- 2007 is the year of the laptop.
- Laptop sales will exceed desktop sales for the first time.
- Prices have dropped as displays and electronics have dropped in price.
- Battery life and improved as processors become more power efficient.
- Wi-Fi connectivity has cut the network wiring tether.
- This year I would opt for a laptop because of the portability
- Major Manufacturers: Dell (US), Gateway (US), Compaq/HP (US), Toshiba (J) , Lenovo/IBM (C), Sony (J), Acer (T)
- Processors
- Intel Core Duo is a very efficient dual-core
- AMD Turion X2 dual core mobile technology (to save)
- Get at least 1 GByte of RAM
- Don’t forget about refurbished laptops from manufactures. You could save 30%.
- If you delete the photos from your camera by mistake, you can recover the deleted files using low cost utilities
- The data is not deleted.
- Only the files names are deleted
- Sometimes only the first letter of the file name is deleted.
- Don’t take anymore pictures because you may overwrite deleted files
- Two file recovery programs that have gotten good reviews are:
- Media Recovery (www.mediarecover.com) — $29
- Digital Photo Recovery (www.photosrecovery.com) — $29
- One final note: backup your digital pictures
- Two copies are needed somewhere
- Backup to second hard drive
- Backup to CD
- Keep extra CD in safe place
- SN 2006gy was an extremely energetic supernova
- Definition of supernova.
- The explosion caused when a massive star, at least 8 times the Sun’s mass, dies (exhausts its fuel) and collapses.
- If the original star is less than 20 solar masses, the supernova will leave behind a neutron star.
- Heavier stars will collapse into black holes.
- Supernova explosions are among the most energetic events in the Universe, and they forge the heavy elements such as carbon, oxygen, and silicon.
- Discovered around September 18, 2006 by R. Quimby and P. Mondol
- Studied by several teams of astronomers using facilities that included the Chandra, Lick, and Keck Observatories.
- Chandra Website: chandra.harvard.edu/
- On May 7, 2007, NASA and several of the astronomers announced the first detailed analyses of the supernova, describing it as the "brightest stellar explosion ever recorded".
- The "SN 2006gy" explosion occurred in a galaxy 240 million light-years away, called NGC 1260
- 100 times more energetic than typical supernovas
- It was detected in September 2006 using ground-based telescopes and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatory.
- It brightened slowly for 70 days, and at its peak emitted more than 50 billion Suns worth of light-shining 10 times brighter than its host galaxy-before dimming
- Could be the first evidence of a new type of supernova fueled by an antimatter engine, exploding rather than collapsing into a black hole.
- Big Bang – 13.7 Billion Years Ago
- Three minutes after the big bang, the temperature has reached 109 K, protons and neutrons combine to form what will become the nuclei of elements
- 375,000 years after big bang, the temperature has reached 3000K, hydrogen forms.
- 100,000 Million years after big bang, first stars formations begin
- After 1 billion years, the temperature is 20 K and galaxies and stars have begun to form via gravitational contraction.
- Our Sun was formed 8.9 billion years after big bang. It is 4.8 billion years old and will live another 5.2 billion years
- Stars are fueled by nuclear fusion
- Fusion Sequence: H, He, C, O, N, Ne, Si, Fe
- They either collapse into a black hole or explode
- Burn durations for star with 20 solar masses. The final S/Si conversion is to Iron (Fe).
- Hydrogen burn (37 Million K) – 8.1 million years
- Helium burn (188 Million K) – 1.2 million years
- Carbon burn (870 Million K) – 976 years
- Neon burn (1,570 Million K) – 0.6 years
- Oxygen burn (1,980 Million K) – 1.25 years
- Sulfur/Silicon burn (3,340 Million K)—11.5 days
- These early stars died explosively as supernovae they produced the first spray of heavy elements.
- Birth of galaxies, by binding the stars and gas together to create these cosmic ecosystems, was crucial to the buildup of heavy elements to a level where planets and life were possible.
- Every atom in our body was formed in star somewhere
- A great website (origins.jpl.nasa.gov/index1.html)
- Monday, May 07, 2007, Page 11
- Two rulings in the last week set new standards for challenges to patents
- Many hope to curb "patent trolls" whose existence is based on royalty payments.
- Revenues in the United States for patent licenses were about $15 billion in 1990; eight years later they had soared to more than $100 billion.
- IBM alone took in well over $1 billion from licensing last year and received a record 2,756 new patents.
- In one key ruling, the nine US justices tossed out a patent for an adjustable accelerator pedal for motorists as "obvious."
- The case involved a suit by auto parts makers KSR International against Teleflex, which developed a system that combines sensor technology with a mechanism to automatically set the height of vehicle control pedals for drivers of different sizes.
- By ruling the patent as "obvious" the justices held that a company cannot hold a valid patent for a device that anyone could have invented, such as a wheel or door.
- In a separate case the same day, the high court ruled that AT&T could not collect damages from Microsoft for patented software sold in other countries.
- The decision could also benefit Internet telephony firm Vonage Holdings, which risks being shut down in a patent dispute with Verizon Communications.
- Legal opinions vary. It depends who payroll you are on.
- Some feel the ruling is going too far and is watering down the patent system.
- While others feel is has not gone far enough.
- Pharmaceuticals are particularly worried.
- Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com and their special invention:
- The patented One Click® feature was invented by Bezos
- U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411, "Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network."
- He won an injunction forcing his chief competitor, Barnesandnoble.com, to add deliberate complication to its ordering process.
- A St. Louis patent broker is suing Yahoo over a "method of effecting commerce in a networked computer environment in a computerized system" — that is, shopping online.
- Another company sued eBay based on a patent to the use a computer mouse to click and make an online purchase.
- Priceline.com, has patented its Internet version of an ancient auction technique, the name-your-price "reverse" auction, and is suing Microsoft’s Expedia.com travel service.
- Microsoft patented a well-known "style sheet" technology just as it was being adopted as standard by the World Wide Web Consortium.
- Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, was sued by NTP Inc, a US firm that had accused RIM of violating its patents in its mobile software. RIM eventually settled the case.
- A California software company is suing eBay over database technology.
- Two professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are suing the Ask Jeeves search site over two patents on handling questions in natural language.
- A Boeing software engineer has patented a basic method of correcting the century in dates stored in databases and sent a threatening form letter to 700 of the nation’s largest corporations
- Multi-Tech Systems is suing the three leading PC makers, Compaq, Dell and Gateway, over patents on transmitting voice and data.
- Sightsound.com is suing at least one music retailer and demanding royalties from others over a patent on selling audio and video recordings online.
- A technique for measuring a breast with a tape to determine bra size
- U.S. Patent No. 5,965,809: No padding: "Method of bra size determination" (by direct measurement).
- Issued: 1999. Inventor: Edward Pechter.
- Executing a tennis stroke while wearing a kneepad (U.S. 5,993,366)
- Early History
- Running machine (1817)
- Rear wheel drive bicycle (1843)
- Pneumatic Tire (1845)
- Pedal powered two wheeler (1866)
- Chain-driven Safety Bicycle (1879)
- Easy to use derailleur (1910)
- Frames Design
- Steel and Aluminum(1980)
- Titanium and Carbon (1990)
- Carbon is superior in cost, weight, and strength. Only disadvantage is durability.
- Ceramic Ball Bearings (2000)
- Rounder, long lasting, expensive ($150 to $250 per wheel)
- Aerodynamic wheels (2005)
- Carbon deep dish wheels ($1500 to $2000 per two wheel set)
- www.zipp.com
- Shifting system
- 10-speed cassettes in rear wheel (2000)
- Two chain rings would give 20 speeds (3 would give 30)
- Break lever shift apparatus
- Shoes and Pedals
- Clipless pedals (shoes lock into pedal)
- Quick release in a wreck
- Pedals ($40 to $150), Shoes ($80 to $300)
- Cost of typical bike for a competition
- Entry level — Trek 1000, all aluminum frame, $700
- Mid-level — Specialized Allez, aluminum/carbon frame , $900 to $1000
- Upper level – Trek Madon series, carbon frame, $1,800 to $8,000
- Richard’s Bike – Trek 5200, carbon frame, $2,400.
- Best web sites to look at competition bikes
- U.S. Military Academy at West Point won the Cyber Defense Exercise for the third time.
- They defeated teams from the nation’s four other service academies.
- The exercise, held April 16-20, pitted student teams from West Point and the Air Force, Naval, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine academies against attackers from the National Security Agency and the Defense Department.
- The exercise is the culmination of information assurance classes for cadets and midshipmen in computer science and electrical engineering departments. It is a learning experience as much as a test.
- The exercise gives students a chance to practice what they have been learning during the first half of the year in classes on networking, security and electrical engineering.
- Each academy had to build and maintain a virtual network that includes a Web server providing dynamic content from a back-end database, an e-mail server with public-key encryption, chat service, file sharing and a Domain Name System server for name resolution
- Computers infected with malware that had to be included on the networks to represent the effects of uninformed users. Students had to clean these machines.
- To stay competitive in the global economy, it’s imperative that IT organizations implement a “Chindia” strategy
- Gartner examined how China and India are altering the future of technology and innovation in the newly released book “IT and The East”, published by Harvard Business School Press.
- The “Chindia” framework is offered as a means to examine how these two countries may soon re-assert their collective influence on the international stage.
- “Today China and India are producing some of the world’s best-trained computer science and electrical engineering graduates
- Far from being simply a source of cheap labor, both countries soon will be able to compete favorably for global business – as India’s IT services firms have done – not on price, but on competence and capability
- The bilateral economy of China and India is in its infancy, but new momentum suggests a powerful relationship is building.
- China-India – ‘Chindia’ – enterprises will have access to complementary skills and resources and, in turn, will have the potential to lead many global markets.
- ICANN once again rejected the establishment of a .xxx top level domain (TLD).
- The vote was 8-4 with a single abstention, that of CEO Paul Twomey.
- ICANN is Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (www.icann.org)
- If approved, porn sites would be www.sitename.xxx
- The debate raged largely around the phony issue of whether a .xxx domain would put ICANN in the content regulation business, when rejecting the domain is itself a content regulation decision.
- ICANN just concluded its annual meeting in Lisbon, Spain
- Other issues discussed were IPV6 addressing, registrar accreditation, operating procedures for accountability