Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple CEO "effective immediately"

 

From DSC:
I want to post a thank you note to Mr. Steven P. Jobs, whom you most likely have heard has resigned as Apple’s CEO. Some articles are listed below, but I want to say thank you to Steve and to the employees of Apple who worked at Apple while he was CEO:

  • Thank you for working hard to enhance the world and to make positive impacts to our world!
  • Thank you for painstakingly pursuing perfection, usability, and excellence!
  • Thank you for getting back up on the horse again when you came out of a meeting with Steve, Tim and others and you just got reamed for an idea or implementation that wasn’t quite there yet.
  • Thanks go out to all of the families who were missing a dad or mom for long periods of time as they were still at work cranking out the next version of ____ or ____.
  • Thanks for modeling what a vocation looks like — i.e. pursuing your God-given gifts/calling/passions; and from my economics training for modeling that everyone wins when you do what you do best!

Thanks again all!

 

 

IBM unveils cognitive computing chips — from IBM.com

Excerpt:

ARMONK, N.Y., – 18 Aug 2011: Today, IBM researchers unveiled a new generation of experimental computer chips designed to emulate the brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition. The technology could yield many orders of magnitude less power consumption and space than used in today’s computers.

In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.

Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won’t be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity.

 

The Singularity: Five technologies that will change the world (and one that won’t) — from MaximumPC.com by David Gerrold; originally saw this in Steve Knode’s July 2011 Newsletter

Excerpt I want to comment on:

Now, let’s try a thought experiment. If we apply Moore’s law and assume that the rate of scientific advancement doubles at the same rate as the computer power that we apply to research, then we can project that we will likely accomplish a whole 20th century’s worth of scientific advancement in 5 years—by 2015. As the rate continues to double, we’ll accomplish a century’s work in 2.5 years, then 1.25 years, 7.5 months, 3 months and 3 weeks, then a smidge less than two months, one month, two weeks, one week, then 3.5 days, 1.75 days, and if you ignore Zeno’s paradox, by the end of 2020 we will be accomplishing a century’s worth of research every day, and two weeks later, every second. And after that…?

From DSC:

This is why it is critical that all of us are tapping into streams of content. We can’t be dealing with damned up “water” — but we need to access ever-flowing-streams of content. We need to learn how to learn — and like learning! We’ll also need to know how to manage learning agents in order to sort through the information overload coming at us.

What's the best way to deal with ever-changing streams of content? When information has shrinking half-lives?

 

Also mentioned in the above article:

  • Graphene
  • Robots
  • Bio-Fabbing
  • Universal Smart Tech

Also from Steve Knode:

 

Interactive streaming video technology from Stanford - Summer 2011

Stanford researchers designed software that allows a viewer to zoom and pan while streaming online courses. They recently released the code to the public.

Free Artificial Intelligence (AI) course from Stanford this fall

 

Addendum on 8/16/11:

  • Virtual and artificial, but 58,000 want course — from NYT
    PALO ALTO, Calif. — A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe — a class nearly four times the size of Stanford’s entire student body.

20 most impressive science fair projects of all time — from onlineuniversities.com
 

Excerpt:

Microsoft has developed an iterative MapReduce runtime for Windows Azure, code-named “Daytona.” Project Daytona is designed to support a wide class of data analytics and machine learning algorithms. It can scale out to hundreds of server cores for analysis of distributed data.

Project Daytona was developed as part of the eXtreme Computing Group’s Cloud Research Engagement Initiative, making its debut at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. One of the most common requests we have received from the community of researchers in our program is for a data analysis and processing framework. Increasingly, researchers in a wide range of domains—such as healthcare, education, and environmental science—have large and growing data collections and they need simple tools to help them find signals in their data and uncover insights. We are making the Project Daytona MapReduce Runtime for Windows Azure download freely available, along with sample codes and instructional materials that researchers can use to set up their own large-scale, cloud data-analysis service on Windows Azure. In addition, we will continue to improve and enhance Project Daytona (periodically making new versions available) and support our community of users.

Also see:

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How making stuff makes science more appealing to kids -- 6-29-11

 

(My thanks to Mr. Joseph Bywerwalter for this resource)

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Microsoft advances natural UI with Kinect SDK — from cnet.com by Jay Greene

 

Oregon State University student Alex Wiggins gestures to Kinect, which in turn makes a remote-control
toy helicopter take off while teammates Ruma Paul (left) and Fabio Matsui (right) look on. (Credit: Microsoft)

 

Excerpt:

Ultimately, the kind of analysis developed in this paper could become part of the design process — allowing engineers to “design for rapid innovation,” Trancik says, by using these principles to determine “how you set up the architecture of your system.”

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MIT’s new liquid flow batteries — from trendbird.biz
MIT’s new liquid flow batteries could make refueling EVs as fast as pumping gas

 

 

Also see:

  • Enerkem raises $60M to transform garbage into fuel — from trendbird.biz
    Canadian company Enerkem has devised an innovative plan to transform garbage into a source of fuel, and today it received $60 million in new financing to bring its technology to the mainstream.

 

Also see:

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Do you know how plastic bottles are actually recycled? The amount of energy that goes into it is pretty insane, as you’ll see in this video below of the Ecostar recycling facility in Wisconsin. The amount of steps—not to mention electricity, water and manpower—that need to be taken to go from a bale of plastic bottles into safe, useable material is pretty staggering.

What’s even more staggering is that as energy-intensive as recycling is, it still gives off only half the carbon that’s produced when creating virgin materials. It makes you wonder why we don’t spend more time looking at more efficient ways to convey fluids, or if our current system of plastic bottles is really the best thing mankind can come up with.

 

Also see:

 

 

Also see:

 

 

Addendum 6-11-11 — also see:

 

Solar Array

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