So I went to the postgraduate open day yesterday at the School of Computer Science at Manchester just to check things out. Unfortunately for me, a lot of the talks was about masters courses, and only about 20 minutes dedicated to information about PhD courses. And there wasn’t a lot of information included that I already didn’t know.

So the course is 3 years, there are a lot of full-paid studentships offered by the school (which is the main reason I’d want to apply), and the minimum requirement is a 2.1 honours in a computer/engineering/physics/maths related degree. To apply, you need 2 written references, and also a proposal about your area of research. Failing the latter, you can also choose an area of research from the list already proposed by the school itself.

I do suppose though, however, there isn’t really much to learn about doing a PhD course, until you choose the area of research you want to expertise in. So it’s essentially, what you make of it.

I think for the time being, it’ll be just a thought, and it will probably stay that way until I reach my final year of my degree next September.

The July 2009 issue of the IEEE/Computer magazine in its “32 and 16 Years Ago” section remembers that 16 years ago:

Software Engineering (p. 68) “The IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors has approved a motion to establish an ad hoc committee to serve as a steering group for evaluation, planning, coordination, and action related to establishing software engineering as a profession. The action came during the board’s May 21 meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering.”

In the same issue Neville Holmes writes:

“Now software engineering aims to be a branch of engineering, but is finding it difficult to be accepted as such. The problem is that other branches sensibly use the skills and talents of technicians to ensure the success of their professional work. Software engineering doesn’t; it won’t let go of programming”

It took a lot of people and effort to design programming languages and models (procedural, functional, etc) that tried to define how people should practice programming. It took only two pieces of software to make anyone think that is a quality programmer: Access and Visual Basic. So Holmes is right: Let go of programming; it is a lost cause.

After reading one of my posts, John Allen (author of “Anatomy of Lisp“) sent me his unpublished manuscript “Wither Software Engineering” and corresponding presentation entitled “More Ballast!” which also deal with the subject of whether Software Engineering is actually a branch of Engineering. You can freely download the pdf slides and audio of an older version of the presentation (Title: History, Mystery and Ballast). In them Allen deals with the transition of traditional Engineering from an experience-based craft to a science-based discipline. Much of the historical data he uses come from “Engineering education in Europe and the USA, 1750-1930“. I have also read “Education, technology, and industrial performance in Europe, 1850-1939” (also translated in Greek) on the subject.

Basically Engineering training followed the path of:

• Apprenticeship for a long period of time under the supervision of an Engineer
• Study (and get certified for) the equipment of a specific manufacturer paying a considerable amound of money, and
• University studies

Does this ring a bell regarding today’s IT arena? It is exactly for this reason that Allen was motivated. Mathematics and Physics transformed traditional Engineering. Can this be done with computation and mathematical logic? His presentation closes with:

It is this kind of education, not Java vocational training, that will bring McCarthy’s 40+ year old quote to life:

“It is reasonable to hope that the relationship between computation and mathematical logic will be as fruitful in the next century as that between analysis and physics in the past. The development of this relationship demands a concern for both applications and for mathematical elegance.”

At least for programmers we are not there yet. The link between their work and mathematical logic is not obvious for all.

In the closing discussion of HDMS 2009 there was a debate whether “their stuff” could be considered as a branch of Engineering, regardless of liability issues. Alex Labrinidis said “Give us 2000 years to perfect bridge building and then come back asking for liability”. Lambrinidis is wrong. Hammurabi solved the issue of Engineering liability back in 1790 BC:

If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then the builder shall be put to death.

After the discussion ended Panos Vassiliadis pointed to me Peter J. Denning’s “Is Software Engineering Engineering?” article which concludes:

“We have not arrived at that point in software engineering practice where we can satisfy all the engineering criteria described in this column. We still need more effective tools, better software engineering education, and wider adoption of the most effective practices. Even more, we need to encourage system thinking that embraces hardware and user environment as well as software.

By understanding the fundamental ideas that link all engineering disciplines, we can recognize how those ideas can contribute to better software production. This will help us construct the engineering reference discipline that Glass tells us is missing from our profession. Let us put this controversy to rest.”

Bertrand Meyer adds that the one sure way to advance software engineering is to “pass a law that requires extensive professional analysis of any large software failure”. Meyer is not alone. “Where are the dead bodies?” asks Derek M. Jones who also writes: “The lack of dead bodies attributed to a software root cause suggests that it is very still early days for the field of high integrity software development.”

There you have it: No dead bodies, no Engineering. Hammurabi knew that long before Engineers did.

You may now want to read “Cargo-cult Engineering“

#include <std/disclaimer.h>

1. Pre-requisite

- You should have a separate partition (FAT32, ext2, ext3) for containing ISO image (or files in ISO image).

2. Preparation

- Download ISO image: http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora-all

- Move ISO image to separate partition

- Copying files related to boot prcoess

# mount /where ISO image located/Fedora-X-DVD-x.iso /mnt/ -ro loop   # mount ISO file

# cp /mnt/isolinux/initrd.img  /boot/;cp /mnt/isolinux/vmlinuz  /boot/     #Copy the initrd.img and vmlinuz to /boot/ partition

- Create grub entry

# echo “title Fedora X installation” >> /boot/grub/menu.lst

# echo “kernel /vmlinuz” >> /boot/grub/menu.lst

# echo “initrd /initrd.img” >> /boot/grub/menu.lst

- Reboot and Select “Install from hard disk”~~

ref. http://gofedora.com/how-to-install-fedora-without-cd-dvd/

Cloud computing is Internet- (“cloud-”) based development and use of computer technology (“computing”). In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. It typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.

The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it conceals. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online which are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.These applications are broadly divided into the following categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Utility Computing, Web Services, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Managed Service Providers (MSP), Service Commerce, and Internet Integration. The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that is often used to represent the Internet in flow charts and diagrams.
Characteristics
In general, cloud computing customers do not own the physical infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, whereas others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing “perishable and intangible” computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development). A side-effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits. In addition, “increased high-speed bandwidth” makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.
Economics
Diagram showing economics of cloud computing versus traditional IT, including capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx)Cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is usually billed on a utility (e.g., resources consumed, like electricity) or subscription (e.g., time-based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost. A few cloud providers are now beginning to offer the service for a flat monthly fee as opposed to on a utility billing basis. Other benefits of this time sharing-style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. In general, users can terminate the contract at any time (thereby avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty), and the services are often covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of electricity generators by electricity grids early in the 20th century.Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget, the cloud model might not make great fiscal sense. Other factors impacting the scale of any potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company’s data center as compared to the cloud vendor’s, the company’s existing operating costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being hosted in the cloud.

Architecture

The majority of cloud computing infrastructure, as of 2009, consists of reliable services delivered through data centers and built on servers with different levels of virtualization technologies. The services are accessible anywhere that provides access to networking infrastructure. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers’ computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers and typically offer SLAs. Open standards are critical to the growth of cloud computing, and open source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations.
Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, comprises hardware and software designed by a cloud architect who typically works for a cloud integrator. It typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over application programming interfaces, usually web services.This closely resembles the Unix philosophy of having multiple programs each doing one thing well and working together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts.Cloud architecture extends to the client, where web browsers and/or software applications access cloud applications.Cloud storage architecture is loosely coupled, where metadata operations are centralized enabling the data nodes to scale into the hundreds, each independently delivering data to applications or users.
Public cloudPublic cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional mainstream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-site third-party provider who shares resources and bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.

Hybrid cloudA hybrid cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers “will be typical for most enterprises”. A hybrid cloud can describe configuration combining a local device, such as a Plug computer with cloud services. It can also describe configurations combining virtual and physical, colocated assets—for example, a mostly virtualized environment that requires physical servers, routers, or other hardware such as a network appliance acting as a firewall or spam filter.

Private cloudPrivate cloud and internal cloud are neologisms that some vendors have recently used to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualisation automation) products claim to “deliver some benefits of cloud computing without the pitfalls”, capitalising on data security, corporate governance, and reliability concerns. They have been criticized on the basis that users “still have to buy, build, and manage them” and as such do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on management, essentially “[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept”.While an analyst predicted in 2008 that private cloud networks would be the future of corporate IT, there is some uncertainty whether they are a reality even within the same firm. Analysts also claim that within five years a “huge percentage” of small and medium enterprises will get most of their computing resources from external cloud computing providers as they “will not have economies of scale to make it worth staying in the IT business” or be able to afford private clouds. Analysts have reported on Platform’s view that private clouds are a stepping stone to external clouds, particularly for the financial services, and that future datacenters will look like internal clouds.The term has also been used in the logical rather than physical sense, for example in reference to platform as a service offerings, though such offerings including Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform are not available for on-premises deployment.

Key Characteristics
Agility improves with users able to rapidly and inexpensively re-provision technological infrastructure resources.
Cost is claimed to be greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This ostensibly lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks.
Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house).
Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using (e.g., PC, mobile). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.
Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for:
Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.)
Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels)
Utilization and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilized.
Reliability improves through the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery. Nonetheless, many major cloud computing services have suffered outages, and IT and business managers can at times do little when they are affected.
Scalability via dynamic (“on-demand”) provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for peak loads. Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely-coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.
Security typically improves due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than under traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford. Providers typically log accesses, but accessing the audit logs themselves can be difficult or impossible. Furthermore, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider area and / or number of devices.
Sustainability comes about through improved resource utilization, more efficient systems, and carbon neutrality. Nonetheless, computers and associated infrastructure are major consumers of energy.

Layers
Clients : A cloud client consists of computer hardware and/or computer software that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or that is specifically designed for delivery of cloud services and that, in either case, is essentially useless without it. Mobile (Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile) Thin client (CherryPal, Wyse, Zonbu, gOS-based systems) Thick client / Web browser (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, WebKit)
Application : A cloud application leverages cloud computing in software architecture, often eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer’s own computer, thus alleviating the burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support.  Peer-to-peer / volunteer computing (BOINC, Skype) Web applications (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) Security as a service (MessageLabs, Purewire, ScanSafe, Zscaler) Software as a service (A2Zapps.com, Google Apps, Salesforce) Software plus services (Microsoft Online Services) Storage [Distributed] Content distribution (BitTorrent, Amazon CloudFront) Synchronisation (Dropbox, Live Mesh, SpiderOak, ZumoDrive)
Platform : A cloud platform (PaaS) delivers a computing platform and/or solution stack as a service, generally consuming cloud infrastructure and supporting cloud applications. It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers.
Services Identity (OAuth, OpenID) Payments (Amazon Flexible Payments Service, Google Checkout, PayPal) Search (Alexa, Google Custom Search, Yahoo! BOSS) Real-world (Amazon Mechanical Turk)
Solution stacks Java (Google App Engine) PHP (Rackspace Cloud Sites) Python Django (Google App Engine) Ruby on Rails (Heroku) .NET (Azure Services Platform, Rackspace Cloud Sites) Proprietary (Force.com, WorkXpress, Wolf Frameworks)
Storage [Structured] Databases (Amazon SimpleDB, BigTable) File storage (Amazon S3, Nirvanix, Rackspace Cloud Files) Queues (Amazon SQS)

Servers : The servers layer consists of computer hardware and/or computer software products that are specifically designed for the delivery of cloud services. Fabric computing (Cisco UCS)
Infrastructure : Cloud infrastructure (IaaS) is the delivery of computer infrastructure, typically a platform virtualization environment, as a service. Compute (Amazon CloudWatch, RightScale) Physical machines) Virtual machines (Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Rackspace Cloud Servers) OS-level virtualisation Network (Amazon VPC) Storage [Raw] (Amazon EBS)

Luego revelaré el detalle de las distintas applicaciones y chiches que mueven mi mac-mundo … pero a manera de adelanto confieso que todo se maneja a través de Quicksilver … hasta ahí confieso por ahora.

Site de ensino EAD – “Ensino a Distância” com diversos cursos pagos mas com um curso gratuito de Use Case.

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Link para o curso:

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Diversos cursos para quem quer aprender a programar. Cursos oferecidos:

• Banco de Dados
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• Introdução a Programação I e II

Curso com vídeo aula , apostila e fórum.

Acesse:

http://www.dfjug.org/DFJUG/jedi/index.jsp

Okay I mentioned in the last post that  it was possible through the magic floaty data dust known as wifi you can stream movies from your computer to your Xbox 360 instead. Read on…

The program you need is called tversity which as you have probably guessed from all other software I’ve mentioned is FREE. There is the option to upgrade to the pro version but I’ve stuck with the basic one and it does all I need so far.

Keeping it short and sweet; install, activate and enjoy.

It runs a media server on the computer which is found on the Xbox 360 dashboard under the videos section,  and allows you to play movies and videos straight onto your TV. I have had very few issues running it so far and there is loads of support on their website and  forums if there are any issues. Before being recommended tversity I didn’t realise it was possible to stream without having more expensive specific versions of windows  which support media streaming, that’s why it rocks so much! And it saves on consumable media like DVD’s and CD’s.

Right enough geeking for tonight. Stream away.

I have many sisters (long story), but haven’t had any contact with the one who lives nearest to me for almost three years now.  Not a problem.

You, dear reader, need no more information than that to understand that I was somewhat surprised to receive an email from her a couple of weeks ago !

However, on closer inspection it became obvious that this email was, in fact, spam. I duly clicked on the appropriate button to inform my email host of the fact and thought no more of it.

Last week I received another, even more obvious, spam-mail which was using her email address and it received the same treatment.

But today I received a different email, again from her address, in what I consider to be a very business-like font, and I present the text below verbatim (with the exception of her email address) for you to read.

The first thing to note about this email is that (where I have put xxxxxxxxxx) her email address was actually mis-spelled by the omission of one letter.

The second thing to note is this…. the remainder of the header to the email…

… at which point, all NINETY email addresses from her contacts list were there for everyone to see and share !

Quote… “Sincere apologies for any breach of security which this unfortunate incident may have caused.“… Unquote !

DEFINE WHAT YOU MEAN BY “SECURITY” !

I assume that this problem is being sorted out by someone at Hotmail…. someone who has never heard of BCC … BLIND COPY !

What hope in hell does anyone have of beating spam when even Hotmail are plastering people’s email addresses around for all to see ?

Tip: For all of you who like to forward all those “funny” emails you get to lots of your friends, do what I do.

1. Set up a new contact in your contacts list (address book, or whatever it is called on your system), name it something like “Me Here” (literally !), and put your own email address in it.
2. When you want to forward something on to more than one person, send it To “Me Here” and BLIND COPY (not just COPY) it to everyone you actually want to send it to. (On some systems, such as Yahoo, you may have to click somewhere hear the header to open up the Blind Copy [BCC] option).

You will get an extra copy of the email yourself, but that is easily deleted and you are doing your bit to cut down on the number of email addresses contained in the email.

If you’re a real trooper and spam-hater you could also do what I do and, rather than just forward the email willly-nilly you could Copy the actual relevant part of it, without everybody’s email addresses and all the footers which are already in it, paste that into a “New” email, and then do what I explained earlier.

It only takes a moment or two.

Or is that asking too much ?

As you browse through the web, you can’t help but notice all the hype that is going on with the new operating system, Chromium OS (Chrome OS),  from Google. Many people, especially Google fans anticipated the release that happened two days ago. When Google announced that they where going to release their operating system back in june, many where eager to find out what Google would in fact release. Some thought that it would be android for the pc and others where awaiting a complete smash to “deliver” them from Microsoft’s platform Windows.

But, as we found out, the Chromium OS is not even close to what we might have imagined. Yet, it should have been forseeable. Google is an internet company and their entire business revolves around the internet. Why then should they leave their environment and verge into completely new territory, almost completely owned by Microsoft?

Then think of the Chromium OS in combined with all that Google has to offer… I mean, take a look at all that they offer. Surely the web is becoming more and more part of our life. Each day we use a few sites for checking email, socializing, reading the latest news and just for entertainment purposes. So, in other words, the Chromium OS will be a really nice option for end users, provided that they are constantly connected to the web. This is not a problem for users in the western hemisphere as a constant internet connection is already integrated into our lives.

So it makes sense that Google addresses a niche market and it will certainly change the way of how we use a netbook. Yet, I don’t think that they’ll control the entire desktop market. There are just too many diverse operational fields that cannot be filled by a simple netbook. However, it might be interesting to follow the future developments of nebooks at the upcoming Netbook World Summit in Paris on December 8th, 2009. And who knows, maybe at some point in the future, out entire lives will be controlled by smart devices and all we need is a small netbook.. maybe not even that.

UPDATE: Mandala screenshots (below)

I’ve begun encoding “Robot Dreams”, a short story about a robot named Elvex (LVX-1) whose positronic brain has been uniquely imprinted with fractal patterns, and as a result has learned how to dream.  This text also features Susan Calvin, the mother of robot psychology in the continuity of most of Asimov’s robot stories.  In my encoding of this text, I’ve run into several challenges:

• I’m finding “otherness” more difficult to determine than I’d expected.  This story in particular is challenging, because Elvex has become more “human-like” due to the unique architecture of his brain– a fact that appalls his creator and Susan Calvin.  The more Elvex describes his dreams, appearing increasingly “human”, the more the human characters try to distance themselves from him and emphasize his robotic characteristics.  In this situation, there is a definite tension between “other” and “same”; I can’t ignore that tension by making that attribute “null”, but how can I determine otherness in such an ambivalent circumstance?  …One solution is to look at the source’s motivation.  Is the source saying/doing something to create distance between human and robot, or to draw them closer together?  This raises a new challenge:
• Can a reference then have multiple sources?  Can multiple sources have different motivations, and thus represent different levels on “otherness”?  If the answer is yes, how do I encode this?  …The answer I’ve come up with is to nest my pr_ref tags.  It’s still too early to tell if this is an effective strategy, but I’m trialing it.
• How do I define my type attributes when it seems that the reference is fulfilling more than one of the possible types?  (e.g. in “Robot Dreams”  Susan Calvin interviews Elvex in her characteristically cold, clinical way.  Most of her questions/statements directed at Elvex can be construed both as “interactive”– since she is “interacting” with the robot– and “descriptive”– since she is describing the robot.)  One possible answer is to look at the possibility of multiple sources again.  The other is to identify a hierarchy of types: emotion trumps interaction trumps description, since all references “describe” something, but not all references “describe” an interaction, and not all interactions are emotional.  Without clearly setting this rule out, I think this is a strategy I followed when encoding “Someday”.  When there is a clearly a situation of multiple sources looking at motivation can again be valuable, and using nested tagging seems the natural answer.

I chose “Robot Dreams” because it has several elements that I felt needed to be explored in my analysis of Asimov’s robot stories.  First of all, whereas in “Someday” the two human characters were male children, in “Robot Dreams” the two human characters are female adults.  I wanted to see if gender and age played a factor (note: my tweaked encoding currently doesn’t catalog age as a factor– if it looks like this might be valuable information to mine, I may add it in future iterations).  Secondly it included Susan Calvin.  Although I have not, as yet, developed an element structure to analyze principal human characters, it has always been my intention for Calvin to be my first attempt.  Not only is her name synonymous with Asimov’s robot stories as a recurring character, but she plays a unique role in them as a foil for the various robots she psycho-analyzes; it would be a valuable exercise to compare the relationship references to her with those of the principle robot characters in the same stories.  Is Susan Calvin characterized as more robot (“other”) or more human?  In comparison, are the robot characters more or less human? Does she elicit more of an emotional response from the figures that interact with her?  An examination of reference sources in this analysis is useful too: does she express emotion more or less than the average robot?

Finally, the problem of “otherness” is central to this text.  I feel that the tension between being “too human” and “too different” is one that makes Asimov’s work so universally engaging, and has not been explored to its fullest.  My XML encoding can– hopefully– reveal exactly how that tension is expressed through the relationships in the text.

***

I have completed a first encoding of the principal robot references in “Robot Dreams”.  Here are screenshots of Mandala evaluating “otherness” from the perspective of the three characters: Elvex (principal robot), Susan (principal human), and Linda (secondary human).  Click on the thumbnails below to view the images in full size.

Douglas Hofstadter’s ” Godel Escher Bach” is the best book about recursion out there. However, it is important to note that Recursion occurs in all kinds of places in life generally. I suppose it’s a question of which particular discipline that deals with recursion you’re looking for. For general philosophical and intellectual stimulation, then “Godel, Escher Bach” is the one to read. You’ll find it on Amazon.

Books are written in language, and language is itself of a recursive nature. NLP, or  Neuro Linguistic Programming, is also about recursion. There are many books opn NLP and it probably doesn’t matter which you read. Quite often the authors of these books give clues to their interest in recursion without direct emphasis. People who understand how to spot the recursion will pick them up without being told.

There best place to learn about recursion is the planet you live on. Take a look around you, you’ll spot it everywhere. The question is, of course, whether or not it is actually real – is it just in the mind?

I’m shortlisted in the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2009. The party and presentations take place tonight at Shoreditch house. I’m in the shortlist for my Talking Outsourcing blog in the best analyst or consultant category.

If you are going to be there then please do say hello. If you are not going to be there then say hello on Twitter… if you include the hashtag #ITBlogs in your Twitter messages then they will visible for all to see at the awards party tonight… they have Twitterwalls at the event showing all the online chat about the awards!

Right now i am 10 minutes into the oh so riveting ‘Core Skills’ . Now when i saw this on my university timetable, my first thought was that it would be learning programming basics, or ‘core skills’. It turned out that it couldn’t be further from my oh so naive thought; instead of learning something relevent, i am sat here being told about efficient research, teamwork theory and various other not Computing related bull. Rant.Over.

Fonte: Popular Science, ripresa da Wired. ripresa da Corriere.it

Ogni anno vengono brevettate centinaia di nuove invenzioni, ma quali sono le migliori? Quali sono destinate a cambiare per sempre, o per un breve lasso di tempo, la vita dell’uomo? Ecco per voi le migliori per ogni ambito, in una classifica stilata da Popular Science, per questo non in 5 punti ordinati in ordine decrescente, e non maledettamente divertente.

Sezione Medicina

In questa categoria è presente il campione dei campioni, vale a dire l’invenzione che secondo il parere degli esperti di Popular Science porterà maggiori benefici all’umanità. Si tratta di uno stetoscopio, antico strumento medico, rivisto e aggiornato in chiave 2.0. Il Littman 3200, prodotto dalla 3M, è in grado di registrare i battiti cardiaci e grazie alla tecnologia Bluetoooth può inviare i dati al computer del medico. L’uso di questo strumento prevede un radicale abbattimento dei costi sanitari connessi a elettrocardiogrammi che, a questo punto, diverrebbero inutili.

Sezione Home Entertainment

In questo caso si tratta di un premio virtuale in quanto il prodotto in questione è avvolto da un alone di mistero. Si tratta di Natal, il nuovo sistema di controllo per Xbox che si propone di eliminare il controller portando le azioni fisiche di chi è di fronte allo schermo direttamente nei personaggi del gioco. Il debutto è previsto per novembre 2010.

Sezione Green Tech

Samms è una polvere in grado di purificare le acque inquinate soprattutto dal mercurio. Ogni granello si comporta come una spugna che, grazie a una reazione chimica, è in grado di assorbire l’agente inquinante, saranno contenti i milioni di malati da avvelenamento da mercurio, alla faccia della dieta ittica…

Sezione Computing

Wolfram Alpha è un motore di ricerca di ultimissima generazione. Viene definito un motore semantico, in quanto è stato programmato per  rispondere direttamente alle domande degli utenti senza obbligarli a digitare una sfilza di parole chiave, ma una sfilza di domande..

Sezione Security

Sul gradino più alto del podio troviamo X-flex, una carta da parati molto resistente. E’ composta da un materiale tipo Kevlar racchiuso tra due fogli di pellicola di elasto-polimeri. È in grado di sostenere muri pericolanti e di resistere a urti e proiettili. Durante un test grazie a un solo strato di X-flex un muro è riuscito a resistere alla forza distruttiva di una palla da demolizione. Inoltre l’esercito statunitense sta valutando se utilizzarla per le basi in Iraq e Afghanistan.

So you have got hold of your video files, now how the hell do you turn them into a DVD that you can watch on your DVD player, Xbox or another PC? Keep reading for the solution…

I won’t go into how to get hold of your movie files as these could come from handycams, mobile phones, torrents (not that i’m suggesting you illegally download them) or your own DVD rips. However you get hold of your digital movie files you have the issue of actually watching them. Do you suffer the smaller computer display(okay I know some people have 37 inch displays etc) or turn them into a DVD to watch on your large HDTV that you bought for that very reason?

Well I’m guessing you would go with the TV. I’m also assuming you don’t want to stream over wifi to an xbox or ps3? That would be a whole other story which I’ll address later on.

The software I would suggest as it has always worked well for me is DVD Flick

DVD Flick is FREE! And it is nice and straightforward to use. It has loads of features but keeps it’s easy for begginners too. Full info can be found here , this explains all the file formats it supports.

All you need to do is find the file you want to burn to DVD, decide on menu options, if you want it burnt to disc after encoding or an iso for burning later, and then click Go.

As it’s free give it a go and see what you think, I would not suggest running it on a low power processor though, as it will take till the end of time to finish.

Enjoy.

My laptop is hardly the top of the range and after having it for the last 2 – 3 years I thought a memory upgrade might just be what it needs. With the much anticipated Windows 7  (positive or negative), I thought the time was right. But I asked myself where the best would be to buy memory for a laptop and more importantly at the right price?

Well after much searching in the land of the web, I discovered mermemory.co.uk. I have to say I was not disappointed. Even for the most technically challenged, this website actually makes it possible for any technophobe to order the memory they need with 100% success.

What is really useful about this site is the user is provided with a selection tool that identifies your exact make and model giving you or anyone the confidence of buying the right memory module. Delivery was quick, and well I’m typing on the laptop right now so the two sticks are working.

The only thing I would say is that some motherboards do need two modules of memory. I made the mistake of only ordering one 2GB stick and when I tried to repeat the order, because of the flat HTML design the second order did not get processed; nothing that a friendly customer support sorted out promptly on the Monday morning. Apart from that and the fact Mr Memory do not trade on the weekend, I would recommend a visit and a purchase.

The business has a genuine feel to it, but also very capable. Check it out.