Electricity is a broad term encompassing the family of phenomenon arising from interaction between charged particles. Of the four fundamental forces of nature, the electromagnetic force is the most influential in our everyday lives. It is responsible for holding materials together, interaction between objects, and even light. Although the existence of electrical phenomenon have been known since ancient times, the properties of electricity have been known to science for less than three hundred years. Even so, almost all modern inventions utilize electricity in some way.
Electrically-charged particles fall under two categories, positive and negative. All positively-charged particles repel all other positively-charged particles, yet attract negatively-charged particles. Likewise, all negatively-charged particles repel each other while attracting positively-charged particles. Thus, no three electrically-charged particles can simultaneously attract one another. The strength of attraction (or repulsion) is inversely proportional the the square of the distance between the particles. Therefore, objects that consist of an equal amount of positively- and negatively-charged particles display an overall net electric charge of zero at distances much greater than the distance between the charged particles themselves. In everyday life, the positively charged particles that we encounter are the protons in the nucleus of the atom, and the negatively charged particles that we encounter are the electrons surrounding the nucleus. As even the smallest distances that humans can perceive are orders of magnitude above the atomic radius, we do not usually perceive electrical interactions directly. However, the movement of electrons as electric current is very influential in modern life, and is very apparent to unaided observation. Similarly, magnetic and chemical interactions are easily observed, and both of these phenomenon are based upon the interaction between electrically-charged atomic particles.
The first suspected human application of electricity is the ancient Egyptian Dendera Light, dating to about 300 BC. The Baghdad Battery, dating between 250 BC and 640 AD, may be another ancient electrical device. The ancient Greeks were the first to record knowledge of electrical phenomenon in their writings. They observed both lightning and static electricity, however they did not make any logical connections between the two. Chinese scientists wrote about the use of magnetite as an alternative to celestial navigation. However, it was not until the 17th century that scientists began actively investigating electricity. Otto von Guericke developed the first electrostatic generator in 1660, and Pieter van Musschenbroek invented the electrical capacitor in 1745. These two inventions provided scientists with on-demand electrical current, thus facilitating controlled experimentation. The work of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison brought electrical devices to everyday use.
Noise pollution is a type of energy pollution in which distracting, irritating, or damaging sounds are freely audible. As with other forms of energy pollution (such as heat and light pollution), noise pollution contaminants are not physical particles, but rather waves that interfere with naturally-occurring waves of a similar type in the same environment. Thus, the definition of noise pollution is open to debate, and there is no clear border as to which sounds may constitute noise pollution. In the most narrow sense, sounds are considered noise pollution if they adversely affect wildlife, human activity, or are capable of damaging physical structures on a regular, repeating basis. In the broadest sense of the term, a sound may be considered noise pollution if it disturbs any natural process or causes human harm, even if the sound does not occur on a regular basis.
The prevailing source of artificial noise pollution is from transportation. In rural areas, train and airplane noise can disturb wildlife habits, thereby affecting the manner in which animals in areas around train tracks and airports hunt and mate. In urban areas, automobile, motorcycle, and even entertainment noise can cause sleep disruption in humans and animals, hearing loss, heart disease (as a result of stress), and in severe cases even mental instability. A notable exception to the rule is the electric, or hybrid-electric, automobile. Hybrid vehicles are so quite, in fact, that legislation is pending to actually make them louder. This is in response to numerous injuries in which pedestrians, unaware of a hybrid vehicle's presence, have been struck by such vehicles in parking lots and pedestrian crosswalks.
Although most developed nations have government agencies responsible for the protection of the environment, no nation has a single body that regulates noise pollution. In the United States, regulation of noise pollution was stripped from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and passed on the the individual states in the early 1980's. Although two noise-control bills passed by the EPA are still in effect, the agency can no longer form relevant legislation. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and most other developed parts of the world, different types of noise are managed by agencies responsible for the source of the noise. Transportation noise is usually regulated by the relevant transportation ministry, health-related work noise is often regulated by health ministries and worker's unions, and entertainment noise such as loud music is a criminal offense in many areas. As the bodies responsible for noise pollution reduction usually view noise as an annoyance rather than a problem, and reducing that noise often hurts the industry financially, little is currently being done to reduce noise pollution in developed countries.
The Storm Botnet is a distributed computer network consisting of computers remotely controlled without their owner's knowledge. Computers in the Storm Botnet are home and small office machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system which have been infected by the Storm worm. Storm got it's name as the worm was first spread though spam email with the subject "230 dead as storm batters Europe." Today, the Storm Botnet is considered to be the largest botnet in the world, with as many as 5 million computers under it's control. Efforts to combat Storm have been met with targeted resistance, suggesting that artificial intelligence and automated adaptive defense techniques are being utilized.
The Storm worm, termed Nuwar by Microsoft but popularly referred to as Storm, was first identified in January 2007. Within one week of it's discovery, the worm had successfully infected over one million personal computers. This success is credited to the ambiguous yet catchy email subject lines in propagation emails, which like the original "storm" subject often referred to current news events. When these email messages are opened in an insecure email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express, an executable attachment downloads and installs several malware packages to the host computer. Usually, in addition to a trojan and a worm update, a rootkit is installed on the host computer, thereby masking any evidence of infection. In fact, the Storm rootkit had been proven to disable any anti-virus programs running on the computer while leaving it's executable file running. The updated worm then mutates slightly, harvests email addresses in the email client and browser cache, and sends itself to those addresses. Unlike other worms which have a master computer hard-coded into their code, the mutated Storm worm contains only a list of other Storm-infected machines with which it can communicate, but not the address of the botnet master. Communication between each Storm node and the master is performed in a P2P fashion, with each machine functioning as both a slave and as a messenger between nodes.
Once a computer is infected with the Storm worm, it becomes part of the Storm Botnet. With 250,000 nodes active at any particular time, the Storm Botnet is estimated to range between 2 million and 5 million computers total. This provides the network with more RAM, disk space, and computing power than many of the world's most powerful supercomputers. However, Storm's strength is not in it's shear computing resources but rather in it's distributed nature, as the computers consisting of the botnet have more available bandwidth than most countries have in their entirety. DDoS attacks originating from even a tenth of the Storm Botnet could shut down many governments and international organizations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross which today depend upon the Internet for vital communications. However, as of late 2007 the only DDoS attacks attributed to Storm are those targeted at IP addresses that have been used to probe Storm nodes in malware research.
FUD is an acronym for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." FUD is often employed as a semi-legitimate marketing tool in the technology sector, in which purchasing decisions are often made by parties who are unable to completely assess two competing products. As FUD is usually based upon the lack of information, rather than the availability of information, FUD campaigns are very effective in influencing decision-makers who do not fully understand a given technology. It is the FUD campaigner's goal to prevent assessment of knowledge, which is a far easier goal than promoting knowledge and teaching prospective clients about new technologies. Although fear-based persuasion is frowned upon in most fields of business, and even illegal in some cases, the technology sector has a history the practice. This is attributed to the traditionally closed-source and specialized nature of hardware and software, which creates a situation in which consumers do not have access to, or are unable to comprehend, all aspects of a product.
Although traditional FUD campaigns center on interoperability, reliability, and maintenance issues, recent campaigns have raised the issue of consumer liability. Claims that competing products may violate intellectual property or copyright restrictions are becoming commonplace. Notable among these is Microsoft's recent claim that the Linux kernel violates over one hundred Microsoft patents. Microsoft is very careful not to specify which patents are being infringed upon, or what parts of the freely-available Linux source code are infringing, thus providing no evidence of infringement. The uncertainty thus raised prevents lawsuit-cautious corporations from using Linux, without any technical merit. In fact, the solution provided by Microsoft is often technically inferior to competing products, as is the case with the Windows operating system and, arguably, the Microsoft Office suite. A similar campaign had been waged by SCO against IBM's competing products. Although successful in hindering adoption of IBM's AIX operating system, SCO's vague claims of intellectual property infringements were thrown out of the court hearing the matter.
The term FUD was originally used by a former IBM employee against IBM itself. Gene Amdahl, founder of Amdahl Corporation, had accused IBM of spreading "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" regarding interoperability between his IBM-compatible hardware and official IBM software. He claimed that IBM was playing on customers emotions, not proper reasoning, to make business decisions. Although in many markets IBM's FUD tactics were successful, Amdahl succeeded in winning over 20% market share in several key geographical markets. Notably, the prominent display of Amdahl accessories such as keychains and coffee mugs during conference with IBM marketers had become fashionable among the technically elite. This was perceived not only as a display of knowledge of competitor's products, but also as a display of values and proper decision-making ability.
The Kyoto Protocol is the first legally binding update to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCCC was developed at the 1992 Earth Day summit in Rio de Janeiro with the intention of balancing worldwide greenhouse gas emissions at a sustainable level. As a non-binding agreement, UNFCCC included provisions for mandatory updates that are legally binding in and of themselves. As the first UNFCCC update, the Kyoto Protocol has been hotly debated in all major UNFCCC signatory states. Some of the major UNFCCC signatories, notably Australia and the United States, have yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on economic or fundamental basis.
The Kyoto Protocol identifies six greenhouse gases, or gaseous emissions typical of technologically-advanced societies that are suspected of catalyzing global climate change. Each signatory country is allocated GHG emission allowances, which can be sold or traded in a barter market. Industrialized nations that sign the Kyoto Protocol pledge to either reduce their GHG emissions to certain acceptable levels, or to buy GHG emissions allowances from developing nations that emit less than their allowance. This approach has a twofold benefit. On one side, the industrialized nations are able to continue emitting GHGs while they develop less toxic technology, and are monetarily penalized until they find solutions. On the other side, developing nations are financially encouraged to keep their emissions low, and they are free to use that money to develop environmentally-friendly power infrastructures.
The Kyoto Protocol has been met with much opposition by industrialists, economists, and other groups that tend to favor the rich. They argue that the Kyoto Protocol was devised to balance the spread of wealth among nations. This would have rich, industrialized nations paying developing nations for an artificial resource, GHG emissions allowances. Thus, they argue, the industrialized nations are essentially profiting from the Kyoto Protocol without contributing anything, while industrialized nations are essentially paying without receiving anything in return. On these grounds nations such as the United States and Australia have not signed the treaty, even though Australia is within 1% of meeting it's greenhouse gas emissions allowance even without allocating additional resources to the effort.
