Posts
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SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and XCOR race to space
And you thought the private space flight sector does not exist? It may be growing faster than you think…
Read on ArsTechnica.
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Lights Management Driver For Whs 2011
If you are still rocking original Windows Home Server hardware like I do (a HP DataVault) and you’d love to make use of those LEDs in front, take a look at this piece of software.
It detects your drives and enables the according drive LED. RAID configurations and health notifications are not supported yet, but the programmer promised to work that out. Potentially allowing compatibility with the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
The only thing required is that the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver is installed. Check this in Device Manager and look if instead of the Standard SATA AHCI Driver the Intel one is installed. If that is not the case have a look at his instructions.
Supported hardware includes HP’s EX48x, EX49x, X510, X310, X311, X312, Acer’s H340, H341, H342 and Lenovo’s D400 servers.
No more constantly blinking health LED…
Update (2017-11-15): looks like the original link does not work anymore. Uploaded a copy to OneDrive.
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Hire people who annoy you | VentureBeat
Nice thinking there, although the headline puts it a little over the top.
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Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just ‘responsible parenting’, claims an eminent Oxford academic.
—Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor - Telegraph -
360-degree panorama from Curiosity
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Michael Hansmeyer: Building unimaginable shapes (by TEDtalksDirector)
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Chinese Able To Build Skyscrapers At Enormous Speeds
“Chinese architecture firm Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) claims that they will take that title by constructing a 838-meter building called the ‘Sky City’ in 90 days.”
They already built a 30-story hotel in 15 days.
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Some thoughts about implants
This is about implants enhancing your abilities in any way beyond what you are able to do now. I’m not talking about medical implants to help you do things you couldn’t do well or not at all before due to a medical or genetic condition.
First of all I have to admit that I would not really be comfortable having surgery to get something implanted into my body. Especially with the prospect of not being able to use it for a long time. Imagine having fiddeled around in your body every two years to exchange your devices, because greater and better hardware is available or even worse your stuff is not compatible with external interfaces anymore. This is something I would carefully way against the actual usefulness of a device itself. Meaning the latest social sharing gadget will likely not end up under my skin.
In general I only would put myself on the table if a device will be supported and usable in the longterm, obviously only if it adds extraordinary functionality. One way to solve this problem of being on the bleeding edge might be to borrow from a rather old idea: sockets. Light bulbs use them, computer processors use them. Why not add implants to that list? Just put a standardized socket in you (this still sounds strange) and plug-in the latest and greatest whenever you feel about it or need to. Some might opt for a below-the-skin (subcutaneous) plug which is not visible on the outside for beauty reasons. This way still a small cut into the skin would be required for changes, but this can be done at home.
So far so good, but thinking about it a little longer: where in your skinny body (I believe we will all have ideal body shape in the future, how generous of me) is actually the space to put new hardware? Sure it will depend on the actual functionality. The brain is likely to be off limits for most here, too much could go wrong. Close to the heart might not be that good of an idea either, albeit we already broadly utilize pacemakers and the like. Which leaves us with extremities and abdomen.
A rule of thumb might be that the smaller a device will get, the more likely it will end up in and all over the body of more and more people. And looking at the progression in microchips we might just start getting there (until we hit that low nanometer barrier with silicon, but we’ll figure something out). Simpler procedures and accommodating laws will do their part for mass market adoption.
Regarding the small hardware issue we might see some form of sensors appear way earlier than actual processing, enhancer-devices. Those feelers could be put anywhere and report if you are about to touch something, if you are standing or walking or which way your head is looking. These might help a long way in improving augmented reality applications. Looks like implants are not that far out anymore.
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All this A,B,C,D-player crap
*rant on*
If you are one of the people who has read the biography of Steve Jobs, or at least part of it as it is rather long, you might have come across Jobs’ believe in only hiring A+ players. People that are better in certain areas than you are, so you can learn from them and to keep yourself on your toes.
The idea is nice. But reducing people down to a rating just isn’t fair. Ask every person on earth who ever received a grade for anything. It doesn’t pay justice to whatever that person might actually be able to contribute to society. Because in the end that is all that matters. A contribution to learning about our past, to running the now or to leaping into the future of humanity. We are all based off one and the same platform, so no one should ever have the right to demote or rise someone beyond others. Whatever the circumstances (See Andi Rubins statement in the GOracle case).
So someone might say how do you keep getting the right person for the job? How do you get the good people in a field? Well, not by looking at grades. The industrialization of education has to be reversed, stopped. We should now, in times of the rise of social, be more aware than ever that we are all human. Nothing more, nothing less. The solutions are out there somewhere. Let’s do what we do best: advance.
*rant off*