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What Does It Take to Launch Dot-Coms in 2002?; Norway's Wolf Population on Verge of Extinction; Spy Museum Set to Open in D.C.
Aired March 16, 2002 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, this guy's not a panhandler. He's the president of an Internet start-up company. Find out what it takes to launch a dot-com in 2002.
Also, Norway's wolf population may not survive that country's efforts at wildlife management.
And spotlight on spying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would say that as you and I stand here talking at 9th and F, there's espionage going on around us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: A new museum will give an inside look at the tools spies have used over the years. All that and more on NEXT.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Miles O'Brien, and this week, we are at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. James Hattori is on assignment, but he left our lead story behind.
Remember those times way back in the 20th Century, when CEOs of dot-coms were generally considered masters of the universe? My, how times have changed. A new generation of dot-com start-ups is taking a very different road to success, and James picks it up from there.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were intoxicating times, dot-com start-ups plush with venture capital, indulging in lavish launch parties, big buck ad campaigns, and untiring binges to fill oversized factories and offices. Well, that was then. This is now.
DAVID HAGAN, BOINGO: Have a minute to chat, sir? I'm running a wireless service available throughout this airport.
HATTORI: David Hagan is working the concourse at Seattle-Tacoma Airport for Boingo, a three-month-old wireless Internet provider.
HAGAN: So do you have a laptop? HATTORI: He's not just a salesman. He's the company president.
HAGAN: People ask for my business card and I'll give them my card and they'll say, "oh, you're the president," so I think they are impressed by it. It's a different approach.
HATTORI: A different approach for a much different era.
HAGAN: In the old days, pre-2000, everybody was talking about build quickly, spend a lot, build mind share, build market share, get eyeballs to your site, and all of those sort of buzz phrases that are now very passe, and now it's about building a great company, one customer at a time.
HATTORI: Pushing an emerging technology called Wi-Fi, Boingo sells high-speed Web access in 500 public areas, like airports and hotels. The company has venture capital funding, but also a business plan with realistic goals.
HAGAN: We need a couple hundred thousand customers ultimately to be profitable, so you know it's within a three-year time period.
HATTORI: There were plenty of losers when high-tech start-ups came plunging back to earth. Today, investors say it was Darwinism at work in the business world, a natural thinning of the herd.
JAY HOAG, VENTURE CAPITALIST: There is a trend toward, like has always been true in technology, a small number of companies doing very, very well and a large number of companies not faring quite so well.
REED HASTINGS, NETFLIX: You know, it's like the hare and the tortoise. We were the tortoise. The hare got ahead, and then they're all bankrupt and we're now cash flow positive and successful.
HATTORI: Sexy as a tortoise, that's NETFLIX, a company that rents movies on DVDs. While Cosmo has squads of bicycle messengers and Web Van had a fleet of shiny trucks, NETFLIX found a simple low- cost formula, free trials and unlimited rentals delivered by plain old U.S. mail for a flat fee.
HASTINGS: And we've always been obsessed by an economic model that works, that is so we charged a reasonable price, $20 a month. We didn't try to undercut everybody, because then you can't sustain that.
HATTORI: NETFLIX advertised, but preferred to pay only when the ads brought in new customers, and if there was a company party, it was underwritten by movie studios.
HASTINGS: The employees say I'm cheap, but I think of it as prudent. It's probably somewhere in between.
HATTORI: Cheap is how Mort Aaronson might describe the price his company paid to acquire Ricochet, another wireless Internet provider, which attempted to build its own network before going bankrupt last year. MORT AARONSON, RICOCHET: Any time you get to spend $8 million on something that cost somebody over $1 billion to build, we feel that we were fortunate to get it for that price.
HATTORI: The new owners are slashing user fees and hope to market the service more like a utility, partnering with schools and governments to lower costs.
AARONSON: We're back to a more simple, economic set of rules. You build something. It generates revenue. You get to build more of that something going forward.
HATTORI: Like Boingo's Hagan, making his pitch one by one.
HAGAN: Another future sale.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: The online world is all about adaptability; Hagan's new approach to cyber business just one example. Here's another, animation made with flash software is turning into an art form, and it even has its own film festivals. Daniel Sieberg checked out one right here in Atlanta.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Every few months, top Internet animators get together for a most unusual party, Flash Bang. Dominating the festivities are works created with Flash software, a technology that literally animated the Web a few years back.
DANIEL CROWDER, MONUMENTAL INTERACTIVE: Nine times out of ten you see anything moving on a web page, it's Flash.
SIEBERG: But the animations at Flash Bang were never intended to be on the web. Instead, they give the artist a chance to create something a little different for a party that's very different.
CROWDER: Flash Bang is kind of a hybrid creature. It takes on a lot of the elements of a kind of independent short film festival, but a the same time, it's also kind of a, you know, place where people get together and network and they talk shop, and it's a lot of fun. I mean it's a party.
(on camera): Not only is Flash Bang a showcase of digital productions, it's also full of interactivity, like this machine that will ask people to try their hand at being a video jockey.
(voice-over): But the real artists are the creators of the films, like the people at Monumental Interactive, who created the cartoon to display at Flash Bank.
DON STEVENS, ILLUSTRATOR AND DESIGNER: I'm the cartoon geek of the office. Right now, we're working on a piece that kind of shows like what went wrong with the dot-com industry and our little spin on it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This little log just pops right out of you. In a word, scrumptious.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CROWDER: And we wanted to create an animation of kind of, you know, make fun of not only just the large companies but the actual business practices of being engaged in, you know, selling hype and, you know, designers who kind of have the same spiel for their clients over and over again. But of course, all this happens in hell, so you know, the devil's there giving them their due.
SIEBERG: Monumental's cartoon brought laughs and cheers from many partygoers, who experience the dot-com bust firsthand. But Flash Bang isn't all about getting laughs. Some artists prefer an alternative message.
ADAM BOOZER, CO-CREATOR, NO-EXIST: A piece we did is called No- Exist, for the main reason that the piece as a whole never really exists until you watch it.
SIEBERG: Adam Boozer and his partner, Tim Tewell, have been creating animations for Flash Bang since the first event more than a year ago.
TIM TEWELL, CO-CREATOR, NO-EXIST: The nucleus behind it is sort of you saw something, you loved it, you hated it, then what did you do?
BOOZER: Really cool. Like at a Flash Film Festival, you sort of like shake hands with people and talk to people about it and get immediate response about what your work is like.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: You can find out more about Flash animation art on our Web site. Just go to cnn.com/next.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, in Arizona the long arm of the law reaches out to nab cactus rustlers. And later in the show, one more for the road, all in the name of research, of course. We'll test some of those do-it-yourself breathalyzer kits. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Some surprising stuff turned up this week in a government survey of the nation's waterways, small quantities of manmade chemicals ranging from antibiotics to pesticides. The survey of 139 streams in 30 states also found steroids, insect repellent, caffeine, disinfectants, fire retardants, and detergent. The searchers say the chemicals got into the streams through run off and through waste water treatment plants, which target bacteria but not chemicals. The substances were found in tiny amounts, but researchers say they don't know if even these small concentrations might cause problems for people or wildlife over the long haul.
The East Coast and a large part of the Western United States are mired in drought. Weather experts say the dry pattern may ease in some areas, but the effects are still likely to be felt for quite a while. Deborah Feyerick has more from a hard hit area of New Jersey.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nurseries stocking up for spring planting pray the winter drought gives way to lots of rain and soon. How much more rain do we really need to make this a good spring?
PETER NOLYNEUX, GALAXY GARDENS: We need at least a half an inch to an inch of rain per week to, at least, stabilize the conditions that we have presently.
FEYERICK: But even that's not happening. Experts from the nation's weather service saying 14 of the last 16 months have been too dry, with below average rainfall. Up and down the East Coast, reservoirs and lakes more than half empty, in places the lowest they've ever been, drought warnings spreading from Maine to Florida. State and local officials urging people to save. New York City's mayor.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY: We cannot use water for things we don't have to absolutely have to use it for.
FEYERICK: New Jersey, the governor declaring a drought emergency. No cash washes, no lawn watering, no water without asking in restaurants, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) reservoir 30 percent full.
(on camera): Normally at this time of year, the water would be right about where I'm standing, 10 feet higher than it is right now. The last time this reservoir was really full was back in September of 1999, after Hurricane Floyd, when this bridge was under three feet of water.
(voice-over): Hurricane Floyd, a temporary fix for a drought that's been around on and off for the last five years. The irony, of course, is that we're standing here and it's drizzling. How much of an impact is this drizzle that we're experiencing right now going to have on the reservoirs?
RICH HENNING, UNITED WATER: This drizzle is not an impact at all. Basically there will be very little measurable rainfall. What we need is steady, hard rain.
FEYERICK: No one knows when that's likely to come, meaning it could get worse. How bad is it really?
GEORGE MCKILLOP, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: It's very bad. I mean, it's bad enough to the point where we need to start taking notice of this and really start the conservation and the water restriction policies. HENNING: The real threat down the line for everybody is that we may be looking at rationing at some point, you know, months down the line if we just don't get any rainfall at all.
FEYERICK: The reason many states want people to save now, before they're forced to later.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: A prickly problem in the Southwestern United States. Giant cacti are disappearing from the desert. Natalie Pawelski reports from Saguaro National Park in Arizona.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Saguaro cactus is a symbol of the Southwest, the visual cliche slapped on Margarita glasses and signs for Mexican restaurants. But walk up to one of these desert giants and you realize how impressive they can be, and it begins to make sense that a black market for cacti as yard art has grown. Supplying that market, cactus rustlers.
JIM MCGINNIS, "CACTUS COP": If they go out and take the plant illegally, and want to sell it quickly, then they can charge anything they want for it.
PAWELSKI: Some call Jim McGinnis a cactus cop. He enforces Arizona laws protecting saguaros and other native plants.
(on camera): Saguaros only grow here in the Senoran (ph) desert of Arizona and Mexico. As cities like Tucson and Phoenix spread, cactus habitat shrinks.
(voice-over): To protect them from destruction and theft, Arizona has outlawed poaching, but does provide permits, sort of like hunting licenses for people who want to rescue native plants that are in the path of development.
CHRIS SHIPLEY: So you just can't go into the desert and start taking plants and trees. You have to have the consent of the landowner and permission of the State of Arizona.
FEYERICK: Poachers who ignore the rules can make hundreds, even thousands of dollars for cactus. McGinnis remembers one prize saguaro he tracked against state lines.
MCGINNIS: And it was in Las Vegas with a price tag of it of $15,000. Now if it sold at that price, I'm not sure. But the individual stole the plant and he went to federal prison.
FEYERICK: But on this day, a more regal relocation, a nursery crew rescues a saguaro that's in the way of a new housing development. Saguaros don't grow arms until they've aged at least 75 years, so this one is probably still just a few decades old. If you still want that yard art and you've got some patience, you can also get saguaros raised from tiny seeds in nurseries. Here's a saguaro at one-year old and at three.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The center plant is the saguaro, hard to believe that that's the gigantic signature plant of the Southwest.
FEYERICK: Saguaros can live for a couple centuries or more, survivors of the days before this desert became a state, trying to survive the day when this desert becomes a suburb.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, what happens to airplanes when their flying days are over. We visit an aircraft retirement home.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Spies have always relied on technology, from swords disguised as canes to cameras hidden in corsages. Some of the gadgets that have contributed to espionage over the years will soon be on display in a museum devoted to spying. David Ensor shares the secrets with us.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Most people when they think of spies, think of the Hollywood version. James Bond, maybe and that Austin Martin. A car like that will be on show, but the real stars of the new Spy Museum under construction in Washington will be the real spies.
Why Washington? Thanks to Aldridge Ames and Robert Hanssen, this city has become the undisputed world capitol of espionage.
PETER EARNEST, DIRECTOR, SPY MUSEUM: I would say that as you and I stand here talking at 9th and F, there is espionage going on around us. Somebody is developing somebody for recruitment. Someone's putting down a dead drop as we speak.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just learned a secret, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but the enemy is listening, so I'll never let it slip.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ENSOR: With wartime cartoons, interactive exhibits and artifacts, the museum will shine new light into a shadowy world. Historian Keith Melton collected many of the most interesting items, like this shoe designed by Czech intelligence to bug American diplomats.
KEITH MELTON, ESPIONAGE HISTORIAN: And essentially the person that was wearing them became a walking radio station.
ENSOR: Here's another charming item, created by Stalin's secret police. It looks like lipstick, but it's loaded. MELTON: At close range, next to the person behind the head, it would be devastatingly accurate and would cause a lethal wound if it was correctly pointed at the head. And it's the type of example that the KGB used.
ENSOR: Contrary to the Hollywood version, the best real spies aren't interesting in killing. They are interested in stealing secrets without getting caught. The museum has one of the German enigma machines, the elaborate secret code message machines they relied on, never guessing the allies had broken their code.
MELTON: You literally hold it like this.
ENSOR: And it has a collection of spy cameras, from the small to the very small.
MELTON: And the idea is that while I'm wearing this, I can take a picture of you and you have absolutely no idea that it's been taken.
ENSOR: The Spy Museum turned to this legendary couple, CIA veterans Tony and Jona (ph) Mendez, now retired, for advice on how spies use disguises. In 1980, during the Iran hostage crisis, Tony spirited six American diplomats out of Tehran, using false identities.
TONY MENDEZ, FORMER CIA CHIEF OF DISGUISE: I've turned a lot of people into older people and turned a few into younger people and turned a few into different genders and different races, you know.
ENSOR: Whatever it takes?
MENDEZ: Whatever it takes.
ENSOR: An, as the Spy Museum will show, Mendez still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
MENDEZ: This is what we call a dental facade, and this just pops in over your regular teeth.
ENSOR (on camera): The art of physical, visual disguises has always been part of the world of espionage and it still is. During the Cold War, the CIA used disguises to spirit its agents out of danger in Eastern Europe, and in the post September 11 world, you can rest assured the same techniques will be used in the War on Terrorism. Things are not always as they seem.
David Ensor, CNN, Knoxville, Maryland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Not far from the site of the Spy Museum is the National Air and Space Museum, which of course showcases aviation history. But that's not where most old airplanes go to die. There's a place in the California high desert that could be called an aircraft retirement home, or even airplane heaven.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) O'BRIEN (voice over): Final approach for a well-traveled 747, and I mean final. This is Mohave Airport in California's high desert, where rain is scarce and land is plentiful, the perfect Sun City for the senior citizens of the airline industry. Some are here in extended vacation but for most, this is the end of the line. They may have flown in, but they will be wheeled out in a dumpster on their way to a less lofty mission, as say beer cans.
(on camera): Is this plane heaven?
MIKE POTTER, P&M AIRCRAFT: Yes, you could probably say it, because I've seen a lot of really neat airplanes get crushed out here. That is kind of sad for pilots. The general population out here could care less probably.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): Mike Potter couldn't care more. He is a retired airline caption who now specializes in aviation geriatrics. Sure, he recycles a lot, but he also finds respectable retirement work for old birds as sets on the Silver Screen. But of late, he has many more planes than roles. What you're talking about is September 11th had a dramatic effect on this business, didn't it?
POTTER: Unbelievable effect. They had to park airplanes in a hurry, so they picked all the ones that were going to go in the next two years and they parked them, and like overnight. So where we only had 25 airplanes here, now we have 240 airplanes or more.
O'BRIEN: The airlines would prefer we wouldn't tell you this story. The image of idle airplanes sitting amid the tumbleweeds isn't exactly what they'd like to project to the flying public or to Wall Street for that matter. But this fleet of grounded airplanes is too big to hide and it is growing.
Cathy Hansen sits on the Mohave Airport Board of Directors. Like many here, she is ambivalent about those idle airliners. On the one hand, it means her airport is thriving, but on the other hand -
CATHY HANSEN, MOHAVE AIRPORT: It makes me sad for the airline industry because they're losing money and I don't want to see any industry lose money.
O'BRIEN: This place is all about the backside of a fragile business, but like so many things these days, it now seems more vulnerable than ever.
POTTER: I hope that, you know, I would wish that all these airplanes would go back into the air, but I just don't think it's going to happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead on NEXT@CNN, after government sponsored hunts, only 13 wolves are left in the wilds of Norway. What might their fate be?
And if you'd like to learn to toot, beat or strum a musical instrument, we've got some Web sites for you. Those stories and much more coming up after a break and a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Norway has been culling the country's wolf population at the request of sheep farmers and others who say the wolves kill livestock and pets. But conservationists say the culling may have gone too far, that Norwegian wolves may now die out completely. Gary Strieker has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After a very bad year for wolves in Norway, wildlife authorities there are reportedly rethinking their plans to continue killing wolves. Last winter, government sponsored hunters killed 10 wolves in southeastern Norway in response to complaints by sheep farmers that the predators were attacking their stock. Conservationists had protested that the country's wolf population, numbering just 28 animals, could not sustain the hunting.
RASMUS HANSSON, WORLDWIDE FUND FOR NATURE: Last year we told them that harvesting such a great fraction of a very small population was biologically completely unsafe.
STRIEKER: Experts now say there are only 13 wolves in Norway, less than half of last year's population, and that the single remaining wolf pack will probably scatter without breeding, because it's alpha male was among those killed.
(on camera): It's a major reversal for wolf recovery in southern Scandinavia, where wolves were wiped out by hunters in the early 1900s, and where only about 10 years ago, a few wolves migrated south from Finland into Sweden and then into Norway.
(voice over): In Finland, wolf hunting is still permitted in some areas, but Finland has a border with Russia, where a large wolf population can easily export replacements for those that are killed. In all of Sweden and Norway, there are now fewer than 100 wolves, what experts describe as an isolated and vulnerable population. Norway's share of that population, they say, has now suffered a catastrophic loss.
The government was planning to launch another wolf hunt this winter, but those plans are said to be on hold until authorities develop a new policy on managing wolves in Norway.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, we'll tell you how to put your loved ones on television, that and more as NEXT@CNN continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Tired of watching the same old reality TV shows? Well, replace them with some reality TV of your own making. David George explains in this week's "Tecnho File."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID GEORGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Your digital pictures can become TV stars with Microsoft's TV Photo Viewer. First transfer your photographs to the photo viewer program in your computer. You can also upload JPEGs from e-mails and images from scanners. Then choose the pictures you like to create a photo album.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, so let's plug in the pictures and see how they look.
GEORGE: You can crop, sort, rotate, even add captions to jazz up your work. Your virtual album can hold up to 40 pictures. Transfer it to a floppy disk, pop the disk in to the photo viewer attached to your TV and you can watch your latest photographic creations, instead of the latest TV reruns.
DARRELL WEST, MICROSOFT: What the TV Photo Viewer does is it gets your images out of the computer room and into the living room.
GEORGE: It's design is simple enough. It includes a remote control that even a child can use.
WEST: If you can change channels on your TV, you can operate the TV Photo Viewer.
GEORGE: Drawbacks, the TV Photo Viewer only works with the Windows Operating System and you have to lug the device around to share your album with grandma. But for $160, you can turn your favorite photos into small screen sensations.
I'm David George, and that's "Techno File."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: If you're less into making pictures and more into making music, you might be able to find some help on the web. James Hattori has more in this week's "Nothing but Net."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI (voice-over): If you've ever wondered whether you could learn to play an instrument, the Internet has lots of ways to help you find out. For the percussionist in you, log onto drumlesson.com. Lessons rum the gambit from hand drumming rhythms to basic drum set sessions. Each exercise is based on full-length feature instructional videos and they're enhanced by pictures, MP3 audio files, and Quick Time video.
Josh Saper is a percussionist who's using the site to improve his conga drumming.
JOSH SAPER, PERCUSSIONIST: I hope that I have a little bit better understanding of congas. I hope that I'm learning at least something new to keep it interesting for me and exciting for me as a musician, and the advantages are that it's at your own pace. You can keep rewinding. You can keep going back and play it over again until you get it.
HATTORI: And if you're really stuck, you can e-mail the Web master for help. The site also features a member forum that allows you to keep in touch with the percussion community, share your ideas, learn from other musicians, and keep up with news and current events in the world of drumming. Drumlesson.com also features interviews with leading percussionists and a media marketplace for the latest entertainment and instructional CDs, books and DVDs.
If you're more into melody than rhythm, Mars Music, Tabcrawler, Tonos.com, and several other Web sites offer online lessons. Their prices and content vary just as much as the types of instruction they offer. But, if you aspire to become more than just an amateur musician, online instruction has its limits.
ROBERT SPANO: I think what can be learned is great. I think there's just a real ceiling on what can be learned. You can get a lot of useful information about a lot of things over the web, but there's nobody there with you observing you and responding to what you're actually doing and saying. "Try this" or "look what you're doing here and you need to think about that."
SAPER: The point is, it's not about making it so serious that it's like either you're going to play or you're not going to play. It's really about having fun playing music, and so I think it's accessible in that way. Anybody can get on there and just start playing and have fun with it.
HATTORI: While you might not become a master musician, online lessons could be a jumping off point for dabblers to become dedicated and lifelong music makers.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, Mars colonization is a long way off, but NASA is preparing. We'll check out plans for a robotic construction crew and a vegetable garden.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Here's a burning question for you. Can you grow cabbage on Mars? Well, NASA would like to know the answer and is making plans to send some genetically engineered plants to the Red Planet to test the conditions there. Gail O'Neill has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GAIL O'NEILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There will soon be life on Mars, plant life that is. These tiny plants may hold the key to colonization of the Red Planet. The Census Bureau estimates that the earth's population will pass nine billion by 2050, and if we ever need to spread out to an additional planet, we must have plants along for the ride in order to survive. DR. ANNA-LISA PAUL, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: Plants do a couple of things. One is that they clean your air and your water. They're great recyclers. They enable you to recycle the water that you drink and then pass through you, as well as the carbon dioxide that you breathe out. They also, of course, can provide food.
O'NEILL: Dr. Paul and other researchers at the University of Florida want to know what kind of environmental stress plants go through in space. They're developing what they call a reporter plant, which will travel to Mars in an unmanned lander. A robot arm will then scoop Martian soil inside the probe, which will analyze any reactions with the plants on camera and send the information back to earth via FM waves.
PAUL: The plants will be able to sample a small amount of Martian soil and be able to tell us whether there's high degrees of metal, high degrees of iron, high degrees of some other unknown substance.
O'NEILL: When they encounter environmental stress, the plants glow brilliant green to help scientists determine what conditions the plants are facing. Sound like rocket science? Actually, it's genetic engineering.
MICHAEL MANAK, NASA: In this particular case, it's two parts of a gene, it's the motor portion which tells the gene what to do and where to do it, and then the second part is actually a foreign gene. It's from a jellyfish protein, and that produces a green light when it's excited.
O'NEILL: NASA is certainly excited. It's funding the project, and if all goes as planned, researchers are hoping to colonize Mars with plant life by 2007.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Colonizing Mars will involve a lot more than growing vegetables, of course. There is also the challenge of building shelter on an alien planet. NASA is developing some robot construction workers with a genius for teamwork. Allard Beutel reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALLARD BEUTEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is NASA's idea of a Martian construction crew, a group of robots working on a task, in this case, lifting and moving an eight-foot-long metal beam. So, what's the big deal? It's just a couple of rovers moving stuff, right?
Well, NASA said what you're looking at is actually a major accomplishment in robotics. These two rovers are using experimental software that lets them essentially share a brain.
PAUL SCHENKER, NASA: There are some basic advances we're after here, first of kind in robotics, and they include the idea of having robots that not just cooperate, but work as tightly coupled coordinated teammates.
BEUTEL: These new Mars rovers will be programmed with a set of behaviors that lets them operate independently on a common job, like building a solar power station, and they wouldn't need a lot of guidance from humans on earth. Using the new software and wireless communications, each rover would know what the other is doing, react accordingly and work in total tandem.
SCHENKER: They're sharing their decision-making process. They're responding adaptively to difficult situations.
BEUTEL: One of those difficult situations Schenker is talking about is having the rovers navigate rough terrain, while still being able to carry things together. The rovers are being designed to use their on board sensors and cameras to get around obstacles, like big rocks.
TERRY HUNTSBERGER, NASA ENGINEER: The have behaviors now that are set up to sense the rock and then basically the two of them go into a planning mode, then they decide how to get around the obstacle and continue on their way.
BEUTEL: NASA says it will be 15 to 20 yeas before you'll see these types of highly coordinated and adaptive rovers tooling around the surface of Mars, but Schenker says they're already trying to incorporate some of this technology into their current generation of robots.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, you'll see just how far Bruce Burkhardt will go in the name of getting a story. OK, he didn't really get arrested, but his report might help you stay out of trouble.
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O'BRIEN: OK, let me let you in on a little secret here. A lot of people actually consider St. Patrick's Day an excuse to drink. Now after a few rounds of green beer and maybe some green (UNINTELLIGIBLE), some partiers may turn to do-it-yourself breathalyzer devices to see if they are OK to drive. But do those things really work? We sent our Bruce Burkhardt out to test some of them, and by the way, kids don't try this at home.
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BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): When do you know you've had a bit too much to drink? Well, knocking over a few cones like this is a pretty good clue.
LIEUTENANT CLIFF MILLER, GEORGIA STATE PATROL: Step on out of the car. Put your hands on top of the car.
BURKHARDT: I'm not really being arrested. It's just an experiment, not just in how alcohol impairs your driving, but in how well a wide range of devices, now on the market, can measure how much alcohol is in your blood stream. Just toss it down?
UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER: Just toss it down.
BURKHARDT: Under the supervision of Lieutenant Cliff Miller of the Georgia State Control, I consumed first three ounces of 80 proof vodka, then waited 30 minutes.
MILLER: Just take a deep breath and blow until I say stop.
BURKHARDT: As our benchmark, we first tested with the official police breathalyzer, a $600 machine. What does it say?
MILLER: .04. The medical research shows that it starts affecting your abilities at .04, so you're right there where it's going to start affecting you.
BURKHARDT: .04, halfway to the legal limit in Georgia and most states. Breathalyzers, whether it's the police version or one of the cheaper consumer versions, determine the amount of alcohol in the blood by measuring the amount that's in the breath.
MILLER: You're getting air from the bottom part of your lungs, which is made up of blood and the alcohol gets in there, so you get a reading from your breath based on the amount of alcohol in your blood.
BURKHARDT: But the readings we found on these consumer versions varied greatly.
MILLER: Put it under your tongue for 10 seconds.
BURKHARDT: For only a couple of bucks, you can get one of these, Guardian Angel it's called, at a drugstore. Just compare the color of the stick to the colors on the package, only it's not that easy, especially if you've had a few.
MILLER: So it's between those two, so you're talking about, I mean...
BURKHARDT: This is like...
MILLER: A person's got to interpret it.
BURKHARDT: Still many law enforcement agencies hand out the Guardian Angel to promote DUI awareness. Another inexpensive model called BreathScan can also be a challenge to interpret. With your fingers, you squeeze the tube and break up some crystals and then blow.
MILLER: It's showing a discolorment.
BURKHARDT: BreathScan doesn't give you an exact reading. It only tells you if you're above or below .04.
MILLER: I'll hold it for you. Just blow in the top there.
BURKHARDT: This version, called PNI, is available on the web for about $60. We didn't have much luck with it.
MILLER: .10.
BURKHARDT: .10.
MILLER: To .04.
BURKHARDT: .04 and that said I'm...
MILLER: A .10.
BURKHARDT: Much higher.
MILLER: Correct.
BURKHARDT: For $70, there's the CA-2000 from Korea. It gave us an accurate readout of .04, as did this model from Sharper Image, the most expensive at $100.
To see just how .04 affects driving skills, professional instructor Andrew Davis escorted me on a test course at Road Atlanta. Earlier, completely sober, I had driven the course to get a feel for it.
ANDREW DAVIS, DRIVING INSTRUCTOR: What I saw was a lot more abruptness with the brake pedal and just not using the brakes on a couple corners that you did before.
BURKHARDT: I now have six ounces.
MILLER: Six ounces of 80 proof vodka.
BURKHARDT: Another half hour and we put the breathalyzers through their paces again, although we didn't really need a gadget at that point.
MILLER: 1.009, 1.010, 1.011.
BURKHARDT: Lieutenant Miller's machine confirmed what he already suspected.
MILLER: So you're at the legal limit now of .79.
BURKHARDT: As for the other breathalyzers, the only one that was consistently in line with the police machine was the $100 Sharper Image breathalyzer, though in fairness to the others, accurate results depend upon following the directions exactly. We may not have. But then again, after a few drinks -- I'll tell you the truth. I couldn't use one of these things properly right now, I don't think.
MILLER: I agree with you.
BURKHARDT: All these gadgets come with disclaimers that essentially say they're not responsible if you choose to drive based on their readout, which begs the question, why bother with them at all? MILLER: Anything's better than nothing. At least it shows us that we got the public thinking.
BURKHARDT: And what's got me thinking is the vast difference between what I thought my abilities were at the .08 level and what the reality was. Whoops, the camera came loose.
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O'BRIEN: Looks like even the camera caught a whiff. Well, that's about all the time we have but, before we go, here's what's coming up next week. Could a trip into space be in your future? One space tourist has already been, another is in the wings, and now an airline says you'll be able to use frequent flyer miles to hitch a ride into space yourself. Also, there may be more than you think in your DVD movies. We'll show you ways to find hidden goodies. You can e-mail us at next@cnn.com.
Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us, I'm Miles O'Brien. We'll see you next time.
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