What you're describing sounds like a fairly typical Sensor Net (or Sensor Web) to me, maybe with a little more data logged than is normal per platform. (I believe they call it a 'mote' in that community).
Some of the newer sensor nets use a forwarding mesh wireless system, so that you relay the data to a highly reduced number of collection points -- which might keep you from having to deal with the collection of the hard drives each night (maybe swap out a multi-TB RAID at each collection point each night instead).
I'm not 100% sure of what the correct forum is for discussion of sensor/platform design. I know they have presentations in the ESSI (Earth and Space Science Informatics) focus group of the AGU (American Geophysical Union). Many of the members of ESIPfed (Federation of Earth Science Information Partners) probably have experience in these issues, but it's more about discussing managing the data after it comes out of the field.
On the off chance that someone's already written software to do 90% of what you're looking for, I'd try contacting the folks from the Software Reuse Working Group of the Earth Science Data System community.
You might also try looking through past projects funded through NASA AISR (Adanced Information Systems Research)... they funded better sensor design & data distribution systems. (unfortunately, they haven't been funded for a few years... and I'm having problems accessing their website right now). Or I might be confusing it with the similar AIST (Adanced Information Systems Technology), which tends more towards hardware vs. software.... so, my point is -- don't roll your own. Talk to other people who have done similar stuff, and build on their work, otherwise you're liable to make all of the same mistakes, and waste a whole lot of time. And in general (at least ESSI / ESIP-wide), we're a pretty sharing community... we don't want anyone out there wasting their time doing the stupid little piddly stuff when they could actually be collecting data or doing science.
(and if you haven't guessed already... I'm an AGU/ESSI member, and I think I'm an honorary ESIP member (as I'm in the space sciences, not earth science)... at least they put up with me on their mailing lists)
Subject: Correction: Radiation Belt Storm Probes Launch, Rescheduled for August 25
This morning's planned launch of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) has been delayed to Saturday, August 25, 2012 at 4:07 a.m. The launch from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida can be viewed live at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .
[local bits trimmed]
The RBSP mission is the second in NASA's Living With a Star program, becoming part of a fleet of spacecraft helping to predict space weather and its effects on orbiting spacecraft and on our technology here on Earth. RBSP has two identical probes to study the Van Allen Radiation Belts which are two concentric, donut-shaped rings of high-energy particles that surround Earth. Data from the probes will help us understand this major feature of the Earth's magnetosphere and the interactions between the sun and Earth.
(4:07am being Eastern, unlike the @!@#$% NASA mail system which sends everything out in central time)
Crap, the school year's started. Now how many stupid questions are we going to get?
(and doesn't everyone keep a bug out bag in their car, next to the emergency preparedness kit? I've hit mine up a few times over the years, even just for simple things like 'had to work all night, I could use a fresh change of clothes')
So the problem is that there's still the question of what exactly 'net neutrality' means by the time someone works it into legislation. Odds are, there will be some glaring loopholes put in my some staffer who the week after it passes gets hired by a corporation or lobbyist organization.
For instance... if we must pass all 'legal' traffic, what about e-mail that complies with the CAN-SPAM act? Would we be allowed to filter that out, or does it have to go through to the customer's mailboxes?
What I'm pissed off about isn't that ISPs filter -- it's that they lie and claim they're not, until it's shown that they are.
So, my proposal:
If you do *no* filtering what-so-ever, you're considered a 'common carrier', and would not be held liable for the actions of the people whom you are granting service to. If you filter or otherwise prioritize packets based on content or destination, you could be held liable for not blocking fraudulent or other illegal activity.
And we'd also have to redefine 'broadband coverage' to specifically require a common carrier to qualify an area as having coverage.
In the case of Curiosity, it launched in November 2011. They've had month of just sitting around, waiting for it to get into place... which gives them time to go over the code (which was previously tested before launch), and optimize it.
It's possible that they might make some changes... eg, send back uncompressed images initially, but then figure out which compression scheme gives them the best compression without introducing problematic noise (and operates within the hardware limits)
Or, you could have a bunch of scientists and programmers twiddle their thumbs for the better part of a year, as they wait for the launch, then wait for it to get into position.
When I started at a NASA center, working with a bunch of physicists for the most part, I found I was being sent to an AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting. I don't remember exactly what my boss said that was disparaging about astronomers, but I do remember he said something to the effect, 'but at least they're not mathmeticians, as they generally bathe at least once a week'.
So, just remember -- they might've been cleaning themselves out of the sink -- but at least they were cleaning themselves.
(and well, during undergrad, I think I had a period of about 10-14 days when I don't think I went above ground... at least not when the sun was out (and it was summer)... the problem is, you can't tell just how ripe you've managed to get... so engineers aren't always the best group, either).
Magnet links only use the hash, so there's a possibility of hash collisions. He's proposing an identifier + resolver scheme... which again, has been done many, many times already.
Or, we get to the larger architecture of storing & moving these files, such as the various Data Grid implementations. (which may also allow you to run reduction before transfer, depending on the exact infrastructure used).
If OnLive follows the Microsoft & Sony model of console sales, they take a loss on each one, which they try to make back by selling when you buy games & services. If someone else is making the console, they don't have to take that loss on each console. So they're getting a potential 40k+ new users.
(and you can get 'em on CD, rather than printed out... I seem to recall it being a spreadsheet when I saw one... don't know if it was a flat file that someone had imported, or if they gave it to you in Excell)
The age bit's been mentioned (18)... but you must be a student at an accredited institution in a restricted list of countries (other than Canada, all are in Europe)... which is what's going to knock out most of the readers on here.
(disclaimer: I was a mentor for a SOCIS 2011 project, and I just found out I'm listed on some 2012 projects, too, even though I don't have time to mentor this summer)
So I assume you've already contact the DoE for whatever materials they have from their Future Truck competition?
(as some of the teams were awarded grants, I assume there'd be some sort of documentation about how they achieved the improvements, so you could see if they're changes that the automobile manufacturers have already put into production models, or if there's some additional enhancements to be done.)
Yes, I know what the difference in territory is between them, but which one of those is officially a 'country'?. I've tried asking folks from the UK, and it stumps them, but we have noticed different competitions between countries treat it differently, which we think rules out Great Britain, but we're still not sure if it's England or the UK:
Eurovision : U.K. Olympics : U.K. World Cup : England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales Rugby World Cup : England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (and if I understand correctly, this is Northern Ireland + the Republic of Ireland)
What you propose has been around for more than a decade with what are called overlay journals.
But the thing is, you're only dealing with published items, so there's no built-in way of improving the article. (asking for clarifications, improving poor grammar, etc.)
Another alternative was proposed in Jason Priem (known for the Altmetrics Manifesto) and Brad Hemminger's Decoupling the scholarly journal (PubMed), discussing the different functions that journals perform, alternatives (such as overlay journals, PLoS One, post-publication review, etc.), and then breaking it down into bits that can be separated from each other.
You can then either do that bit in-house, or outsource specific parts, without having to deal with those cases where a society sells (licenses?) their journal to Elsevier or Wiley.
As I also work (as a contractor) for a agency (that I've mentioned before, if you really care)...
I see it as being two things:
Lobbying. Just like the 'one card' fiasco (what, we issue cards for 5 years even if the person's got 2 years left on their contract? Because it's such a pain & expense to issue a card? Oh, and it can get them into other installations that they have no business going to?), it's all a matter of lobbyists selling 'solutions' to minor problems that end up having major repercussions that the high up decision makers don't seem to care about.
There's been a requirement for the past few years for agencies to reduce the number of 'data centers'. Unfortunately, they keep changing the definition of 'data center' until I think at this point a telco closet qualifies. (and unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating). So, the easiest reduction -- get rid of all of your servers, implications be damned.
And of course, we're getting all sorts of clouds now -- public cloud, public companies with specialized government clouds, agency clouds, departmental clouds and clusters, etc. And for the departmental one they're trying to get us to move over to, they can't tell us what the cost model is going to be. (other than we know it'll be cost / year, while our budget is built around infrequent hardware replacement costs + lower reoccurring sysadmin time)
Here's yesterday's gem. Mind you, it was sent to an mailing list '-owner' account, too:
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:19:24 -0300
From: MyUps <ups-shipping-agency@ups.com>
To: [listname]-owner@[domain]
Subject: You have urgent work
Hi, [listname]-owner
We got today a letter from tax depratment they writing that we have not paid all needed
taxes.
You must urgent clear this shit other way they are freeze our bank acocunts.
I have scanned the letter for you, you will find it in attach. Clear this situtaion and write
me back.
I've worked as a contractor for the federal government for the last 8 years, I've been a municipal elected official for the last 4 years, I was chief election judge for the same municipality for 4 years, I did two years of contracting for a state government, and I interned for three summers in high school with the DoD.
So, I actually *do* know how these things work... and all it really takes it one person who knows what they hell they're doing to get these things straightened out.
In my case, the location that I work has an 'excess warehouse'... which, given the right person to sign off on the paperwork, I've been able to go down there and acquire old computer equipment to repurpose in different roles. (one of which required me going through the higher up 'I can't believe they still have this stuff around' shelves to try to find a working 21" CRT monitor that met certain size & weight distribution requirements)
Given the right people to do this, you could have those things repurposed and placed into government buildings for people to figure out which floor they need to go to for different issues; what courtroom for specific cases; card catalog lookups in libraries; etc.
At the very least, all of the e-voting machines that I've seen have touch screens. I would think that someone could be able to get these for pennies on the dollar, and find a way to use the parts to build kiosks for other purposes.
The CPUs might not have the necessary power for much, but if it's just a lookup & display system, it shouldn't require much.
If you're on the US east coast, there doesn't look to be a theatre between New Jersey and Florida... so most of us won't get a chance to find out if it's worth it. (and as one of those people w/ poor vision... this I'd be interested in... 3D video, not so much)
This stuff's been out for years, but it just wasn't freely available to the public -- you had to pay someone to get access to it. (oh... and those groups sold to governments... I know my county has access to pictometry.com... I have no idea what all they use it for, but their website has suggestions)
Now that Google et.al. want to make it freely available, so the general public can use it, it's finally getting attention?
Experience means different things to different people... '22 years computer experience' could mean, 'I used an Apple ][e when I was in elementary school, and we got to play Oregon Trail', vs. 'I ran my own BBS back in the day'.
If they were on Prodigy, Compuserve or AOL, it might've just mean that he knows how to send email:
Denholm: I'm gonna put you in I.T. because you said on your CV you have a lot of experience with computers.
Jen: I did say that on my CV, yes. I have a lot of experience with the whole computer thing you know, emails... sending emails... receiving emails... deleting emails... I could go on.
Denholm: Do.
Jen:... the web... using a mouse, mices, using mice... clicking... double clicking... the computer screen, of course. The keyboard. The... bit that goes on the floor down there.
Denholm: The hard drive.
Jen: Correct.
Denholm: Well, you certainly seem to know your stuff. That's settled. I've got a good feeling about you Jen and they need a new manager.
It loses something without the rest of the context. You could've instead gone for one of the other quotes about Rimmer insisting it's aliens:
Lister: What do you believe in, then? Do you believe in God?
Rimmer: God? Certainly not! What a preposterous thought! I believe in aliens, Lister.
Lister: Oh, right, fine. Something sensible at last.
Rimmer: Aliens, Lister, with technology so far in advance of our own we can't even begin to imagine.
Lister: Well, that's not difficult. Mankind hasn't even got the technology to create a toupee that doesn't get big laughs.
Rimmer: Aliens, Lister, who can give me a real body.
Lister: Ooohhh, I can't wait to see your face in the morning, I really can't.
Rimmer: And nor I yours, Lister. When that pod opens and from it emerges a beautiful alien woman with long green hair and six breasts.
Lister: Six breasts?! Imagine making love to a woman with six breasts!
Rimmer: Imagine making love to a woman!
-- Red Dwarf, "Waiting for God"
... or...
Rimmer: Aliens!
Lister: What?
Cat: What are you talking about, grease stain?
Rimmer: It's a well documented phenomenon. They kidnap you, give you a mind probe, erase your memory, and put you back.
Lister: Okay, aliens came aboard.
Rimmer: Without question.
Lister: They broke my leg.
Rimmer: For some reason.
Cat: They broke *my* leg.
Rimmer: Right.
Holly: And then they did a jigsaw.
Rimmer: Right.
Holly: Well, that's cleared that up then.
Rimmer: Look, you're not thinking alien. That's what aliens are: alien. They do alien things. Things that are... alien. Maybe this is the way they communicate.
Cat: By breaking legs?
Lister: And doing jigsaws?
Rimmer: Why should they speak the way we do? They're aliens.
Lister: Okay, professor, what does it mean?
Rimmer: Maybe, maybe, okay? Breaking your leg hurts like hell, okay? "Hel." They do it below the knee, "lo." "Hel-lo," get it? They do it twice. Twice, "two." "Hello two." And the jigsaw must mean "you." "Hello to you."
Cat: I wouldn't like to be around when one of these suckers is making a speech!
Lister: Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.
Rimmer: Well we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?
Lister: Rimmer, *aliens* used our bog roll?
Rimmer: Just cause they're aliens doesn't mean to say they don't have to visit the little boys' room. Only they probably do something weird and alien-esque, like it comes out of the top of their heads or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any obviously Lord of the Rings images on their website:
http://controversy.wearscience.com/
What you're describing sounds like a fairly typical Sensor Net (or Sensor Web) to me, maybe with a little more data logged than is normal per platform. (I believe they call it a 'mote' in that community).
Some of the newer sensor nets use a forwarding mesh wireless system, so that you relay the data to a highly reduced number of collection points -- which might keep you from having to deal with the collection of the hard drives each night (maybe swap out a multi-TB RAID at each collection point each night instead).
I'm not 100% sure of what the correct forum is for discussion of sensor/platform design. I know they have presentations in the ESSI (Earth and Space Science Informatics) focus group of the AGU (American Geophysical Union). Many of the members of ESIPfed (Federation of Earth Science Information Partners) probably have experience in these issues, but it's more about discussing managing the data after it comes out of the field.
On the off chance that someone's already written software to do 90% of what you're looking for, I'd try contacting the folks from the Software Reuse Working Group of the Earth Science Data System community.
You might also try looking through past projects funded through NASA AISR (Adanced Information Systems Research) ... they funded better sensor design & data distribution systems. (unfortunately, they haven't been funded for a few years ... and I'm having problems accessing their website right now). Or I might be confusing it with the similar AIST (Adanced Information Systems Technology), which tends more towards hardware vs. software. ... so, my point is -- don't roll your own. Talk to other people who have done similar stuff, and build on their work, otherwise you're liable to make all of the same mistakes, and waste a whole lot of time. And in general (at least ESSI / ESIP-wide), we're a pretty sharing community ... we don't want anyone out there wasting their time doing the stupid little piddly stuff when they could actually be collecting data or doing science.
(and if you haven't guessed already ... I'm an AGU/ESSI member, and I think I'm an honorary ESIP member (as I'm in the space sciences, not earth science) ... at least they put up with me on their mailing lists)
(4:07am being Eastern, unlike the @!@#$% NASA mail system which sends everything out in central time)
For more information on the mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp
Crap, the school year's started. Now how many stupid questions are we going to get?
(and doesn't everyone keep a bug out bag in their car, next to the emergency preparedness kit? I've hit mine up a few times over the years, even just for simple things like 'had to work all night, I could use a fresh change of clothes')
So the problem is that there's still the question of what exactly 'net neutrality' means by the time someone works it into legislation. Odds are, there will be some glaring loopholes put in my some staffer who the week after it passes gets hired by a corporation or lobbyist organization.
For instance ... if we must pass all 'legal' traffic, what about e-mail that complies with the CAN-SPAM act? Would we be allowed to filter that out, or does it have to go through to the customer's mailboxes?
What I'm pissed off about isn't that ISPs filter -- it's that they lie and claim they're not, until it's shown that they are.
So, my proposal:
If you do *no* filtering what-so-ever, you're considered a 'common carrier', and would not be held liable for the actions of the people whom you are granting service to. If you filter or otherwise prioritize packets based on content or destination, you could be held liable for not blocking fraudulent or other illegal activity.
And we'd also have to redefine 'broadband coverage' to specifically require a common carrier to qualify an area as having coverage.
ps. 'implementing' net neutrality == not
Standard operating procedure for space missions.
In the case of Curiosity, it launched in November 2011. They've had month of just sitting around, waiting for it to get into place ... which gives them time to go over the code (which was previously tested before launch), and optimize it.
It's possible that they might make some changes ... eg, send back uncompressed images initially, but then figure out which compression scheme gives them the best compression without introducing problematic noise (and operates within the hardware limits)
Or, you could have a bunch of scientists and programmers twiddle their thumbs for the better part of a year, as they wait for the launch, then wait for it to get into position.
No, not that one. Or this one.
When I started at a NASA center, working with a bunch of physicists for the most part, I found I was being sent to an AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting. I don't remember exactly what my boss said that was disparaging about astronomers, but I do remember he said something to the effect, 'but at least they're not mathmeticians, as they generally bathe at least once a week'.
So, just remember -- they might've been cleaning themselves out of the sink -- but at least they were cleaning themselves.
(and well, during undergrad, I think I had a period of about 10-14 days when I don't think I went above ground ... at least not when the sun was out (and it was summer) ... the problem is, you can't tell just how ripe you've managed to get ... so engineers aren't always the best group, either).
Magnet links only use the hash, so there's a possibility of hash collisions. He's proposing an identifier + resolver scheme ... which again, has been done many, many times already.
Eg, ARK or OpenURL
Or, we get to the larger architecture of storing & moving these files, such as the various Data Grid implementations. (which may also allow you to run reduction before transfer, depending on the exact infrastructure used).
If OnLive follows the Microsoft & Sony model of console sales, they take a loss on each one, which they try to make back by selling when you buy games & services. If someone else is making the console, they don't have to take that loss on each console. So they're getting a potential 40k+ new users.
What was surprising was when Sony hit Connectix with the lawsuit to ban the Virtual Playstation. (maybe not in hindsight, with the control that Sony wants, but it made no sense to me at the time.
$128 in Maryland:
http://www.elections.state.md.us/voter_registration/purchase_lists.html
(and you can get 'em on CD, rather than printed out ... I seem to recall it being a spreadsheet when I saw one ... don't know if it was a flat file that someone had imported, or if they gave it to you in Excell)
http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2012/?q=faq#socis_elig_restrictions
The age bit's been mentioned (18) ... but you must be a student at an accredited institution in a restricted list of countries (other than Canada, all are in Europe) ... which is what's going to knock out most of the readers on here.
(disclaimer: I was a mentor for a SOCIS 2011 project, and I just found out I'm listed on some 2012 projects, too, even though I don't have time to mentor this summer)
So I assume you've already contact the DoE for whatever materials they have from their Future Truck competition?
(as some of the teams were awarded grants, I assume there'd be some sort of documentation about how they achieved the improvements, so you could see if they're changes that the automobile manufacturers have already put into production models, or if there's some additional enhancements to be done.)
Which one's the country?
England? Great Britain? The United Kingdom?
Yes, I know what the difference in territory is between them, but which one of those is officially a 'country'?. I've tried asking folks from the UK, and it stumps them, but we have noticed different competitions between countries treat it differently, which we think rules out Great Britain, but we're still not sure if it's England or the UK:
Eurovision : U.K.
Olympics : U.K.
World Cup : England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales
Rugby World Cup : England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (and if I understand correctly, this is Northern Ireland + the Republic of Ireland)
What you propose has been around for more than a decade with what are called overlay journals.
But the thing is, you're only dealing with published items, so there's no built-in way of improving the article. (asking for clarifications, improving poor grammar, etc.)
Another alternative was proposed in Jason Priem (known for the Altmetrics Manifesto) and Brad Hemminger's Decoupling the scholarly journal (PubMed), discussing the different functions that journals perform, alternatives (such as overlay journals, PLoS One, post-publication review, etc.), and then breaking it down into bits that can be separated from each other.
You can then either do that bit in-house, or outsource specific parts, without having to deal with those cases where a society sells (licenses?) their journal to Elsevier or Wiley.
As I also work (as a contractor) for a agency (that I've mentioned before, if you really care) ...
I see it as being two things:
And of course, we're getting all sorts of clouds now -- public cloud, public companies with specialized government clouds, agency clouds, departmental clouds and clusters, etc. And for the departmental one they're trying to get us to move over to, they can't tell us what the cost model is going to be. (other than we know it'll be cost / year, while our budget is built around infrequent hardware replacement costs + lower reoccurring sysadmin time)
Doubtful it was an automated translator -- those would have been more likely to have spelled the words correctly:
So if his other shoe had a printer ... then he could receive faxes! brilliant!
I've worked as a contractor for the federal government for the last 8 years, I've been a municipal elected official for the last 4 years, I was chief election judge for the same municipality for 4 years, I did two years of contracting for a state government, and I interned for three summers in high school with the DoD.
So, I actually *do* know how these things work ... and all it really takes it one person who knows what they hell they're doing to get these things straightened out.
In my case, the location that I work has an 'excess warehouse' ... which, given the right person to sign off on the paperwork, I've been able to go down there and acquire old computer equipment to repurpose in different roles. (one of which required me going through the higher up 'I can't believe they still have this stuff around' shelves to try to find a working 21" CRT monitor that met certain size & weight distribution requirements)
Given the right people to do this, you could have those things repurposed and placed into government buildings for people to figure out which floor they need to go to for different issues; what courtroom for specific cases; card catalog lookups in libraries; etc.
At the very least, all of the e-voting machines that I've seen have touch screens. I would think that someone could be able to get these for pennies on the dollar, and find a way to use the parts to build kiosks for other purposes.
The CPUs might not have the necessary power for much, but if it's just a lookup & display system, it shouldn't require much.
After a bit of digging, I found a list of the Atmos locations, and it's barely a handful:
http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/technology/cinema/dolby-atmos.html#Locations
If you're on the US east coast, there doesn't look to be a theatre between New Jersey and Florida ... so most of us won't get a chance to find out if it's worth it. (and as one of those people w/ poor vision ... this I'd be interested in ... 3D video, not so much)
This stuff's been out for years, but it just wasn't freely available to the public -- you had to pay someone to get access to it. (oh ... and those groups sold to governments ... I know my county has access to pictometry.com ... I have no idea what all they use it for, but their website has suggestions)
Now that Google et.al. want to make it freely available, so the general public can use it, it's finally getting attention?
Experience means different things to different people ... '22 years computer experience' could mean, 'I used an Apple ][e when I was in elementary school, and we got to play Oregon Trail', vs. 'I ran my own BBS back in the day'.
If they were on Prodigy, Compuserve or AOL, it might've just mean that he knows how to send email:
--The IT Crowd, 'Yesterday's Jam'
-- Red Dwarf, "Waiting for God"
-- Red Dwarf, "Thanks for the Memories"
--Red Dwarf, "Kryten"