It’s fair to say that dwindling energy resources and ever growing demand is eventually going to shape up to be one of the greatest challenges ever to face all of mankind. We know we need to act, and we’re starting to realize that we’re already behind the ball. Unfortunately, now is a confusing time to be alive. The lip service is building and it’s coming full force from every direction. We’ve got “ideas” coming from our politicians who in many cases have “solutions” probably designed to garner votes than to actually solve anything. We have activist groups who have answers that fit their agendas but put up barriers to ideas that don’t fit their ideals. We have folks like T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore claiming to have it all figured out – but a look into their investment portfolios makes one wonder what it is they’re trying to solve.
What’s missing from all these ideas and plans being thrown around? How about some cold hard facts? Some actual numbers? When they say “we have huge wind and solar resources,” wouldn’t it be nice to know what exactly “huge” meant? (more…)
Google has struck a deal with GeoEye for access to data from the GeoEye-1 Satellite, to be launched on September 4th.
While Google Maps already uses data from several sources, the GeoEye-1 is special because it’s the highest resolution commercial satellite ever to be launched. It’s capable of 41 centimeter resolution, meaning each pixel of data can discern an object as small as 41 square centimeters. The US government however limits the resolution commercial enterprises can make available to the public to 50 centimeters (a half meter), so we won’t quite be seeing quite what the GeoEye can do. (The government will of course be able to purchase the full 41cm data.)
Some of Google Map’s data isn’t actually satellite data at all, but rather is patched together from aerial photography. This means the high-resolution and detailed images of major urban areas already available through Google Maps won’t necessarily change much with the acquisition of the GeoEye data – it’s already on-par or better in terms of quality because it was taken from a much lower altitude and not subject to the government’s satellite imaging limits. On the other hand, more remote areas on Google Maps where aerial photography isn’t feasible have at worst lower resolution of 15 meters, which is only good enough to see obvious things like streams and rock formations. The new data could start filling in these areas with more detail, and bringing color imaging to areas of Google Maps previously only available in black and white. The image to the upper right is a simulation courtesy of GeoEye simulating just how far half meter resolution can “zoom in” compared to existing technology. It’s most telling to keep your eye on the parking lot in the image – notice how at a half-meter you can count the cars, and even tell what color they are.
The financial details of the arrangement haven’t been disclosed, but it is an exclusive deal. No other Internet based mapping service will have access to the same hi-res data. The data is expected to start becoming available in approximately two months time.
Several sources are reporting this morning that Bloomberg accidentally ran a lengthy obituary for Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs on their newswire.
It’s common for news agencies to prepare obituaries ahead of time for prominent public figures, so that all the biographical background work is done – just slap a date and cause of death on there and they’re good to go. It’s NOT common however, to publish them before the person actually dies! Ooops!
Bloomberg retracted the obituary rather quickly, but if you’re curious about what the press will have to say about Jobs when he does actually die, you can take a peek at a saved copy here.
SpaceRef.com reports that NASA has discovered a computer virus on one of the computers located on the International Space station.
The virus (well, technically classified as a worm) was identified as W32.Gammima.AG, and Symantec describes it as a relatively low-risk threat. Its purpose is to steal passwords to on-line games, and presumably sends them back to its author(s). It normally spreads via removable media, like memory cards or thumb drives. Other than being an annoyance, unless you play the games the worm targets, there really isn’t any damage done. NASA gets lucky this time (assuming the astronuats aren’t playing World of Warcraft up there!)
Just goes to show you still need to run anti-virus even when you’re 230 miles above the Earth.
A post on the Microsoft Developer’s Blog yesterday outlining some new privacy features in the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 that has consumers rejoicing, and webmasters everywhere reaching for their tinfoil hats.
IE8 is slated to include a private web surfing mode, known as “InPrivate.” When InPrivate is activated, several behaviors of the browser change: cookies are held only temporarily for the browsing session, browsing history isn’t recorded, auto-fill form information and passwords on not recorded, and so on. The idea is that once you close your browser, not a trace of your browsing session is saved anywhere – a great idea if for example you wanted to check your bank statement at a public terminal. (Interestingly enough, this is feature the Safari browser has had for years now.)
Microsoft does take it a step further with “InPrivate Blocking” – and this is where the controversy begins. InPrivate Blocking is intended to prevent the planting of cookies on your machine that tracks your behavior across several domains. It also has the ability to give fine-grained control to block tracking pixels, and analytics scripts. All great ideas on the surface, to protect end user’s privacy… because let’s face it, those techniques are almost exclusively used by on-line advertisers in order to track and target advertising to web users. By breaking some of these systems advertisers rely on, advertisements may not be delivered correctly or at all in certain circumstances. (Also not an entirely new idea, as AdBlock & AdBlock Plus has been offering similar functionality to FireFox users for years.)
This gets interesting though when we consider Internet Explorer’s overwhelming market share, and Microsoft’s desire to better position themselves in the on-line advertising marketplace. As I think back to all the anti-trust lawsuits and predatory business practices over the years, I can’t help but wonder – are they really out to provide security & privacy for their user base, or is there something more sinister cooking up? Distributing these new features on such a wide scale might throw a wrench into analytics tracking all over the web, and may seriously damage how advertising is delivered by many of the big players on the Web… just in time for Microsoft to push their new advertising services… (you don’t think IE8 will block Microsoft’s own advertising, do you?)
