Google making app that would identify people's faces

The article is basically about how Google is working on a smartphone app that would identify people's faces in photos. Due to privacy concerns, people will have to opt in to Googl'e database to be identified. The article says how identifying faces using pages that are publicaly available on the internet is technically feasible.

This article pretty much scared me to death. I hope Google does not go through with this app. It is a scary thought to think about. People can take a picture of you and know information about you. I feel that this app will cause more grief and trouble than actually be used for good.

Former truck driver deciphers top secrets of first atomic bombs

I found this article on CNN and I thought it was intersting and it caught my eye. I pasted it to on this post.

 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Truck driver John Coster-Mullen deciphers exact specifications of the first atomic bombs
• Technology behind the bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima are a state secret
• Coster-Mullen spent years researching and reconstructing bombs, wrote book on findings

Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) -- Two decades after helping to design the first atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, was asked to describe how he felt after the bomb's first test. "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky," he quoted from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, "that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."
When bombs that he helped design were unleashed over two cities in Japan in August 1945, they detonated at temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun. So began the Atomic Age, a period that would blow apart our ideas about warfare and technology, send the Americans and Russians into a perpetual state of fear, and set the world on a course of nuclear power, the unintended effects of which are being felt once again in Japan.
While the Fukushima disaster reawakens global concerns over nuclear power, the separate but related threat of nuclear weapons has been mostly lost in the shuffle. Political treaties and protected weapons caches aside, there is no telling what North Korea and Iran might do with their atomic caches -- or what a terrorist could do with the right ingredients and know-how.
Watch the rest of Atomic Trucker at Motherboard.tv
A lot, says John Coster-Mullen. A former truck driver with no college education, Coster-Mullen taught himself how to build an A-bomb. "The secret of the atomic bomb," he says, "is how easy they are to make."
Last year, Motherboard visited Coster-Mullen to talk with him about his life project: reverse engineering the atomic bombs America dropped on Japan. His findings are available in a book he continuously updates and publishes himself called "Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man," which has received rave reviews from the National Resource Defense Council: "Nothing else in the Manhattan Project literature comes close to his exacting breakdown of the bomb's parts."
After years of research into the bomb's classified plans, Coster-Mullen has been able to create an intensely technical history of the atomic bomb, centered around a detailed explanation of how the bombs were built, including exact dimensions and configurations, inside and out. For almost 10 years, Coster-Mullen painstakingly analyzed photographs and interviewed more than 150 scientists, engineers and others involved in their development. The result is an unprecedented and highly accurate recreation of the bomb on paper, both in its mechanics and history.

Certainly Coster-Mullen's ambitious project is a neat example of the ingenuity that led America to be the first to develop the atomic bomb. But it's also a stark reminder that our most powerful technologies can end up being reworked and used in other ways, by people much less friendly than truck drivers with lots of time on their hands.

Task Manager

Today, we talked about Task Manager. When you open it, it has different tabs: Applications, Processes, Services, Performance, Networking, and Users. We talked a little bit about the Applications Processess, and Performance tabs. The Processes tab shows you what your computer runs when you turn in on. We looked at the CPU and memory for the Performance tab. We will begin to further examine the Processes tab to see what each image name means.

Life Lesson

Basically, do not post anything on the internet that you don't want people to see. Avoid posting pictures that are not appropriate. Have respect for yourself as well as others. Once you post something on the internet, it is there FOREVER!! Just keep that in mind. When you go on an interview for a job, they will probably look at your Facebook. The internet is a good souce, but do not abuse it. Just be careful about what you post because everyone can see it.

What I learned so far...

      A browser is a program you use to surf the internet and within the browser there is a search engine. The top five browsers are Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Opera has a low profile which means it is a small program and does not take up a lot of space. Ad-ons are mini apps for your browser. You can use two types of software: one that you pay for and one that you can download for free. Free software is part of a project called open source software. A bit is the smallest amount of information a computer processes and is equal to a zero or one. It is also equal to the state of electricity on or off as zero is off and one is on. A byte is equal to eight bits. An AC adapter is known as an alternating current which is coming out of the wall. An AC adapter current has the ability to kill you. DC means direct current and will not kill you, just shock you. A system board is the core of the computer. The CPU is also known as the chip and a cord works faster than wireless.
      Desktops have motherboards and laptops have system boards. Motherboards are bigger than system boards and use expansion cards. Some examples of expansion cards are USB, sound expansion card, video expansion car, NIC (network interface card), and modem (for dialup). If a system board goes bad, then you have to replace the whole thing. Another name for a processor is the chip or CPU which is the central processing unit. It is the brain of the computer and does all the work. The hard drive stores all the long term information and the RAM or random access memory does short term information.

Definitions:

• Hard drive:
- An inflexible magnetic disk with greater storage capacity than a CD; can be internal to the computer or external
- A device used for storing large amounts of data for a computer that persist while the computer is turned off.

• RAM:
- Random access memory, This is a type of computer memory that allows data to be stored and retrieved as required. It is called random access because any part of the memory can be located without having to go through everything that comes before it.

• Processor:
- The Central Processing Unit (CPU) or the processor is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions.

• System board:
- A motherboard is the central printed circuit board (PCB) in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, while providing connectors for other peripherals.

• Sound card:
- Is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs.

• Video card:
- A piece of hardware installed into a personal computer to allow it to send video signals to an external output device such as a monitor or projector

• Power supply:
- is a device that supplies electrical energy to one or more electric loads. The term is most commonly applied to devices that convert one form of electrical energy to another, though it may also refer to devices that convert another form of energy (e.g., mechanical, chemical, solar) to electrical energy.

TED

Today we watched a video on TED. It was about a guy who made videos that ended up benefiting a lot of people. Teachers even started using the videos to teach the students. They had ways to monitor the progress of the students for the teachers so they knew what areas the chidlren needed help in. It provided the kids with a good sense of learning as they could go at their own paces. I, however, do not like to learn from videos on the computer. I rather have a teacher teaching it in class. That is just my personal preferance.

RIM PlayBook tablet coming April 19 for $499

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/22/technology/rim_playbook_release_date/index.htm
I found this article on the CNN website. It basically says that the Blackberry Playbook is going to become on sale on April 19th. It is going to be sold starting at about 500 dollars. It has a 7-inch screen which is smaller than the ipad. If RIM does not sell 1 million playbooks by the end of 2011, they expect that investors will be soured on the whole tablet thing. I found the article somewhat interesting. It really just shows that technology is not slowing down, but continuing to advance.

Kinect

Today in class, a few students set up Kinect. It is the first time that I even heard of it. It is like the wii, yet you do not need a remote. The machine functions by your movements. A few classmates played the games, and it was quite interesting to watch. The game just showed me how fast technology is improving each day. The Kinect system is going to be the "new" thing for a while, just like the wii was.

Japan

I was just thinking today about the disaster of Japan and the effects. Considering all of the damage that they have, we will probably not be able to get our computer parts as quick as we usually do. Japan is saving money since they need all the money they can get right now. Also, our SJA computers are Fujitsu, which is made in Japan. So, the disaster in Japan definitley affects the world, not just Japan.

Guess the Google

So, Mr. John introduced us to "Guess the Google" today in class. It is really fun but addicting. It is good, I guess to get you to think though. I found it interesting. It gives you about 16 pictures and you have to guess what word was googled. So, it's basically backwards. So, it can give you 16 pictures of the beach and you would have to guess that.
Its really fun and entertaining so check it out at:
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/

Technology at the Table

I personally feel that technology has gone too far when you cannot simply have dinner without the phones in your hand. My family does not eat together too often as my brother and I are involved in sports, and so we are never home at the same time. Therefore, mom or dad is usually with me and the other is with my brother. So, when we do have a family dinner together, I feel it is really nice and we enjoy it. We do not bring our phones or any distractions to the dinner table, becuase it is simply family time and time that we have all together. Family time is very precious to me as my family is extremley close!

The 'killer app' that can help save lives

The UCLA provessor invented a cheap, portable microscope that uses the cell phone camera sensor. LUCAS negates need for bulky, expensive optical lenses, instead he uses halograms. Aydogan Ozcan predicts that the device could only cost about $5 and may reach the market within only two years. The microscope could revolutionize the treatment of diseases such as malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis. This article was really interesting and amazing. I hope it works and helps to treat those insane diseases that are out there.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/04/mobile.microscope.ozcan.malaria/index.html

Facebook helps your self-esteem

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/01/facebook.self.esteem/index.html

The Cornell study shows higher levels of self-esteem for subjects who spent time with Facebook. The result could be because people present their best selves on the site. Also, some have reported Facebook having negative impact, like promoting addictive behavior. I however, liked this short article. It gave me a sense that Facebook is actually a good thing if viewed in the sense that it helps your self-esteem.

One in three mobile phone owners is a regular mobile gamer

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/03/01/mobile.gaming.study.mashable/index.html

The article was about how a survey showed high percentage of adults in the UK and the US into mobile gaming. About 31% of U.S. mobile users now have and own a smartphone. Half of the gamers said they had upgraded a free trial game to the full or paid version. Lastly, a smartphone crowd said that they spent more money on games ($25.75) per user for the year, compared to ($15.70) from feature phone owners. This article sparked me because it made me aware of how games on phones are taking over our generation.