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Internet billionaire aims to build spaceport in Texas (read Full Story)
Health Internet addicts 'need help' (read Full Story)
Twenty five years of the IBM PC
Friday, 11 August 2006
BBC News
Computer firm IBM made technological history on 12 August 1981 with the announcement of a personal computer - the IBM 5150.
Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a couple of modest e-mails worth.
The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it soon came to define the global standard.
It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution in home computing.
"It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything," said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the World Service's Analysis programme.
"But there were still things you could do with a computer that you couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing."
Global impact
Everything from automated spreadsheets to desktop publishing and the rise of the internet have since become possible.
The term PC had been in use long before IBM released its machine - but the success of the 5150 lead to the use of the term to mean a machine compatible with IBM's specifications.
The machine was developed by a team of 12 engineers, lead by Don Estridge, who was known as the "father of the IBM PC".
Development took under a year and was achieved by building a machine using "off the shelf" parts from a variety of manufacturers.
The machine had an "open architecture" which meant other firms could produce compatible machines. IBM banked on being able to charge a license for using the BIOS - the software which controls the heart of the machine.
But other companies reverse engineered the BIOS and were able to produce clones of the machine without having to pay IBM a penny.
That open architecture sparked an explosion in PC sales and also paved the way for common standards - something business had craved.
Since then the PC has come to dominate the home and the office and led the move to the online era with cheap global communication, e-commerce and for consumers the ability to find the answer to almost any question on the web.
Roger Kay, president of computer consultancy firm Endpoint, said the impact of the PC on all aspects our lives cannot be over-stated.
"I have for example an archive of correspondence from people that I diligently wrote letters to and all of a sudden that just stops," he said.
"I don't think I've got a personal letter for five years."
Moving this revolution forward are the one billion PCs that are now in use around the world.
In many ways, the PC has become in the developed world, an essential tool in our everyday lives.
End of an era?
But for how much longer?
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, told the firm's shareholders last month the PC era was coming to an end.
"We're now in a new era, an era in which the internet is at the centre of so much that we do now with our PCs," he told them.
"And it's important to start then from a different vantage point."
With the lion's share of the Microsoft global software empire founded on the success of the PC, Mr Ozzie's statement was a significant admission.
Mr Standage said Microsoft has come to recognise that it will inevitably have to move with the times.
He said: "The problem is that Microsoft has most to lose from the shift towards internet-based software and that means it has the least incentive to do anything about it because it likes the status quo.
"But if it doesn't switch to this new model other people will."
PC supremacy
The move towards internet based software calls into question the supremacy of the PC itself.
Vying to knock the PC off its pedestal are a new generation of media PCs that hook up to televisions and hand-held computer devices, from phones to pocket PCs.
With all this small mobile technology and the growth of wireless internet, will people on the move bother owning a PC at all?
Reports of the PC's demise may be a little premature. While the market may not be growing anymore, it remains an industry generating some $200bn a year.
In developing countries such as China and Latin America, the PC market is still expanding at double digit growth rates.
But the development of mobile technology may enable the developing world to leapfrog the PC era altogether.
Mr Standage said mobile technology is key to sharing the benefits of the PC age with developing countries.
"I think that adding features to mobile phones is probably a better way to democratise computing," he said.
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Health Internet addicts 'need help
Wednesday, September 29, 1999 Published at 02:01 GMT 03:01 UK
BBC News
Internet addiction is a growing problem and doctors should be better equipped to deal with it, research from the Center for Online Addiction suggests.
It claims that people are spending an increasing amount of time online and then lie about it to hide their activities. In a paper to be published in the student edition of the British Medical Journal, Dr Kimberly Young, director of the centre, sets out a series of questions she says determine whether or not someone is an Internet addict.
However, other psychologists working in the same field say that her criteria are too wide ranging to provide a useful definition.
Self-test reveals all
Dr Young said that an Internet addict would answer yes to at least five of the following questions:
Do you feel preoccupied with the Internet (you think about your previous online activity or anticipate your next session)?
Do you feel the need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction?
Have you repeatedly made unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back or stop Internet use?
Do you stay online longer than originally intended?
Have you jeopardised or risked the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of the Internet?
Have you lied to family members, therapist or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet?
Do you use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving, for example, feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety or depression?
"The way some people have come to use (the Internet) has created a stir among the mental health community and Internet addiction has become a serious topic of discussion," she said.
"Most people agree that the Internet is a productive tool, but research findings document serious negative consequences when it is used in a negative manner."
The anonymity of the Internet made it easier to indulge the addiction, and encouraged "deviant, deceptive and even criminal online acts, such as the development of aggressive online personas or the viewing and downloading of illegal images".
Dr Young - who offers E-mail consultations at $15 a time - said treatment should focus on getting an individual to regulate and moderate Internet use.
'Devastating effect'
Dr Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University, has studied the effects of excessive Internet use and is familiar with Dr Young's work.
He said that, in its favour, it raised the profile of an important contemporary problem.
"Most Internet addicts are young, socially unskilled men," he told BBC News Online. "It's tragic - these people have the same problems as any other addict."
However, he said Internet addiction was a small problem at present, but Dr Young's criteria classified too many people as addicted to the Internet.
"A lot of these people aren't addicted to the Internet - they're addicted to sex or gambling and they use the Internet as a tool," he said.
"You can't classify an addiction in terms of its medium - if someone's addicted to gambling and spends all their time in a betting shop, we don't say they're addicted to betting shops."
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Internet billionaire aims to build spaceport in Texas
23:11 26 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Kelly Young
The 2200 residents of Van Horn, Texas, US, seem to be embracing the idea of having a spaceport in their backyard.
Blue Origin, a company headed by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has applied to build a launch site for its planned New Shepard space rocket about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Van Horn.
A prototype of the rocket could make up to 10 suborbital test flights in 2006. And the rocket – which would take off and land vertically – could be ready to take passengers to the edge of space and back by as early as 2010.
But first the US Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial spaceflight, must approve a draft of an environmental impact assessment that the company recently filed.
More tourists
On Tuesday, the town of Van Horn held a hearing about the environmental impact of building the launch site on 7527 hectares (18,600 acres) of a larger piece of property owned by Bezos, which is known as "Corn Ranch".
"People are excited about it," says cattle rancher Ron Helm, who spoke at the hearing and used to raise cattle on ranches abutting the proposed spaceport. "We know a lot of the Blue Origin people. They've been honest about their dealings."
The region already sees a fair amount of tourists who visit the nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Big Bend National Park. But a spaceport could bring even more tourists – and their dollars – to the area.
"Who would have thought Van Horn, Texas, would be on the cutting edge of space technology?" Helm told New Scientist.
Precision landing
Blue Origin has kept its plans for the rocket and launch site largely under wraps until the environmental assessment draft was released in June. "We're not going into any details beyond the environmental assessment," company spokesman Bruce Hicks says.
But the assessment shows that at least three tourists could fly on the rocket, which would consist of a propulsion module with a crew capsule on top.
Tourists would experience a flight lasting nearly 10 minutes. The rocket would fire its engines for two minutes, then coast to an altitude of 99,060 metres. Should something go wrong during launch, the crew capsule could detach from the propulsion module and parachute back to Earth.
But if the launch was successful, the rocket would then fall back to Earth. It would restart its engines at an altitude of several hundred metres, when it was less than 15 seconds from landing.
The company aims to have its rocket make a precision, vertical landing on a concrete pad 6.1 kilometres (3.8 miles) away from the launch pad. It also says it could make about one suborbital launch per week depending on market demand.
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