From the category archives:

Standardization

Current-Generation Supercomputers — How Fast Is Fast? Can We Build Next-Generation Supercomputers That Are As Proportionally Fast?

4 March 2011
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Will we see advances in microprocessor speed during the next decade similar to what we saw in the past two decades? If so, how?
Researchers at DARPA asked this question, or, rather, asked: “What sort of technologies would engineers need by 2015 to build a supercomputer capable of executing a quintillion (1018) mathematical operations per [...]

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CBS News Examines the Internet and Our Right to Privacy

21 February 2011
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What if you are asked to resign your position because of a complaint about photos you posted to Facebook that you thought were private and for friends only — but weren’t? What if in the pictures you are perfectly sober, but simply posing with two glasses of alcohol, and reference a site that has a [...]

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Linked Open Data: the Promises an the Pitfalls…Where Are We and Why Isn’t There Broader Adoption?

8 February 2011
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This post is for those of you who are interested in Linked Open Data.
The following is from an announcement sent out via email by Diane Goldenberg-Hart of CNI on 7 February 2011.

A new video from CNI’s 2010 fall membership meeting is now available from CNI’s video channels on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/cnivideo) and Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/channels/cni). [...]

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Starbuck’s Adds the 31 oz “Trenta” to the Menu

18 January 2011
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How big is a 31 oz cold coffee beverage? How can you display the new beverage size so that a layperson like me can understand exactly how oversized the new beverage is?
Starbucks recently announced that they will add a larger size to their menu of beverages — the “Trenta“. As I stated above, the new [...]

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What is Old is New Again: the Antikythera Mechanism Lego Version

16 December 2010
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A long, long time ago (100 BCE) in a civilization far, far away (Ancient Greece), someone built a mechanism that could “predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy” (Engadget). The machine — or, at least one of them — was lost in a shipwreck and lay on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea until [...]

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The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet…and the Web?

7 December 2010
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Is the Web dead? What about net neutrality?
Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff’s August 2010 piece in Wired Magazine called, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet” caused a bit of controversy. The authors argued that the Web is losing supremacy, and stated that our online world will be cordoned off into closed [...]

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Digital Preservation Education for NC State Government Employees

19 November 2010
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This past week, the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources released guidelines for state employees responsible for preservation of the state’s public record. I have included the press release below. Whether or not you are an employee of the State of North Carolina, if you are interested in learning about digital preservation, I encourage you [...]

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“Quantitative Easing” Explained with Cute Bears

17 November 2010
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Did you understand the controversy over “quantitative easing” at the G-20 Summit last week? Were you able to sift through the news to find and understand why the US should not print more money and buy $600 billion in US Treasury Bonds? Did you even know there was a controversy? Or, like me, did your [...]

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Oxford Launches Research Data Management Website

16 November 2010
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The following announcement was posted to the Research Data Management listserv on 14 November 2010 via S. Hodson. I thought it might be on interest to some of you.

The University of Oxford has recently launched a new Research Data Management Website: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rdm
The development of this resource was ‘a close collaboration between Research Services, Computing [...]

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Preservation Policies, Forbes, and an Email Time Capsule

12 November 2010
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I’m often asked why the preservation of digital materials is so complicated. After all, isn’t it simply about the storage and migration, or emulation, of digital objects and metadata? Why do you need all of these policies and procedures around a data or digital archive? Why can’t you just store the digital files and leave [...]

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