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http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090315/ap_on_hi_te/tec_inside_a_botnet_checklist
How to tell, what to do if computer is infected (AP)
· Posted on Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:46PM EDT
- Computer-virus infections don't cause your machine to crash anymore.
Nowadays, the criminals behind the infections usually want your computer operating in top form so you don't know something's wrong. That way, they can log your keystrokes and steal any passwords or credit-card numbers you enter at Web sites, or they can link your infected computer with others to send out spam.
Here are some signs your computer is infected, tapped to serve as part of "botnet" armies run by criminals:
* You experience new, prolonged slowdowns. This can be a sign that a malicious program is running in the background.
* You continually get pop-up ads that you can't make go away. This is a sure sign you have "adware," and possibly more, on your machine.
* You're being directed to sites you didn't intend to visit, or your search results are coming back funky. This is another sign that hackers have gotten to your machine.
So what do you do?
* Having anti-virus software here is hugely helpful. For one, it can identify known malicious programs and disable them. If the virus that has infected your machine isn't detected, many anti-virus vendors offer a service in which they can remotely take over your computer and delete the malware for a fee.
* Some anti-virus vendors also offer free, online virus-scanning services.
* You may have to reinstall your operating system if your computer is still experiencing problems. It's a good idea even if you believe you've cleaned up the mess because malware can still be hidden on your machine. You will need to back up your files before you do this.
How do I know what information has been taken?
* It's very hard to tell what's been taken. Not every infection steals your data. Some just serve unwanted ads. Others poison your search result or steer you to Web sites you don't want to see. Others log your every keystroke. The anti-virus vendors have extensive databases about what the known infections do and don't do. Comparing the results from your virus scans to those entries will give you a good idea about what criminals may have snatched up.
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Anti-virus vendor: ID theft Trojans on 1 in 100 PCs
http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/03/09/Panda_ID_theft_Trojans_are_on_1_in_100_PCs_we_scan_1.html
Just over 1 percent of systems tested by Panda Security test site were infected with apps designed to help thieves steal sensitive information
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service,
March 09, 2009
Perhaps as many as 10 million PCs are infected with sneaky programs designed to steal sensitive financial information, anti-virus vendor Panda Security reports.
The company found that just over 1 percent of systems belonging to the 67 million people who tried out its free ActiveScan test site last year were infected with malicious software designed to help thieves steal sensitive information about victims. If 1 percent of the world's 1 billion computers are infected, that would mean that this kind of software is on 10 million PCs worldwide, the company reports.
[Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld.]
These identity-theft-focused Trojan programs are becoming more sophisticated and more common. Panda's detection rate jumped 800 percent between the middle of 2008 and the end of the year, according to Carlos Zevallos, a security evangelist with the security company. "The report shows a very sobering number," he said. "We don't want it to seem that it is a hopeless battle [but] all businesses innovate, and crimeware is a business."
Identity theft is a big problem. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission estimates that 9 million U.S. residents have their identities stolen each year through a variety of techniques, including dumpster diving, skimming credit card numbers at legitimate businesses, and phishing.
According to Panda, these Trojan programs are a now a serious threat too. Victims of the Trojans are usually tricked into installing the software themselves. They may think they're installing a new plug-in in order to view a video. Once the software is installed, it typically sends messages to a central command and control server
Although banking Web sites have added a lot of features over the years to prevent hackers in another country such as Russia from logging into online accounts, these banking Trojans can be really hard to stop, Zevallos said. "They essentially have complete control of your machine, so they can send a request from your machine and the Web site will not know that it is not being initiated by the user."
Trojans can take screen shots of everything on your screen and search the machine for credit-card numbers, Social Security numbers, resumes -- anything that could be used in identity theft. Today's Trojans can even download software updates from their criminal masters.
Today's most common financial Trojans go by names like Cimuz, Sinowal, and Torpig.
Most of these programs come from China or Russia, but Panda says that a growing number are coming from Brazil and Korea too.
In the past few years, hackers have become very good at cranking out new, slightly altered, variants of their malware, designed to evade anti-virus detection. So, anti-virus products will detect identity theft Trojans, but not all of them. Panda said that 35 percent of the infected PCs that it spotted last year were already using up-to-date anti-virus programs.
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More about Panda Security
http://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_Security
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PMO email in virus grip for months
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090316/jsp/nation/story_10675764.jsp
New Delhi, March 15 (PTI): The email system in the Prime Minister’s Office was virus afflicted for three months last year before officials detected the problem and replaced it with a new software.
From February to April 2008, the PMO did not receive many of the mails addressed to it because of the virus. The extent of the damage is uncertain.
The problem was detected late last April after which the Microsoft Outlook Express software, on which the PMO’s email communication system was based, was replaced with SquirrelMail.
The matter came to light during one of the hearings of the Central Information Commission where the PMO submitted that there was a virus problem in the months of February, March and April “that was finally diagnosed only late in April”.
The commission was hearing a plea of retired Air Commodore Lokesh Batra, who had sent an email to the PMO.
In its submission to the commission, the PMO said: “Many mails reportedly sent were not received in the Outlook Express and subsequently the Outlook Express was discontinued and SquirrelMail was used.”
Cyber forensic experts say a virus attack can compromise email security.
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More about SquirrelMail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquirrelMail
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/4306613.cms?TOI_Home
Priyanka Chopra with a trophy after winning the Nielsen Box Office Award for her role in 'Service' at the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. (AP Photo)
http://www.asianfilmawards.org/2009/index.html
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/plastic.bottle.boat/index.html
Updated 8:19 a.m. EDT, Mon March 9, 2009
By Brandon Griggs and Jeff King CNN
SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Imagine collecting thousands of empty plastic bottles, lashing them together to make a boat and sailing the thing from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles (17,700 km) through treacherous seas.
This 60-foot sailboat, the Plastiki, is being built from more than 12,000 recycled plastic bottles.
Video: Sea voyage for recyclable boat
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/09/plastic.bottle.boat/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
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Smoke is seen after an underwater volcano erupted in Hunga Ha'apai, Tonga March 18, 2009. The eruption is only 34 nautical miles off the coast of the Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa. Picture is taken on March 18.
REUTERS/Matangi Tonga Online/Handout (TONGA ENVIRONMENT)
Thu Mar 19, 3:38 AM ET
Video: Undersea volcano erupts near Tonga in Pacific Ocean
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5014854/Video-Undersea-volcano-erupts-near-Tonga-in-Pacific-ocean.html
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Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupts
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/03/23/alaska.volcano/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CN-EGuCBUg
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/20/lifetiles.optical.illusion.murals/index.html
Updated 7:50 a.m. EDT, Fri March 20, 2009
Artist uses optical tricks to create 'moving' murals
By Jeremy Bradley CNN
BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- A huge mural greets visitors to the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Boston. It's a memorial to the building's namesake, who died unexpectedly in 1993.
A young Reggie Lewis, wearing his No. 35 Boston Celtics jersey, dominates the middle of the 11-foot-by-14-foot artwork. At the bottom left is a picture of him and his wife. To his right, the face of legendary Celtic Larry Bird.
Artist Rufus B. Seder calls these "movies for a wall" Lifetiles. The Massachusetts artist invented the Lifetiles medium and is the only artist in the world using it. He has more than 30 Lifetiles installations around the globe.
Hundreds of tiles are used to create the "magic" mural at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Boston. The same mural, seen from a different angle, displays a new set of images around the main figure.
Video: Magical murals that move
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/20/lifetiles.optical.illusion.murals/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Artist Rufus B. Seder
Eye Think, Inc
http://www.eyethinkinc.com/index.html
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March 12, 6:23 PM
In 1969, two friends who owned a furniture store in London decided to rescue/buy a small lion cub that was for sale at upscale Harrod's. (The upscale department store has since done away with its "exotic animals" department.)
"There, in a small cage, was a gorgeous little lion cub. We were shocked. We looked at each other and said something's got to be done about that," John Rendall told the Daily Mail in 2007.
He and Ace Berg bought the 35-pound cub and brought it home to live with Rendall in his tony Chelsea flat.
When Rendall and Berg visited Kenya a year later, they were told that Christian had successfully acclimated to his new environment and hadn't been spotted for a while. Even if they did see the lion, the pair was told, Christian would not recognize the men who raised him as a cub.
After hours of searching for him, the two men spotted Christian.
The astonishing reunion was documented on film and has become a YouTube sensation.
One of the videos has clicked over 10 million views!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=christian+the+lion&aq=0&oq=christian+the
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Power Of ten for science students
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12597888/Power-Of-ten-for-science-students
http://s.scribd.com/images/filetypes/powerpoint_16x16.gif?1237435861
http://www.slideshare.net/leo/a-journey-to-the-macro-to-the-minutest
This unique slide show with 68 slides takes us to unique journey within 10 minutes from atom to universe, as it increases size resolution by a factor of 10.
Secret Worlds: The Universe Within
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
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Original website for slide-show
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
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Doctor Doom
The U.S. Financial System Is Effectively Insolvent
Nouriel Roubini, 03.05.09, 12:01 AM EST
There is a grave risk of a global L-shaped depression.
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(Nouriel Roubini)
For those who argue that the rate of growth of economic activity is turning positive--that economies are contracting but at a slower rate than in the fourth quarter of 2008--the latest data don't confirm this relative optimism. In 2008's fourth quarter, gross domestic product fell by about 6% in the U.S., 6% in the euro zone, 8% in Germany, 12% in Japan, 16% in Singapore and 20% in South Korea. So things are even more awful in Europe and Asia than in the U.S.
There is, in fact, a rising risk of a global L-shaped depression that would be even worse than the current, painful U-shaped global recession. Here's why:
First, note that most indicators suggest that the second derivative of economic activity is still sharply negative in Europe and Japan and close to negative in the U.S. and China. Some signals that the second derivative was turning positive for the U.S. and China turned out to be fake starts. For the U.S., the Empire State and Philly Fed indexes of manufacturing are still in free fall; initial claims for unemployment benefits are up to scary levels, suggesting accelerating job losses; and January's sales increase is a fluke--more of a rebound from a very depressed December, after aggressive post-holiday sales, than a sustainable recovery.
For China, the growth of credit is only driven by firms borrowing cheap to invest in higher-returning deposits, not to invest, and steel prices in China have resumed their sharp fall. The more scary data are those for trade flows in Asia, with exports falling by about 40% to 50% in Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
Even correcting for the effect of the Chinese New Year, exports and imports are sharply down in China, with imports falling (-40%) more than exports. This is a scary signal, as Chinese imports are mostly raw materials and intermediate inputs. So while Chinese exports have fallen so far less than in the rest of Asia, they may fall much more sharply in the months ahead, as signaled by the free fall in imports.
With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption, industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously, capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe.
Fiscal and monetary stimulus is becoming more aggressive in the U.S. and China, and less so in the euro zone and Japan, where policymakers are frozen and behind the curve. But such stimulus is unlikely to lead to a sustained economic recovery. Monetary easing--even unorthodox--is like pushing on a string when (1) the problems of the economy are of insolvency/credit rather than just illiquidity; (2) there is a global glut of capacity (housing, autos and consumer durables and massive excess capacity, because of years of overinvestment by China, Asia and other emerging markets), while strapped firms and households don't react to lower interest rates, as it takes years to work out this glut; (3) deflation keeps real policy rates high and rising while nominal policy rates are close to zero; and (4) high yield spreads are still 2,000 basis points relative to safe Treasuries in spite of zero policy rates.
Fiscal policy in the U.S. and China also has its limits. Of the $800 billion of the U.S. fiscal stimulus, only $200 billion will be spent in 2009, with most of it being backloaded to 2010 and later. And of this $200 billion, half is tax cuts that will be mostly saved rather than spent, as households are worried about jobs and paying their credit card and mortgage bills. (Of last year's $100 billion tax cut, only 30% was spent and the rest saved.)
Thus, given the collapse of five out of six components of aggregate demand (consumption, residential investment, capital expenditure in the corporate sector, business inventories and exports), the stimulus from government spending will be puny this year.
Chinese fiscal stimulus will also provide much less bang for the headline buck ($480 billion). For one thing, you have an economy radically dependent on trade: a trade surplus of 12% of GDP, exports above 40% of GDP, and most investment (that is almost 50% of GDP) going to the production of more capacity/machinery to produce more exportable goods. The rest of investment is in residential construction (now falling sharply following the bursting of the Chinese housing bubble) and infrastructure investment (the only component of investment that is rising).
With massive excess capacity in the industrial/manufacturing sector and thousands of firms shutting down, why would private and state-owned firms invest more, even if interest rates are lower and credit is cheaper? Forcing state-owned banks and firms to, respectively, lend and spend/invest more will only increase the size of nonperforming loans and the amount of excess capacity. And with most economic activity and fiscal stimulus being capital- rather than labor-intensive, the drag on job creation will continue.
So without a recovery in the U.S. and global economy, there cannot be a sustainable recovery of Chinese growth. And with the U.S, recovery requiring lower consumption, higher private savings and lower trade deficits, a U.S. recovery requires China's and other surplus countries' (Japan, Germany, etc.) growth to depend more on domestic demand and less on net exports. But domestic-demand growth is anemic in surplus countries for cyclical and structural reasons. So a recovery of the global economy cannot occur without a rapid and orderly adjustment of global current account imbalances.
Meanwhile, the adjustment of U.S. consumption and savings is continuing. The January personal spending numbers were up for one month (a temporary fluke driven by transient factors), and personal savings were up to 5%. But that increase in savings is only illusory. There is a difference between the national income account (NIA) definition of household savings (disposable income minus consumption spending) and the economic definitions of savings as the change in wealth/net worth: savings as the change in wealth is equal to the NIA definition of savings plus capital gains/losses on the value of existing wealth (financial assets and real assets such as housing wealth).
In the years when stock markets and home values were going up, the apologists for the sharp rise in consumption and measured fall in savings were arguing that the measured savings were distorted downward by failing to account for the change in net worth due to the rise in home prices and the stock markets.
But now with stock prices down over 50% from peak and home prices down 25% from peak (and still to fall another 20%), the destruction of household net worth has become dramatic. Thus, correcting for the fall in net worth, personal savings is not 5%, as the official NIA definition suggests, but rather sharply negative.
In other terms, given the massive destruction of household wealth/net worth since 2006-07, the NIA measure of savings will have to increase much more sharply than has currently occurred to restore households' severely damaged balance sheets. Thus, the contraction of real consumption will have to continue for years to come before the adjustment is completed.
In the meanwhile the Dow Jones industrial average is down today below 7,000, and U.S. equity indexes are 20% down from the beginning of the year. I argued in early January that the 25% stock market rally from late November to the year's end was another bear market suckers' rally that would fizzle out completely once an onslaught of worse than expected macro and earnings news, and worse than expected financial shocks, occurs. And the same factors will put further downward pressures on U.S. and global equities for the rest of the year, as the recession will continue into 2010, if not longer (a rising risk of an L-shaped near-depression).
Of course, you cannot rule out another bear market suckers' rally in 2009, most likely in the second or third quarters. The drivers of this rally will be the improvement in second derivatives of economic growth and activity in the U.S. and China that the policy stimulus will provide on a temporary basis. But after the effects of a tax cut fizzle out in late summer, and after the shovel-ready infrastructure projects are done, the policy stimulus will slacken by the fourth quarter, as most infrastructure projects take years to be started, let alone finished.
Similarly in China, the fiscal stimulus will provide a fake boost to non-tradable productive activities while the traded sector and manufacturing continue to contract. But given the severity of macro, household, financial-firm and corporate imbalances in the U.S. and around the world, this second- or third-quarter suckers' market rally will fizzle out later in the year, like the previous five ones in the last 12 months.
In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed--between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision--about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure).
Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. The only issue is whether banks and financial institutions should also be nationalized de jure.
But even in this case, the distinction is only between partial nationalization and full nationalization: With 36% (and soon to be larger) ownership of Citi (nyse: C - news - people ), the U.S. government is already the largest shareholder there. So what is the non-sense about not nationalizing banks? Citi is already effectively partially nationalized; the only issue is whether it should be fully nationalized.
Ditto for AIG (nyse: AIG - news - people ), which lost $62 billion in the fourth quarter and $99 billion in all of 2008 and is already 80% government-owned. With such staggering losses, it should be formally 100% government-owned. And now the Fed and Treasury commitments of public resources to the bailout of the shareholders and creditors of AIG have gone from $80 billion to $162 billion.
Given that common shareholders of AIG are already effectively wiped out (the stock has become a penny stock), the bailout of AIG is a bailout of the creditors of AIG that would now be insolvent without such a bailout. AIG sold over $500 billion of toxic credit default swap protection, and the counter-parties of this toxic insurance are major U.S. broker-dealers and banks.
News and banks analysts' reports suggested that Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) got about $25 billion of the government bailout of AIG and that Merrill Lynch was the second largest benefactor of the government largesse. These are educated guesses, as the government is hiding the counter-party benefactors of the AIG bailout. (Maybe Bloomberg should sue the Fed and Treasury again to have them disclose this information.)
But some things are known: Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein was the only CEO of a Wall Street firm who was present at the New York Fed meeting when the AIG bailout was discussed. So let us not kid each other: The $162 billion bailout of AIG is a nontransparent, opaque and shady bailout of the AIG counter-parties: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other domestic and foreign financial institutions.
So for the Treasury to hide behind the "systemic risk" excuse to fork out another $30 billion to AIG is a polite way to say that without such a bailout (and another half-dozen government bailout programs such as TAF, TSLF, PDCF, TARP, TALF and a program that allowed $170 billion of additional debt borrowing by banks and other broker-dealers, with a full government guarantee), Goldman Sachs and every other broker-dealer and major U.S. bank would already be fully insolvent today.
And even with the $2 trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and charge-off rates are now rising at a rate--given the macro outlook--that means expected credit losses for U.S. financial firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent.
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, is a weekly columnist for Forbes.com.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/opinion/01roubini.html
Op-Ed Contributor
The L Curve
Peter Mendelsund
By NOURIEL ROUBINI
Published: February 28, 2009
LAST year, the debate over how long the recession will last was between those in the consensus who argued that it would be V-shaped — only about eight months long like those in 1990 to 1991 and in 2001 — and those like me who argued that it would last at least three times as long, 24 months, and be more than three times as deep as the previous two.
Today, as we enter the 15th month, it’s obvious that we are already in a painful U-shaped recession that has become global and will last at least until the end of the year — 24 months, the longest since the Great Depression. Even if the gross domestic product grows in 2010, it is likely to be no higher than 1 percent. And at that rate, with the unemployment rate rising toward 10 percent, we will still be substantially in a recession.
Even if appropriate aggressive policy actions were undertaken — monetary and fiscal stimulus, bank clean-up and credit restoration, mortgage debt reduction for insolvent households — the growth rate would not rise closer to 2 percent until 2011. So this recession may last 36 months.
And things could get worse. We now face a 1 in 3 chance that, if appropriate policies are not put in place, this ugly U-shaped recession may turn into a more virulent L-shaped near-depression or stag-deflation (a deadly combination of economic stagnation and price deflation) like the one Japan experienced in the 1990s after its real estate and equity bubbles burst.
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http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/03/technology/copeland_epaper.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009030311
Someday you may be reading your newspaper on an e-paper device - a thin piece of plastic the size of a legal pad that can be taken to the beach or on the train. That day may be a lot closer than you think.
By Michael V. Copeland, senior writer
Last Updated: March 3, 2009: 11:44 AM ET
|  Russell Wilcox, CEO of E Ink, with a piece of plastic that displays type as clearly as a magazine. _________________________  |  |
Behind all the handwringing is the fact that the Internet has not yet become the moneymaker that the $300 billion global publishing industry had hoped. Online revenue is growing, but not fast enough to make up for falling print advertising. Even the New York Times, a paper that has turned its staff loose online more than most, needed a recent $250 million cash infusion from Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim to keep chugging along.
So if the Internet can't do it, what can save the New York Times (NYT) or your favorite magazine from withering away? Increasingly, publishers like News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500), Hearst, and Time Inc. (the owner of Fortune) are looking toward a coming generation of so-called e-readers. These are handheld gadgets akin to Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader that use electronic "ink" rendered on a crisp screen to deliver an experience that approximates reading on paper - without the cost of paper, printing, and delivery.
Today the Kindle and the Sony Reader are mostly suited to books because their six-inch-diagonal, black-and-white displays simply don't provide a good enough reading experience and advertising environment for magazines and newspapers. But at least a half-dozen companies, including giants like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) and Fujitsu and startups such as Polymer Vision, FirstPaper, and Plastic Logic, are developing a new crop of readers, some of which will start hitting the market later this year. Designed with the requirements of newspapers and magazines in mind, they will feature larger screens (to make it easier to navigate through stories), wireless updating (something the Kindle has made a requirement), better image resolution, and eventually color and video.
These gadgets could be pulled straight out of the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. Imagine wirelessly downloading an issue of your favorite magazine onto an 8- by 11-inch plastic screen that is light and durable enough to throw into your briefcase, to take to the beach, or to read in your easy chair on a Sunday morning. The resolution of each page is as clear as what you find in today's magazines, and the photographs appear in striking color. Flip the page with a touch of your finger, and an ad for, say, BMW appears. Touch the image of that navy-blue 3 Series, and a video shows the car slicing through the hills of Bavaria.
"It all sounds very sci-fi," says Kenneth Bronfin, who heads up the interactive-media group for Hearst, which publishes newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and magazines like Esquire, "but the technology, with the exception of video, is readily available." When asked whether Hearst publications will appear on it, Bronfin is coy: "I can't tell you the details." Industry insiders say Hearst is close to launching a wireless e-reader with a large screen tailored to the newspaper and magazine industry. Publishers will be able to brand the Hearst devices themselves and configure its look and feel, as well as how the content is sold to subscribers.
Finding a business model
The technology, for the most part, works. The question is, Will the business model? So far the math looks somewhat promising. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney estimates that since Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) launched the Kindle in 2007, it has sold 500,000 at $399 a pop (now $359) - roughly a $200 million business. The machine sold out during the holiday season. Sales of Amazon's e-books - you can download onto your Kindle the novel Edgar Sawtelle for $9.99, vs. $15.57 for the hardcover version - are soaring. Amazon won't reveal any figures, but book publishers say sales of e-books, albeit from a small base, quadrupled in 2008.
"We knew we couldn't out-book the book," says Steve Kessel, senior VP for worldwide digital media at Amazon. "We needed to do things that books couldn't do. We have 3G [wireless], which allows you to look up a word or go directly from a passage to Wikipedia."
The Kindle might be the salvation of books, but magazines and newspapers have a different business model. They rely on revenue from reader subscriptions and from advertising, and those trends are not encouraging. The industry's contraction is happening at a time when paper prices are high and postal costs are rising. E-readers could dramatically reduce those costs. Buying paper and ink, printing, and delivering a newspaper or magazine can account for more than 50% of the overall cost of producing the periodical. E-readers also turn out to be good for the environment - fewer trees are cut down to make paper.
Can publishers abandon paper and still keep a big chunk of the subscription and advertising money? That won't be easy. No one yet has figured out the perfect business model. Under one scenario publishers would license their content to an e-reader seller, such as Plastic Logic or Amazon, or to a wireless provider like AT&T (T, Fortune 500) or Verizon Wireless (VZ, Fortune 500). These companies would sell and manage the wireless e-readers and offer customers bundles of content the way a cable company does. You could buy subscriptions to individual magazines and newspapers or bundles of content on entertainment, sports, or business - or both.
Verizon Wireless is making a big push to open its network to e-readers, says Anthony Lewis, vice president for Verizon Wireless Open Development Business. "I want to see all kinds of e-readers on my network, and you are going to see it happen sooner rather than later," Lewis says. "How the partnerships with device makers and content providers are designed remains to be seen."
What most publishers wouldn't want to see is someone else controlling their content. When News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox wanted to sell its movies on iTunes, Apple demanded the lion's share of the revenues. After a long string of heated negotiations, Fox finally won a share of the proceeds it could live with. Rupert Murdoch is looking hard at e-readers. He has always believed that the role of the media is to get consumers their newspapers and magazines conveniently, on as many platforms as possible. Today that means News Corp. may have to get into the e-reader business, both on the hardware and software side.
That raises some thorny issues. When the next generation of e-readers first hit the market, they will cost as much as $800. Will a customer be willing to buy a device that could download only the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and other News Corp. properties? Probably not. That means any print publisher that gets into the e-reader distribution game will have to offer an open system in which you can download any magazine or newspaper. A publisher that wants to control distribution will need to sign licenses with competitors that in all likelihood would rather be offering their own e-reader catalogs. Prepare for a battle royal.
Trading dollars for dimes?
Another wrinkle is that most readers are used to getting their content free on the web. Persuading them to pay for what they now get free will be a tough sell. Precedents do exist. The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Zagat, and Consumer Reports charge readers an annual subscription fee for most of the content on their websites. Online traffic at the Wall Street Journal, which charges $103 a year, is almost half that of the New York Times (about six million unique visitors a month, vs. 14 million, according to Compete.com). But the Journal last year raked in $100 million in online-subscription revenue, which suggests that if the material is compelling enough, publications could charge for subscriptions on an e-reader.
Some experts believe that readers will pay by the article. "Citibank Finally Posts a Profit" might cost you 10 cents. The technology exists for micropayments. Trouble is, except for iTunes, consumers have shown little inclination to use micropayments when it comes to content. As more and more high-quality articles are protected behind Internet walls, people are likely to subscribe to magazines and newspapers on these devices just as they buy books.
If subscribers do come flocking, advertising will follow, but only if publishers provide Madison Avenue with an environment where their ads look great. Keeping the feel of a magazine or newspaper is what e-reader makers like Plastic Logic hope to give publishers. "Our device is the size of a magazine, so it offers a way to maintain all the layout, the images, and the design - and all the advertising - that are a part of that publication's brand," says Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta.
Some publishers worry that the advertising model won't work. The fear is that they will find themselves in the same predicament they're in today with online, where ad rates are dramatically cheaper than print. Why should an advertiser pay more for an article on an e-reader than on a website? After all, they're both electronic media. Another problem: Print magazines are usually handed on to other readers, and publishers get paid for those extra eyeballs. True, an e-reader subscriber isn't likely to hand around an $800 device at the office, but it is conceivable that he could share a downloaded article with others at home or e-mail it to a few friends.
So will print publications be trading yesterday's dollars for dimes? E-reader fans argue that the environment will be so attractive (imagine color video ads in HD) that advertisers will be willing to pay considerably more than they do for online ads, especially if they appear in a publication the reader has paid for. Plus, people tend to be more engaged in an offline reading experience (as they are in magazines). A publisher will be able to prove that to an advertiser by tracking who has looked at an ad and for how long. Even if e-reader ad rates end up being less than those for print, the amount saved in paper and delivery costs might make up much of the difference.
That said, attracting meaningful ad dollars won't happen overnight, says David Smith, CEO of the San Francisco media-buying and digital-advertising company Mediasmith. "Until e-readers get popular enough where they have reached some critical mass, other forms of media are first in line, like mobile," Smith says. "I have no doubt advertising will happen on these devices, but it is not going to be this year or next." To reach that critical mass, e-readers will need to drop dramatically in price. The magic pricetag, according to research by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, is in the neighborhood of $200 - but that's a far cry from the $800 often quoted for the next generation of e-readers. One tactic would be for publishers to subsidize the cost of the readers in the same way that U.S. cellphone companies subsidize the cost of handsets.
The other hurdle e-readers face is gadget fatigue. Some people are already reading newspapers and books on their iPhones. Are they really going to add yet another device to the jumble in their bag? Different gadgets will suffice for different situations, says Steve Haber, president of Sony's (SNY) digital-reading business. "We heard this when camera-phones came out - people have them 24 hours a day, why would they need a separate camera? Well, you use the camera in your phone when you have to, but when you want to take real pictures, you get out your point-and-shoot. When you want to get the ultimate reading experience, you will get out your e-reader."
The next generation
On a sunny winter day at Plastic Logic's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, CEO Archuleta pulls out an 8- by 11-inch white plastic sheet about an eighth-inch thick. He touches a button in the upper left corner, and a menu appears listing documents, spreadsheets, newspapers, and magazines. Less than a pound in weight, the Plastic Logic reader, which the company says it will start selling early next year, has the feel of a clipboard. A slim lithium ion battery powers it for several days' worth of reading on a single charge. Like the Kindle, the Plastic Logic reader permits uploading documents from a PC.
What Plastic Logic has done, after years of research and some $200 million in funding from Dow, BASF, and others, is to create transistors from plastic that can do the work of ones made from silicon, but without brittle glass substrates. One advantage of plastic transistors is that they're cheap to make. They are "printed," rather than etched in multibillion-dollar chip fabs. They also happen to be tough. Plastic Logic's screen, while not floppy or foldable like a piece of paper, can be stomped on without breaking. But flexible display technology may not be far behind. Besides Plastic Logic, such other players as HP, LG Display, and Polymer Vision are developing their own brews of flexible substrates that will allow you to fold up your screen and slip it into your pocket.
Most e-readers would not exist if it weren't for E Ink, a Cambridge, Mass., startup, which has raised $150 million from investors like Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) and Hearst. Its technology makes possible the black-and-white text and images in the Plastic Logic reader and just about every other reader on the market, including the Kindle and the Sony Reader. CEO Russell Wilcox and his colleagues originally developed the technology at MIT. According to Wilcox, a color screen is at least two years away, but the work in E Ink's labs looks promising. It is adding color filters to the capsules. The trouble with filters is that they reduce the resolution of the screen, making the color appear washed out. Beyond color is video, something E Ink has shown to work in the lab, but which is still years away. One problem: Video eats up battery life rapidly.
In the meantime, competing display technologies could get there first. For example, LCD technology - used in today's flat-screen TVs and in PCs - has a massive manufacturing infrastructure behind it. Once power consumption and readability issues are solved, it could mean a quick dip in prices for these displays. Pixel Qi, a startup in San Bruno, Calif., headed up by Mary Lou Jepsen, former CTO of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, expects to start shipping ten-inch-diagonal color LCD screens for e-readers this summer with video and long battery life. "Once you get to low-power color and video, you can make these devices much more visually compelling, and that is fundamental to the ultimate mass-market appeal," says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, and a former board member at E Ink. "Without it, you fail."
E Ink's Wilcox has anything but failure in mind. He believes that e-readers are the best chance to keep the world devouring novels, lengthy nonfiction tomes, and long-form journalism. "We can't have meaningful discussions or try to solve the world's problems using blogs and 140-character Tweets," Wilcox says. "What we need more is calm, prudent thought - more expertise." That is what Wilcox hopes to deliver with E Ink. "We're not only going to save publishing," he says, "we're also going to save civilization." The laugh that you might expect to come next never does. He means it. 
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/20/budget-deficit-forecast-hit-trillion-year/
The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit under President Obama's policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable.
FOXNews.com
Friday, March 20, 2009
President Obama and Chairman of the National Economic Council Larry Summers leave an announcement on the economy in Washington in late February. (Reuters Photo)
President Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.
The Congressional Budget Office figures, released Friday, predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.
Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama's policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday that the new projections won't stop Obama from achieving his goals or keeping his promise to cut the country's red ink in half within four years.
The administration is a bit more optimistic about the nation's economic growth over the long term than congressional analysts, Gibbs said.
Not surprisingly, Democrats and Republicans had different views on the figures.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the report should serve as a wake-up call to the Obama administration.
"Washington Democrats are learning a harsh lesson," he said in a statement. "Their unprecedented spending binge will have some very severe consequences for taxpayers now and future generations for decades to come."
Boehner said both parties need to offer better solutions for creating jobs "by letting families and small businesses keep more of what they earn and restoring some fiscal sanity in Washington."
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Budget Committee, said the estimates are "further evidence of the mess that has been handed the Obama administration."
"The reality is we are going to have to make adjustments to the president's budget if we want to keep the deficit on a downward trajectory," he said in a statement, adding that lawmakers would still adopt a budget resolution that reflected the key priorities of the president's agenda.
The latest figures, even worse than expected by top Democrats, throw a major monkey wrench into efforts to enact Obama's budget, which promises universal health care for all and higher spending for domestic programs like education and research into renewable energy.
Many Democrats were already uncomfortable with Obama's budget, which promises to cut the deficit to $533 billion in five years. The CBO says the red ink for that year will total $672 billion.
The worsening economy is responsible for the even deeper fiscal mess inherited by Obama. As an illustration, CBO says that the deficit for the current budget year, which began Oct. 1, will top $1.8 trillion, $93 billion more than foreseen by the White House.
The 2009 deficit, fueled by the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and diving tax revenues stemming from the worsening recession, is four times the previous $459 billion record set just last year.
The CBO's estimate for 2010 is worse as well, with a deficit of almost $1.4 trillion expected under administration policies, about $200 billion more than predicted by Obama.
By the end of the decade, the deficit under Obama's blueprint would go back up to $1.2 trillion.
Democrats in Congress are readying Obama's budget for preliminary votes next week, and they promise to cut the deficit in half within five years.
Democrats are likely to curb somewhat Obama's request for a 9 percent increase in non-defense agency budgets.
Obama's $3.6 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 contains ambitious programs to overhaul the U.S. health care system and initiate new "cap-and-trade" rules to combat global warming.
Both initiatives involve raising federal revenues sharply higher, but those dollars wouldn't be used to defray the burgeoning deficit.
Republicans say Obama's budget plan taxes, spends and borrows too much, and they've been sharply critical of his $787 billion economic stimulus measure and a just-passed $410 billion omnibus spending bill that awarded big increases to domestic agency budgets.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who almost joined the Obama administration as commerce secretary before withdrawing consideration, said the CBO's estimates confirm that the national debt "will increase to shocking levels that are simply unsustainable and will devastate future economic opportunities for our children and grandchildren."
"Our struggling economy is now at a crossroads, and I strongly urge the Democratic majority to show the fiscal restraint needed to control spending, maintain a fair tax policy and cut the deficit, so that we can head off the avalanche of debt that is poised to crush the economy," he said in a statement.
The administration says it inherited deficits totaling $9 trillion over the next decade and that its budget plan cuts $2 trillion from those deficits. But most of those spending reductions come from reducing overseas costs for the war in Iraq.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/03/googles-different-voices-heading-for-unison/
Google’s different voices heading for unison
March 12, 2009 9:09pm
Google has been speaking in different tongues with its voice strategy, but there are signs that its ambitions in telephony are coming into focus.
Last night, it unveiled Google Voice - a rebranding of GrandCentral, bought in July 2007. The company usually takes a long time reworking its acquisitions, some of them never reappearing at all, so the nearly two years it has spent on GrandCentral seems par for the course.
The original product offered users one telephone number to give out, replacing the usual three of mobile, office and home. Through a web interface, users set up caller groups of friends, family, co-workers and “other” that determined which phones rang in which order and which voicemail message was played out if the user did not answer. Calls could also be recorded.
Google Voice adds some new features - text messaging, voicemail transcription and a new Gmail-like interface that makes it easier to search and keep tabs on calls. It also promises a more robust service, free of the outages of the past.
Google had frozen membership of the service since acquisition and Voice will not be available for a few weeks to new users, and then only in North America, it appears.
Prospective users may also have privacy concerns about Google holding transcripts of messages and recordings of conversations, as well as all the other data it collects on their habits.
Google also has Chat, an instant messaging application, and Talk, which adds video and Voice-over-Internet Protocol calls. Both have been combined in its Gmail webmail application and it seems logical that Voice, a free service apart from charges for making international calls, will be integrated with all three.
Google Voice will also work on cell phone interfaces (where Google has introduced voice search for the iPhone), so integration with its Android operating system will happen as well.
Unified communications is shaping into a big battle between companies such as Cisco, IBM and Microsoft for major business customers. Google could be a competitor in the enterprise as well. It is starting with the individual consumer, competing with Ebay’s Skype, but its route to businesses through its Google Apps suite of online applications is already a well beaten path.
Others should be worried as well - Google’s combination of its software, its network of data centres and its marketing of its services to its huge audience could challenge business models in both emerging and traditional telecoms sectors.
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Additional links
https://www.google.com/voice/about
Google Eyes Rival Skype with VoIP Service
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/161176/google_eyes_rival_skype_with_voip_service.html
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10200071-56.html
March 19, 2009 9:34 AM PDT
Microsoft launches IE 8 with a smile
Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch launches the IE 8 browser at the Mix 09 conference in Las Vegas.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)
LAS VEGAS--Having finished its latest browser, Microsoft on Thursday kicked off its campaign to get consumers to actually start using it.
After years of losing market share to Firefox and other rivals, Microsoft is hoping to convince people, many of whom use old versions of Internet Explorer, to give the company a new look.
Part of that marketing push is a light-hearted video on the history of the Internet that also shows off some of the new features of Internet Explorer 8, including its private browsing mode and so-called "accelerators" that let users take action without leaving the Web page they are on.
The video was shown prior to the browser's formal introduction at the Mix 09 show. Microsoft also released the final version of the browser for download on its Web site.
"We are releasing it here at Mix because we are excited about what you, the developers, can build with it," IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch said. Hachamovitch then launched into a demo of the new browser, touting its anti-malware features, such as protection from click-jacking attacks.
Speaking to a crowd of Web developers, Hachamovitch also spent a good deal of time talking about the moves Microsoft made to make IE 8 far more standards-compliant than earlier versions.
The biggest ding on IE 8 so far has been its performance. Microsoft has sought to blunt criticism in two ways. First, the company has released a video that it says shows that its browser is faster at loading a number of key sites. Second, the company has tried to downplay the difference in speed to the average user.
"In most cases the difference could literally be measured by a blink of an eye," Microsoft Senior Director Amy Barzdukas said in an interview on Wednesday. "That kind of speed becomes almost a push."
The release of IE 8 comes at a critical time for Microsoft, which faces its steepest competition in years, facing credible rivals not only in Firefox, but also from Apple and Google, among others. The global market share of Internet Explorer, which was more than 90 percent in 2004, ended last year at just above 70 percent, according to Net Applications.
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Download IE 8.0 from Microsoft site
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
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http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-41801-140.html
Gmail lets you unsend email
Software
By Samantha Rose Hunt
Friday, March 20, 2009 12:17
Chicago (IL) - A Google post unveils a new service, “Google Unsend” which allows users to unsend e-mails they don’t want delivered within a five second window. Though the product does seem to have more validity than Twitter Premier services April Fool’s Day is approaching, so I question the products authenticity. In fact, it has actually given me Déjà vu. Remember “Gmail Custom Time”?
Google has a history of providing users with technologies which save individuals from themselves. With products such as "Google Goggles", which prevents users from emailing under the influence during the early morning hours by making them complete a math quiz first. There is also the Google Domains Applications, typically used by businesses which use Gmail on a corporate level has a feature which alerts users that emails are coming from outside of the company via an orange border around sender address. This is to prevent the sharing of private or sensitive company information with outside individuals. The forgotten attachment detector is available to all Gmail users to prevent any embarrassing “Oops, forgot the attachment” messages by detecting the word “attach” and alerting users that there are no attachments with the document. Now, the new “Gmail Unsend” feature will too protect you from becoming your own worst enemy.
We’ve all been there. After an upsetting e-mail from a boss, or a significant other you reply back without a breather. Instantly you regretting hitting the send key, and you realize you want your words back. Maybe you’ve hit the “reply all” key when you really only meant to make a direct response to the sender. What if you submit your resume for a new job, and see that you misspelled a word, or copy and pasted wrong company information. Ooops! Undo Send is a feature which allows you to jerk back that electronic response before it is delivered. But you must do this with haste!
The feature which was developed by an engineer in Japan was utilized internally for testing. It has the ability to recall e-mail as long as it is done within five seconds (with an option to increase the unsend time window to 10 seconds). Trying to add additional recall time would cause a lag in e-mail delivery in general, which would make communication frustrating. The company claims they might potentially opt to increase time options for the function. The feature does not merely recall an email, it pulls it back meaning there will be no record that you ever sent it in the first place.
Users can turn the option on in Gmail Labs (the small Erlenmeyer flask icon beside your username) by going to Settings. Once you’ve added it you’ll see a new “Undo” link on every sent email confirmation.
Personally, I don’t think this feature would be of any benefit with a mere 5 second response time. If I’ve fired off an angry e-mail, or said something I regret it typically takes me longer than 5 seconds to realize it, by then it’d be too late. But for some users this might save you from a drunken profession of love, or a snide remark to a coworker.
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/25/galaxy.planets.kepler/index.html
Updated 12:51 p.m. EST, Wed February 25, 2009
By A. Pawlowski CNN
(CNN) -- As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.
An artist's impression shows a planet passing in front of its parent star. Such events are called transits.
Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.
There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."
He made the prediction based on the number of "super-Earths" -- planets several times the mass of the Earth, but smaller than gas giants like Jupiter -- discovered so far circling stars outside the solar system.
Boss said that if any of the billions of Earth-like worlds he believes exist in the Milky Way have liquid water, they are likely to be home to some type of life.
"Now that's not saying that they're all going to be crawling with intelligent human beings or even dinosaurs," he said.
"But I would suspect that the great majority of them at least will have some sort of primitive life, like bacteria or some of the multicellular creatures that populated our Earth for the first 3 billion years of its existence."
Putting a number on alien worlds
Other scientists are taking another approach: an analysis that suggests there could be hundreds, even thousands, of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland constructed a computer model to create a synthetic galaxy with billions of stars and planets. They then studied how life evolved under various conditions in this virtual world, using a supercomputer to crunch the results.
Galaxy Quest
The Milky Way is believed to be more than 13 billion years old.
It is just one of billions of galaxies in the universe.
The Milky Way has a circumference of about 250,000-300,000 light years.
It is about 100,000 light years in diameter.
There are three types of galaxies: ellipticals, spirals and irregulars.
The Milky Way is a large disk-shaped barred spiral galaxy. (A barred galaxy has a bar-shaped structure in its middle.)
Source: Space.com
In a paper published recently in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the researchers concluded that based on what they saw, at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in the Milky Way since its creation, and as many as 38,000 may have formed.
Duncan Forgan, a doctoral candidate at the university who led the study, said he was surprised by the hardiness of life on these other worlds.
"The computer model takes into account what we refer to as resetting or extinction events. The classic example is the asteroid impact that may have wiped out the dinosaurs," Forgan said.
"I half-expected these events to disallow the rise of intelligence, and yet civilizations seemed to flourish."
Forgan readily admits the results are an educated guess at best, since there are still many unanswered questions about how life formed on Earth and only limited information about the 330 "exoplanets" -- those circling sun-like stars outside the solar system -- discovered so far.
The first was confirmed in 1995 and the latest just this month when Europe's COROT space telescope spotted the smallest terrestrial exoplanet ever found. With a diameter less than twice the size of Earth, the planet orbits very close to its star and has temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius (more than 2,700° Fahrenheit), according to the European Space Agency. It may be rocky and covered in lava.
Hunt for habitable planets
NASA is hoping to find much more habitable worlds with the help of the upcoming Kepler mission. The spacecraft, set to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida next week, will search for Earth-size planets in our part of the galaxy.
Kepler contains a special telescope that will study 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way for more than three years. It will look for small dips in a star's brightness, which can mean an orbiting planet is passing in front of it -- an event called a transit.
"It's akin to measuring a flea as it creeps across the headlight of an automobile at night," said Kepler project manager James Fanson during a during a NASA news conference.
The focus of the mission is finding planets in a star's habitable zone, an orbit that would ensure temperatures in which life could exist.
Boss, who serves on the Kepler Science Council, said scientists should know by 2013 -- the end of Kepler's mission -- whether life in the universe could be widespread.
Finding intelligent life is a very different matter. For all the speculation about the possibility of other civilizations in the universe, the question remains: If the rise of life on Earth isn't unique and aliens are common, why haven't they shown up or contacted us? The contradiction was famously summed up by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 in what became known as the Fermi paradox: "Where is everybody?"
The answer may be the vastness of time and space, scientists explained.
"Civilizations come and go," Boss said. "Chances are, if you do happen to find a planet which is going to have intelligent life, it's not going to be in [the same] phase of us. It may have formed a billion years ago, or maybe it's not going to form for another billion years."
Even if intelligent civilizations did exist at the same time, they probably would be be separated by tens of thousands of light years, Forgan said. If aliens have just switched on their transmitter to communicate, it could take us hundreds of centuries to receive their message, he added.
As for interstellar travel, the huge distances virtually rule out any extraterrestrial visitors.
To illustrate, Boss said the fastest rockets available to us right now are those being used in NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. Even going at that rate of speed, it would take 100,000 years to get from Earth to the closest star outside the solar system, he added.
"So when you think about that, maybe we shouldn't be worried about having interstellar air raids any time soon," Boss said.
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