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Comment: It's just a matter of time... (Score 2) 123

by bobcardone (#41953263) Attached to: The Cyber Threat To the Global Oil Supply
Before any number of potential calamities affect the increasingly vulnerable oil chain. Adversaries realize that this is our Achilles heel and that any disruption will cause an immense impact on the world economy. I just hope we have effective plans in place to counteract any actions taken, as well as proactively identifying, nullifying and persecuting any organizations or states that choose to pursue any actions along these lines.

Comment: A good thing (Score 1) 341

by bobcardone (#41753275) Attached to: Boeing's CHAMP Missile Uses Radio Waves To Remotely Disable PCs
This is an excellent example of the type of device that the US needs to assure minimal casualties, both hostile and friendly. Proper usage would allow safe ingress/ egress from a target site for both strike aircraft and assault teams. The days of non-electronic warfare are over, and the new battlefield is the transistor junctions. Combined with surgical strike weaponry and proper intelligence, "collateral damage" can be kept to a minimum. For those that think this is a bad thing, study war through the ages and see what collateral damage really amounted to in past wars.
The Military

+ - NATO Summit reading: What's wrong with term "tactical" nuclear weapons?->

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Benjamin Loehrke describes the rather odd definitions of what is a "tactical" nuclear weapon and what isn't. "There is enough ambiguity surrounding the capabilities of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons to render the term "tactical" all but useless for arms control purposes. As the United States and Russia pursue new arms control treaties, they should drop the tactical distinction and limit the total number of all nuclear weapons — strategic, tactical, or other.""
Link to Original Source

+ - Google Search Goes Semantic - The Knowledge Graph->

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk (1801200) writes "The most reasonable response to Google's recent announcement of the Knowledge Graph is "what took you so long?" If Google wants to stay ahead in search, it has to innovate and, since the introduction of the page rank algorithm, core innovation has been very slow.
What Google has announced is at best a move towards a more semantic search algorithm and at worst another tweak to an approach to search that is becoming increasingly ad-hoc and fragmented.
The latest idea probably won't make a huge difference, but at least it represents a coherent and new approach to search. Unfortunately, the Knowledge Graph that Google has started using isn't described in sufficient detail to get an inside view of how it works. What Google says is that it organizes data into objects. So, for example, when you search for Taj Mahal then there will be a number of objects in the graph that are labeled "Taj Mahal", including the famous building, eating places and a musician. The graph is used to provide an extra category of choice to the user via a side-bar. You can use this to pick out a more exact category of object that the search phrase refers to.
So not so radical but search needs to move in this direction. The whole approach to search has to become increasingly semantic. The sorts of methods that we currently use are simply stop-gaps that try to make up for the fact that the search engines don't understand the client or the articles at the end of the links they harvest. Without understanding there can be no reliable ranking of the importance of content and no interpretation of the search phrase.
It may be difficult to think of a world where Google is not the top search provider but only a short time ago there was only Yahoo and then Google introduced Page Rank to destabilize the market. A sufficiently intelligent search engine could do the same again.
One speculation is that it is in the Web search engine that strong AI will first appear as a commodity algorithm."

Link to Original Source

Comment: where are the boosters? (Score 1) 278

by bobcardone (#31788524) Attached to: NASA Unveils Sweeping New Programs For Next 5 Years
Ya gotta have the throw weight to do anything in space. Orbital braking and fuel depots are cool but mass into orbit rules. We need to develop a really big booster so all the boys can orbit their toys. I did not see this addressed in any of the cited articles. I want a big booster first. Then we can play with the finesse stuff.

Tiny ARM-Based Sensor System Makes Battery Replacement Obsolete 96

Posted by timothy
from the transcend-batteries dept.

Comment: Re:stop dissing it. (Score 1) 307

by bobcardone (#15490501) Attached to: Notebook with Huge 20 Inch Screen Reviewed
I agree...
In my job as a construction superintendant, many times in the field I have to pull up a 3D archectural rendering of some minor construction detail or finish illustration.
The ability to set the machine up in seconds and display the detail in question can be a real labor, money and timesaver.
The large screen allows quite a few people to see everything easily at once and the large storage capacity lets' one store a lot of CAD files.
I currently use a large screen Acer laptop in this capacity, and I would seriously consider this one as a replacement.
BTW, 17 lbs is NOTHING compared to some of the equipment I have to lug around, and yes I always have AC power available to juice up.

Oh, and for the anti-SUV/ big truck crowd, some people NEED their cargo capacity. I do agree that anyone who does not and drives one is a POSER.

Chemist who falls in acid is absorbed in work.