Steve Wozniak came out of retirement this week to spearhead research at new Fusion-io in Salt Lake City. The new SSD (all solid-state server memory) no bigger than hand-sized is 100 times faster than legacy technology and draws much less power.
Takeaway #2
Woz takes a break from teaching fifth graders in Los Gatos California living under the radar for ten years. He's bake an believes SSD is the future and memory will never be the same.
To deliver server-based slot machines to its newest casino, Aliante Station Casinos in Las Vegas NV built a IP network 10 times as dense as it built before.
Takeaway #2
The slot machine ends is a PC, so you can change the game, centrally.
Takeaway #3
Changes to older slot games, meant visits to each machine so it's quite labor intensive and centralized deployment of server-based games changes that, so you can do a change in the middle of the night. You need a bigger pipe.
Takeaway #4
The Station opened in November, with 500 network switches,400 just for the casino floor and 2,400 server-based slot machines running on gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to each game. Each bank of six games has a Cisco 3560, and each 3560 has a fiber connection to two Cisco 6500s."
Takeaway #5
The Cisco Call Manager supports 1,000 phones.
Takeaway #6
A distributed antenna system (DAS) boosts internal communications, and wireless LAN. The signals originate from four major wireless carriers .
Takeaway #7
The huge number of switches was more than the company dealt with before. Spectrum eHealth detects network anomalies every five minutes,"
Takeaway #8
Right before we came online, we were bringing up the 10 gigabit fiber ring when an outage fault isolation by Spectrum saved us.
Charles Platt took a job at Walmart to investigate why the company has been so controversial and unpopular throughout its recent history.
Takeaway #2
The employees at the Walmart all seemed to like their jobs, felt that they had some autonomy in the way they ran their sections of the store, and earned more than they would at Target or fast food restaurants.
Takeaway #3
Walmart's success is due in large part to Wal-Mart's ability to detect demand and respond to it by "distributing decision-making power to grass-roots level," giving low level employees the ability to order more products in high demand.
Takeaway #4
Platt makes the case that because value is determined by demand for certain skills, employees at Wal-Mart are getting paid about what they should, and that the real scandal isn't Wal-Mart's practices but the fact that despite a free public education system there are so many unskilled workers in the U.S.
Takeaway #5
Wal-Mart pays a U.S. average of $10.86 power compared to the $8.67 average for retail employees and the $6.55 federal minimum wage.
Takeaway #6
Most of the anti-Wal-Mart campaigning has been done directly by or with support from unions such as the United Food and Commercial Workers Int'l Union.
Takeaway #7
Wal-Mart and other big box retailers have provided much more convenience than "mom-and-pop" stores in the past, who were often under-supplied and whose employees were at the mercy of the sole-proprietor with no superiors to appeal to.
NASA Caltech-JPL engineers designed a robot for planetary crater exploration that looks like a fat axle with a bicycle wheel at each end so comes the name Axel. www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov presents an expanded demonstration. You will want one of these!
Japanese scientists figure out how to go beyond heating pellets to cylinders of carbonized biomass to achieve up to 80% efficiency home heating while in addition reducing GHG emissions. Get your cylinders from Japan and dramatically cut down your heating costs. R&D Magazine.
"The 2009 Senate American Reinvestment and Recovery Act aims to get the engine started again. The U.S. economy has been productive, but capital is short. Workers are taking it on the chin, and soon, America’s R&D infrastructure will absorb some punches."
Takeaway #2
An effort by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) involves removing nearly $80 billion from the more than $900 billion.
Takeaway #3
100% of the National Science Foundation’s $1.4 billion budget, Drug Administration, NOAA, Alternative Vehicle Technology and NIST see dramatic cuts.
Takeaway #4
100% slashing of the Dept. of Energy’s Office of Science increase. $5.2 billion (or about 90%) of the increase in Prevention and Wellness funding were cut and billions for HIV/AIDS testing, diabetes screening, and pandemic flu prevention. None of these problems will fade without funding, and it could be they will intensify.
Google Maps upgrade marries social networking, mapping and mobility
Takeaway #2
An upgrade to Google Maps that allows people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices
Takeaway #3
Contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail.
Takeaway #4
A beta version of Google Latitude was released more than a year ago.
Takeaway #5
You see if your spouse is stuck in traffic, a buddy is in town, know that a loved one landed safely. Feel close to the people you care about."
Takeaway #6
GPS technology has been available from other vendors for some time, Google's entry into the business prompts a lot of buzz.
Takeaway #7
Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, said there are obvious privacy issues when people know your every move.
Takeaway #8
"Latitude puts a powerful tool in users' hands. With Latitude, it can be done without taking the time to call service people to find out if the workers actually are where they think they are.
Seth Weintraub Seth Weintraub:
Google Latitude: Ten usesthink through who can access such personal information. "Users need to understand how to do it and why they probably don't want to constantly broadcast their locations to the world at large," he added.
Google explained in an online statement that users can opt into the GPS feature or allow only specific friends or family members to follow their travels. Once an agreement is reached, users will be able to see their friends' profile pictures appear on a map through their mobile device or desktop computer.
The Japanese are close to perfecting a replacement to the current tedium of human-to-human sexual relations.
Takeaway #2
The doll is fully animatronic, designed to be superior to the human body in both sexual appendage size and resistance to extreme blunt force trauma.
Takeaway #3
Material resembles human skin but resists liquidation at even extreme heat. Yoshimaritsu, the makers of the doll, claim that in the case of a fire the genitals will sear closed, safely sealing any genetic deposits for enjoyment by future generations.
Takeaway #4
Product is already the most anticipated of the decade, beating out the chair that tells you when your bowels are full and the urinal that cries if used.
Twitter’s going mainstream, Yahoo is poised to reclaim it’s Majestic Web 2.0 position.
Windows is spliting Windows 7 six ways and even Techcrunch is building a Tablet PC…
Alright! This was a feature that was requested from the beginning but clearly they wanted to do it right! I’m ok with that because Friendfeed just might have the most comprehensive internet snapshots online! They’ve become their own search engine.
Hulu un hit avec les créateurs du contenu dérivé et pirates. La plate-forma vidéo permet le téléchargement des série télé via Bit-Torrent pour un visionnement international.