From the category archives:

Standards

The Science Network – A Social Network Parody

18 April 2011

You don’t get to 11 million papers without a few dodgy results.

So, what do you think? Did he or didn’t he invent PubMed?
[Via Jane G.]

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Save the Data

13 April 2011

Welcome to my own version of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard-ism).
Yes, I know the US federal budget needs to be cut, but not my programs.
Seriously. :)
The Sunlight Foundation writes:

Some of the most important technology programs that keep Washington accountable are in danger of being eliminated. Data.gov, USASpending.gov, the IT Dashboard and [...]

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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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The Information Explosion and Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

24 January 2011
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The information explosion. What does that mean to you? Does it mean multi-tasking, multiple Internet-enabled devices, cyber-friends, a vast database of knowledge at your fingertips…and a sense of being overwhelmed with too much information?
If you were an adult before the World Wide Web became common, are you more informed or less informed because of the [...]

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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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Beyond C.S.I.: The Rise of Computational Forensics

6 January 2011
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How can you determine if two fingerprints are merely similar or are an exact match? Is forensics as practiced currently, skill and art — or science?
I was surprised to learn from Sargur Srihari that forensics is not as scientific in its methods as one might think from watching the various TV shows. Neither are the [...]

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2010 — the Year Mobile Connected the World

27 December 2010
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I’ve only had a smart phone for 10 months, and yet I cannot imagine how I lived without it. Therefore, for your viewing pleasure, I have posted this animation from themobilefuture on the mobile phone in the year 2010. The animation is by http://www.istrategylabs.com.
The authors cite the following statistics (sources not listed):

Massive increase in apps [...]

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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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