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472477940" height="1" width="1"/> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:58:00 GMT http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/M/MUSIC_ITUNES_BESTSELLERS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-12-02-07-58-27 Associated Press 2008-12-02T12:58:00Z http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/M/MUSIC_ITUNES_BESTSELLERS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-12-02-07-58-27 Nokia Announces Chunky, Full-Featured N97 'Cellphone' http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472489401/nokia-announces.html On paper, Nokia's new N97 is a solid iPhone-beater: A Zeiss lens equipped 5MP with an LED flash and a video mode, a huge 32GB of memory, boost-able to 48GB with microSD cards, 3G comes in HSDPA flavor and there is Wi-Fi in the shape of 802.11b and g. 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He sieves the earth, runs it through magnetic drums and centrifuges and electromagnetic separators. Then his technicians, working with scanning electron microscopes, separate out grains and mount them on postage-stamp-sized squares of epoxy. It's painstaking work but worth the trouble. Fipke has learned to understand those grains of dirt, and that understanding has led him to diamonds.</p> <p>Eighteen years ago, there was no such thing as a Canadian diamond &mdash; as far as anyone knew. Diamonds came mostly from Australia, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and Russia. De Beers mined 75 percent of the world's output, much of it tainted by controversial "<a href="http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html">blood diamonds</a>," sold to fund African wars.</p> <div id="embed"> <div id="pic"><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_ice2_f.jpg" alt="" /> <div id="caption">Stones from the Ekati Mine.<br /> <em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em></div> </div> </div> <p>Today, Canada is the world's third-largest producer, by value, of rough stones. In the Northwest Territories, <a href="http://www.bhpbilliton.com/">BHP Billiton</a>'s Ekati <a href="http://www.bhpbilliton.com/bb/ourBusinesses/diamondsSpecialtyProducts/ekatiDiamondMine.jsp">mine</a> has been producing since 1998 and Rio Tinto's <a href="http://www.diavik.ca/">Diavik mine</a> since 2003. De Beers opened its first Canadian mine, at Snap Lake, in July &mdash; a confirmation that Canada is the new center of the world.</p> <p>The story behind the addition of Canada to the ranks of diamond-producing nations leads back to one man: a short, absentminded Canadian geologist named Chuck Fipke. When he discovered diamonds in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_de_Gras">Lac de Gras</a>, Northwest Territories, in 1991, he started the largest staking rush in North America since <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=4614">George Carmack</a> found gold in the Klondike a century earlier. And he's not finished: He's prospecting around the world, toting gravel samples back to his lab in British Columbia to figure out where to look for his next big strike.</p> <p><strong>In 1970, fresh out of</strong> the University of British Columbia with a degree in geology, Chuck Fipke signed on with mining company <a href="http://www.kennecott.com/">Kennecott Copper</a> to look for gold and copper in Papua New Guinea. A helicopter would drop him off alone in the middle of a jungle, and pick him up at the end of the day. The terrain was so rough that the chopper often couldn't land &mdash; Fipke would just leap out as it hovered close to the ground. One day he turned around to face 20 locals, arrows strung. He raised his arms, slowly removed his vest, and offered it to "the one who looked like the chief." By the time the helo returned for him, Fipke was in his underpants clutching a fine array of tribal shields, bows and arrows, and fetishes. "I've got an amazing collection of stuff!" he says.</p> <p>Fipke is a small man with a shaved head, a burnished tan, piercing blue eyes, and forearms like Popeye's. As a kid, his frantic start-stop mind made people think he was stupid. After getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, he agreed to marry her ... and then failed to show up for the wedding. (The couple eventually married after the baby was born.) He stutters and says "hey" in almost every sentence. He frequently loses his glasses and his keys, shows up late to appointments, and has a history of spending prodigious amounts of money in strip joints. His nicknames have included Captain Chaos and Stumpy.</p> <p>After stints in the Amazon, Australia, and South Africa, Fipke opened a mineral separation laboratory in British Columbia in 1977. A year later, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Oil_Company">Superior Oil</a> hired him to go back into the field &mdash; to look not for metals but gems.</p> <!-- pagebreak --> <div class="wide_img"><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_ice3_f.jpg" alt=""> <div class="wide_caption"><div class="wide_caption_txt">The wilderness around Snap Lake, in Canada's Northwest Territories, conceals a trove of diamonds.<br /> <em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em></div></div></div> <br/><br/> <p>The company already had a search method. A couple of years prior, a geologist named <a href="http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/geolsci/people/staff/johng.htm">John Gurney</a>, working with Superior's money at the University of Cape Town, hypothesized that certain common minerals might reliably form alongside diamonds. He used an electron microprobe to analyze geological structures called <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/diamonds/kimberlite.html">kimberlite pipes</a> &mdash; the places you occasionally (but not often) find diamonds &mdash; and discovered that the presence of chromite, ilmenite, and high-chrome, low-calcium garnet did indeed predict a rich strike. He examined a host of pipes in South Africa that had these so-called indicator minerals and published a paper explaining his results.</p> <div id="embed"> <div id="pic"><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_map_250.jpg" alt="" /> <div id="caption">The Snap Lake site is one of four diamond mines established in Canada in recent years.<br /> <em>Illustration: Bryan Christie</em></div> </div> </div> <p>Fipke heard about Gurney's work on a tour of De Beers' <a href="http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/finsch/">Finsch Mine</a> in South Africa and quickly turned himself into an expert on indicator minerals &mdash; combining what he understood of Gurney's work with results coming out of Russian labs and his own skills with field sampling. Superior had worked with Fipke before, back in his gold mining days, so by the time the company wanted someone to go look for kimberlite pipes northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado, Fipke was the best choice. He found half a dozen, but like 98 percent of the kimberlite formations in the world, they didn't contain diamonds in commercially viable quantities.</p> <p>But Fipke knew that, 100 miles under those pipes, was a craton, a thick, old chunk of continental plate where diamonds form. Kimberlite pipes are created when magma bubbles up through a craton, expanding and cooling on its way up. If the craton has diamonds in it, the result is either a carrot-shaped, diamond-studded pipe reaching up to the surface or a wide, flat underground structure called a dike.</p> <p>Fipke also knew that the craton underneath the pipes he had found ran all the way up the Rockies. With Superior's backing, he teamed up with a geologist and pilot named Stewart Blusson, formed <a href="http://www.diamet.com/">Dia Met Minerals</a>, and headed north.</p> <p>By 1981, the two men were sampling the ground in Canada; they would eventually secure mining concessions on 80,000 square miles. "It was just me and Sewart and a floatplane," Fipke says. "We took all the supplies and all the samples in ourselves."</p> <p>De Beers geologists, it turned out, were already there, relying on their own indicator mineral formulas. But Fipke and Blusson surmised that the indicators De Beers found had in fact been dragged far from the kimberlite pipe eons ago by a passing glacier. What they needed to do was look "upstream" for the point of origin. Fipke got a helicopter and flew back and forth over the Arctic Circle, using a magnetometer to track variations in magnetic field that would suggest kimberlite. After thousands of miles and hundreds of hours in the air, he found a promising site near Lac de Gras, a barren world of lakes and rock and muskeg a few hundred miles outside the Arctic Circle.</p> <p>He'd been surveying for eight years. He hadn't found a single diamond. Superior had abandoned the diamond business. Dia Met's stock was trading at pennies a share. But based upon a few samples, Fipke estimated a diamond concentration at Lac de Gras of more than 60 carats per 100 tons &mdash; with about a quarter of the stones of good quality or better. (In kimberlite pipes that have gem-quality stones in commercial quantities, a concentration of 1 carat &mdash; 0.2 grams &mdash; per 100 tons can be profitable.) After six months of sampling, Fipke went public. It was 1991, and he had found a kimberlite pipe (buried under 30 feet of glaciated sediment) with a concentration of 68 carats per 100 tons &mdash; the first Canadian diamonds ever found. Shares of Dia Met rocketed to $70. Fipke had partnered with mining giant Broken Hill Proprietary Company (now BHP Billiton) to get the diamonds out; BHP opened the Ekati mine at Lac de Gras in 1998. Soon Dia Met's 29 percent share of the mine was worth billions. Fipke would go on to sell his chunk to BHP for $687 million, retaining 10 percent ownership in the mine, worth another $1 billion.</p> <p>Today Canada's diamond business is soaring. The country's four working mines produced 17 million carats in 2007, up 23 percent from 2006. Diamonds from Canada now account for 10 percent of all diamonds by carat sold in the world. And the addition of more diamonds to the global market hasn't driven prices down. Average carat value has actually risen 15 percent, and the gems from the far north are untainted by the bad publicity that comes from an association with African wars.</p> <p>Shortly before Fipke sold most of his Ekati claim to BHP Billiton, his marriage, faltering for years after so much time in the field, fell apart. At the time it was the <a href="http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-02/feb28_00dia.html">largest divorce settlement</a> in Canadian history. "Cost me $200 million, hey," Fipke says. "Best money I ever spent!"</p> <p><strong>Fipke now has mining</strong> projects in Morocco, Greenland, Canada, Angola, and Brazil. His laboratory bookshelves are heavy with mineral guides &mdash; and the family histories of thoroughbreds. Besides diamonds, he's now obsessed with horse racing. "It's a huge challenge, hey, and I like challenges even if they're risky," he says. "And I think I'm really going to do spectacularly well with horses." So far, so good: He has more than 50 brood mares in Ireland and Kentucky and 20 racehorses all over the world. His horse <a href="http://www.kentuckyderby.com/2008/contenders/tale-ekati">Tale of Ekati</a> placed fifth in this year's Kentucky Derby. "I always go to the Derby with Bo Derek," he says, unlocking the door to a windowless room piled with maps and electron microscopes and computers. "She's a good rider, and she knows horses. And she's a lot of fun, hey! I'm gonna do for horse racing what I did for diamonds!"</p> <!-- pagebreak --> <div class="wide_img"><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_debeers_630.jpg" alt=""> <div class="wide_caption"><div class="wide_caption_txt">The De Beers mine at Snap Lake is a labyrinth of crushers and separators. <br/> <em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em></div></div></div><br/><br/> <p>Whether or not Fipke actually turns out to have an eye for horseflesh, his eye for the characteristics of crystals is unparalleled. He shows me rooms of glass flasks and tubes, the equipment for analyzing all those gravel samples. I peek through a microscope and see a rainbow treasure of sparkling gems: green chrome diopsides and red garnets &mdash; the low-calcium, high-chrome G-10s that mean diamonds are nearby.</p> <p>Over many years in the field and the lab, Fipke has refined his understanding of this unique stew of minerals. "Everyone now knows that G-10 garnets with low calcium might lead you to diamonds, hey," Fipke says. "But how do you distinguish between a Group 1 eclogitic garnet that grew with a diamond and a Group 2 eclogitic garnet that didn't? They look the same." Custom software compares the grains' shapes and chemical compositions, analyzes them against 1,000 minerals that are intergrown with diamonds, and compares them against 10 fields of mineral groupings. If seven to 10 of the fields from one pipe overlap, Fipke says, "there's no doubt; it's full of diamonds. No one else out there can distinguish between these similar tiny particles of minerals that grow with a diamond and ones that don't."</p> <div id="embed"> <div id="pic"><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_ice5_f.jpg" alt="" /> <div id="caption">Miners prepare to blow up a rock face.<br /> <em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em> </div> </div> </div> <p>"Look," he says, opening a folder on a table. He has thousands of photos of mineral grains magnified to the size of golf balls. Some are all sharp corners and jagged edges, some rounded. Since erosion and age wear the minerals down, "we can tell when we're getting closer to the source. If the edges are sharp, hey, we know they haven't traveled far from the pipe."</p> <p>That level of geographic precision has allowed Fipke to stake more claims. He's even working in areas of Brazil where De Beers hasn't been able to turn a profit. "And Angola. Angola has the richest alluvial diamond river in the world," he says, "and there are thousands of diamond works there. But we're looking for the source pipes." Five years ago Fipke started making magnetometer survey flights over the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwango_River">Kwango River</a>. Having identified 100 possible targets, he now has 40 men taking core samples 900 to 1,200 feet under the riverbed. "I'm there at the camp at least three times a year, hey, and it's much harder than in the Arctic. Your drilling equipment just gets buried in enormous piles at customs in Luanda and you can't get it. In the Northwest Territories it was cold, hey, and full of snow, but you get a good parka and you're a bug in a rug. Angola is the most inefficient place on earth!"</p> <p>I start to ask another question, but Fipke has something else in mind. "I'm hungry, hey," he barks, as the door to the map room slams shut behind us. "Do you like oysters?" But we're not going anywhere: He has locked his keys in the room and has to call someone to drive in and open up his office.</p> <p>We finally head into town. "Hi, Chuck!" says the hostess, leading us to the back room of a hip Asian fusion place. Around a long table sit 23 young women, all sporting stilettos and big hair. "Chuck!" they shout. We have, it seems, shown up at the bachelorette party for Fipke's granddaughter. The hostess seats us at the next table. Fipke orders four dozen oysters and a bottle of wine that has to be driven to the restaurant from some special cellar, and a young women shimmies into the booth next to Fipke. "Chuck," she says, kissing him on the cheek, "do you think you can pay for us all tonight?"</p> <p>"Sure," Fipke says, beaming.</p> <p>"Do you remember this?" says another woman &mdash; his daughter, it turns out, who slides in next to him, holding up a purse. "You bought it for me!"</p> <p>With Fipke suddenly bankrolling the night, the girls break loose, and the restaurant staff starts hauling out the bottles of champagne. Pretty soon a couple of lasses are dancing on the tables, the oysters are slipping down, a second bottle of rare wine is being decanted, and Fipke is remixing the menu like Danny DeVito in <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/Title?0113161"><cite>Get Shorty</cite></a></em>.</p> <p>And the tales spill forth: three week forays into the Peruvian Amazon, travels with the Kalahari Bushmen of Southern Africa, visits to the pygmies of the Ituri forest in the Congo. "I'd just leave my family and go, hey," he says. "I was really into native culture."</p> <p>Somebody asks him about Brazil, and it reminds him of something important. "Caipirinhas!" he shouts out of the blue. "I want 25 caipirinhas!"</p> <p>When the bill arrives, it's 3 feet long and $4,000. Fipke pays up, and we spill into the night &mdash; his daughter and granddaughter and their friends and now boyfriends, who joined us in the restaurant. On the street, Fipke suddenly leaps into the air and delivers a solid, suede loafer-clad foot to the head of a parking meter. "I fucking hate parking meters, hey!" he shouts. He jumps and kicks another one, and then erupts into a fit of giggles.</p> <p>We are ushered past the velvet rope at the Cheetah Lounge, Kelowna's classiest strip joint, and Captain Chaos orders another round of caipirinhas for everyone. Three generations of Fipkes pound drinks as naked women dangle upside down from poles onstage.</p> <p>The room is spinning by the time Fipke takes me aside and lays a big warm hand on my arm. "Hey," he says, "here's the thing. I learned that I did my best. I mean, I really tried my best. How many people can say that? I worked hard, and I mean really hard. I worked seven days a week from 8 am until 3 am. Every day. We drilled and drilled all winter when it was dark and the windchill was 80 below. Everyone thought I was crazy. But most people just never do their best, hey. And I did."</p> <p><em>Contributing editor Carl Hoffman </em>(<a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/mailto:carlhoffmn@earthlink.net">carlhoffmn@earthlink.net</a>) <em>wrote about the private space company SpaceX in issue 15.06.</em></p><br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:0627ce3c3b6ae327e5f06dd2f229cc5e:%2FfMZEsh%2BwKLICU5UU6f2XvNPdawcsXbrPL0IgcNmb1HkbkovTIq34grsdoe%2FarsA5BIV0olmUO5vOg%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:f6c60dd504b07078bdbc6b09258399fa:z9re7O%2Fr9g7IWr4dUnV7qrGpZcrb8Jda0z5wA4Ind8sbvwvuCjEcWeHZ3OMoIQ2%2FlAqrQu%2BxQ%2Fwj"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:eabae8e0f643b5c7f7a103cea954fefd:B7poPN8AgcPsLABfHqfLdvTArLYNDoIDfq7hJXfovsGgeK1C%2FXxzP9gLrcWMNRJZSzyblLz%2BiS6g"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3669b8286376e46e06956252ef17c5b1:cfCGfTXzx74lBKekrETCStAWLWyBnGkD8fTmyGqiNQWrC6%2FmqUtSmWQQxfC2zORnD6oE0JLZc9DD"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=aee47be5de030b69470388cf099ed063&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=aee47be5de030b69470388cf099ed063&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=aee47be5de030b69470388cf099ed063" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=IAu4eH"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=IAu4eH" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101281" height="1" width="1"/> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-12/ff_diamonds Carl Hoffman 2008-12-02T05:00:00Z http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-12/ff_diamonds Geek Hotels Pass the Nerd Test http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472101282/gallery_geek_hotels <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_sidi_driss_t.jpg"></img>: Photo: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/scottroberts/2192864663/">scottroberts/Flickr</a> <p> Whether your fantasy hotel is a <cite>Star Wars</cite>-style cave dwelling or a Hobbit hole in New Zealand, specialty accommodations around the world will fulfill your nerdy needs. </p> <p> Other hotels geek out with crazy gear, from Apple- and Microsoft-themed suites to virtual golf courses. And while WiFi has become a common hotel offering, a high-tech hotel in the Middle East extends internet access all the way to its private beach. </p> <p> These and other specialty accommodations make Wired.com's list of top geek hotels. </p> <p> <strong><a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hôtel_Sidi_Driss">Hôtel Sidi Driss</a>, Matmata, Tunisia</strong> </p> <p> <strong>Left:</strong> The Tunisian town of Matmata is riddled with <a href="http://lexicorient.com/e.o/troglod.htm">troglodyte dwellings</a>, vertical caves dug out by humans and turned into homes. The Hôtel Sidi Driss is one such desert delight. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> Does the cave hotel look strangely familiar? The interior was used as a <cite>Star Wars</cite> filming location &mdash; it's the Lars' homestead on Tatooine. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_sax_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy Hotel Sax<p><strong><a href="http://www.hotelsaxchicago.com/TheMicrosoftExperience/">Hotel Sax</a>, Chicago</strong> </p> <p> Plenty of businesses have gotten into bed with Microsoft. Now you can, too: Chicago's Hotel Sax has a partnership with the software giant that lets weary travelers relax into "the Microsoft Experience." </p> <p><strong>Geek factor:</strong> The Studio, Hotel Sax's "Entertainment Lounge" available to all guests features Microsoft gear like Xbox 360s and Zunes. Don't want to share? Book your own private "Entertainment Technology" studio or suite.</p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_1000_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy Hotel 1000<p><strong><a href="http://www.hotel1000seattle.com/">Hotel 1000</a>, Seattle</strong> </p> <p> The operators of this high-tech hotel sank millions of dollars into the latest gear. With luxuries like ubiquitous WiFi, HD TVs and a "fully converged IP infrastructure" that allows for internet-enabled personalization of everything from room temperatures to the art on the walls, Hotel 1000 was a shoe-in for <cite>Hospitality Technology</cite> magazine's 2008 award for overall technology innovation. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> After playing around on the hotel's virtual golf course, just flip the electronic "do not disturb" sign to keep hotel staff or annoying co-workers at bay. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/avante_t.jpg"></img>: Photo: Mark Darley<p> <strong><a href="http://www.jdvhotels.com/hotels/avante/">Hotel Avante</a>, Mountain View, California</strong> </p> <p> Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Hotel Avante is making a big play for big players. The 91-room boutique hotel bills itself &mdash; and its guests &mdash; as "smart, visionary, iconoclastic and artistic." </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> To further its "creative clubhouse" atmosphere, each room includes an "executive toy box" with a yo-yo, an Etch A Sketch, a Rubik's Cube, playing cards and a Slinky. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/pod_hotel_akihabara_t.jpg"></img>: Photo: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/maurizio_mwg/2515790491/">maurizio_mwg/Flickr</a><p> <strong><a href="http://www.capsuleinn.com/">Capsule Inn Akihabara</a>, Tokyo</strong> </p> <p> Capsule Inn Akihabara is one of only a few places to stay in "Electric Town," Tokyo's anime/otaku hub and the site of the largest electronics market in the world. The tiny capsule rooms look like washing machines from the outside. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> The hotel's sleeping units are "designed in the image of a jet airplane's cockpit" with every device in the capsule &mdash; TV, radio, alarm clock, lighting &mdash; designed to be controlled from a sleeping position. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/pod_hotel_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy The Pod Hotel <p> <strong><a href="http://www.thepodhotel.com/">The Pod Hotel</a>, New York</strong> </p> <p> With free WiFi, iPod docks, relatively inexpensive rooms (called "<a href="http://www.thepodhotel.com/yourpod.html">pods</a>") and the opportunity to make new friends in its shared bathrooms, The Pod Hotel in Manhattan's Midtown East neighborhood is making a play for the Facebook generation. Antisocial guests will be pleased to know that some rooms have private baths. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> Nicknamed the "Facebook Hotel," this place has its own <a href="http://podculture.thepodhotel.com/PodCultureHome/tabid/36/Default.aspx">social networking site</a> to help guests find someone for dinner, drinks, shopping or whatever. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/tribecca_grand_istudio_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy Tribeca Grand Hotel<p><strong><a href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/">Tribeca Grand Hotel</a>, New York</strong> </p> <p> With its plush bar and 98-seat <a href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/meetings/grandscreen.htm">screening room</a>, the Tribeca Grand is definitely swanky. But book an iStudio and you'll be pampered, Apple-style. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> The <a href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/rooms/istudio.htm">iStudio rooms</a>. They're decked out with Apple products, including a Power Mac G5, photo- and video-editing software and an iPod. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/woodlyn_park_t.jpg"></img>: Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenr/106085993/">stephenr/Flickr</a> <p><strong><a href="http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz/">Woodlyn Park</a>, New Zealand</strong> </p> <p> Woodlyn Park is home to Billy Black's Kiwi Culture Show, with sheep shearing and a dancing pig. But the real star of the complex is <a href="http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz/thehobbitmotel.html">The Hobbit Motel</a>, two polystyrene-block units with circular doors built into a hillside. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> You can pretend you're a hobbit. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/ice_hotel_t.jpg"></img>: Photo: Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions<p><strong><a href="http://www.icehotel.com/">Icehotel</a>, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden</strong> </p> <p> The Icehotel says it offers "an experience of a lifetime as well as an encounter with art and design that will surprise your senses." Since it's made of ice and snow, that claim sounds perfectly believable. You can book hot or cold accommodations at the Icehotel. Each ice room is designed by an artist, such as the one shown here by Andrea Thomson. Got the shivers? Heat up from the inside out at the <a href="http://www.icehotel.com/Content/AbsolutIcebar/">Absolut Icebar</a>. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> The ice palace in the Bond flick <cite>Die Another Day</cite> was inspired by this hotel. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/emirates_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy Emirates Palace Hotel<p> <strong><a href="http://www.emiratespalace.com/en/home/index.htm">Emirates Palace Hotel</a>, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates</strong> </p> <p> Everything's superdeluxe at this Middle Eastern resort hotel, and it's even better if you step up a notch: All suites boast 61-inch plasma TVs (regular rooms have puny 50-inchers). All guest rooms have handheld computers that control switches and outlets &mdash; set your language preference for the interactive screens upon check-in. </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> Free WiFi reaches all poolside areas and even the private beach. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/tomo_t.jpg"></img>: Photo courtesy Joie de Vivre Hospitality<p> <strong><a href="http://www.jdvhotels.com/tomo/">Hotel Tomo</a>, San Francisco</strong> </p> <p> From anime-inspired wall paintings to glow-in-the-dark desk blotters, Hotel Tomo kicks out the J-pop jams. See Wired.com's photo gallery on this Japanophile find, "<a href="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multimedia/2007/09/gallery_hoteltomo/ ">San Francisco's Hotel Tomo Jacks Into Japanese Culture</a>." </p> <p> <strong>Geek factor:</strong> Deluxe gaming suites come with PlayStation 3, Wii, beanbag chairs and a 6-foot LCD projection screen.</p><br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b75f61bee4a8a86d8109e8bf3c479dea:gdjlmXDagKuvEhGX5ENHbUSG%2Bc5SWOpUdQACXI8Td62ujoup%2B9ehSiohCNtmAuBYPXPh%2Ff%2BAXr1C5A%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:91fe3b2e771768819ef417c75c50c9f0:WDe9%2BmQrF2IUfcChjlR2r%2BfmBAfAjT6o6%2FyK9NgvffqOnWRdBJCQmwf%2F4d5iJhcQJ3lXunygaXXf"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1692e3484550dc3dcab6d7af9328db30:DNv9zdmYxFnuBq3XXQl24bmsXn0b%2BJ%2F%2Bl6fOz2vaFFROXPooGiDP0WYqO3KL7Z8bp7rLuyxx9RdL"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:a63bad173c89dcbc37bf8f56ff443099:iGGf%2FxgavkIBWhN5nXayRzORRUKnkiBChOijp28Ea634%2BDN7Xn2hmphrpvSQGumyOpHm%2Bf07CjtM"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=5fded2fa260612e175c28588afab2f77&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=5fded2fa260612e175c28588afab2f77&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=5fded2fa260612e175c28588afab2f77" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=0YqoMk"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=0YqoMk" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101282" height="1" width="1"/> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels Brita d'Agostino and Lewis Wallace 2008-12-02T05:00:00Z http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels Digging for Diamonds 24/7 Under Frozen Snap Lake http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472101284/ff_diamonds_sb <p> Plink. Plink. Tink. One billion dollars of up-front investment and it all comes down to this: a slow but steady trickle of milky white pebbles dropping from a funnel into an acrylic jar. The jar is locked inside a glass case that's inside a vault that's inside the high-security Red Area of a prefab aluminum building on the Canadian tundra. Every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year, miners for the South African company De Beers blast 3,150 tons of rock &mdash; enough to fill 80 trucks &mdash; from under the earth near this aluminum building and feed it into crushers, scrubbers, sifters, and x-ray machines. It's a lot of effort for a little, but the little is a lot: the equivalent of two coffee mugs a day full of rough diamonds. </p> <p> Running a diamond mine in the Arctic is a mind-boggling undertaking. "This is a camp in the middle of nowhere," says Peter Mooney, manager of the processing plant at Snap Lake, "and a bloody horrible winter's day in Africa is the nicest summer day here. The real problem with diamonds isn't even their scarcity," he says. "It's that getting them takes a lot of science and engineering and lots and lots of money." </p> <!-- start article photo --> <div id="embed"><div id="pic"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg" alt="" /></a> <div class="zoom"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" /></a> </div> <div id="caption"> An aerial view shows the Snap Lake facility. <br /><em>Photo: Courtesy DeBeers</em> </div></div></div> <!-- close pic --> <p> Fipke doesn't work for De Beers &mdash; they're competitors &mdash; but the Snap Lake project, just like the ones at Ekati and Diavik, is part of the new era that Fipke created. The only way in is by air on company charter flights, except for six to 10 weeks in winter when ice road truckers &mdash; just like on the History Channel show &mdash; cart in fuel, mining machines and haul trucks, dormitories and parts for generators, conveyor belts, explosives. </p> <p> On a 4,000-foot gravel runway, commuter planes and 737s trade approaches and takeoffs with C-130 Hercules flights full of cargo. After my ATR threads its way to the ground, a yellow school bus picks me up and drops me at a snaking series of linked prefab trailers containing sleeping quarters, offices, and a cafeteria. I fill out forms. I agree to be searched at any time. I agree not pick up any rocks from the ground, even the smallest pebble. Hundreds of closed-circuit cameras watch my every move. </p> <p> Snap Lake is unusual &mdash; instead of blowing straight up to the surface, the magma followed a crooked path through fissures in the surrounding granite. Snap Lake's kimberlite is a 9-foot-thick, 2.5-by-1.6-mile seam angling slightly downward. It's also about 200 feet under a lake that's frozen most of the year. So all of Snap Lake's mining is underground &mdash; a cold, wet, black world of rising and falling tunnels constantly leaking water from the lake above. </p> <!-- start article photo --> <div id="embed"><div id="pic"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg" alt="" /></a> <div class="zoom"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" /></a> </div> <div id="caption">Snap Lake miners work under the lake. <br /><em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em></div></div></div> <!-- close pic --> <p> The operation consumes 25,000 gallons of fuel a day &mdash; and the work never stops. Miners drill holes in rock faces, insert explosives, and blow out over 1,500 tons of gray kimberlite per blast, twice a day. Trucks carry the ore to a large bin where it's stored. Then it's sent to a crusher that feeds the rock onto a mile-long conveyor belt that carries it to the surface, to the Blue Area, specifically a 5-story building of more crushers and sifters and shakers and screens and heavy liquid cyclone separators that pick out all the heavy ore. It's a roaring maze of steel grates and 60-foot staircases. </p> <p> Eventually the conveyors pass into a more secure building-within-the-building, the Red Area. It's accessible only via a room the size of a closet; when the door behind me locks, cameras confirm that I'm alone. A green light tells me to proceed through zigzagging rooms that would be difficult to, say, kick a diamond through. </p> <p> The ore passes down through another tower of sorters &mdash; x-rays illuminate diamonds. A secondary (and secret) process uses lasers to further refine the stream. At the end of the line, past an 8-inch-thick steel door and a set of steel bars, is the vault itself, a small room with half a dozen cameras and a big, rectangular glass box shot with glove-lined holes, like an incubator for premature infants. Stones &mdash; some the size of pin heads, others the size of gum balls &mdash; drop into a jar. Sometimes five minutes pass with nary a gem, and then two or three tumble out at once. Over the course of a year, there will be 1.2 million carats. Some are opaque; some are as clear as glass. Of the 430 men and women working here, no more than 60 will ever see this vault &mdash; or any diamonds. Ever. I slip my hands through the holes and into gloves, and pick up the biggest rock I see, a perfect 5-carat octahedral crystal three times older than the human species, formed during the age of the mastodons. A chunk of pure carbon, beautiful and banal. I ask how much it's worth. "Not allowed to say," Mooney says. "Put it this way: That's a hell of a lot of diamonds." </p> <!-- start article photo --> <div id="embed"><div id="pic"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg" alt="" /></a> <div class="zoom"> <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg&imageCaption=&imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" /></a> </div> <div id="caption"> Dumptrucks loaded with ore exit Snap Lake mine. <br /><em>Photo: Andrew Hetherington</em> </div></div></div> <!-- close pic --> <p> Diamond jewelry has never moved me. But suddenly, holding this stone, I can't help it. I want one. The gears in my mind whir. And it's as if Mooney can hear them. "People get very clever," he says, "and very determined. We haven't had any theft here yet, but we check the gloves for holes every day." I gently place the stone back in the pile. </p> <p> Exiting requires an additional turn into a room with an x-ray machine and a glass wall. Under the gaze of a man who says, "Don't worry, I've seen it all," I strip to my underpants, place my clothes and shoes and socks through the x-ray machine. Open my mouth. Show behind my ears. Sit in a chair and show the bottoms of my feet. Stand and run my fingers under the band of my underpants. There's only one hiding place left, which happily they don't check. I'm cleared and allowed to dress. </p><br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d011f686205262c6951fc33685b9bb46:a8pvoY0DF4w6AiLCDaPAxt4vcEJtvr5wJESgvBmhZizGdIwUswHdfQNGT0WMrv4ojgA5yCeDKy7W3Q%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1735cba2b691243040d240890798faea:5NRFEhJtG%2F%2F8WaCMCuPS%2F4RjNqb89d3oWFzueVglFjn1wsAbytlpHHl8XzVTjtNg41BQd3NxQV9w"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:dc8729a9cfdd0557ca41dce4be2e075c:2CxMVa%2F06wsEm0VSsYE%2FCE1SkSz%2BXA1VhsMeuyIIPLpXdjBq3K9BXbQVcJ4ZOEwec2vUcRvFaVES"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:70ffb3fccb1fa0cdf92173d47ab87d7e:2M67At%2B4WlXawKkc8v5qSMyJqs1W%2BmVDtVF1w7XerfxYF1r%2Fc7E49pH6Pz6uWaHwwDnYF5Rlqbzi"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=1DnDqv"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=1DnDqv" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101284" height="1" width="1"/> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-12/ff_diamonds_sb Carl Hoffman 2008-12-02T05:00:00Z http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-12/ff_diamonds_sb Dec. 2, 1942: Nuclear Pile Gets Going<br />Dec. 2, 1957: Nuclear Power Goes Online http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472101286/dayintech_1202 <p><strong>Dec. 2: </strong>It's a double milestone for nuclear energy. The first man-made sustained nuclear chain reaction was created this day in 1942. And just 15 years later, the first full-scale nuclear power plant went online. </p><p> <strong>1942: </strong> Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and their colleagues achieve a successful, controlled chain reaction in a squash court underneath the football grandstand of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. It lays the groundwork for the <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/07/dayintech_0716">first atomic bombs</a>. </p><p> <a href="http://www.anl.gov/Science_and_Technology/History/Anniversary_Frontiers/unisci.html">Fermi and Szilard</a> had been working on nuclear fission at Columbia University in New York, when Einstein wrote of their work to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein feared that German nuclear researchers might gain an unbeatable lead in the field and develop an atomic weapon that could win the war. </p><p> The Roosevelt administration responded with the then-secret, now-famous Manhattan Project. Top U.S. atomic scientists soon gathered in Chicago to see just how feasible it was to start a nuclear chain reaction, starting with a <em>controlled</em> rather than explosive one. </p><p> The original idea was to build a nuclear pile at a location in the Argonne Forest about 30 miles outside Chicago, but there were construction problems. Remarkably, the experiment was relocated to the University of Chicago campus inside city limits. </p><p> Construction began Nov. 16, 1942. The team got uranium from an Iowa State University researcher and Westinghouse Electric. Staffers worked around the clock to build a wooden structure on which they placed a lattice of 57 layers, comprising six tons of <a href="http://www.anl.gov/Science_and_Technology/History/Anniversary_Frontiers/piglet.html">uranium metal and 40 tons of uranium oxide</a> embedded in 380 tons of graphite blocks. </p><p> The whole apparatus was encased in a custom square balloon built by Goodyear Tire. The Chicago Pile-1 cost $2.7 million (about $36 million in today's money). </p><p> The Dec. 2 experiment began at 9:45 a.m. with more than 50 people in attendance. A three-man "suicide squad" was ready to douse the reactor in case it threatened to get out of control. Besides the main On/Off switch, there was a weighted safety rod that would automatically trip if neutron intensity got too high, a hand-operated backup safety rod, and "SCRAM" &mdash; the safety control rod ax-man, a top staffer wielding an ax to cut a rope to drop the safety rod, if all else failed. </p><p> The suicide squad wasn't needed. The pile achieved a sustained nuclear reaction at 3:25, and Fermi shut it down at 3:53. Those 28 minutes changed the world. </p><p> <a href="http://www.anl.gov/Science_and_Technology/History/Anniversary_Frontiers/italnav.html">So secret was the project</a> that at a party a few days later, the scientists' spouses didn't know what the all the congratulations were about. They wouldn't find out what had happened and <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/dayintech_0806">where the technology was headed</a> for another two-and-a-half years. And then, the world knew.</a> </p><p> <strong>1957: </strong>The light-water breeder reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania &mdash; the first in the United States &mdash; goes to full power on the anniversary of Chicago Pile-1. </p><p> An experimental breeder reactor devised by Chicago Pile-1 veteran Walter Zinn had created the <a href="http://www.todayinsci.com/12/12_20.htm">first nuclear-generated electricity</a> in 1951. President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ground for the first commercial plant, to be operated by Pittsburgh's Duquesne Light Company, in 1954. </p><p> Westinghouse Electric designed the plant in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. When it was in operation, nuclear fission heated water, which transferred its heat to convert the water in a secondary system into steam, which drove the turbine that created the electricity. </p><p> Shippingport shipped its first power into the Pittsburgh grid Dec. 18, 1957. Eisenhower returned to formally dedicate the plant the following May 26. </p><p> The plant was decomissioned in 1982 after a quarter-century of use. In the first complete U.S. decontamination, the reactor vessel was shipped to a low-level waste disposal facility at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington. </p><p> After the Shippingport site was cleaned, the <a href="http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/doe_shippingport_01.htm">government released it for unrestricted use</a> in 1987, suitable for picnicking or a children's playground. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated the plant as a landmark, and it's now open to visitors. </p><p> <em>Sources: Argonne National Laboratory, American Society of Mechanical Engineers</em> </p><br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d04b7d88f530e39194bc599220676652:PJ1Tngm9vQKgPkYwgsdlZMKccPpHfssntBumRI0rx%2FirE1WcaNkmankQFrbfNv58Rb6L%2F%2FpmvvokFg%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3c978e96ae3430e21a50a098f75521f4:uhdwzLVz3iXtNorICmjTMItbOhTRHsguMmlo3433VtAYdxUIKl%2FOvF64uOqPFZODa2Bk6Pd%2FiCBK"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:8ff5bbf35e4fa9163de15e8ba131a6c6:%2BPph8ER7ESfXl6uSNutvk4wFzUZFZ%2B8S1Wv0qoUCU76FuXSHOJyDL8N2WQBkGK3Z19%2BziZKkUB16"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c431e0cb48973aad5d57cca4d636af51:j9NJglfHKB7U4E9YgwIVKjdjgEnffbi1Mtap1KKFxmQFGgGPD7d61Qba5bpQSGKI9TEDPpXB6%2B4p"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2969bdd972653259f70ee05049c1e412&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2969bdd972653259f70ee05049c1e412&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2969bdd972653259f70ee05049c1e412" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=XBHz7a"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=XBHz7a" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101286" height="1" width="1"/> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1202 Randy Alfred 2008-12-02T05:00:00Z http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1202 As Facebook Connect Expands, OpenID's Challenges Grow http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/472477943/as-facebook-con.html Facebook Connect has been adopted by several high-profile websites, including Digg, Hulu and Discovery.com. 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Iceman May Have Dressed His Own Wounds http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/471895900/iceman.html The 5,000-year-old iceman may have been his own doctor, according to a new analysis of his intestinal tract. 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But once it's GAME OVER, what are you left with? Empty pockets and your initials on the high-score table? That won't buy those Warhammer figurines. </p><p>Well, now one of the hottest toy trends out of thrifty Japan is piggy banks that turn stockpiling yen into a game. In 2006, the Tomy company launched its Jinsei Ginko ("Life Bank"), a coin repository with an electronic version of the board game Life. It was such a hit that today there's a range of increasingly sophisticated banks, tailored for both genders and encompassing several genres. </p><p>Here's a look at a few piggys that are gobbling up the nation's yen, and the gameplay you get when you drop some dough. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/white_bank1_t.jpg"></img>: <p> This high-tech piggy bank started it all. The LCD screen is inhabited by a stick-figure avatar who can have various jobs like businessman or musician or president. He is your pet, sort of like a Tamagotchi that you have to feed with yen. </p> <p> Let's play it safe, join the work force as a corporate warrior. Our young salaryman starts out in a one-room dilapidated apartment, eating bowls of cheap noodles. Five days in, he has only saved a mere 500 yen. Pathetic. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/white_bank2_f.jpg"></img>: <p> Work, work, work. Endless! Our businessman races back into his office, briefcase in tow, only to end up hunched over a desk late into the night. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/white_bank3_f.jpg"></img>: <p> Here comes the bride, the stick figure bride! (Isn't she a knock out?) We've dumped thousands of yen into the Jinsei Ginko, and our avatar is moving up in the virtual world. With enough money in the bank and ample stick-figure charm, the salaryman is able to convince a fetching young lady to accept his hand in marriage. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/white_bank4_f.jpg"></img>: <p> As you move closer to maxing out the bank at 100,000 yen, your avatar moves out of his urban shoebox into a penthouse apartment with a beautiful view of the city. Raise your glass, salaryman-san. You've hit the 2-bit LCD big time! </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/tower_bank1_t.jpg"></img>: <p> The worst part of Japanese RGPs is grinding through the damn game, looking for money. Here's a thought: Look in your wallet! Instead of using in-game currency, BankQuest uses <em>your</em> coins. </p> <p> Still wet behind the ears, our hero enters the Tower, but he's brought an ax to a sword fight &mdash; not to mention a stupid-looking hat. Let's plunk some cold hard cashola into the bank so we can level up. Whenever players put change into this role-playing lock box, the gargoyle's mouth glows red and the in-game hero gets credit. </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/tower_bank2_f.jpg"></img>: <p> Once you've converted real money into virtual money, your avatar can buy weapons, armor and even health &mdash; regeneration potions in the village shops outside the castle walls. "Welcome!" says the shopkeeper. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/tower_bank3_f.jpg"></img>: <p> As you toggle through the goods in the shop, you'll spot cool merch like this blade that looks like it could cut a swath through hundreds of tiny LCD monsters. Must-have. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/tower_bank4_f.jpg"></img>: <p> Back in the Tower, our hero's brandishing his new gleaming sword and fancy hairdo. Just like in a standard RPG, leveling up changes the characters' appearance, and right now you look pretty darn good. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/tower_bank5_f.jpg"></img>: <p> Just like in any standard RPG, enemies pop up asking for a butt-whoppin'. Ack! There's a globby one. But with a badass sword in hand, that monster is so toast. The hero roams dungeons killing monsters and amassing treasure before he faces down the final boss, the dastardly spendthrift Devil Warudollar (<em>waru</em> means "bad"). </p> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/heart_bank_hunk_t.jpg"></img>: <p> Why drain your purse on dates with real men? Following schmaltzy romance novel plot lines, Ikemen Bank is a vault you can fall in love with. Literally. This heart-shaped vault is a <em>renai</em> (dating game) that lets frugal gals find romance while saving money. <em>Ikemen</em> is Japanese slang for "handsome guy," and there are five hunky suitors to select from: the cool dude, the TV star, the rich kid, the buff athlete and the sugar daddy. Just look at that dreamboat. He's so, well, dreamy. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/heart_bank_rice_t.jpg"></img>: <p> Cool guy is hungry, and when cool guy is hungry, you damn well better feed him. Tonight's din-din is a traditional meal. "Delicious!" he says, emptying another bowl of rice. </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/heart_bank_holdclose_t.jpg"></img>: <p> What. An. Evening. Tonight was truly a date to remember forever and ever. That is, until the next one. But before parting, cool guy pulls you close, whispering sweet nothings. Each time a coin is inserted, he'll say things like "I want to smooch," or "You really look great today," or "Let me give you a shoulder rub." Swoon! </p><img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/heart_bank_sayonara_t.jpg"></img>: <p> Great date aside, you're totally busy with real world stuff! And you totally forget to insert money into your Ikemen Bank for a whole working week. Your greedy hunk writes you a letter that simply says, "<em>Sayonara</em>." No translation needed. </p><br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:2c57fdaa67026c727731d01fed441262:613lc78hik1NULFov2dZuXax%2BoS6oFREi6qD2oI8H5OKGVDe7BrwH0Me2v8Q9goojR%2FROf38DJ%2Fc6A%3D%3D"><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:c4e1cf2b0866451d525fa29e1e9195ed:1o%2Bsgx5ysTxyLikMBLGnFrsl7lb%2F%2Fu0xzWk8oKBwFMUu1zsBAMuBYTPRdIznqvMT4b%2FwxlLNOzH3"><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:a529d7f28be5ec78d6874abf084feae3:08gOUcR%2BvkNVEf9kXhBNZo%2BgwGBxbvwb0P6QQvHQbYx6cYp0td76C11zIpCt1bhgYO6umlVPhN0U"><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif"/></a> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href="http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:0b6590178278dc967e63e66c49346ee7:syqbZ4wvguFbFd8ShgU5cVFwcy2v%2FJEzCgkPKo%2BnRZ5PsDk5%2B2mDLsPtifrxcLTsFPYvPa7Ke2yI"><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src="http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png"/></a> <br style="clear: both;"/> <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b4b35ae1016f5298984a0ee52bcdec06&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b4b35ae1016f5298984a0ee52bcdec06&p=1"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b4b35ae1016f5298984a0ee52bcdec06" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=geW5eI"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=geW5eI" border="0"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/471672380" height="1" width="1"/> Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multimedia/2008/11/pl_games Brian Ashcraft 2008-12-01T06:00:00Z http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/multimedia/2008/11/pl_games Secret Geek A-Team Hacks Back, Defends Worldwide Web http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/471672381/ff_kaminsky <!-- pageType= magazinewide slug= ff_kaminsky section= techbiz subsection= people headline= Secret Geek A-Team Hacks Back, Defends Worldwide Web authorName= Joshua Davis creditType= photo credit= John Keatley caption= TBD --> <p><strong>In June 2005,</strong> a balding, slightly overweight, perpetually T-shirt-clad 26-year-old computer consultant named Dan Kaminsky decided to get in shape. He began by scanning the Internet for workout tips and read that five minutes of sprinting was the equivalent of a half-hour jog. This seemed like a great shortcut&mdash;an elegant exercise hack&mdash;so he bought some running shoes at the nearest Niketown. That same afternoon, he laced up his new kicks and burst out the front door of his Seattle apartment building for his first five-minute workout. He took a few strides, slipped on a concrete ramp and crashed to the sidewalk, shattering his left elbow.</p> <p>He spent the next few weeks stuck at home in a Percocet-tinged haze. Before the injury, he'd spent his days testing the inner workings of software programs. Tech companies hired him to root out security holes before hackers could find them. <a href="http://www.doxpara.com/?page_id=1159">Kaminsky</a> did it well. He had a knack for breaking things&mdash;bones and software alike.</p> <p>But now, laid up in bed, he couldn't think clearly. His mind drifted. Running hadn't worked out so well. Should he buy a stationary bike? Maybe one of those recumbent jobs would be best. He thought about partying in Las Vegas ... mmm, martinis ... and recalled a trick he'd figured out for getting free Wi-Fi at Starbucks.</p> <p>As his arm healed, the details of that Starbucks hack kept nagging at him. He remembered that he had gotten into Starbucks' locked network using the domain name system, or DNS. When someone types google .com into a browser, DNS has a list of exactly where Google's servers are and directs the traffic to them. It's like directory assistance for the Internet. At Starbucks, the port for the low-bandwidth DNS connection&mdash;port 53&mdash;was left open to route customers to the <em>Pay for Starbucks Wi-Fi</em> Web page.</p> <p>So, rather than pay, Kaminsky used port 53 to access the open DNS connection and get online. It was free but super-slow, and his friends mocked him mercilessly. To Kaminsky that was an irresistible challenge. After weeks of studying the minutiae of DNS and refining his hack, he was finally able to stream a 12-second animated video of Darth Vader dancing a jig with Michael Flatley. (The clip paired the Lord of the Sith with the Lord of the Dance.)</p> <p>That was more than a year ago, but it still made him smile. DNS was the unglamorous underbelly of the Internet, but it had amazing powers. Kaminsky felt drawn to the obscure, often-ignored protocol all over again.</p> <p>Maybe the painkillers loosened something in his mind, because as Kaminsky began to think more deeply about DNS he became convinced that something wasn't right. He couldn't quite figure it out, but the feeling stuck with him even after he stopped taking the pain pills. He returned to work full time and bought a recumbent stationary bike. He got hired to test the security of Windows Vista before it was released, repeatedly punching holes in it for Microsoft. Still, in the back of his mind, he was sure that the entire DNS system was vulnerable to attack.</p> <p>Then last January, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon, he flopped down on his bed, flipped open his laptop, and started playing games with DNS. He used a software program called Scapy to fire random queries at the system. He liked to see how it would respond and decided to ask for the location of a series of nonexistent Web pages at a Fortune 500 company. Then he tried to trick his DNS server in San Diego into thinking that he knew the location of the bogus pages.</p> <p>Suddenly it worked. The server accepted one of the fake pages as real. But so what? He could now supply fake information for a page nobody would ever visit. Then he realized that the server was willing to accept more information from him. Since he had supplied data about one of the company's Web pages, it believed that he was an authoritative source for <em>general</em> information about the company's domain. The server didn't know that the Web page didn't exist&mdash;it was listening to Kaminsky now, as if it had been hypnotized.</p> <p>When <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/06/dayintech_0623">DNS was created</a> in 1983, it was designed to be helpful and trusting&mdash;it's directory assistance, after all. It was a time before hacker conventions and Internet banking. Plus, there were only a few hundred servers to keep track of. Today, the humble protocol stores the location of a billion Web addresses and routes every piece of Internet traffic in the world.</p> <p>Security specialists have been revamping and strengthening DNS for more than two decades. But buried beneath all this tinkering, Kaminsky had just discovered a vestige of that original helpful and trusting program. He was now face-to-face with the behemoth's almost childlike core, and it was perfectly content to accept any information he wanted to supply about the location of the Fortune 500 company's servers.</p> <!-- pagebreak --> <div class="wide_img"> <img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_kaminsky2_f.jpg" alt=""> <div class="wide_caption"> <div class="wide_caption_txt"> Paul Vixie organized experts from around the world to address the DNS security flaw. <br/> <em>Photo: John Keatley</em> </div> </div> </div> <br/> <br/> <p>Kaminsky froze. This was far more serious than anything he could have imagined. It was the ultimate hack. He was looking at an error coded into the heart of the Internet's infrastructure. This was not a security hole in Windows or a software bug in a Cisco router. This would allow him to reassign any Web address, reroute anyone's email, take over banking sites, or simply scramble the entire global system. The question was: Should he try it?</p> <p>The vulnerability gave him the power to transfer millions out of bank accounts worldwide. He lived in a barren one-bedroom apartment and owned almost nothing. He rented the bed he was lying on as well as the couch and table in the living room. The walls were bare. His refrigerator generally contained little more than a few forgotten slices of processed cheese and a couple of Rockstar energy drinks. Maybe it was time to upgrade his lifestyle.</p> <p>Or, for the sheer geeky joy of it, he could reroute all of .com into his laptop, the digital equivalent of channeling the Mississippi into a bathtub. It was a moment hackers around the world dream of&mdash;a tool that could give them unimaginable power. But maybe it was best simply to close his laptop and forget it. He could pretend he hadn't just stumbled over a skeleton key to the Net. Life would certainly be less complicated. If he stole money, he'd risk prison. If he told the world, he'd be the messenger of doom, potentially triggering a collapse of Web-based commerce.</p> <p>But who was he kidding? He was just some guy. The problem had been coded into Internet architecture in 1983. It was 2008. Somebody must have fixed it by now. He typed a quick series of commands and pressed enter. When he tried to access the Fortune 500 company's Web site, he was redirected to an address he himself had specified.</p> <p>"Oh shit," he mumbled. "I just broke the Internet."</p> <p><strong>Paul Vixie</strong>, one of the creators of the most widely used DNS software, stepped out of a conference in San Jose. A curious email had just popped up on his laptop. A guy named Kaminsky said he'd found a serious flaw in DNS and wanted to talk. He sent along his phone number.</p> <p>Vixie had been working with DNS since the 1980s and had helped solve some serious problems over the years. He was president of the <a href="http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml/https://secure.isc.org/">Internet Systems Consortium</a>, a nonprofit that distributed BIND 9, his DNS software. At 44, he was considered the godfather of DNS. If there was a fundamental error in DNS, he probably would have fixed it long ago.</p> <p>But to be on the safe side, Vixie decided to call Kaminsky. He picked up immediately and within minutes had outlined the flaw. A series of emotions swept over Vixie. What he was hearing shouldn't be possible, and yet everything the kid said was logical. By the end of the third minute, Vixie realized that Kaminsky had uncovered something that the best minds in computer science had overlooked. This affected not just BIND 9 but almost all DNS software. Vixie felt a deep flush of embarrassment, followed by a sense of pure panic.</p> <p>"The first thing I want to say to you," Vixie told Kaminsky, trying to contain the flood of feeling, "is never, ever repeat what you just told me over a cell phone."</p> <p>Vixie knew how easy it was to eavesdrop on a cell signal, and he had heard enough to know that he was facing a problem of global significance. If the information were intercepted by the wrong people, the wired world could be held ransom. Hackers could wreak havoc. Billions of dollars were at stake, and Vixie wasn't going to take any risks.</p> <p>From that moment on, they would talk only on landlines, in person, or via heavily encrypted email. If the information in an email were accidentally copied onto a hard drive, that hard drive would have to be completely erased, Vixie said. Secrecy was critical. They had to find a solution before the problem became public.</p> <!-- pagebreak --> <p><strong>Andreas Gustafsson</strong> knew something was seriously wrong. Vixie had emailed the 43-year-old DNS researcher in Espoo, Finland, asking to talk at 7 pm on a hardwired line. No cell phones.</p> <p>Gustafsson hurried into the freezing March evening&mdash;his only landline was the fax in his office a brisk mile walk away. When he arrived, he saw that the machine didn't have a handset. Luckily, he had an analog phone lying around. He plugged it in, and soon it let off an old-fashioned metallic ring.</p> <p>Gustafsson hadn't spoken to Vixie in years, but Vixie began the conversation by reading aloud a series of numbers&mdash;a code that would later allow him to authenticate Gustafsson's emails and prove that he was communicating with the right person. Gustafsson responded with his own authenticating code. With that out of the way, Vixie got to his point: <em>Find a flight to Seattle now</em>.</p> <p><a href="http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-wijngaards-dnsext-resolver-side-mitigation-00.txt">Wouter Wijn