Yahoo goes local

Just look at the add to the right of the image.




I have also seen Warid & Telenore ads on Yahoo quite recently.

"IT manager at the South Pole". What ?????

Yeah, this was the first thing that crossed my mind, when I read the interview of an IT Manager, live from the South Pole.

Few snippets from the interview:

What technical challenges do you face?

Our biggest challenge is bandwidth. We only have it only 12 hours a day at anywhere from T-1 (1.54 Mbit/sec) to 3 Mbit/sec speeds. We also have a transponder that we can use to send 60 Mbit/sec unidirectional from the pole to the real world. We use that to upload scientific data. Our record was 94Gbytes out in one day.

We have three different satellites we use to provide our Internet. All of those are pretty ancient. We have a weather satellite, an old maritime communications satellite and an old NASA satellite, the first one that was launched back in 1981. The others were launched in 1976 or 1977.

Basically we're scavenging whatever we can find and we can only see each satellite for 3 to 4 hours a day. Other than that we're almost a typical network. We use Cisco gear, we've got land lines to all of the bedrooms, we've got fiber optic distributed throughout the building so if fiber to the desktop ever becomes a reality the building is prewired for that. So we are trying to be as future proof as possible.

And this:

In many data centers in the U.S. heat density is becoming a problem. Surely that's not an issue for you?

You would think that at the South Pole cooling wouldn't be a problem but with the amount of heat we generate [in the data center] getting rid of it actually can be quite an issue. We try to pipe some that heat to other parts of the building to recover it. The data center in the old station just had a hole cut in the wall with a fan [to the outside] to cool the systems. Sometimes you'd be sitting there in a parka trying to get something done.

And this seems to be in need of a little bit of censor, but anyhow:

What's the most outrageous experience you had?

We have this tradition called the 300 Club. When the temperature drops below -100 we hike the sauna up to 200 degrees and stay in there as long as we can stand it. Then we run outside, naked, around the geographic pole and back inside so we get that total 300-degree change in temperature. That happens every year and it's absolutely amazing. Just the feel of that cold on your skin is like nothing else. People always wonder if you can feel the difference between 60 below and 100 below and the answer is absolutely.

Seems like a job?

[via Slashdot ]

Flickr Photo Editor

Yahoo-owned Flickr integrated web-based photo editor Picnik. This way you can click Edit on top of your image uploaded to Flickr to switch into a photo retouching mode, where you can then crop, resize, adjust colors, apply effects, add text and clip arts, and more. Most features are free, though you need to upgrade to Picnik Premium for ~25 bucks/ year to use stuff like Polaroid effects. While you won’t be able to do advanced PhotoPaint/ Photoshop things, this whole thing works quite brilliantly already

[via Blogoscoped]

Can you write it human readable?

I was literally amazed to see this. Although quite weired but what an idea!!

Function Show Books (search query)

If the database connection as specified in global
settings isn't open, open it.
Grab all book records which contain the search
query anywhere.
Note to escape the search query above.

If some records are found, do this:

    For each record in the records, do this:
        Display the record content in an HTML
        table row.
        If the length of the record content above
        is over 30 characters, remove subsequent
        characters.
        Note to escape HTML entities above.

    Wrap the above in an HTML table.

otherwise, do this:

    Display a "sorry" message taken from the site
    messages file.
    Use local language setting for that message.
    Wrap message above in an HTML paragraph of
    the "sorry" class.

Close the database connection.

For this whole function, use a medium priority,
and spread it across different servers for extra
speed.
If the function takes more than 0.5 seconds to
finish, email the site administrator as defined in
the global settings with details about what
happened.

For this whole function, if the search query is
empty, display the "empty search query" message
from the site messages file. Use local language
settings for that message.

For this whole function, display important
ambiguities before compiling.

End of Function

[via Blogoscoped]

Be careful ...

when you are chatting with a prospective "friend" :)

"Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools"



So be carefull !!!

[Via CNet]

YouTube under scrutiny

They say, "There is nothing free in this world. " and "Everything comes with a price tag."
So is the case with YouTube. Yeah, you don't pay bucks, as yet, but the price is not only paid in bucks, then.

As Slashdot reports:

"University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."

Just trying to be regular

Yup.

Nothing in particular to share.

Just making up the habit :)

I am back !!!

Its been a couple of years I wrote anything here in.

Reason is the same: started the blog, went along for a month or two, and then ....

Few days back, I was suggested by Nauman bhaee, to get re-started on it.

So here I go ....

I hope to be regular this time ... :)

yeah, I hope so ....

Nano-Scale Memory Fits A Terabit On A Square Inch

"San Jose Business Journal talks about Nanochip, a company that's developing molecular-scale memory: "Nanochip has developed prototype arrays of atomic-force probes, tiny instruments used to read and write information at the molecular level. These arrays can record up to one trillion bits of data -- known as a terabit -- in a single square inch. That's the storage density that magnetic hard disk drive makers hope to achieve by 2010. It's roughly equivalent to putting the contents of 25 DVDs on a chip the size of a postage stamp." The story also mentions Millipede project from IBM, where scientists are trying to build nano-scale memory that relies on micromechanical components."

(via Slashdot)

Firefox 1.0.1

Firefox 1.0.1 is out with some security fixes. Internationalized domain names like www.bär.de or www.bücher.de – the German words for “bear” and “books” – will work, but are instantly rewritten to “Punycode”. This means www.bär.de turns to “http://www.xn--br-via.de/” in the browser address bar. The reason behind this apparently is to prevent phishing attacks, which could fool users by leading them to URLs which look like “paypal.com” but actually contain a cyrillic “a.” (Google, by the way, does understand special characters in domains, which you can see by entering “site:www.bär.de”.)

(via Blogoscoped)

Please don't do it! [The Google Login]

Well Google is said to introduce some "premium" links in the search results, and to access a "premium" link one hs to provide a user-name and passoword.

"Google is likely to require its users to begin providing personal information to use some of its products and services, said CEO Eric Schmidt.

Requiring people to provide their identity and a password to gain service access is common at many Web sites, but would be new for Google. Having more personal information would enable Google to offer more useful improvements, Schmidt said."

Liked the idea?? I don't .

(via addict3d)

HP's CEO walks away ...!

Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina, one of the most powerful women in corporate America, is leaving the troubled computer maker after being forced out by the company's board.

On a conference call with reporters, executives said Fiorina was not terminated for cause and that she would receive severance pay -- and a company spokesman said she'll get a payout of approximately $21 million.

more ... at CNN

Want a PhD in Game Dev???

University of Southern California, introduced a chair for the study of interactive entertainment. The chair is endowed by EA, the game dev giant.

Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts (Research), was named the first holder of the Electronic Arts endowed faculty chair at the USC School of Cinema-Television, according to a statement from the company, the biggest video game publisher.

"A leader in the game industry for more than 20 years, Bing once again is making history as the inaugural holder of the first-ever endowed chair at a university for the study of electronic gaming and interactive entertainment," USC Dean Elizabeth Daley said in the statement.

more.. at CNN

(via Slashdot)

Einstein

This time, its a parrot!

It can be bore, it can produce the sound of more than 10 animals, it considers itself a super-star, and a lot more. Its cool!

BTW Its streaming media, so better try with a good connection.

(courtesy Asim Ajmal)

hummm, some more maps around

Well this is another map availble on the web, and seems even better than Google's version. Isn't it?
And though, they might haven't got as much bandwidth as Google enjoys.

(Thanks Ali)