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Long Bets is an interesting idea. The site hosts predictions of the future and allows netizens to vote and debate the predictions -- their viability, their implications, and whatever else comes to mind. The predictions have an best-before due date, which is where the betting part comes in. If your prediction is realized before the date, you win -- and there is real money at stake. The person making the prediction antes up $50. The person betting has to drop $200. The winner gets to choose which charity receives their winnings. The real money aspect keeps out the rift-raft, but allows anyone to join the discussions. This concept is similar to market concept, where the merits of ideas and opinions are bought and sold for virtual money. [ Thanks for the link Darren. ]

ESA, ESO and NASA are making raw hubble data available to the masses. Data from the telescope comes in Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format -- and is a standard for the astronomical community. I remember the format from my observing days at university. Programs to use the FITS format however have not been accessible. The ESA/ESO/NASA team however, have created a FITS plugin for Photoshop that allows FITS formated data to be interpreted. Once you've loaded the plugins, you'll need to download the FITS datasets to your computer. Having broadband would come in really handy, as the datasets are huge. Image processing will take some work, but the beautiful images that will result are worth the effort. [ This came via The Caretaker blog . ]

This week's BusinessWeek magazine did some navel gazing for bloggers with a cover article on blogs and how they will change your business. If you're a blogger, you're already a believer -- granted some of you do some rather personal navel gazing in the public blogosphere, and probably don't get the difference between blogs and personal journals. The article contends that blogs are a prerequisite, "not a business elective." Why? Consider the following argument. Businesses in the past have controlled their image and public perception. They had much more control in the past, especially with media in the hands of the few, who were also businesses. With freedom of the press and media control shared amongst the conglomerates and some smaller players, business lost some control of the shaping of public perception. But, they still had significant control. They controlled their image by buying media time -- one way or another -- via commercial time, or by bul...

In the 1990s, the Lunar Prospector and Clementine found signs of ice in the shadowed craters never the Moon's poles. There has been no substantial evidence for ice however. NASA's future plans for lunar colonization hinges on finding water on the Moon . Water would be useful for lunar colonists as drinking water, water to grow food, provide oxygen and rocket fuel, as well, water is very effective in blocking space radiation. In 2008, NASA will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to map the lunar environment. It's hoped that the LRO will confirm water on the Moon, and will set the stage for the return to the Moon in 2020.

The Register has an article about the dangers of spreadsheet misuse in the business world. Spreadsheets have achieved ubiquity in businesses. There isn't a business manager who could function without them -- and if you're a business manager who functions without them, chances are, you're not a real manager because you don't know you are using them, whether directly or indirectly (and I actually know some these strange beasts). The dangers with spreadsheets isn't the software, but the misuse of the software. Usually no controls governing the information, analysis or computations done within spreadsheets. An indispensable tool that too often is being used to enable critical business processes, spreadsheets also fall into a grey area for support -- most IT organizations could care less about them or their use/misuse. Often IT is busily enforcing controls on the huge ERP packages that business managers couldn't misuse anyway, and completely forget the million...

If you've got some computer skills, a high speed line to the internet and are looking for a job, a home business as a virtual worker may be just the thing for you. According to the Canadian Telework Association , 1.5 million people in Canada have virtual jobs -- charging a rate of $25-40 per hour. For those looking to provide administrative duties, check out the Canadian Virtual Assistant Connection . [ Thanks for the link Garry . ]

I just read on Hammer & Nail of State Rep. Daniel LeMahieu's proposed bill in to "prohibit health care facilities on campus from dispensing, advertising or prescribing birth control to adult female students" in Wisconsin. Apparently, LeMahieu thinks that birth control “encourages women to be promiscuous.” WTF?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out a letter to employees to clarify Microsoft's and his preferred position on gays and specifically, their position on anti-discriminatory legislation being debated. Ballmer says that Microsoft and he himself, remains "hardcore" about diversity and "rigorous about having a non-discriminatory environment." OK Steve. Down boy. Ballmer went on to say that Microsoft decided to narrow their legislative focus rather selfishly on matters that had a direct impact on their business. In no way did they cave in when Rev. Hutcherson demanded that the two Microsoft employees that testified in support of the anti-discriminatory legislation, be burned at the stake, because from Ballmer's experience, gays don't burn well -- and further, the demand that Ballmer should do a public dance in support of taking away all gay rights was just ludicrous. Ballmer questioned whether public companies should be taking a position on social is...

Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, has made an important leap in number theory with the publishing of a proof for the level-1 case of the Serre conjecture . Late last year, Khare and J.P. Wintenberger published a two part strategy to solving Serre conjecture. The strategy builds on the work of Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor, en route to proving Fermat's last theorem . Khare is at work on the final proof of the Serre conjecture, although there is no timeline for the publication of his result. For more information, see the following: Mod l representations of arithmetic fundamental groups : Part I (An analog of Serre's conjecture for function fields) [PDF] Lectures on Serre's Conjectures [PDF] Fermat's Last Theorem : After 356 Years [PDF]

OS/2 World, an OS/2 online community, is looking to bring OS/2 out of the closet in a resurrection. The community is petitioning IBM to open source the entire OS or components of it. It's not a bad idea. Let's face it -- IBM dropped the ball with OS/2 and is letting it die a slow and painful death. OS/2 however, seems to have a cult following -- how else would you describe these guys? Giving it away may lend new viability to the product, and may also serve to drive innovation. The Linux community for one, could probably gain from some of the code in OS/2.

Check out this little piece of wizardry . It doesn't always work, but when it does -- well ... [ Thanks Darren -- another 5 minutes wasted. ]

Music is about to hit North American cell phones in a really big way. In Europe and Asia, cell phones are already well versed in MP3 playback -- but in the large North American market, they've had only a passing interest from mobile carriers. That's about to change however. The music industry and mobile carriers are teaming up to deliver music downloads directly to cell phones that are about to become the new digital jukeboxes. Every large mobile carrier is busy at work on their music stores, and the major labels, having missed the boat on the internet, are quickly reading their catalogs for the cell phone market. iPod and iTunes have been the most successful digital music foray, but consider the numbers: there are 1.4 billion people with cell phones, and to date, only 10 million iPods have been sold. The iPod can hold 60GB of music -- your entire music collection; but Samsung already has a 3GB phone on the market and is developing a 10GB version. How long will it be be...

BusinessWeek has a cover article on the downsizing of CEOs -- especially in Corporate America. The resizing of CEOs are coming as a result of the bad apples being thrown out -- from Enron, WorldCom, and Fannie Mae to the recent shenanigans of AIG's former boss, Maurice R. Greenberg . More power is being wielded by the directors, auditors and lawyers, who in the past have played the advisor role to CEOs, in helping them helm their companies, and are now questioning, countering and generally being confrontational. Why the change? Fear. Sarbanes-Oxley alone has gone the distance of making the advisors accountable for shareholders and the public. Now, there is liability. Advisors can find themselves in the hot seat just as much as CEOs. This is all a great thing. Public accountability -- the stymieing of bad accounting practices, lying to investors and breaking of the law. But it also has a downside. More and more, the advisors are commanding higher fees, and are curtailing...

Microsoft, a firm supporter of gay rights in the past, has quietly retreated from its position due to pressure from the religious right. Apparently, Microsoft was supportive of a bill protecting gays from discrimination in the workplace in Washington State -- but backed away when pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church of Redmond threatened to organize a national boycott of the company's products.

I just picked this up from Mocking Music -- apparently a new malware has hit the internet. Nopir-B bills itself as a DVD-cracking program that gets your around DVD copy protection. What it does instead is take control of your machine, deleting all MP3s it finds, then hunting down P2P programs and some other apps and wiping them out. Anti-virus vendors are updating their products, but expect this piece of crap to hang around the P2P world for some time. Personally, I think the RIAA or MPAA are behind it. No hacker would build this for fun -- the hacker community would take them apart for it.

Some interesting articles of note from last week's BusinessWeek magazine: MBA Applicants Are MIA -- Tuitions for business schools are on the rise, the job market is again healthy and, is there really value in getting an MBA? Or, to qualify that -- is there really any value in getting an MBA without work experience? I'm of the firm belief that an MBA is lost on those without experience -- which would include a few good failures along the way. It's not the death knell for MBA schools, but it sure is to be a good kick in the pants. AIG: Get Ready for Starr Wars -- in case you haven't been following the news, it goes something like this. Former AIG CEO & Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg ran a great company. It made profits while its competitors were at a lost trying to catch up. It also sold insurance that wasn't really insurance, and made a killing. Now NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is out guns blazing and is set to get his man. Ooops. G...

Picture this: a cruise ship off a major coastal city of an industrialized country, in international waters. The vacationers are not on vacation, but are at work. They come from many of the developing countries that are now supplying the brains to the next wave of innovation -- India, China, etc. They get the same amenities as a guest on a cruise ship would, except they work in two shifts, get paid more than they would at home -- and technically, it is offshoring -- only it's local. This ship was dreamt up by Roger Green and David Cook , who have now formed SeaCode and are in the market for a cruise ship to anchor Los Angeles and clients who need cheap, highly skilled labour. Uh-huh. I'll believe it when they turn a profit.

Astronaut Harrison Schmidt complained of having " lunar dust hay fever " after a moonwalk during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission . His symptoms were gone in a day, and the episode drifted from the limelight. The astronauts of that mission had brought dust from the Moon into their spacecraft and it had become airborne, entering their lungs. Dust particles less than 10 microns wide can block the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs, and the lungs can't clear out the dust by coughing or mucous. Further, white blood cells are destroyed when they try to take sharp-edged particles away in the bloodstream. This all leads to silicosis -- effectively, the slow suffocation of the victim. Moon dust isn't poisonous, just dangerous. Martian dust on the other hand may be toxic to humans and even corrosive to equipment. With future missions to the Moon and Mars possible, NASA is busy figuring out how to keep the dust out. All interesting, but I also wanted to pos...

With your own Pope Hat ! Yes, with one of those funky hats, you can walk around mumbling in what passes for latin and blessing people. [This came from moxiegrrrl .]

OK, it's nothing new . I'm sure it's been around for a while, in Beta ... but it's damn cool! (Although it didn't find the local PizzaPizza from my house ... oh well.) If you really want to see cool, select Satellite from the top, right hand corner, then type in an address to seach for. Amazing!