NASA/Newsmakers

With the space shuttle set to retire in 2010, and its replacement not ready until 2015, the United States had been planning on hitchhiking to the International Space Station for a few years. That may be a bit of a problem now, as the one country with the ability to transport to and from the station turns out to be -- you guessed it -- Russia.

Beyond the rising rhetorical showdown between the two sides, there's also a legal roadblock that may prevent further space cooperation with Russia. The United States needs to negotiate a new contract with the Russian space program, which may be difficult because Congress must first pass a waiver to a 2000 law banning government contracts with states who supported nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. That includes -- you guessed it -- Russia.

In an election year with an increasingly bellicose Moscow, that's "almost impossible," says Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a supporter of the waiver who admits America is stuck between a rock and a hard place:

It is a lose-lose situation," Nelson said.

"If our relationship with Russia is strained, who knows if Russia will give us rides in the future?" Nelson asked. "Or if they give us rides, will they charge such an exorbitant price that it becomes blackmail?"

Still, who knows what relations with Russia will be like in 2010? Even if the Cold War is truly back, that doesn't necessarily spell the end of U.S.-Soviet -- er, Russian -- space cooperation. A lot could change in the next few years.

The September cover of Esquire is going to be pretty cool. An electronic ink diplay, built on the same technology that E Ink used in the Amazon Kindle, will flash the words "the 21st Century Begins." The logistics of pulling of this feat are a story in globalization:

First Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine's distributor in Glazer, Ky.

So, has the magical world of Harry Potter and its animated Daily Prophet sprung into being? Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger sees a bright future for e-ink:

Pointing to the prototype sitting on a conference room table, Mr. Granger said, "The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones."

Alternatively, it could look a lot like this.

In some ways, the iPhone is a step backward for Japan, where the masses are accustomed to using their mobile phones for everything from watching television to buying Royal Milk Tea from vending machines. But the iPhone 2.0's lack of such modern conveniences failed to deter the more than 1,000 people who waited patiently overnight outside the Softbank Mobile store in Tokyo to get their hands on Apple's latest device for the first time. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, the richest man in Japan, hailed it as "a historic day."

It's hard to tell from the photo below, but it looks like this guy is so excited, he's made himself an iPhone hat. Either that, or he's wearing a visor and leaning against a very clean glass window:

A great post on Neatorama lists the 10 strangest anti-terrorism patents you'll ever see. Among them are an airplane trap door (shown above), a railroad missile launcher and -- best of all -- a biohazard suit with a built-in toilet. We'll hopefully never see any of this stuff in action, but during the final year of a second-term president with dismal approval ratings? Stranger things have happened.

Bhutan -- Land of the Thunder Dragon -- is on the cutting edge when it comes to postage stamps. It has a stamp on a CD-ROM, roughly 4 inches in diameter, seen in this image. The CD plays a video on the history of the country's kings. Other philatelic highlights from Bhutan include 3-D stamps and scented stamps, as well as stamps printed on steel, silk, and extruded plastic.

Want to buy the stamp? Check out the "Marketplace" tent at the 42nd annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, held through June 29 and again from July 2 to 6. In addition to its exhibition on Bhutan, the event has programs on NASA ("Fifty Years and Beyond") and Texas ("A Celebration of Music, Food, and Wine").

More outsourcing to India. This time, it's homework:

Students studying computing in the UK and US are outsourcing their university coursework to graduates in India and Romania. Work is being contracted out for as little as £5 on contract coding websites usually used by businesses. Students are outsourcing everything from simple coursework to full blown final year dissertations. It's causing a major headache for lecturers who say it is almost impossible to detect."

Slashdot's CmdrTaco cracks,"The irony, of course, is that if they actually get jobs in the sector, this will be how they actually work anyway."

You've heard of peak oil? Get ready for peak phosphorus:

Researchers in Australia, Europe and the United States have given warning that the element, which is essential to all living things, is at the heart of modern farming and has no synthetic alternative, is being mined, used and wasted as never before.

Massive inefficiencies in the "farm-to-fork" processing of food and the soaring appetite for meat and dairy produce across Asia is stoking demand for phosphorus faster and further than anyone had predicted. "Peak phosphorus," say scientists, could hit the world in just 30 years. Crop-based biofuels, whose production methods and usage suck phosphorus out of the agricultural system in unprecedented volumes, have, researchers in Brazil say, made the problem many times worse. Already, India is running low on matches as factories run short of phosphorus; the Brazilian Government has spoken of a need to nationalise privately held mines that supply the fertiliser industry and Swedish scientists are busily redesigning toilets to separate and collect urine in an attempt to conserve the precious element.

Colin Barras of New Scientist stumbled across the following odd bit in the End User License Agreement (pdf) -- you know, the legal document you pretend to have read when you install a software update -- for iTunes 7:

Licensee also agrees that Licensee will not use the Apple Software for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons."

This just might be the coolest vending machine of all time:

Michael Keferl of CScoutJapan reports:

Pushing the button on the vendor won’t exactly pop out a car, but it does dispense a branded tube containing pamphlets on the new models, dealer information, and a sheet of Smart Car stickers featuring the available colors.

Not quite as cool as an actual car vending machine, but ingenious nonetheless. I'm still waiting for MIT's Media Lab to roll out its long-hyped stackable cars, though.

(Hat tip: TreeHugger)

Feng Li/Getty Images

The last thing Beijing wants to see at the Olympic opening ceremonies on August 8 is Tibetan flags, "Stop genocide in Darfur" signs, or similar such provocations from "troublemakers." And given Beijing's paranoia, it's hardly surprising that this year's opening and closing ceremonies are going to have some of the tightest security of any event, ever.

Each ticket for the ceremonies will have a microchip embedded with the user's photograph, passport details, addresses, emails, and telephone numbers. All event tickets also have microchips to prevent counterfeiting, but only the ceremony tickets will contain the personal data. Some have raised fears of data theft, and others question whether activists known to the Chinese authorities could even attempt to attend, since many of them are being detained or at least closely watched ahead of the games. Perhaps the biggest concern is that the tickets will be too effective: If you are attending the ceremonies with a few friends or family members and your tickets get switched among you, expect big delays at the gates.

Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images

July 11 could not come fast enough for a few million folks dying to get their hands on the new faster, sleeker, cheaper iPhone 3G. (Count me in.) But what I found most interesting about Steve Jobs's big announcement yesterday is Apple's abandonment of its iPhone business model so far: exclusive carrier agreements.

In the six countries where you can officially get an iPhone, Apple has signed deals with mobile carriers (such as AT&T here in the United States) that give Apple a cut of the revenue from the carriers' service plans. But within weeks of the iPhone's launch last year, a massive global gray market in hacked iPhones emerged -- much to Apple's surprise. The company still made money on iPhone handsets, but it was missing out on millions of dollars in revenue it could have gotten from its partners, since more than a million new iPhone users were using hacked phones on different carriers. So, instead of pursuing what was clearly an untenable course, Apple yesterday switched gears, dropping plans for exclusivity agreements in new markets. In other words, they learned from the gray market that their business model simply wasn't the best way to go:

We've changed our business model, from getting a cut of the future revenues to just a more traditional model," Mr. Jobs said in an interview on Monday. "That’s enabled us to roll out around the world much faster."

As for the new business agreement in the States, Apple and AT&T will no longer share revenues as of yesterday. But it still sounds like AT&T will be the exclusive carrier through the end of its multi-year contract, believed to be five years. At the very least, it will be harder to gripe about AT&T's slow download speeds on the new 3G network.

Via Kottke, the latest in Japanese innovation: machine-readable tombstones:

Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code -- a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive. [...] In addition to images of the deceased, people can view a greeting from the chief mourner at the funeral and browse through the guest book. They can also make entries using their cell phones.

Here are a couple photos:

The LA Times recently picked up on an interesting trend. With the dollar plumbing record depths, game manufacturer Nintendo has been shipping more units of its popular, scarce Wii Fit to Europe:

[Nintendo] also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro, said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. Pachter estimated that Nintendo shipped just 500,000 copies of the game in North America but as many as 2 million units to Europe. "The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere," Pachter said.

With the iPhone going global today, this Nintendo story leads me to wonder if we aren't eventually going to be seeing a similar calculus from Apple. Why keep your inventories high in the United States if you can bank more cash elsewhere? (The potential difference, of course, being that Nintendo is a Japanese company and Apple is American.)

(Hat tip: Slashdot)

In Japan, where people seem to have a fondness for high-tech gizmos and small, cute things à la Hello Kitty, an engineering professor and his students are serving up something, er, gastronomic: the world's smallest bowl of Ramen noodles.

The bowl is 0.001 millimeters in diameter, while the noodles were 0.002 millimeters long and 0.00002 millimeters thick.

But this wasn't just a fun stunt. The whole thing is made from carbon-based nanotubes, whose special properties (they're stronger than steel) mean they have the potential for wide use in electronics and medicine. Note: not food! As Masayuki Nakao, the engineer behind the creation, stressed to the Associated Press, "… they are not edible."

Shane Harris makes some explosive allegations in a new article for the National Journal. Experts, citing U.S. officials, believe that China's People's Liberation Army may have shut down power grids in Florida and the northeastern United States, Harris reports:

Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

If the allegations are true, was this act intentional? Perhaps not, another source tells Harris:

A second information-security expert independently corroborated Bennett’s account of the Florida blackout. According to this individual, who cited sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, a Chinese PLA hacker attempting to map Florida Power & Light’s computer infrastructure apparently made a mistake. “The hacker was probably supposed to be mapping the system for his bosses and just got carried away and had a ‘what happens if I pull on this’ moment.” The hacker triggered a cascade effect, shutting down large portions of the Florida power grid, the security expert said. “I suspect, as the system went down, the PLA hacker said something like, ‘Oops, my bad,’ in Chinese.”

I wonder if Richard Clarke still believes that the real threat from Chinese hackers is industrial espionage.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has always cultivated a populist image, quite unlike most of the Communist Party's normally aloof leaders. And "Grandpa Wen's" following only grew after his quick and empathetic response to the Sichuan earthquake. Now, you too, can be one of Grandpa's friends, on Facebook at least.

One of Wen's supporters has set up a Facebook profile for him and, as of this writing, he's approaching 14,000 supporters. There's not much personal info on the page, though we do learn that the prime minister enjoys Chinese literature and baseball. The New York Times's Edward Wong writes that it is "unclear who the supporter is that set up the page... and whether he or she has ties to the government." I would be very suprised if the CCP were behind this since the profile's message board is basically a magnet for comments like "Tenzin Gyatso > Wen Jia-bao."

But if you want to believe you're Facebook-stalking the leader of 1.3 billion people, go right ahead. I'm sticking with Clay Davis.

Already bored with Google Earth? Is Google Transit just too mundane? Then it's high time to go the way of the Phoenix and check out Google Mars:

Google Mars

In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, Google Maps has created an interactive map of our neighboring planet, complete with "elevation," "visible," and "infrared" view options, as well as markers indicating space craft landings, dunes, craters, and ridges.

While Google Mars is a pretty cool concept, and its mapping has certainly come a long way from those of the 19th century astronomer Percival Lowell, it appears Mars as a planet doesn't offer quite the diversity of satellite images provided by Earth's mountains, oceans, deserts, and plains.

Google actually admits that without color alteration, "Mars pretty much looks like butterscotch." And according to the principal investigator for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, images sent back from the spacecraft, which landed on Mars's toffee-like surface this weekend, show a "barren landscape that is kind of lumpy."

Apparently the lumpiness, which orbiting space crafts detected back in 2002, is a sign of underground water ice. But now NASA's Phoenix lander is back to explore the next big question: "But does the ice melt?"

If the answer is yes, then at least we're not alone.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Looks like Sen. Dick Durbin may be taking up the flag of the late Rep. Tom Lantos when it comes to bashing the operations of tech companies in China. Ars Technica's Nate Anderson reports on today's hearing before Durbin's Judiciary subcommittee:

Yahoo, Google, and Cisco all trekked over to the Senate today to sit for an hour under the grandfatherly, but strangely stern eye of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The subject was 'Internet freedom,' but this turned out to be code for 'censorship in China....' Durbin [was not] convinced, though, that multinational corporations were truly doing as much as they legally could to avoid censoring information.... After Google's Nicole Wong claimed that engagement with China was better than isolation, Durbin said that the answer reminded him of corporate arguments regarding apartheid in South Africa.

Durbin told tech executives to expect some legislation in the Senate similar to the Global Online Freedom Act, which would hold U.S. companies liable for helping foreign governments censor the Net. A recently unearthed PowerPoint presentation in which Cisco Systems executives appeared to be keen to help Chinese officials in censoring the Web (one phrase referred to "combating Falun Gong evil cult and other hostile elements") could give the bill legs.

State gifts have a long history of goofiness, (300 lbs of lamb?) but I have to hand it to Bill Gates. His recent gift of a traditional mother of pearl-inlaid X-Box 360 to South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is both beautiful and functional. Plus, it helps boost Microsoft's numbers against Sony for dominance of the South Korean gaming market.

The decoration is the handiwork of Kim Young-jun [pictured above], the head of a manufacturing company called Gookbo. "I got a call from Microsoft Korea last month," Kim said. "They told me something about an Xbox, but I had no idea what that was. I thought they were talking about some kind of black box."

I wonder if Lee will get a free X-Box Live membership as well. It's time to go pwn some noobs. If you're ever on "Call of Duty 4" Lee, my gamertag is "tcd004." See you online!

CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

Brits hoping to buy an Apple iPhone this week (or next week, or the week after that) are out of luck. O2, Apple's exclusive carrier in the UK, has run out of iPhones. There's reportedly not a new phone to be had in the British Isles right now, as everyone eagerly awaits the 3G version, rumored to be launched this summer. (No doubt there are a few barely second-hand iPhones available out there for the right price.)

And Americans hoping to blow their $600 tax rebate checks on new iPhones might be in for a shock as well. Apple sales reps told PC World last weekend that both the UK and U.S. online stores are sold out. (Further evidence here.) Some iPhones should still be available in Apple stores, but all the disappearing acts have talk of the 3G phone going into hyperdrive.

In the current issue of FP, I have a short piece on the iPhone grey market, the million+ iPhones that have been unlocked for use all around the world. There's evidence that Apple not only didn't anticipate the extent of the underground market, but that as soon as it became apparent, they've used it to their advantage to test market in countries where the phone hasn't yet launched.

Their exclusivity agreements - with AT&T in the U.S., O2 in Britain - were always something of a puzzle, and it looks as though Apple is abandoning them as it becomes apparent that people are determined to get around them. A string of announcements in recent weeks suggests that iPhones will officially be available on a number of carriers in Australia, India, and Italy, among others. Can the U.S. be too far behind?