The Kepler Probe, launched in Feb 2009, will aim its gigapixel eye at the same region of space for 3.5 years and look for brief dimmings of stars that are planetary transit eclipses. It's estimated that several hundred such events will be observed, including ones as small as Earth. The size and orbital paramters of new planets can be determined in many cases.
Great lab, poor productizing. AT&T invented UNIX, but really couldnt figure out what to do with, so gave it to universities almost free. Xerox pretty invented the GUI, yet couldnt make money off it. I heard a complain of "culture war" between shipping product devlopers at MSFT and their R&D lab. The research people are undsiciplined prima-donas.
I've admired some of the results coming out of MSFTs R&D lab. But I rarely see them becoming supported products. For example they (and other groups) are working on image-based construction of 3D models. This means if you shoot a bunch of overlapping photos, you may be able to construct the 3D geometry behind them such as buildings along a street via stereo matching. All the mapping companies are starting to use this now for street views. MSFT finally released a version of this for NASA so they could QC space-shuttle defects more quickly and accurately during a mission.
God created the lights in Heaven on the fourth day. And the seventh day was Saturday when he rested.
4 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
Just due to its shear number of server farms and servers - about 3 million nodes recent estimate.
On the other hand they may hold the contrarian position as lowest power consumption per peta-op/peta-byte due to their attention to decreasing power costs (and green concern).
I recall in 2005 the precent voting lines in Denver reached SIX HOURS on a freezing Novemeber day. The cause was that voters were permitted to vote in any precent instead of their home precent and the certified-voters-list was on a web-server instead of a computer printout book. Well you guess it: the server locked up in the first 45 minutes beacuse it was never stress-tested by the vendor.
Earlier this year a couple of all-mail-in elections took seven days to count. The optical readers crapped out and too few people had been hired.
So the Secretary of State was directed to certify four new election systems ten months in advance to catch potential problems. They were tested for accuracy and efficiency. And he found significant problems in two of them. Ten months is insufficent to obtain certified replacements and train new election workers, so Colorado is fishing for solutions. The Secretary of State claimed he tried to certify much quicker, but the machine companies stalled as much as possible hoping to avoid de-certification.
It will be a long time before there are radical changes in synthetic life.
The early wrok will be tinking: combing proteins from different existing lifeforms,
changing an amino there, etc.
So extending the shuttle lifetime will be one of the first decisions of the new [Madame] President. The main important parts are the troublesome rocket engines, but tiles etc. too.
MicroSoft tried to co-opt TCP/IP by putting special MicoSoft code in it, or completely replacing it. MSN was supposed to crush AOL (just dialup in early 1990s) and replace the internet.
Then Bill had a "Damascus" insight after one of his retreats and decided to join the InterNet rather than replace it. His main weapon- free InterNet Explorer- pretty much banrupted Netscape, the Google/Facebook phenom of ite era.
The guy on radio who promises to name a star after your request for $54 (includes name book) is advertising on the radio for Christmas again. Claims the name will be "coyrighted" because he submits the book to the copyright office. With only 200 million objects and 310 million people in the USA (and more int he rest of the world), this is not enough!
ISP will lose its "fair trade" carrier immunity if its becomes responsible for any content. This could include sexual or ecopnomic crimes, which are big InterNet issues of police lists.
Perhaps before 1970 relatively few people had seen one. There would be one per organization in some central shrine. When DEC came along computers started to decentralize into departments and more people would see them at work. Home PCs and game machines came along in the late 1970s.
The symbol of the computer was the tape drive and blinking light console. Those would be the I/O devices you see on a tour beacuse the drives occupied the bulk of the floor area. The real programmers used punchcards and the lineprinter, but visitors didnt see those. You'd have to submit year punchcard decks to the submission desk and your printout would appear one to eight hours later. If your program was to be used a lot you could store it on disk. But that usually cost more than recompiling it. Maybe you'd get a funny-money budget of $500 a project or class. A compilation would cost a dollar a minute, or a few bucks. Disk storage was something like $1 a kilobyte per month. Most users were programmers. You might get a clerk assistant who prepare data on punch cards, put the data into the card deck, submit jobs and analyze printouts. The clerk didnt have to know too much about programming.
The big fear was that "automation" would make your job obsolete and you be on the streets.
A few technologists are recording 100% of their waking lives on video, but maybe this one percent solution might be adequate for most of the time.
Then I might be able to remember what I ate for breakfast yeseterday!
Slashdot Mirror
Im surprised there havent been a large number of class-action suits for data-theft. Many data-owners seem irresponsible.
I have it set for my name, my company's name, and few friends.
If the universe is not "flat" then taht could explain apparent acceleration. Need a test to distinguish this from a repulsive force.
The Kepler Probe, launched in Feb 2009, will aim its gigapixel eye at the same region of space for 3.5 years and look for brief dimmings of stars that are planetary transit eclipses. It's estimated that several hundred such events will be observed, including ones as small as Earth. The size and orbital paramters of new planets can be determined in many cases.
I remember an early mobile robot (CMU?) that had the ability to find wall sockets and plug itself in when the battery got low.
Great lab, poor productizing. AT&T invented UNIX, but really couldnt figure out what to do with, so gave it to universities almost free. Xerox pretty invented the GUI, yet couldnt make money off it. I heard a complain of "culture war" between shipping product devlopers at MSFT and their R&D lab. The research people are undsiciplined prima-donas.
I've admired some of the results coming out of MSFTs R&D lab. But I rarely see them becoming supported products. For example they (and other groups) are working on image-based construction of 3D models. This means if you shoot a bunch of overlapping photos, you may be able to construct the 3D geometry behind them such as buildings along a street via stereo matching. All the mapping companies are starting to use this now for street views. MSFT finally released a version of this for NASA so they could QC space-shuttle defects more quickly and accurately during a mission.
Any long term politician panders for money and votes. The brutally honest ones who have no chance of getting either of these are often attractive.
God created the lights in Heaven on the fourth day. And the seventh day was Saturday when he rested.
4 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
Just due to its shear number of server farms and servers - about 3 million nodes recent estimate. On the other hand they may hold the contrarian position as lowest power consumption per peta-op/peta-byte due to their attention to decreasing power costs (and green concern).
I recall in 2005 the precent voting lines in Denver reached SIX HOURS on a freezing Novemeber day. The cause was that voters were permitted to vote in any precent instead of their home precent and the certified-voters-list was on a web-server instead of a computer printout book. Well you guess it: the server locked up in the first 45 minutes beacuse it was never stress-tested by the vendor.
Earlier this year a couple of all-mail-in elections took seven days to count. The optical readers crapped out and too few people had been hired.
So the Secretary of State was directed to certify four new election systems ten months in advance to catch potential problems. They were tested for accuracy and efficiency. And he found significant problems in two of them. Ten months is insufficent to obtain certified replacements and train new election workers, so Colorado is fishing for solutions. The Secretary of State claimed he tried to certify much quicker, but the machine companies stalled as much as possible hoping to avoid de-certification.
One billion to find them, ...
On billion to take them all,
And in the contracts bind them
In the studios, where the lawyers lie.
is where the Laws of Nature come from.
How much natural language do you really need for a search? Not much.
It will be a long time before there are radical changes in synthetic life. The early wrok will be tinking: combing proteins from different existing lifeforms, changing an amino there, etc.
So extending the shuttle lifetime will be one of the first decisions of the new [Madame] President. The main important parts are the troublesome rocket engines, but tiles etc. too.
MicroSoft tried to co-opt TCP/IP by putting special MicoSoft code in it, or completely replacing it. MSN was supposed to crush AOL (just dialup in early 1990s) and replace the internet.
Then Bill had a "Damascus" insight after one of his retreats and decided to join the InterNet rather than replace it. His main weapon- free InterNet Explorer- pretty much banrupted Netscape, the Google/Facebook phenom of ite era.
Had a room of dildotic sex machines. Some were pretty elaborate.
Humans have bred themselves for attractive charcteristics that interfere with being able to run without clothes. Both genders, to be fair.
Only been there once
The guy on radio who promises to name a star after your request for $54 (includes name book) is advertising on the radio for Christmas again. Claims the name will be "coyrighted" because he submits the book to the copyright office. With only 200 million objects and 310 million people in the USA (and more int he rest of the world), this is not enough!
ISP will lose its "fair trade" carrier immunity if its becomes responsible for any content. This could include sexual or ecopnomic crimes, which are big InterNet issues of police lists.
Perhaps before 1970 relatively few people had seen one. There would be one per organization in some central shrine. When DEC came along computers started to decentralize into departments and more people would see them at work. Home PCs and game machines came along in the late 1970s.
The symbol of the computer was the tape drive and blinking light console. Those would be the I/O devices you see on a tour beacuse the drives occupied the bulk of the floor area. The real programmers used punchcards and the lineprinter, but visitors didnt see those. You'd have to submit year punchcard decks to the submission desk and your printout would appear one to eight hours later. If your program was to be used a lot you could store it on disk. But that usually cost more than recompiling it. Maybe you'd get a funny-money budget of $500 a project or class. A compilation would cost a dollar a minute, or a few bucks. Disk storage was something like $1 a kilobyte per month. Most users were programmers. You might get a clerk assistant who prepare data on punch cards, put the data into the card deck, submit jobs and analyze printouts. The clerk didnt have to know too much about programming.
The big fear was that "automation" would make your job obsolete and you be on the streets.
Human beings generate about one watt per kilo of weight. You could plug us while we were sleeping.
(What if some evil power kept us sleeping and plugged in all the time?)
A few technologists are recording 100% of their waking lives on video, but maybe this one percent solution might be adequate for most of the time.
Then I might be able to remember what I ate for breakfast yeseterday!