The Robotboys featuring Poppin John have all the right moves!
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/video-robotboys-dance-poppin-john/1-a-550895?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Avideo-robotboys-dance-poppin-john-550895Police cars in Iowa and Florida are testing a secret weapon: a small cannon embedded in the grill. It shoots "tracking" bullets — containing tiny GPS devices — that can stick to the trunk of a suspect's car. Police could then follow a suspect at a leisurely pace instead of embarking on a dangerous high-speed chase.
Oracle is exploring silicon photonics, an optical technology drawing widespread interest, as a potential weapon in the battle against data-center power consumption.
Advances in CPU and memory design could boost efficiency dramatically over the next few years. When they do, the interconnects among components, servers and switches will effectively become the power hogs of the data center, according to Ashok Krishnamoorthy, architect and chief technologist in photonics at Oracle.
[ InfoWorld presents the Bossies 2013, the best open source software for networking, data centers, clouds, and more. | Get expert networking how-to advice from InfoWorld's Networking Deep Dive PDF special report. ]
Optical connections, which will eventually be needed for high-speed links within rows and racks of servers, promise efficiency gains over copper cables but need to get cheaper first. A key part of that effort will be integration, the time-honored work of bringing the functions of many separate chips into one. Silicon photonics is a likely technology for doing that, though it probably won't ship in volume for two years or so, said Linley Group analyst Jag Bolaria.
Oracle isn't often associated with networking and may not even manufacture or sell the technologies it's now studying. But as a big player in computing and storage, it could benefit from fostering a future technology that helps make faster, more efficient data centers possible.
Like other Oracle hardware divisions, the photonics unit has its roots in the former Sun Microsystems, which began work on short-reach optical communications in 2004 and has had a photonics partnership with the U.S. military research agency DARPA since 2008. Silicon photonics is part of Oracle's larger effort to help data centers and private and public clouds meet future computing needs, Krishnamoorthy said.
"We see bandwidth and computing demand growing unabated," he told an audience at the recent Open Server Summit in Santa Clara, California. "Can we scale infrastructure and systems to meet demand?"
Silicon photonics holds the potential to help do that, Krishnamoorthy said. In his conference presentation, he used power consumption as a measure of efficiency, while adding that space and cooling are also critical issues.
Work that the industry is already doing may make both CPUs and memory several times more efficient over the next several years, Krishnamoorthy said. At that point, connectivity will consume a much bigger percentage of a data center's power than it does now. "If we do our job here, then we have sort of this gaping interconnect problem," he said. Oracle's goal is optical interconnects that use about one-tenth as much power as those in use now.
For high speeds over long distances, optical links are already standard. Multi-gigabit carrier backbones can carry a whole city's data as waves of light, which are converted to and from electrical signals on each end. When individual servers start generating enough information, data-center architects will have to use optical technology just to connect them the top of the server rack.
Where is Casey Stengel when we need him? In 1962 as the manager of the brand new and determinedly hapless New York Mets -- 40 wins, 120 losses -- he looked up and down his bench one dismal day and wondered, "Can't anybody here play this game?" That phrase kept coming at me recently as I watched the impressively inept performance of the Obama administration in both foreign and domestic policy. On a given day, this administration makes the '62 Mets look good.
This is a surprise -- at least to me. If Barack Obama has an image, it is of the infinitely cool, cerebral leader.
The man can give a rousing speech, but he is, at heart, a planner and a plodder. Both his presidential campaigns were exercises in micromanagement -- digital all the way. Obama was the better candidate, but he had, by far, the better organization.
Yet this same man has lately so mishandled both domestic and foreign policy that he is in mortal peril of altering his image. This unsettling and uncharacteristic incompetence became shockingly clear when Obama failed to come to grips with the Syrian civil war. I did not agree with the president's do-nothing policy, but at least it was both a policy and intellectually coherent. What followed, though, was both intellectually incoherent and pathetically inconsistent -- a "red line" that came out of nowhere and then mysteriously evaporated, and a missile strike that was threatened and then abandoned. It was a policy so wavering that if Obama were driving, he would be forced to take a breathalyzer.
The debacle of the Affordable Care Act's website raised similar questions about confidence. This was supposed to be Obama's Big Deal. The president has other accomplishments -- navigating out of the Great Recession was no minor feat -- but restoring the status quo does not get your face on Mount Rushmore. It takes achievement, a program -- something new and wonderful. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to be it.
Something went wrong. People could not sign up. Why? Not sure. Who's at fault? Apparently no one. An act of God. Something that could never have been foreseen. Another president might have had someone in the White House calling every day -- no, twice a day -- to make sure the program was going to work. But no, it was a shock to everyone, and when the White House rolled out its gigantic cake -- maestro, some music please -- no one jumped out.
Pathetic.
Here, I must mention that bit of theater in which various world leaders wax indignant about their telephone conversations being bugged by the National Security Agency. This is not Obama's doing since the program predated his time in office. But the decibel level of the outrage does suggest that in Germany, France, Brazil and elsewhere, Obama's standing is not what it once was. He and America are no longer held in either awe or respect and the bugging program, instead of seeming a necessary evil, looks both clumsy and silly. Bugging Angela Merkel's personal phone -- she who once said that when she thinks of Germany she thinks of "well-sealed windows" -- puts at risk the poor NSA listener. He must be catatonic by now.
But the reaction of the bugged has been nothing compared to the bleat of anger coming from the Middle East. The Saudis, who usually whisper their differences, have severely upped the volume and now talk dismissively of Obama and America. They didn't like the way we washed our hands of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a steadfast and durable ally, and then dealt with the Syrian civil war in such a wobbly fashion. In recent days, the kingdom has rejected a seat on the U.N. Security Council and, in the person of its intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has said the U.S.-Saudi relationship is strained. Bandar, a former ambassador to Washington, can hardly be dismissed as anti-American.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, and in the long run Riyadh and Washington were always going to make an odd couple. But the current spat is not about values but about reliability and performance. The Obama administration has botched Syria and, in the Saudi (and Israeli) view, cannot be trusted to deal firmly with Iran. An erratic presidency has made the world a bit less safe.
History will someday provide perspective and say, possibly, that Syria and Obamacare did not matter. I doubt it. At the least, they help validate the once-frivolous Republican charges of incompetence. A competent president would beware. As Casey Stengel might note, strike three is coming up.
The beauty of math and numbers and formulas and equations and so forth is that they can work without you ever understanding how the hell they work. What seems like complete randomness is actually just a math problem! Like this slick trick with a deck of cards. Take twenty or so cards and flip over five cards face side up and randomly insert them back into the rest of the deck. Shuffle it up all you want, split the deck in two and you can get the same exact amount of face up cards in each card pile.
     |
CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian kung fu gold medalist has been suspended by the sport's national federation because he displayed an Islamist symbol showing support for ousted President Mohammed Morsi during a tournament in Russia, officials said Monday.
The online service of the state newspaper Al-Ahram posted a photo of Mohammed Youssef wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of an open palm with four yellow fingers — the symbol representing a pro-Morsi protest camp violently cleared by security forces in August. In the photo, Youssef held his gold medal with his right hand while punching the air with a clenched left fist during the medal ceremony.
It quoted the federation president as saying Youssef also would be banned from a tournament next month in Malaysia.
Youssef flew to Cairo early on Monday from Moscow after being sent home early by the federation, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. The player's brother Hamam confirmed in a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher Misr that his brother was sent home early from the tournament because he displayed the symbol.
The suspension underlines the deepening divisions in Egypt, nearly four months after Morsi — the country's first freely elected president — was ousted in a popularly backed military coup. His ouster followed protests by millions of Egyptians calling on him to step down and accusing him and his Muslim Brotherhood of acting undemocratically and trying to monopolize power in the latest crisis to roil the Arab world's most populous nation since the 2011 ouster of autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak.
More than 600 protesters were killed when Egyptian police moved in with armored bulldozers to clear the massive sit-in demanding the reinstatement of the Islamist leader near Cairo's Rabaah el-Adawiya mosque. Tensions have spiked as the military-backed interim administration continued to crack down on the Brotherhood, arresting more than 2,000 senior and mid-level officials.
Islamic militants also have stepped up their campaign of violence, mainly targeting Egyptian police and soldiers since the coup, especially in the volatile northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The militants' campaign mostly has been confined to the troubled peninsula that is separated from the mainland by the Suez Canal, but attacks outside Sinai have grown more frequent in recent weeks.
On Monday, gunmen killed three policemen at a security checkpoint in Mansoura, a city north of Cairo, according to the Interior Ministry. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the shootings, but such attacks are typical for militants opposed to Egypt's military-backed government.
Despite the arrests of much of the Brotherhood's leadership, Morsi supporters have pressed forward with protests to try to maintain pressure on authorities to release the toppled leader, who has been held largely incommunicado since his detention on July 3. He is due to go on trial on Nov. 4 for allegedly inciting supporters to kill protesters outside his presidential palace in Cairo last December.
Police used tear gas Monday to disperse several hundred pro-Morsi university students who were rallying near Rabaah el-Adawiya, in eastern Cairo. As the protest got underway, army troops and police backed by armored vehicles blocked off the road leading to the site, creating a tense standoff that lasted hours. By late afternoon, the students retreated to their campus, while pelting security forces with rocks.
I mean. What is this? Or a better question might be what isn't this? They're playing bottles in a pool in Borneo. They're apparently called the Bottle Boys. This probably took quite a bit of rehearsal time. I don't know what else to say. Good job, internet. You've done whatever it is you do again.
| |
