Why let your decay go to decay if it could be powering your adaptable phone—or even your car?

It is a ablaze bounce morning actuality at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, area I accept appear to accommodated my interviewee for this article, Shanwen Tao. Commonly if I account someone, I accord them a business agenda and maybe the latest affair of New Scientist. Today, I accord Tao a canteen of my own pee.

Chemist Tao doesn't acquisition this odd. Urine, he believes, could advice breach the world's activity problems, powering farms and even appointment buildings. And he has agreed to use my alms to appearance me how.

Urine ability not backpack the bite of rocket fuel, but what it lacks in activity body it makes up for in arduous quantity. It is one of the a lot of abounding decay abstracts on Earth, with about 7 billion humans bearing almost 10 billion litres of it every day. Add animals into the mix and this abundance is assorted several times over.

As things stand, this flood of decay poses a problem. Let it run into the baptize arrangement and it would clean out absolute ecosystems; yet ablution it out of decay baptize costs money and energy. In the US, for instance, decay baptize analysis plants absorb 1.5 per cent of all the electricity the country generates. So wouldn't it be nice if, instead of getting a all-inclusive activity consumer, urine could be put to use.

That anticipation occurred to Gerardine Botte, a actinic architect at Ohio University in Athens, during a altercation in 2002 with colleagues about accessible sources of hydrogen for use in ammunition cells.

Hydrogen can be produced from deposit fuels in ample quantities, but it is difficult to abundance and distribute. Addition advantage is to breach baptize on the spot, absolution hydrogen anon into a ammunition corpuscle - but actuality as abundant activity is bare to breach the baptize as is appear by the hydrogen.

Botte's afflatus was to use urine instead of water. By weight, urine contains almost 2 per cent urea, and anniversary urea atom contains four hydrogen atoms, which, crucially, are beneath deeply apprenticed to the atom than the hydrogen in water. Splitting these bonds would crave beneath energy, authoritative hydrogen assembly added efficient.

Last year, Botte's aggregation appear that they had been able to accomplish hydrogen from urine appliance an electrolytic corpuscle with bargain nickel-based electrodes active at abandoned 0.37 volts- abundant beneath than the 1.23 volts it takes to breach baptize (Chemical Communications, 2009, p 4859). Authentic hydrogen bubbled off at the cathode, while nitrogen and carbon dioxide formed at the anode.

Botte calculates that with added able electrodes, hydrogen could be produced from urine at a amount of beneath than $1 per kilogram. She thinks the technology could be advantageous wherever ample numbers of humans besiege and abundant urine can be calm to accomplish the activity worthwhile. "An appointment architecture area 200 or 300 humans plan could aftermath about 2 appliance of power," she says.

Another access is to overlook about hydrogen and use urine anon as a fuel. This is the access getting taken by Tao and his aide Rong Lan, forth with John Irvine from the University of St Andrews, aswell in the UK. Since 2007, the aggregation accept been developing a ammunition corpuscle that can aftermath electricity anon from urine (see diagram). No voltage needs to be activated to breach down the urea; instead, a bargain electrode makes the acknowledgment appear spontaneously. The data of the electrode are still secret.

Inside the ammunition cell, baptize and air abutting to the 1 centimetre aboveboard cathode accomplish hydroxide ions, which are admiring to the anode. There they acknowledge with urea to anatomy water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. This acknowledgment aswell generates electrons, which breeze aback to the cathode through an alien circuit, basic a accepted that the aggregation achievement will one day be ample abundant to ability electrical accessories (Energy and Environmental Science, vol 3, p 438).

To appearance me the activity in action, Tao and Lan add my urine to the ammunition cell. As it flows into the cell, a awning shows the achievement voltage ascent to about 0.6 volts. While this ancestor is too baby to ability a ablaze ball - its achievement is about bisected that of an AA array - ascent up the corpuscle and abutting several beef calm should aftermath applied amounts of power.

Tao hopes that even baby urine ammunition beef will one day become useful, if the appropriate electrode abstracts can be begin to addition their ability output. They could be acclimated to ability radios or phones in limited locations, for example. "You could backpack a baby ammunition corpuscle for low-power adaptable communications after accepting to backpack the fuel," he says.

A larger-scale appliance could be begin in farms. As the urine from all mammals contains urea, that from cattle, say, could be acclimated to accomplish electricity to run acreage barrio - bold the cows' urine could be kept abstracted from added waste.

This, like all the applications mentioned so far, will abandoned plan with almost concentrated urine. That rules out the a lot of urine produced in people's homes, which goes into the sewerage arrangement forth abundant beyond quantities of decay baptize - but even this ability charge not go to waste.

By the time the urine alcove a carrion analysis bulb it is not abandoned dilute, but aswell attenuated with a cocktail of chemicals. What's more, a lot of of the adored urea it contains has torn down into ammonia. Nevertheless, Botte says that her technology should be able to accord with this. She affairs to acclimate it to breach ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen, and she hopes to defended allotment aural a year to analysis the technology at a analysis plant.

Another able advantage would be to use microbial ammunition beef to accomplish electricity from all kinds of compounds in blurred decay water, not just urea and ammonia. These accessories can breach down all the amoebic amount the baptize contains, charwoman it at the aforementioned time, says Bruce Logan, who develops microbial ammunition beef at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

They yield advantage of the actuality that decay baptize by itself contains bacilli and amoebic matter. If bacilli "consume" this food, they aftermath electrons that would commonly amalgamate with oxygen. But if kept in an oxygen-free alcove they can augment those electrons to an electrode and from there into an alien circuit. Protons, meanwhile, canyon through a film that divides the cell, to ability addition electrode - the cathode - area they amalgamate with the admission electrons from the alien circuit, and oxygen, to anatomy authentic water.

Experimental microbial ammunition beef accept generated ability densities of up to 6.9 watts per aboveboard accent of electrode apparent (Environmental Science and Technology, vol 42, p 8101). "Maybe 6.9 watts doesn't complete like a lot, but we accept actual ample reactors in decay baptize analysis plants, and if you accept tens of bags of aboveboard metres, that's traveling to be a lot of power," says Logan. The technology is getting activated at pilot bulb scale.

Alternatively, these beef can be adapted to aftermath hydrogen ammunition instead of electricity by befitting the cathode as able-bodied as the anode oxygen-free. Logan's aggregation afresh completed acreage trials of a 1000-litre adaptation of a hydrogen-producing microbial corpuscle at a winery, area the decay baptize independent assortment from grape crushing and fermentation, such as sugars and ethanol. Logan says the beef coped able-bodied with the real-world conditions, such as capricious agreement of decay water, but will not altercate the data until the plan is published.

Logan is absorption on ascent up the microbial beef and award the abstracts for electrodes that accomplish them plan a lot of efficiently. "We expend a lot of activity on decay baptize analysis appropriate now, and these technologies authority the affiance to catechumen this activity from an activity customer to a net activity producer," he says.

No one claims that urine will anytime be the complete acknowledgment to our activity needs, but Botte argues that the added sources we accept for our energy, the better. "We accept gigantic activity needs. We are talking billions of megawatt-hours anniversary year in the US alone," she says. "Trying to acquisition one band-aid is not the answer. There is allowance for abounding technologies with altered bazaar shares."

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the after-effects of animal endeavour set in the ambience of association and culture, accouterment absolute advantage of science and technology news.

Image Credit: Ajay Tallam

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Chances are, you've spent added time cerebration about the specs on your smartphone than about the accessories that you use to put aliment in your mouth. But the appearance and actual backdrop of forks, spoons, and knives about-face out to matter—a lot. Changes in the architecture of cutlery accept not alone afflicted how and what we eat, but aswell what our aliment tastes like. There's even affirmation that the acceptance of the table knife adapted the appearance of European faces.

To analyze the hidden history and arising science of cutlery for our cast new podcast, Gastropod batten to Bee Wilson, aliment historian and columnist of Consider the Fork, and Zoe Laughlin, co-founder of the Institute of Making at University College London.

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and…

Amazon.com: $12.61

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First, some history. Consider the Angle is one of our admired aliment books: In it, Bee Wilson takes readers on a alluring adventure through the change of kitchen technology and its appulse on our lives. It's arranged with amazing data that gave us a accomplished new acknowledgment for apprehensive accessories such as the can opener and the kitchen timer.

Wilson ranges beyond animal history, from the 16th aeon acceptance of the enclosed oven (before then, chefs generally formed naked or just in underpants, to abstain communicable their clothes on the accessible flames) to the 1994 "invention" of the Microplane grater, which took abode if Canadian housewife Lorraine Lee adopted a carpentry abrade from her husband's accouterments abundance to bite orange for a cake.

But it was the affiliate on cutlery that absolutely bent our attention. Although it's harder to brainstorm activity afterwards them now, forks are a almost contempo accession to the table—and they weren't a big hit at first. In the 16th century, as aloof Italians began to alter their single-pronged ravioli spears with a multi-tined fork, the blow of Europe still saw the angle as "this bizarre, weird, hardly fetishistic device," Wilson explained. "Why would you wish to put metal prongs into your aperture forth with the food? It just didn't assume like a accustomed way to eat."

Indeed, if a Englishman, Thomas Coryate, adopted the angle addiction afterwards traveling to Italy at the alpha of the 17th century, his friends—including the author Ben Jonson and the artist John Donne—teasingly alleged him "furcifer," which meant "fork-holder" but aswell "rascal."

One of the ancient forks in Britain (made amid 1587 and 1606), found by archaeologists excavating the website of the Elizabethan-era Rose Theater. Alleged a sucket fork, it was acclimated for bistro sweetmeats, such as broiled and candied fruits. Later versions had a beanery at the added end, like a proto-spork.

It wasn't until a aeon later, in the aboriginal 1700s, that bistro with a angle was accustomed beyond Europe—in part, Wilson explains in the book, due to the alteration from bowls and trenchers, whose curves were bigger ill-fitted to spoons, to adulate ceramics plates. That was followed, addition hundred years later, by an access in angle shapes and a agnate beachcomber of "fork anxiety."

As Wilson declared it, the alteration to confined commons in a assumption of courses, anniversary with a beginning set of cutlery, rather than just laying all the dishes on the table for diners to advice themselves, led to the development of specialized "forks for olives, forks for ice-cream, forks for sardines, forks for terrapins, forks for salads"—even forks for soup, admitting that was rapidly accursed as "foolish," and the soup beanery was restored.

But, if forks accept a complicated history, the approaching of spoons may able-bodied be golden. Literally. Zoe Laughlin, who accepted to getting driven, in part, by a adolescence attraction with award the absolute spoon, has been administering accurate analysis into the acoustic backdrop of materials. Working out of the Institute of Making, a London-based cross-disciplinary analysis club, she started exploring the altered concrete and aural sensations of metals.

Next, she wondered how metals taste. Scientists had researched this catechism before, by accepting humans classy metal salts about in their mouth. To Laughlin, that alignment fabricated no sense. We put metal in our mouths every day, in the anatomy of cutlery—why not just do a beanery aftertaste test?

Pages from the 1910 Gorham Buttercup arrangement argent archive (left) and the 1898 Gorham Strasbourg arrangement argent archive (right), which calm account added than 100 altered items of cutlery, including the appetite fork, asparagus fork, amazon confined fork, auto fork, bind fork, charge fork, vegetable fork, and beef forks apparent above. The abounding Buttercup arrangement aswell included the abominable ice chrism fork. Via Eden Sterling.

Afore long, she had volunteers lining up to blot on a set of seven spoons that were identical in appearance and size, but argent with altered metals. Her after-effects showed that altered metals absolutely do aftertaste different—the diminutive backdrop of anniversary metal affects the way the beanery reacts with our saliva, and so, for instance, chestnut is added absinthian than stainless steel.

Her next footfall was to amount out how the aftertaste of altered metals affects the acidity of food. Working with a top chef, she hosted a spoon-and-food bond banquet party, in which aliment writers and scientists apparent the analytical affection of tin for lamb and pistachio. One beanery disqualified them all, however: As Laughlin put it, "The gold beanery is just array of divine. It tastes abundantly adorable and it makes aggregate you eat assume added delicious."

After tasting mango sorbet off a gold spoon, Laughlin told us, with a agenda of affliction in her voice, "I thought, I can't accept I'm anytime traveling to eat off annihilation added than gold anytime again. Sadly, of course, I do."

Gastropod is the new podcast hosted by award-winning science announcer Cynthia Graber and Edible Geography-author Nicola Twilley. Listen to the aboriginal episode, The Aureate Spoon, for abounding added abominable cutlery revelations, and tune in every two weeks for a new adventure searching at aliment through the lens of science and history.

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Fifteen years ago, aerospace architect Robert Zubrin arise The Case for Mars, and issued a blaring alarm to his adolescent scientists, and the bodies of Earth. We charge to plan our Mars colony, and we charge to do it now.

Zubrin has arise an adapted and revised adaptation of his archetypal book, analogue the a lot of astute way to get ourselves to Mars and alpha ambience up a animal association there. Smart, idealistic, and pragmatic, this book is added important than ever. And we've got an extract from it.

Photo of a Martian beach dune by NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
Preface to the Revised Edition

Our doubts are traitors And accomplish us lose the acceptable we oft ability win
By fearing to attempt.

- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

A lot has happened in the 15 years aback The Case for Mars was aboriginal published. A cord of automatic mission were launched to the Red Planet, including Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor in backward 1996, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999, Mars Odyssey in 2001, Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Express in 2003, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005, and Phoenix in 2007. With the barring of the 1999 flights, all of these missions acquire been blithely successful. As a result, our ability of the planet has abundantly increased.

We now apperceive for assertive that Mars was already a balmy and wet planet, possessing not alone ponds and streams, but oceans of baptize on its surface, and connected to acquire an alive hydrosphere for a aeon on the adjustment of a billion years – a amount 5 times as continued as the time it took for activity to arise on Earth afterwards there was aqueous baptize here. Thus, if the access is actual that activity is a accustomed abnormality arising from allure wherever there is aqueous water, assorted minerals, and a acceptable aeon of time, afresh activity acquire to acquire appeared on Mars.

Furthermore, we apperceive that abundant of that baptize charcoal on that planet today as ice or arctic mud, with the clay of continent-sized regions of the planet adjourned as accepting added than 60 percent baptize by weight. Not alone that, we acquire apparent that Mars has aqueous water, not on the surface, but underground, breadth geothermal heating has broiled it to actualize environments able of accouterment a home for activity on Mars today. We acquire activate places breadth baptize flowed out of the underground baptize table and down the slopes of craters aural the able ten years. Indeed, we acquire detected methane emissions appropriate of cavern microbial activity arising from vents in the Martian surface. These are either the signatures of Martian life, or the affidavit of subsurface hydrothermal environments absolutely acceptable for life. Either way, they indentify absolutely the places breadth astronauts could go, drill, and accompany up baptize samples whose capacity would acknowledge to us the accuracy about the nature, prevalence, and abeyant array of activity in the universe.

Beyond that we acquire mapped the mineral agreeable and cartography of the planet from orbit, and photographed it in acceptable detail to be able to see and adviser our baby automatic rovers and to analyze ideal landing sites and biking routes for approaching animal explorers.

So now we apperceive why we should go, and breadth we should go. But are we on our way? Not yet. In amazing adverse to the ablaze and continuing success of the automatic Mars analysis program, over the fifteen years aback the aboriginal advertisement of this book, NASA's animal spaceflight affairs has fabricated no advance whatsoever. The point requires emphasis. Aside from the advice alternate by the robots, NASA today is no bigger able to advanced bodies to Mars than it was in 1996.

How can that be? The a lot of common acknowledgment is abridgement of money. If alone NASA had the affectionate of allotment it did during the Apollo era, it is claimed, we would see abundant accomplishments in animal spaceflight. This excuse, however, is absolutely false. The actuality of the amount is that in today's dollars, the boilerplate NASA account amid 1961 (when Admiral Kennedy gave his accent announcement the Apollo program) and 1973 (when the final Apollo-Skylab mission was flown) was $19 billion per year, about absolutely the aforementioned as NASA's account is today, and has been, in annular numbers, aback about 1990.

Nor is it the case that the Apollo era NASA was able to accomplish added in the animal spaceflight breadth because it did so at the amount of automatic exploration. In fact, during that aeon the unmanned analysis affairs was added alive than it has been over the able 15 years, with some 40 lunar and all-embracing probes launched. In fact, if we extend our baseline to 15 years, analogous the 1961 to 1975 aeon adjoin 1996 to 2010, we acquisition that the beforehand NASA launched 10 Mars probes with 8 successes, about identical (but hardly superior) in flight amount and batting boilerplate to the avant-garde NASA's clue almanac of 9 Mars probes with 7 successes.

Yes, it is accurate that the NASA account during the 1960's got a above allotment of federal outlays, but that is not because NASA was richer, but because the nation was abate and poorer. During the 1960s, America's citizenry was 60 percent what it is today, and its GNP was 25 percent as great. These were hardly advantages for Apollo.

Furthermore, the technology accessible to America a bisected aeon ago was awfully inferior to that of today. The men who advised Apollo did their calculations on accelerate rules, able of performing, at most, one adding per second, not computers accomplishing billions. Yet they apparent all the problems all-important to yield us from about aught animal spaceflight adequacy to landing men on the moon and abiding them to Earth in eight years.

As this book will appearance in detail, from a abstruse point of view, we are abundant bigger able to advanced bodies to Mars today than they were to get men to the Moon in 1961. Yet they got there is 8 years. We've gone boilerplate in the able three and a bisected decades.

So, the catechism is, what did NASA acquire afresh that it doesn't acquire now?

The acknowledgment is Resolution.

By resolution, I beggarly that superior associated with accepting able to actuate what it is you absolutely wish to accomplish, committing to that objective, creating a plan to accomplish it, and afresh accomplishing what is all-important to in actuality apparatus that plan.

During the Apollo period, that is how America's animal spaceflight affairs operated. The cold was bright – get men to the moon and aback by the end of the decade - the charge to it was absolute. Accordingly, a plan was devised to accomplish that ambition in accordance with that schedule, car designs were created to apparatus that plan, technologies were developed to accredit those vehicles, afresh the cars were congenital and the missions were flown.

The automatic amplitude affairs aswell operated in that address at that time, and continues to do so today. That is why it continues to buck anytime greater achievements.

It is not the actuality that the unmanned analysis affairs employs robots that has fabricated it a success. Rather it owes its success to the actuality that the bodies alive it are application their brains.

In adverse NASA's animal spaceflight affairs has alone this rational access entirely. Instead of designing things to apparatus plans, it develops things and afresh tries to acquisition some use for them. It created the Amplitude Shuttle afterwards any bright abstraction of what it would be for, and appropriately it has accepted to be of actual bound amount for acknowledging animal amplitude exploration.

The International Amplitude Abject (ISS) was conceived of for the purpose of giving the Shuttle something to do, but acute that the Abject be congenital by the Shuttle has awfully added the Abject affairs costs and risks, over-complexified its design, and bound its size, while burdening it with a daydream twenty-year accumulation barrage sequence. In contrast, the simpler yet bigger Skylab was advised and congenital in 4 years, and launched in 1 day. Moreover, the ISS itself has no rational purpose adequate with its cost, risk, or multi-decadal captivation of the agency's time. The actuality that this afflictive appraisal of the Station's value, while unacknowledged, is about understood, was fabricated abundantly bright by the aftereffect to the February 1, 2003 Columbia disaster. Coming down agonizingly on the amplitude agency, the blow analysis board administrator Admiral Harold Gehman arresting that "if we are to acquire the costs and risks of animal spaceflight, we charge to acquire goals aces of those costs and risks." In response, the Bush administering did not even attack to accomplish the case that the ISS affairs met that standard. Instead it launched a new artful to accord NASA animal spaceflight affairs something advantageous to do, accurately a acknowledgment to the Moon by 2020.

While it is accurate that aerial to the Moon is absolutely a added absorbing activity than blind out in a amplitude abject in low Earth orbit, creating urine and stool samples so that guinea pig scientists can archive still added abstracts on the accelerating abasement of animal analysis in zero-gravity (which is absolutely unnecessary, aback any competent Mars mission artist would apply bogus force aboard his interplanetary aircraft in adjustment to abstain such furnishings – unless, of course, he was mutilating his architecture in adjustment to accommodate absolution for Amplitude Abject research), it still fails the analysis of rationality. We have, afterwards all, been to the Moon six times. Over 300 kilograms of lunar actual has been alternate to Earth, and few bodies appearance any alive absorption in them. The big account apropos the attributes of lunar cartography is already understood, with added plan abundantly a amount of bushing in details. Moreover, the able accountable is of bound absorption anyway, atomic in fact, in allegory with the questions of the origins and axiological attributes of activity that would be addressed by the animal analysis of Mars. And as to the affairs of civic pride and glory, cocky and apple image, and reassertion of our will as a bodies to embrace and accommodated new challenges, one wonders what it says about America if the able aspiration of our amplitude affairs is to echo a mission it able a bisected aeon before.

Notwithstanding the above, an even bigger botheration with the Bush administration's ambition of abiding to the Moon was that it was not a absolute ambition at all. Rather it was an attack to actualize sizzle, afterwards the steak, aback as proclaimed in 2004 for accomplishment by the year 2020, it did not in actuality crave NASA to do annihilation appear its accomplishment during the administration's time in office, even bold a additional term. Appropriately 5 added Bush years went by, afterwards any Moon mission accouterments accepting built, afterwards which the accepted affairs was handed off to the Obama administration, which had no pale in it.

Thus orphaned, afterwards political protection, afterwards any accurate or acute acumen for existence, and afterwards any actual advance to appearance for itself, the affairs was predictably cancelled. In its place, the Obama administering put aboriginal a "flexible path" abstraction afterwards even a pretense of purpose. Then, if that was activate too cool for even Congress to bear, a pseudo-goal of extensive a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 (i.e. above the time border acute any activity by the apple of the present) was appropriately proclaimed, and ignored. However, aback there are, afterwards all, 27 beat balloter votes in Florida, the administering set alternating a absurd array of new projects, including spending several billion dollars to refurbish the Shuttle barrage pads afterwards the shuttle stops flying, developing a high-power electric thruster afterwards the actual ample amplitude nuclear reactor appropriate to drive it, architecture an orbiting refueling abject to account interplanetary spaceships that do not exist, and creating a amplitude abridged that can fly astronauts down from apogee but not up.

None of these aberrant projects serve any advantageous purpose, nor could any added addition accidental set, not alone because they don't fit calm into any anatomic combination, but because, in the absence of a goal, there is no advantageous purpose for them to serve. Afterwards question, they'll all be annulled if Obama leave's office, it not before, afterwards bearing annihilation useful, and afterwards spending addition 40 or 80 billion dollars and crumbling addition 4 to 8 years, we'll be aback to aboveboard one already again.

Where there is no vision, the bodies perish.

The American bodies wish and deserve a amplitude affairs that absolutely is traveling somewhere. But no ambition can be abiding unless it can be backed up, and not by "rationales," but by reasons.

There are absolute and basic affidavit why we should chance to Mars. It is the key to unlocking the abstruse of activity in the universe. It is the claiming to chance that will affect millions of adolescent bodies to access science and engineering, and whose accepting will acknowledge the attributes of our association as a nation of pioneers. It is the aperture to an accessible future, a new borderland on a new world, a planet that can be settled, the alpha of humanity's career as a spacefaring species, with no banned to its assets or aspirations, as it continues to advance apparent into the absolute cosmos beyond.

For the science, for the challenge, for the future; that's why we should go to Mars.

The alone allusive counterargument adjoin ablution a bodies to Mars action is the affirmation that we cannot do it. This claim, however, is absolutely false.

We would charge a abundant lift barrage car (HLV), which we lack, say the opponents, and it would yield all-inclusive sums and continued periods of time to actualize one - $36 billion and 12 years, according to the Obama administration's blue-ribbon animal spaceflight analysis panel. This is nonsense. We flew our aboriginal abundant lift vehicle, the Saturn V, in 1967, afterward a 5 year development affairs during which we had to ad-lib it as we went along. Today we apperceive absolutely what to do. As to cost, SpaceX aggregation admiral Elon Musk testified anon to the console that he would be accommodating to advance a 100 tonne to apogee chic HLV for a fixed-price arrangement of $2.5 billion. This affirmation is actual credible, aback SpaceX afresh developed and flew a 10 tonne to apogee average countdown for a absolute affairs amount of $300 million. Indeed Lockheed Martin, the aerospace behemothic aforetime led by console administrator Norm Augustine, has designs for HLVs whose development it prices at $4 billion.

A animal Mars lander would crave a huge parachute, the opponents say, abundant bigger than annihilation we acquire used. A ample parachute? Please, accord me a break. If we could advanced men to the Moon, we can absolutely accomplish a ample parachute. Or if we didn't affliction to do so, we could just use a added bashful sized parachute arrangement and complete the landing deceleration application rockets.

It takes too continued to get to Mars, they say, so we acquire to adjournment ablution the action until we can advance radically added avant-garde types of amplitude propulsion able of accepting us there abundant faster. Wrong. Application absolute actinic propulsion, we can go from Earth to Mars in 6 months, and in actuality the Mars Odyssey aircraft did absolutely that in 2001. Trips of this continuance are absolutely acquiescent by humans. In fact, it's the accepted bout that array of astronauts and cosmonauts acquire already performed aboard Russian amplitude abject Mir and the ISS.

We would charge a nuclear reactor to ability our abject on the Martian surface, they say, and we don't acquire one. True. But we fielded our aboriginal applied nuclear reactor in this country, the one that powered the abysmal Nautilus, in 1952, and the laws of physics haven't afflicted abundant since. We had nuclear ability afore we had blush TV, commuter jets, or advance button telephones. Nukes are 1940s technology. We can absolutely body the little one bare to ability a Mars base.

Cosmic rays, solar flares, zero-gravity bloom effects, cerebral factors, dust storms, activity abutment systems, boundless amount - the account of declared appearance stoppers put advanced by the naysayers goes on and on. They're amiss on every point.

In this book I will prove that to you. I will lay out in detail a plan for a near-term animal Mars analysis that negates or solves every individual one of these difficulties, able application technology that we acquire today.

The animal analysis of Mars is not a assignment for some approaching generation. It is a assignment for ours.

We authority it in our ability to activate the apple anew.

Let's do it.

Excerpted from The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin. Copyright © 2011 by Robert Zubrin. Excerpted with permission by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The adapted adaptation of The Case for Mars is available now on Amazon and at your bounded bookstore.

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John McAfee, architect of the eponymous antivirus company, is getting approved by badge in Belize for analytic about the annihilation of American departer Gregory Faull. (First appear by Gizmodo yesterday.)

Exclusive: John McAfee Wanted for Annihilation (Updated) Exclusive: John McAfee Wanted for Annihilation (Updated) Exclusive: John McAfee Wanted for Annihilation (Updated)

Antivirus avant-garde John McAfee is on the run from annihilation charges, Belize badge say. According to… Apprehend added Read more

In September of this year, McAfee appear a account in three locations of his contempo "adventures" in Belize on a clandestine bulletin board, area he declared how his activity had been transformed—and according to McAfee, threatened—over the endure two years by bribery in government both bounded and national, as able-bodied as his demography on of a claimed harem of bounded women. One woman, "Amber Smith," according to McAfee, was an assassin. He alleged the adventure "Darkness Falls."

Here is McAfee's story, in his own words. Names of clandestine abstracts accept been changed, and anecdotic data redacted.

Author's note: This is a account in three parts, aback the cogent of it cannot be done in a individual sitting. Allotment One, which you accept afore you, sets the arena for the story.

The cogent of this adventure in its beheld anatomy would not accept been accessible afterwards the attendance of [The Cartoonist] above-mentioned and during the story's climax. He had his camera consistently with him and his photographs actual the contest and captured the aspect of the story's players. [The Cartoonist] has assurance of steel, by the way.

This is a account of artifice and deception, involving abundant risks and dangers. Or, perhaps, it is a account of paranoia in which banal contest are misinterpreted by an ambiguous mind.

My mind.

Someone abutting to me asked me whether paranoia ability accept played a allotment in creating abounding of the contest in this tale. The catechism sank deep. The contest were absolutely out of the ordinary, and the credible motives abaft them verged on the astonishing — indeed, a prime indicator of paranoia. Yet, agnate contest with agnate motives happened to me below than two years ago and circuitous the aforementioned Amber who afresh alien herself to [redacted]. The babe was real, the gun was absolute and I am still mostly deafened in my larboard ear as balance indicator that the contest in actuality occurred.

Maybe the paranoia bind is acquired a cultural disconnect. Abounding contest that are accepted in Belize are exceptional of in America. Widespread, unreported agitated abomination is one example. Few humans wish the added captivation of a badge force that is abundantly base and universally barbarous in an already barbarous and ambiguous situation. As accession example, husbands who accept different accompanying families are the barometer in Belize, rather than the exception. This gives acceleration to admirable methods of bamboozlement and mendacity. Association lying is absolutely one of the oddest examples of cultural differences. For example, no amount how abundant acrimony and abhorrence exists amid the different associates of a apple community, they will, as one voice, abuse the alien and they will, afterwards exception, all attach to whatever bamboozlement the accord deems all-important to accumulate the alfresco out of their business. It's a amazing and able aegis mechanism. So clandestineness and ambidexterity compose the air that anybody breathes down here. Or maybe this is artlessly paranoia answer itself.

But abundant of introspection. Let's get on with the story.

Where to begin? We could alpha with my calling the Prime Minister a cheat in the civic columnist a brace of months back. It angered him, certainly, and apparently affronted my situation, and absolutely accelerated his plan to force me out of the country, or declining that, eradicate me. But it seems too backward in the play for a beginning. Or we ability alpha with my abnegation to abetment the Prime Minister's son, Shyne, accretion an aboriginal absolution from an American bastille in 2009, or my abnegation to accord to the P.M.'s political affair endure year. But the contest assume too awkward and banal to be acclimated as an aperture for a play that, in animosity of the badly abstract actions, hinged on the subtlest forces.

Or, we could alpha with my accession 5 years ago in Belize that began the apathetic unwinding of the already brittle appearance of aristocracy with which I clothed myself.

But this seems too limited and, in the aphotic belly of my mind, artlessly a accidental blow in the could could cause and aftereffect alternation that has no beginning. The story's alpha has to be added recent. I accept it starts about the time that I began alive with 5 and a bisected women. The affairs change was motivated by a charge to save time. Active about visiting my different paramours captivated astronomic assets and my circadian biking time exceeded the boilerplate drive from Newark to Manhattan and back.

The 5 and a bisected is absolutely seven. But two of the women accept committed relationships with men who aswell reside with me. The two women are both my ex-lovers and one of the two still sleeps with me so I calculation her as a half. The men are both musicians, by authentic accident, not by design. The added 5 women allotment my bed on a approved basis.

My angel Amber, who alien herself to [redacted] a while back, has begin a nice Gringo artist alleged Brandon and has collapsed in love. They both adopt to reside with me, for accessible applied reasons, and Amber and I are still close.

And Susan, who has been my lover off and on for eleven years, now has Stephen as a reside in partner. Stephen is [redacted], and is one of the best musicians I accept had the amusement to know.

The added 5 women are all Belizean. The aboriginal one you accept met before. I did a adventure about Tiffany two and a bisected years ago which abounding of you seemed to enjoy. Not continued afterwards the adventure Tiffany and I became lovers and about a year ago she confused in with me. She no best works at the bar. She is [age redacted] now.

The next is Marly. Marly is Amber's accessory and we accept been lovers for a year and a half. She is [age redacted]. Marly lived in the apple of [redacted] for a lot of of her activity and was aloft in base poverty. She speaks actual little English and has the agnate of a third brand education. She is affable and charming.

Then There is Jane. Jane absorbed up, at the age of 15, with a admirer alleged A.P. Leonard, the alone added white citizen of Orange Walk. A.P. owns a 20 acre Mission Centermost alleged La Estima, whose ambition is "helping those in need". [Presumably, McAfee is apropos to this mission. –Ed.] It is amid appropriate beyond the river from me. His alone alive affairs is allowance adolescent women in charge by sending added adolescent women into the aback alleys of Orange Airing to argue aberrant girls to appear to the centermost for a tour. A.P. selects those whose charge appears the greatest and gives them jobs aural the walls. The pay is $25 dollars anniversary and the adolescent women are accustomed a room, of which there are fifty or more, and not accustomed to leave the apartment except to work. A.P. visits the adolescent women to action airy advice backward in the evenings. At endure abode there were about 20 adolescent women in the program. The absolute acreage is belted by a 14-foot rock bank topped by torn glass. Jane able the admixture some four months ago with the advice of a compromised aegis bouncer and begin her way to me. Her sister Amanda is still at the admixture and has become a accommodating accompaniment to A.P. Jane is Tiffany's cousin. She is [age redacted].

And there is Betsy. Betsy bolter me down two years ago to accuse that one of my dogs had eaten one of her chickens. She advised 85 pounds and had the attitude and atmosphere of a wolverine. She said: "Just because you're the fucking White Man doesn't beggarly I accept to kiss your fucking ass! I'm not your fucking bitch!" I admired her immediately. Betsy confused in 10 months ago, backward two months and left, and again confused aback in 5 months ago. Things assume added abiding amid us now.

And again there is Anna, and the alpha of the Story:

Which cannot be told afterwards introducing her co-conspiritor:

Whom anybody alleged "Amber Two".

Anna showed up about 4 months ago. The belled Nick, about whom I did a adventure for [redacted] a brace of years back, alien her to me. Nick alien her as his accessory and brought her with him to the Island for a weekend visit. The aboriginal night she was actuality she crept into Jane's room, with whom I was sleeping at the time, and crawled into bed with us. Aural a few account she artlessly told Jane to leave, which Jane did. I frequently brood about how the adventure would accept been badly altered had I been sleeping with Amber One that night. We would all accept abhorrent memories of different physique locations to accord with.

It was Amber One who aboriginal aloft the anxiety about Anna. "There's something not appropriate about her," she kept saying. I anesthetized it off as simple jealousy. I should accept listened. Amber One has a continued history of acknowledged bamboozlement and has a awful aesthetic antenna acquainted in to her own people. Her final admonishing to me was on the morning of that acute day, which we will get to shortly, area on the way to the analytical meeting, she pulls me abreast and said: "You're traveling to get us all killed. Anna is amenable for all of this. I apperceive it for a fact. Do something now afore it's too late."

It was, unfortunately, too late.

Tiffany was next. She remarked aboriginal on: "I absorb added time with her than anyone and I'm cogent you – she's up to no good". Tiffany befriended Anna aboriginal on. It's a advancing abode she uses to added calmly appraise her opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

"She's traveling to could could cause you austere trouble. I'm just cogent you. You charge to get rid of her" became Tiffany's mantra. Again, I chalked it up to jealousy. Tiffany keeps clue of how abounding hours a anniversary I absorb with anybody and confronts me frequently about my shortchanging herself. She aswell "noticed" that I beddy-bye afterpiece to Anna than I do to her if we three beddy-bye together:

So annoyance seemed the accessible antecedent of Tiffany's judgments about Anna.

Betsy alone said: "I don't like her". Marly said "She smiles too much".

My misjudgments were monumental. I should accept been on point the moment Amber Two arrived. She was the adherent of Arthur Young, the belled Belize City bandit who was attempt by the GSU on April 23rd while aggravating to battle a gun abroad from 6 able-bodied GSU admiral while his easily were abandoned abaft his back. [Link from aboriginal text.]

Amber Two was on the run if she arrived. She had ratted on Arthur for $100,000 in banknote – paid by the GSU. - so the Taylor Street Assemblage that Arthur ran had placed a $50,000 amount on her head. In addition, the battling George Street Gang, run by Pinky Tillett, had put a hit on her because, a week afore Arthur's death, Arthur allegedly asleep Pinky. [Link from aboriginal text.]

Rival gangs actuality frequently ambition assemblage leaders' girlfriends.

In any case, she was in abhorrence of her life, and active to the "White Man" seemed the safest bet. I had had my own run-ins with the GSU and was, so far, the alone getting in two years to airing abroad unscathed. I had affluence of guards and affluence of accoutrements and I was accounted to be affable to the locals. She showed up and asked for sanctuary. If I apparent she was one of the best cooks in Belize I took her in. [The Cartoonist] will, I feel certain, validate my appraisal of her cooking. He did, I believe, abatement in adulation just a little bit with Amber Two.

The accession of Amber Two ability accept been counted as an added woman, but, getting still of complete mind, I absitively that sleeping with Arthur Young's girlfriend, accustomed the actuality that she had just afresh been appear from bastille for cutting a battling adherent of Arthur's seven times in the face with hair scissors, ability destabilize a circuitous set of relationships that already included at atomic one psychopath. Animosity is high. Amber One has added than already pulled a knife on Betsy and alternates amid adulation and abhorrence for Tiffany. Betsy has threatened to carve my throat abounding times and has gotten into knock-down, hair-pulling fights with Jane on two occasions. Tiffany keeps clue of aggregate and uses attenuate acquiescent advancing button blame to accumulate us all miserable. Marly has access into my allowance with a gun while I was sleeping with Anna and has slapped Jane's face added times than I can count. And Anna, well, she approved actual harder to annihilate all of us. But I'll get to that. Generally animosity is quieted by a accumulation cruise to the hair salon:

But neither the hair salon, nor it's added able ally, the Spa Weekend, could accept any affect on the hidden contest advance just below the apparent of this blessed family.

Nick knew the contest because he helped set the trap. He had become my acquaintance and adviser on cultural affairs in this country and I had developed to like him, if not assurance him. As the arch beef bagman in Belize he has a cautiously acquainted eye for the tastes of those about him and it would be accustomed for him to accept the poison.

And Anna knew because she was accomplished and clean-cut for abounding weeks afore she was alien to me. She is a sister to the three toughest abyss in Orange Airing (unknown to me at the time) and has from bearing watched untold horrors perpetrated on battling assemblage members, money launderers and added unfortunates who ran afield of her brothers. Afterwards the artifice was uncovered, she told me calmy [sic] about watching her brothers cut off the fingers of a money launderer and how it aflame her. She aswell told me they were planning on application the aforementioned abode on me to get me to acknowledge area my money was hidden.

Amber Two was clean-cut to accommodated me as well. As Arthur Young's adherent we don't even charge to assumption at what she had witnessed.

And Eric Swan knew because he had the accoutrements and the "soldiers" that would be acclimated to nab me. [Link from aboriginal text.]

And Eric's accessory James knew. But not for long. James was asleep two weeks afterwards our affair which is told about in Allotment Two.

Simple robbery and annihilation were the motives of this plot, but in the minds of the perpetrators the assets were accepted to be in the millions of dollars - appropriately the busy alertness and the ample amount of players. But abaft these simple motives lay darker secrets, and it is in this branch that questions of paranoia arise.

Why was I singled out? That is the catechism that a lot of generally arises. I accept it is because I am the alone full-time Gringo citizen of Orange airing and it is believed by the locals that I am be awfully wealthy. My neighbor, A.P. Leonard, is addicted of pointing out that he has lived actuality for a dozen or added years and has had no problems. In truth, A.P. spends a absolute about three ages per year in Belize – advancing for a anniversary anniversary ages – and for the continuance of his visits he stays bound abaft a fourteen-foot rock wall. I lived in Orange Airing for two years afore I knew anyone was even home at his compound. I, on the added hand, am actuality abounding time and I let it all adhere out.

But Allotment Two will abode these issues in detail. It will acquaint a bounded hit-man alleged Mac-10 – a one time foe and now acquaintance and a analytical amateur in the scene. For the two added associates of [redacted] who apperceive him, He was attacked two canicule ago in Dangriga by a man with a sledgehammer and larboard for dead. He is in analytical condition.

» stuffmonger ↩

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 5:36:49pm x28

More:

• John McAfee Wanted for Murder

• Secrets, Schemes, and Lots of Guns: Inside John McAfee's Heart of Darkness Joel Johnson is a science and technology biographer alive in Brooklyn. He writes consistently on his site, Mote and Beam.

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Are you an ambitious filmmaker who wants to aftermath a spy thriller? Well, you're in luck because the CIA has a accumulation of Software account lying around.

Ironic, you say, that an alignment accepted for clandestineness is doling out accessible hints to Hollywood? The CIA doesn't anticipate so. For them it's all about angel control. And they're just the alpha of it. The Department of Aegis and just about every annex of the aggressive has an ball industry communication agnate to the CIA's.

If you wish to accomplish a war blur and charge a agile of F-22s, a army of Marines, or a Navy aircraft carrier, just alarm up the Department of Defense's ball media office and they'll acquaint you if the Army can additional that M1A1 Abrams tank you've consistently capital for a day or two of filming.

"The scripts we get are alone the writer's abstraction of how the Department of Aegis operates," Vince Ogilvie, agent administrator of the Aegis Department's ball communication office, told Danger Room. "We accomplish abiding the Department and accessories and humans are portrayed in the a lot of authentic and absolute ablaze possible."

Hollywood has been alive with government organizations to accomplish added aboveboard films for years (for instance, Jerry Bruckheimer and Paramount Pictures formed carefully with the Pentagon if filming the 1986 blockbuster "Top Gun"). But the abnormality is beneath newfound scrutiny. There was a bit of a kerfuffle afresh if some in the columnist and in Congress speculated about whether the government will accord Sony Pictures any pointers while they accomplish a blur about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In a letter to the Aegis Department and CIA endure month, Rep. Peter King bidding abuse at the Pentagon's accord with the film's director, Kathyrn Bigelow. King claimed that she had already been fabricated buried to acute advice that could put American lives at risk. (King may accept aswell accept been cerebration about the actuality that the cine is appointed to hit theaters one ages afore America decides whether or not to reelect President Obama.)

White Abode Columnist Secretary Jay Carney assured the media that the Pentagon does not altercate classified advice and appropriate that King could plan on "more important things to altercate than a movie."

Ogilvie told Danger Room that until the Pentagon sees a completed script, they will not accomplish a accommodation on whether they'll abetment Bigelow. Accepted activity is to analysis the script, accomplish addendum on what the Aegis Department would like changed, and bang it aback to the producer. If the changes are made, the aggressive will accommodate whatever advice they can - declassified information, equipment, personnel, etc. - for a price. If an acceding can't be reached, the activity is either scrapped or fabricated afterwards Pentagon help.

"We try to acquisition a average ground," said Ogilvie. "We wish the assuming of the aggressive to appearance professionalism, cohesiveness, jointness, and dedication." He cited NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, two shows the Pentagon has collaborated on, as examples of ball in which bad behavior in the aggressive is generally depicted, but at the end of anniversary storyline, anyone consistently takes activity to actual it. In added words, the U.S. government wants us to apperceive that the aggressive is not fabricated up of egocentric rogues and the CIA doesn't alone apply humans who attending like Brian Cox.

"We wish these movies to advice us in agreement of application and retention," said Ogilvie.

OK, fair abundant I guess, but why has the Aegis Department afresh partnered with 20th Century Fox to accomplish an X-Men/U.S. Army ad or with explosion-enthusiast Michael Bay to accomplish all three Transformers movies? In The Washington Post, David Sirota suggests ball like this is "government-subsidized propaganda."

Ogilvie assures Danger Room that the Pentagon's Hollywood ventures are abundant added innocent than that. Sure, they'd like to see a addition in aggressive support, but it absolutely all comes aback to accurateness in agreement of accepted operating procedures - "whether it be a activity mission in Iraq or how we ability activity a three-legged conflicting in alien space."

While our aggressive is active absorption aegis strategies adjoin Camaro-bots and aliens, I'll do something appropriately advantageous and abuse one of the CIA's "inspirations for approaching storylines" into my aboriginal feature-length activity flick: "The Ten Commandments of Counterintelligence." I'm cerebration early-20th-century religious apologue with lots of explosions, fedoras, and Mel Gibson. But if Mel's busy, I'll just alpha an indie bandage alleged "Robert Fulton's Skyhook and Operation Cold Feet," called afterwards one of the Agency's canned cine treatments. Thanks, CIA! You're my heroes!

Wired.com has been accretion the accumulate apperception with technology, science and beatnik ability account back 1995.

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Napster is dead. Napster lives. Napster is asleep again. Napster lives? Not even Keith Richards has agape on death's aperture as generally as the belled N.A.P. And, frankly, all this belief surrounding the company's fate is moot. Napster was asleep continued afore the appeals cloister disqualified adjoin it endure week. But music online lives on.

There was never any way for the Napster aggregation to accomplish a accepted business archetypal out of a account that, in the simplest terms, lets humans get so abundant air-conditioned being for free. A accepted Napster is an abundantly catchy affair to cull off, acute appalling advances not alone in technology (which would acquiesce Napster to baby out royalties to artists based on downloads), but, added importantly, in animal relations amid the bratty dot com and the absinthian old recording industry.

On the whole, the cast is absolutely austere for Napster: the company's CEO admits that they don't accept the technology now to absolutely cycle out a cable service; the RIAA acutely doesn't wish to abutment such a plan; and, furthermore, the courts are lining up adjoin Napster, adage that, yes, architecture a business based on acceptance humans to bandy absorb adequate abstracts is abetting a crime.

But, really, all this was blighted from the start. Napster was built-in as a bedrock & cycle technology, and like the greatest of bedrock stars, it was meant to die young. Even if, by some phenomenon of science and law, Napster evolves into its accepted new machine, the aboriginal dream of Napster (free, instant, infinite, calmly attainable music for everyone) is done. As for now, the party's still traveling online, but it's got all the tones of a anniversary party's endure call.

Of course, the affair is already advanced to added bars: OpenNap, Gnutella, FreeNet and added hubs that don't even abide yet (but I'll absolutely be autograph about them actuality in months to come). So far, none of these are absolutely as convenient as Napster, but they're alive on it. Nevertheless, if you've got the activity and the time, I agreement you that you can acquisition any song you're searching for online. But that's the bolt appropriate there, isn't it? Most humans don't accept the activity or time. This is why Napster, which fabricated songs so simple to find, ruled.

What to do now? For the account of the change of music online, it's time to move on and yield the acquaint of Napster into the future. The acquaintance has proved, a allotment of added things: there's a amorous accumulation of music admirers on the Internet; humans like accepting burning admission to songs; agenda music technology is now a allotment of circadian life; acceptable radio is not acceptable millions of listeners; artists charge some agency of advantage in the new economy. Now the claiming is to actualize a new arrangement that addresses all these points.

Within a few years, there will absolutely be some alive solution. A abode area admirers can download abominable old Triumph ballads on a whim. A abode area Lars can get paid. A abode area Napster, the one that hotwired it all, seems quaint.

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One bequest of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has accustomed on the southern bound of the United States. The Administration of Homeland Aegis afresh completed tests of a able camera, one that cut its teeth in the war zones, that captures video of absolute afar of bound in a individual frame. DHS thinks mega-cameras on blimps and aerostats ability be the approaching of bound aegis - if its analysts can alone accumulate up with the excess of abstracts they'll gather.

The arrangement itself, a wide-area surveillance camera apartment accepted as Kestrel, becoming its stripes during the wars. That got DHS interested. "You had this imager aerial that was able to annal and save adumbration and reconstruct [bomb] emplacement so troops could go afterwards [insurgents] later," John Applebee, who manages the bound camera affairs for DHS, tells Danger Room. "It aswell was acclimated for added things every day, like troop aegis or ambit protection, just as we brainstorm its uses forth the continental borders of the United States."

So for a anniversary of tests, the administration army Logos Technologies' Kestrel imager on a 75-foot continued Raven Aerostar aerostat tethered 2000 anxiety aloft the Arizona desert. DHS letters in a account that Kestrel helped atom "more than 100 actionable attempted entries and declared adulterous activities in progress."

"We can see afar from this with a individual angel frame," Applebee enthuses. "Within every pixel, you accept high-resolution, good, abundant resolution, like high-d-caliber imagery. In every frame, beyond the frame."

This is hardly the aboriginal time that wartime surveillance technology has fabricated its way home from the battlefield. DHS flies caught drones aloft the arctic and southern U.S. borders, snapping pictures. (They backpack an "excellent camera system," Applebee allows, but clashing Kestrel, "you charge to apperceive area to point it.") Police departments nationwide accept started application abate spy drones as well. Earlier this year, DHS bidding absorption in camera systems that can spy on four aboveboard afar at once, able-bodied within the ambit of the military's new mega-cameras. Kestrel's 360-degree camera apartment is a footfall in that direction.

But the clearing of those aggressive accoutrement comes the clearing of some of the military's problems. Specifically: the "persistent" video taken by the able cameras creates a blaze corrupt of abstracts that analysts attempt to interpret.

And if the excess of video overwhelms the military, DHS - whose anniversary account is beneath $60 billion, an adjustment of consequence beneath than the Pentagon's - is in abysmal trouble. Applebee is up foreground about it. "They accept the people," he says. "We do not."

The answer, he hopes, will appear from software. "We're searching carefully at the developments in the aggressive and intelligence communities for means the software and assay can be automated, so can we use software accoutrement as a tripwire to arresting us and alarm abettor to absorption already [the camera observes] a movement has occurred in a accustomed region," Applebee says. Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky researchers, for instance, are absorbed in something akin to a "thinking camera" that pre-sorts adumbration according to an algorithm based on what an analyst hopes to find.

And conceivably afterwards those pre-selecting adumbration accoutrement appear online for the military, it will not yield continued afore noncombatant law administration puts them to use. Applebee absolutely hopes so. He sees the believing Kestrel as a huge advice for "securing ample areas from actionable intrusion." Brainstorm what the next bearing of cameras will let him see.



Photo: Raven

Wired.com has been accretion the accumulate apperception with technology, science and beatnik ability account back 1995.

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A hacker accumulation accepted as the Ninjas has created what may be the best DefCon brand ever. The brand allows wireless ninja action amid brand holders. Unlike the official badge, attendees can't buy this one: it's free.

DefCon, the world's better hacker convention, is added than just a accumulation of hackers accepting calm to barter the latest accomplishment cipher and hacking techniques. It's a time for hackers who may alone see one accession already a year, to associate face to face. One of the a lot of absolute venues for fraternizing at DefCon is the Ninja party. To appear the affair attendees accept to apperceive one of the Ninjas and they accept to accord them a badge.

In years past, a Ninja would accord a affair attendee a sticker or a cardboard allure that would get them in to the party. Endure year the Ninjas took the affair allure to the next akin if they created their own custom badge for their affair attendees. This year, brand designers Amanda Wozniak and Brandon Creighton absitively to yield the brand to the next level, and again some. What started as a account on a napkin concluded up as an amazing hacker gaming and development platform.

The DefCon 18 Ninja Networks brand is an alternate wireless bold system, consisting of role-playing appearance Ninja battles. The brand shows a account of added badges aural ambit and allows the brand holder to action them. Every time players fight, they accretion acquaintance points, authoritative them added powerful.

The brand has a cavalcade of LEDs with the aforementioned blush coding as World of Warcraft items. The players accept basic items by commutual missions in assorted locations about DefCon and Las Vegas.

The brand transmits stats intermittently to a amount of Android-badge-powered abject stations hidden about the convention. A baton lath at the assemblage shows accepted scores. The badges aswell collaborate wirelessly with added bearding accessories at the assemblage and in accession to ninjas the brand aswell contains a pirate.

This year's brand aswell addresses the alternating botheration of affair attendees branch in and out of the affair with two badges and bringing in alien guests. The wireless brand checks in if attendees access or leave the party, and a black-badge holder can admission a +1 guest.

The badges were designed, programmed, bogus and accumulated in the United States. To account the top amount of the badges and the affair that serves chargeless alcohol, the badges were sponsored by Facebook and Lookout. If the photos were taken endure weekend, the brand software was still getting tested. See beneath for added photos of the badge, software and manual.

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Photos: Dave Bullock

Wired.com has been accretion the accumulate apperception with technology, science and beatnik ability account back 1995.

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Not alone is Charlie Stross a appear sci-fi author, but he is aswell an apostle for DRM-free eBooks. As such, he's put calm a anxious altercation as to why DRM-free eBooks will be acceptable for the publishing world...

After I recommended that the above publishers drop binding DRM from their ebook products, I accomplished that my article had elided a agglomeration of accomplish in my thinking, and bare to amend some points. Afresh I accomplished that it's not a simple, aboveboard altercation to make. Consequently, I concluded up autograph addition essay, although I've approved to abridge my abstracts below.

First, my conclusions:

1. The accelerated accepted clip of change in the cyberbanking publishing area is apprenticed by the chump electronics and internet industry. It's absurd to accomplish connected appellation publishing affairs (3-10 years) afterwards compassionate these added industries and the priorities of their players. It is important to agenda that the CE industry relies on affairs consumers new accessories every 1-3 years. And it is through their accessories that readers acquaintance the books we advertise them. Where is the CE industry demography us?

2. Bottomward DRM beyond all of Macmillans articles will not accept immediate, global, complete furnishings on acquirement in the aforementioned way that introducing the bureau archetypal did ...

3. However, adequate the claim for DRM beyond some of Macmillans brands will accept actual complete attainable relations after-effects a part of assertive chump demographics, conspicuously brand readers who buy ample numbers of books (and who, while a boyhood in complete numbers, are a asymmetric antecedent of abutment for the midlist).

4. Longer term, removing the claim for DRM will lower the barrier to access in ebook retail, acceptance abate retailers (such as Powells) to attack finer with the accepted above incumbents. This will animate assortment in the retail sector, force the accepted incumbents to interoperate with added accumulation sources (or face an departure of consumers), and attenuate the addiction appear oligopoly. This will, in the connected term, attenuate the advantage the ample vendors currently accept in negotiating abatement agreement with publishers while convalescent the accompaniment of midlist sales.

Now the details:

1. Anticipating the approaching of ebook account technology

(Background note: I accept a computer science amount from 1991, which is a bit like accepting an aeriform engineering amount from 1927. But I've spent a block of time alive as a computer journalist, and I try to accumulate up to date.)

First, a agenda on the alteration technology. The chump electronics industry relies on affairs everybody agleam new accessories every 12-24 months for their revenue. Margins are attenuated and R&D costs are high. They aswell accept an absorption in advancement a attic beneath the amount of their articles by abacus new appearance to absolve the advancement treadmill, because acknowledgment to Moore's Law, the electronics area is trapped in a abiding deflationary cycle. So I accept that any advanced publishing action needs to accede the appulse of this amaranthine accessory agitate on consumers, and their acceptable response.

Because the accessories our consumers own arbitrate their acquaintance of the ebooks we advertise them.

First, the hardware:

It's my acceptance that today's e-ink ebook readers are bedevilled to obsolescence aural a abbreviate aeon - 2-3 years possibly, 5 years probably. This is because the ability burning of LCD displays is bottomward and their superior is rising. e-ink accessories are inherently butterfingers of announcement video, are awful as web browsers due to the awning brace time, and if you use them to play audio or do any accelerated processing (such as active apps) their array activity drops appear that of a approved LCD-equipped tablet. They're about single-purpose devices, aggressive in a bazaar with general-purpose devices. Their alone advantages are array activity and readability in absolute sunlight, both of which are beneath threat. So it's my acceptance that accepted purpose tablets (and big-screen smartphones) will drive e-ink readers out of the accumulation bazaar aural 2-5 years, just as smartphones asleep off your 2003 Palm Pilot.

Secondly, the software:

The two accepted tablet/smartphone bazaar incumbents are iOS (Apple) and Android (Google). (Microsoft is authoritative a come-back attack with Windows 8 Mobile, but is angry an acclivous battle.) These are about aggressive software platforms, like MacOS and Windows in the backward 1980s. However, just 5 years ago, none of these platforms existed; the bazaar was bedeviled by PalmOS, Symbian, and Microsoft's asleep PocketPC platform. I accordingly achieve that it is a in fact bad abstraction to accomplish assumptions about the accessories barter will own in even 3 years' time.

In the tablet/smartphone world, DRM is accurate at the appliance level. B&N (Nook), Amazon (Kindle), and Adobe all accommodate readers that run on adverse DRM standards. Even if the book architecture is the aforementioned (ePub) the DRM prevents files from, say, the Adobe Digital Editions arrangement from getting apprehend by a rival's reader.

In the absence of DRM it is trivially simple to catechumen ebooks amid book formats - as simple as aperture a chat processor book on a altered machine, if not easier. Amazon's connected use of a non-epub book architecture on the Kindle belvedere does not beggarly that Amazon could not, actual rapidly, about-face to acknowledging epub files; all that would be bare would be a software amend pushed to their Kindle customers' readers. In fact, Amazon acquired a software aggregation specializing in epub clairvoyant software - Lexcycle - in 2009.

The capital aftereffect of DRM, from a belvedere vendor's perspective, is to lock end-users into their belvedere in perpetuity. (Amazon, as both a banker and a belvedere vendor, has leveraged this actual finer to accord their retail access a whip hand.)

2. Which sectors will acknowledge in fact to beneath DRM

Macmillan sells a array of articles (trade and accumulation market, audio, ebooks and cardboard books) into a array of broad and retail channels, who in about-face advertise the articles to the account public.

The account attainable is not a monolith, and the articles Macmillan sells are dissimilar. Some books are altered and non-interchangeable, while others are advised as an akin article by their consumers. One ample chump articulation buy 1-5 books a year, usually bestsellers for recreational vacation reading. At the adverse end of the scale, 20% or beneath buy 20-150 books a year, about midlist titles. The above accumulation food accumulation sales, but the closing accumulation supports the midlist and food diversity. A one-size-fits-all access to the account attainable is accordingly absurd to amuse everyone.

For example, the 1-5 bestsellers-a-year people: ahead they bought from airport bookstores and WalMart, to apprehend already afresh discard; we apprehend them in approaching to buy ebooks to apprehend already afresh discard. They will apparently use a work-issue book or smartphone active a chargeless Kindle or Nook app, rather than affairs a special-purpose e-reader, and annul their books afterwards reading. They couldn't affliction beneath about DRM. They will apparently stick to one acclaimed online retail supplier. You are in fact appropriate about there getting no account from bottomward DRM in this sector.

3. Who gains? And why?

The avid 20-150 books/year readers are a baby but cogent bazaar segment.

These humans buy lots of titles. They frequently accept specialized interests which they accompany in depth, and a ample amount of authors who, although not prominent, they will buy everything by. They frequently re-read books, and they are disproportionately affecting on added barter because they enthuse about what they've read. They're decidedly accepted in brand fiction. Ahead they bought paperbacks and hardcovers from specialist brand bookstores or, declining that, from ample B&N/Borders branches. They will go to whatever banker they can acquisition online, and they acquisition DRM a aristocratic affliction in the ass - indeed, a bridle to affairs ebooks at all.

There is a common acceptance that ebooks are disposable literature. But to the avid readers, this is not the case. Currently it's harder for abounding humans to body up collections of books due to amplitude constraints - about I apperceive abounding SF admirers (of the affectionate who apprehend 50-150 books a year) who accept angry their homes into libraries. They will be the tip of an abstract already ebooks become mainstream; why abandon an ebook if you can book it and appear aback to it in 10 years' time and it takes up no space?

For such people, filing and tagging their collections is a above issue. And so is portability. It's accurate that if they own an iPad they can accept an iBooks app abounding of books purchased from Apple, and a Kindle app abounding of books from Amazon, and a Nook app abounding of books from B&N. But those apps are, acknowledgment to DRM, abstracts silos - you can't cross-check to see if you bought book 3 in a alternation from Apple and book 5 from Amazon afterwards a lot of bribery around.

Platforms age and die. This summer, Microsoft is axis off the DRM servers for Microsoft Reader. This bureau that humans who bought Microsoft Clairvoyant ebooks over the decade back 2002 now acquisition that their ebooks are trapped central a rapidly ageing, aged slab of artificial and glass. In addition 5-10 years, 95% of those books will be cacographic because the machines they're bound into were advised by a CE industry bedeviled with the 2-3 year advancement aeon - they're not durable. This is in fact one cerebral disciplinarian for piracy - humans who accept paid for a book resent getting accepted to pay for it afresh due to an arbitrary-seeming lock-in assimilate an crumbling section of hardware. From their point of view, bluntness is getting punished.

There is no agreement that B&N will break in business, or that Amazon will not abandon abutment for beforehand Kindle files, in the not too abroad future. This is something that the hardcore readers cannot advice but be acquainted of, because it has already apathetic them in the past, if they bought a Zune, or a Palm Pilot, or any amount of added devices.

If Macmillan bead DRM on ebooks about bought by these people, it sends a signal: "you can abide to apprehend these ebooks in approaching application whatever belvedere you want". Converting a DRM-free ebook amid ePub and Amazon's Kindle format, or any added accepted ebook format, is as simple as extenuative a Microsoft Chat certificate in Rich Text Format, or as a web page: there's an app for that. Moreover, all the DRM-equipped account platforms abutment importing non-DRM'd ebooks.

So, from the point of appearance of a accurate subset of Macmillan's barter - the harder amount brand admirers who apprehend many, abounding books - removing DRM would be a above account and would apparently accomplish immense goodwill.

(This is abrogation abreast the point that, if a trend appear adequate DRM becomes accustomed - as happened in 2009 in the music download industry - the aboriginal mover will acquire ample attainable relations allowances and account advantage in the abbreviate term.)

But is there a business case for accomplishing so?

4. Furnishings of removing DRM on the accumulation chain

(Firstly, I'd like to agenda that the Macmillan acquaintance with bottomward the binding claim for DRM on audio books can't be taken as a advantageous indicator. The capital retailers of audio books, Apple and Audible, debris to address DRM-free audio books. Accordingly DRM-free audio books remained about bare to the public.)

The capital aftereffect of DRM on the accumulation alternation is that a chump who buys DRM-locked agreeable is bound into the supplier who supports that blazon of DRM. A non-casual clairvoyant with a brace of hundred ebooks on their Kindle can't calmly leave the Kindle belted garden. (I emphasize, DRM is the alone affair that keeps them there: converting Kindle ebooks to ePub is trivially simple in the absence of DRM.)

This bearings plays to the account of the bigger incumbents in the retail sector. Currently we accept gone from a near-monopoly by Amazon to a near-cartel a part of Amazon, B&N, and Apple. The absolute bookseller area is disturbing to accord with ebooks.

It's adorning to yield a attending at how the absolute retailers are declining to cope. Powell's accept a ample online store, and are absolutely acknowledged with cardboard products. However, if you wish to buy ebooks from them, they action you a card of DRM silos - Adobe Digital Editions, Google Ebooks, and so on. If you wish to buy ebooks from Powell's, you accept to attack with registering your accessory with them, so that the ebooks can be bound to your reader. This armament barter to jump through a agglomeration of abstruse ablaze hoops; it's easier for them to accord up and point their web browsers at Amazon or B&N instead. And the after-effects accept been so poor that Google seems to be abandoning from the retail market, at atomic to the admeasurement of giving apprehension to abdicate to their beyond retail affiliates (Powell's included).

If Macmillan titles did not accept DRM, afresh barter would acquisition it abundant easier to buy books from absolute retailers like Powell's - or added baby bookstores. DRM-free ebooks can be alien calmly into whatever ebook account accessory a clairvoyant already possesses. It will afresh be attainable for artery and adhesive retailers and baby online retailers to get a toe in the aperture and advertise ebooks competitively. In short, it will lower barriers to access into the retail accumulation chain, which in the connected appellation is advantageous to publishers.

Another bend is that bottomward DRM gives readers some affirmation that their ebooks will abide accessible, even if they change account accessories and apps assorted times over the next decade. It aswell allows them to absorb ebooks from altered sources into a individual collection, simplifying their account experience, and to confidently acquirement from abate retail outlets.

As acclaimed earlier, consumers change e-reader accessories frequently. Aural 5 years we will be seeing a radically altered cyberbanking landscape. Unlocking the readers' book collections will force Amazon and B&N and their approaching competitors to abutment clearing (if they wish to attack for anniversary others' customers). So hopefully it will advance the alteration from the near-monopoly we had afore the bureau model, via the cartel we accept today, to a absolutely aggressive retail bazaar that aswell supports midlist sales.

(Why this will abutment the midlist: currently Amazon accept ashore the midlist a part of ebooks in a sea of self-published rubbish. It's absurd to acquisition annihilation account account in the Kindle abundance that isn't a actual accessible bestseller. This offers an befalling for specialist bookstores to action a curatorial role. I accept the avid brand consumers are captious abundant about what they apprehend that they animosity Amazon's slushpile approach, and will preferentially boutique in bigger organized outlets.)

Other thoughts

I don't apprehend bottomward binding DRM to accept an actual complete appulse on sales. However, it will admittance baby retailers to attack and specialize in a bazaar they are currently bound out of by arrangement externalities. Appropriate now, there is a window of befalling for abate resellers: Amazon's admittance of masses of self-published actual in the Kindle abundance has fabricated it absurd for abundant consumers to browse it effectively. Abate bookstores may be able to accretion a cardinal bend by curating their content, accouterment superior ascendancy on reviews, and added approach we can't adumbrate at this time. This is, I emphasize, abstract - but I accept extenuative the abate resellers is key to assortment in the retail ancillary of the market, and will added abutment the midlist (which is threatened appropriate now by coast accumulation bazaar sales and the adversity authors acquaintance in extensive their audience).

To the admeasurement that piracy is an issue, I anticipate the horse is able-bodied and absolutely out of the abiding and over the horizon; bolting the abiding aperture and abacus chains and padlocks hasn't formed to date, either in book publishing or in music and blur publishing. However, I would acclaim because a about-face to watermarking. Watermarking doesn't anticipate copying, but makes the aboriginal antecedent of a affected book simple to find, which is a bridle to piracy. This appears to be the accepted best convenance in the music industry (in the iTunes store, all music downloads are watermarked), and they're a few years added into the era of internet administration than we are.

Dropping DRM is apparently not traveling to accept a cogent aftereffect on the bestsellers, but I will agenda that J. K. Rowling's move into ebook area is DRM free; apparently the aggressive levels of piracy about her plan was apparent as a above-mentioned condition, and annihilation that ability catechumen charlatan readers into paying barter was apparent as giving Pottermore an edge.

Finally, if traveling DRM-free is a trend, it may be to Macmillan's advantage to be apparent to be a front-runner. Removing the claim for DRM from specialist imprints business primarily to the avid brand readers would be a advantageous beginning step: I will acknowledge to a claimed bent here, but I'd adulation it if Tor was accustomed to advertise my novels unencumbered by DRM — I could alone use that as a able business angle. (Like abounding adolescent writers, my above point of acquaintance with my readers is my blog - I about get 12-14,000 readers per day, and accommodate them with a association for discussing my plan and allurement me questions - based on absolute acknowledgment I'm adequately assertive that bottomward DRM would acquiesce me to accomplish added ebook sales and point my readers at a added assorted ambit of retailers.)

Republished with permission from Charlie Stross.

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Microsoft's motion gaming borderline is, if accomplished correctly, absolutely possibly the approaching of gaming. It ability even be the approaching of Windows 8 and computers everywhere. But how abundant fun is arena with Kinect appropriate now?

Specs
Xbox 360 Kinect Add-on
Price: $150
Works with: Every Xbox 360, but bigger with Xbox 360 S (no ability cord)
Launch titles: Complete account here
Space requirements: 6-8 anxiety stated, but absolutely should be 8-10
Games: $50 each, $10 beneath than accepted Xbox 360 titles

Sony's Move and Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus both accredit the aforementioned blazon of gaming—using a wand-shaped ambassador to represent a section of accessories in 3D space. Microsoft's Kinect is the alone one that actively integrates both voice, a camera and full-body analysis into amateur and the amount Xbox experience.

Despite a launch lineup comprised mostly of affair and exercise games—stuff that appeals mainly to the accidental gamer—it's simple to brainstorm this technology acclimatized to augment any blazon of game. Or best of all, to actualize new adventures you can't get anywhere else, like with Dance Central.

Kinect's 17 Amateur "Launch Portfolio" is One Shy of Xbox 360 Barrage Line-Up Kinect's 17 Amateur "Launch Portfolio" is One Shy of Xbox 360 Barrage Line-Up Kinect's 17 Amateur "Launch Portfolio"

This morning Microsoft apparent the 17 amateur that will be allotment of the Xbox 360's… Apprehend added Read more

Here's Ball Central. It's a dancing game, sure, but it's a dancing bold that doesn't crave you to ball like a guy landing a even (with two batons in your hand)—something aberrant even in the highest-end arcades. That you and your accompany attending asinine arena it is just a bonus, as is the abeyant to apprentice real-world applicative skills—like the "Dust-Off" and the "Keyboard Cat."

Kinect has to backpack a abounding cafe of affair games, because the bazaar still assembly motion-gaming with accidental gaming. I'd apparently buy one or two of these for visitors, but no added than that; they're not that abundant bigger than a Wii's titles if it comes to authentic fun-quotient, even if the technology allows added things.

Just as important is what Kinect agency for accretion as a whole, as apparent by how the way cross the Xbox acquaintance with gestures and with voice.

Gesture aeronautics consists of affective your duke in time with the cursor, captivation it in abode while a alternative confirms. It works, and is adequately accurate, with the alone downside accepting things yield best than with a controller. Voice, on the added hand, works about flawlessly, even if you're bound in things you can do with it because you're just adage words that are on screen. It's accurate, even mid-movie, acknowledgment to its directional mics. If I had to accept amid gestures and voice, I'd accept articulation if possible.

Oh, and there's video chat, accordant with Windows Live Messenger.

This acquaintance is absolutely new. If motion amateur until now were like boxing, Kinect is like kickboxing. You can use your freaking legs! Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is like Wii Fit if Wii Fit in actuality knew if you were befitting your aback beeline or accoutrements captivated out, instead of cheating by sitting on the couch. Kinect Sports Volleyball knows if you've jumped in the air for a spike. Hell, just the actuality that you can use added than your accoutrements is could cause for celebration.

I aswell like what this agency for gaming, and for computing, in general. Just the actuality that you can now cross through the Xbox menus, music, movies and amateur application your physique and your articulation heralds change; something that usually needs an absolutely new animate to accomplish. I abhorrence to use the old cliches of Minority Report or Blade Runner, but accepting able to beachcomber at a apparatus or say the agnate of "enhance, enhance, enhance" and accept it in actuality apperceive what you wish is science fiction in applied terms. Brainstorm accomplishing this not alone for games, but for your desktop, alteration from email to your browser to IM either with a beachcomber of your wrist or a quick announcement of "Computer, go to YouTube." Suck it, past. This IS the future.

I really, absolutely adulation Ball Central as the apotheosis of the platform. Learning to ball is awkward enough, and ball classes acknowledge your abridgement of accent to 15-30 humans at a time. But with this? Nobody knows except you and your active room. It ability be somewhat alcove in that it appeals to humans who adore dancing games, or music games, or accent games, but it aswell shows what developers can do if they yield abounding advantage of the technology that Kinect gives them. Anticipate of what abroad you can apprentice in the aloofness of your underwear.

If I had to define Kinect's one above antecedent of problems, it's that the camera's examination bend is too narrow. Not alone does this bind the play breadth to a 6-8 bottom block in foreground of the TV but, it can almost authority two berserk gesticulating humans on awning after one of the players accepting cut out and told to footfall aback into frame. In fact, to clasp a little added examination bend out of the camera, you're told by some amateur to abode the Kinect on top of your TV. Great idea! Except you accept to pay added for the angle that lets you arise it deeply there. And if you appear too abutting to the camera in your excitement, it'll admonish you, schoolmarmishly, to aback abroad from the TV. I feel like if it could, Kinect would angrily boost you back.

This leads to the additional above problem: You absolutely charge a lot of allowance for Kinect. Matt's New York accommodation was not big abundant to get a acceptable play experience, and even my ample burghal active allowance acquainted hardly confined. I was abetment into my couch able-bodied afore I hit the recommended "back wall" apparent by Kinect. Humans in average-sized burghal apartments will get a sub-par acquaintance just because they don't accept abundant room. Who wants to pay $150 for a apparatus to acquaint you that you should get a bigger domicile?

The actuality that you accept to do a little bit of bureaucracy in anniversary bold is awkward, but it's not as awkward as the actuality that there's no connected way to cross airheaded with your body. Every individual bold does it differently. Even the action you charge to bethink to cull up the Kinect Guide (a abeyance menu, essentially) is a bit wonky. It boils down to the actuality that ambience up the arrangement and accepting the gestures to consistently plan in assorted amateur isn't fun, and doesn't plan appropriate all the time.

I'm conflicted. Although the abeyant of the Kinect belvedere is evident, it's still cryptic how added boilerplate titles like Gears of War or Dead Rising or Fable can use these new gaming mechanics. Will you act out chainsawing soldiers and zombies with an airy saw in your hand? Will you action and beachcomber to your peasants as you airing down the streets as king?

It's aswell harder to absolve the $150 amount tag appropriate now—especially if you charge to acquirement a accomplished bulk of new amateur at $50 a pop just to use the thing. You aswell charge a lot of space—way added than either the Wii or PlayStation Move requires, and this is a big problem.

Having alone 1 appellation out of 17 barrage amateur absolutely do something acute and new isn't a actual acceptable launch, abnormally for humans who don't like ball games. Appropriate now, the acknowledgment to the axiological catechism of "are you accepting fun with Kinect" is, unfortunately, "not really." Unless you like ball games. The abeyant is there, but you charge to anticipate of Kinect like the barrage of a new console: Wait until the amateur you absolutely wish are available—or maybe even the next generation.

Imagery by Sam Spratt. Check out Sam's portfolio and become a fan of his Facebook Artist's Page.

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