Technology
gregladen | January 23, 2008For the geeks only: An overview of D, a programming language that gloms C and C++.
Here.
pontiff | January 23, 2008Fortune has put out its list of the top 100 companies to work for. The Google Monster is number one. Washington state does pretty good, as it is in a tie for fourth in the total number of companies on the list with headquarters in the state. (Per capita it comes in third, losing to Delaware and D.C.)
Looking through their article on "10 fascinating Googlers" I found Wei-Hwa Huang. Hey, he was in my class at Caltech! Indeed Wei-Hwa was responsible for one of my favorite stories about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Huh?
Wei-Hwa, you see, is a world class puzzle…
clock | January 22, 2008On the heels of David Warlick's session on using online tools in the science classroom, this initiative is really exciting:
Teachers, Students, Web Gurus, and Foundations Launch Campaign to Transform Education, Call for Free, Adaptable Learning Materials Online
Cape Town, January 22nd, 2008--A coalition of educators, foundations, and internet pioneers today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the internet.
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching…
clock | January 22, 2008The Science Communication Consortium presents:
DISCUSSION ON THE ROLES OF EMERGING MEDIA OUTLETS IN COMMUNICATING SCIENCE
Thursday, JAN 31st, 7-8:30pm
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, East Building Seminar Room (1425 Madison Ave at 98th St, NYC)
A discussion of how science is communicated effectively - and ineffectively - through emerging media outlets, such as blogging, podcasts, online multimedia, and more.
Blogs, podcasts, and other new media outlets have changed the way people learn about scientific info, and shortened the shelf life of these stories. This immediacy of information…
gregladen | January 21, 2008Holy crap! The Age of The Machines is nigh: a bunch of scientists in Switzerland have created learning robots that can lie to each other. Okay, so they don't swill beer or put bends in girders--they just communicate to each other with benign flashing lights, thank goodness, instead of using lasers to destroy humans:
The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding "poison." Imagine their surprise when one generation of robots learned to…
gregladen | January 21, 2008The CIA on Friday admitted that cyberattacks have caused at least one power outage affecting multiple cities outside the United States.
Interesting...
Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said that CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue confirmed that online attackers had caused at least one blackout. The disclosure was made at a New Orleans security conference Friday attended by international government officials, engineers, and security managers from North American energy companies and utilities.
Paller said that Donahue presented him with a written statement that read, "We have…
gregladen | January 21, 2008Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest and first previewed to the scientific community at the Science Foo camp at the Googleplex last August, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon.
Check it out here.
gregladen | January 21, 2008Check out this picture of the Internet! Can you find yourself? I think I see my house!!!
gregladen | January 18, 2008The Year 2038 problem could begin today. Similar to the Y2K problem, certain operating systems cannot handle dates after about 3 AM Universal Time on January 19th, 2038. If your bank is handling a 30 year mortgage starting today, funny things could happen starting now.
The Y2K problem occurred because the amount of space allocated in computer hardware and software to store the date was insufficient to handle a year greater than 1999. A huge amount of effort and funds were spent in preparation for Y2K. Arguments have been made that the problem was overblown (including the fact that across…
pontiff | January 18, 2008Second Life, the virtual community, bans banks which aren't banks in the real world.
Since the collapse of Ginko Financial in August 2007, Linden Lab has received complaints about several in-world "banks" defaulting on their promises. These banks often promise unusually high rates of L$ return, reaching 20, 40, or even 60 percent annualized.
Second Life imitating the first?
pontiff | January 17, 2008Does anyone know of an RSS reader which adjust the order of your feeds depending on which feeds you tend to click on / spend time reading?
gregladen | January 16, 2008Slashdot has a number of interesting technology tidbits you may want to know about:
Later this year, at ShopRite supermarkets in the eastern US, Microsoft will be rolling out computerized shopping carts. These carts will allow people with a ShopRite card to enter their shopping list on the ShopRite site from home, and then pull up the list on their grocery cart when they swipe their card. The new carts will also display advertisements depending on where in the supermarket the cart is, using RFID technology to help locate it."
[source]
"IBM is molding its Jazz technology, which helps…
revere | January 16, 2008Another one of those stories about what is truly, a technological marvel: shrinking a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer down to the size of an iPod, with the target size being that of a matchbox. Designed by MIT engineers, the device which can analyze the air for hazardous gases (and could be adapted for other media like water) is touted as a possible distributed sensor for water supplies to protect us against chemical attacks or in subway systems to warn of terrorist attacks. I think this is bullshit and I'll explain why after a description of this ingenious device:
Their detector uses gas…
gregladen | January 16, 2008The world's thinnest computer is coming out officially in a couple of weeks, but apparently you can get it now. It's a Mac, it will cost about 1,800 bucks US, and it is said that you can "fit it into an interoffice mailing envelope."
I strongly recommend that you do not put this computer into an interoffice mailing envelope.
The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing…
gregladen | January 15, 2008
This is a virtual keyboard, just a laser image on your desk. See the others in the list of 10 Strange Keyboards, here.
gregladen | January 15, 2008If there's a sense of déjà vu permeating a rather massive corporate campus in Redmond, Washington right now, it wouldn't be surprising. The European Commission, which regulates competition for the European Union, today announced a brand new antitrust investigation against Microsoft.
Read about it here.
gregladen | January 15, 2008Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase's investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he's made some unexpected discoveries: about the novel ways illiterate people interface with their cellphones, or the role the cellphone can sometimes play in commerce, or the deep emotional bonds we all seem to share with our phones. And watch for his surefire trick to keep you from misplacing your keys.
gregladen | January 15, 2008National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.
Read about it here.
pontiff | January 15, 2008Speaking of airports, why can't there be more airports like Albuquerque's Sunport: free wireless and even nice places to plug in and lay out your laptop:
Actually this brings up a point I've often pondered while sitting in an airport refusing to pay the $9.99 to connect to the Internet. Seattle is quite the software city (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) I would expect that a large number of employees from these software companies and their customers pass through the Seattle airport. And yet, when I go to the airport, there is no free wireless connection. :( You would think that it would be to…
drorzel | January 14, 2008Well, OK, not really. You can, however, hear what I sound like by listening to a couple of official Tor podcasts made from the panel I did at Worldcon with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Adam Rakunas, Paul Cornell and Yoshio Kobayashi.
The panel was back in September, but I haven't seen the files on Tor's web page until just now. You can access them directly, if they move off the index page, using these links:
Part 1/2
Part 2/2
It's a pretty wide-ranging discussion, and a couple of funny things get said. The sound quality is pretty good, especially given that it was recorded by a single Tor…