GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org): "GooOS, the Google Operating System"
"Great post about what Google is up to by Rich Skrenta. He argues that Google is building a huge computer with a custom operating system that everyone on earth can have an account on."
I think that Google has an interesting business model, they have a LOT of servers and the money and talent to do something quite extraordinary. They also seem to be going after the same business that Microsoft wants to be in 3 years from now, with clients that can search both locally and remotely. It will be interesting to see if they come to blows, like Microsoft did with Netscape back in the 90's.
Apple 30 inch Display
"Feast your eyes on more than four million pixels in the first high-resolution 30-inch flat panel display designed for the personal computer. The Apple Cinema Display line features a gorgeous new anodized aluminum enclosure to complement the Power Mac G5 or PowerBook G4 and includes PC-compatible 20-inch and 23-inch models. The state of the art starts at $1299."
That is one very nice monitor. I'd like two please.
How-To Tuesday: Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "How-To Tuesday: Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod"
This site has a good article on how to turn your iPod into a pirate radio station!
"This was going to be “How-To increase the range of your iTrip mini”. But after playing around with the new iTrip mini, the FM broadcasting accessory for the iPod (
our review here) our little minds got working on some ideas. We thought we might be able to make the range of Griffin’s iTrip mini a little better if took it apart and exposed the antenna, turns out we could. And then we thought, hey- we could use a couple iPods to broadcast something we wanted to get out there, perhaps not “should” that is, but could. So that was our motivation, and here’s the How-To."
Sky Server
At the Tech.Ed 2004 speech Jim Gray, one of the speakers, who works for Microsoft's Research Division, talked us through the work he is doing on linking very large databases together across the web. One of these is Skyserver
which is an attempt to bring together all of the data from Sky surverys into one interface. Amazing pictures here.
http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr2/en SDSS SkyServer: "This website presents data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to make a map of a large part of the universe. We would like to show you the beauty of the universe, and share with you our excitement as we build the largest map in the history of the world"
The First Computer Virus?The Animal Episode
"On a very early computer system, which lacked any shared directory structure but also lacked any protection tools, a programmer invented a novel way of making the game available to several users. A version of the game existed in one user's directory. Whenever he played the game, the program made a copy of itself into another directory. ... If that directory had previously no version of ANIMAL, the game had been offered to yet another user."
...ANIMAL was such a popular game that eventually every directory in the company system contained a copy. "Furthermore, as employees of the company were transferred to other divisions...they took ANIMAL as well, and thus it spread from machine to machine within the company." ... Only when someone devised a more "virulent" version of the game was the situation brought under control. When the new version of ANIMAL was played, it copied itself into other directories not once but twice. Given enough time, it was thought, this program would eventually overwrite all the old versions of ANIMAL. After a year had passed, a certain date triggered each copy of the new ANIMAL program. "Instead of replicating itself twice whenever it was invoked, it now played one final game, wished the user `goodbye' and then deleted itself, And thus ANIMAL was purged from the system."
The McCulloch Effect - An On-line Science Exhibit
Stranger than Fiction dept - you really have to try out this optical illusion, it actually lasts for up to 24 hours. Its wierd...but not permanent!
Institute for War and Peace Reporting: "The Father of Invention
A local man has spent his life developing original solutions to everyday problems."
There is an amazing story on the Insitute for War and Peace Reporting website about a 62 year old man in Afghanistan who has 341 inventions to his credit but has never been had any formal education and can hardly read or write.
Tech.Ed 2004 Amsterdam
I have returned from Amsterdam, didn't have time to post while I was there, it was a long hard week of seminars, sessions, hands-on-labs and beer. Lots of beer. I have never seen so much Heineken in my entire life.
New products announced include SQL Server Express, a replacement for MSDE. There is also a new VB product called VB.NET Express, which is aimed at enthusiasts and students, but which is based on the new VB.NET interface. This stuff is good, it all but writes the code for you, all you have to do is work out what you want to do and supply the variable names. With predictive text and text snippets, plus intellisense, this is the programming environment you have been waiting for. The new stuff for SQL looks good too, with queries constructed in VB and not SQL. Very powerful.
There was a great opening keynote speech, with African drummers leading the audience (all 7000 of whom were issued with drums) in a mass drumming session. 7000 drummers make a lot of noise! There were also opportunities to top up your drumming experience with lunchtime drum clinics. We were all allowed to keep our drums and take them home, and were issued with bright orange bags with a clip on so you could attach your drum. There were a lot of people heading through Schipol on Friday night with orange bags and attached drums.
