Pluto is not a planet. Despite earlier indications that the International Astronomical Union might adopt a broad definition of a planet that includes Pluto and additional objects in the list of planets, they've decided that Pluto isn't a planet after all, and neither are the other three objects they had been considering: Charon, Ceres, and 2003 UB313. The good news, I … [Read more...] about Bummer
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
Building on top of their S3 service, Amazon Web Services has announced the beta phase of a new service: The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Simply put, EC2 provides web-accessible virtual servers that you can provision as a service in just a few minutes. Let's say you have an application that requires a database server, an application server, and a web server. You … [Read more...] about Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Everybody says Google is going to build a web-based operating system, but Amazon seems to be doing it too, with their Amazon Web Services line of products. For example, there's Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which implements a very simple store-a-file/get-a-file service. Amazon says it's fast and designed for 99.99% availability, with data centers in two … [Read more...] about Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
The Coming Racial War
Sort of: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Get ready for a segregated ''Survivor.'' Race will matter on the upcoming season of the CBS show as contestants will be divided into four tribes by ethnicity. That means blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians in separate groups. The announcement was made on CBS' Early Show. Host Jeff Probst says the idea ''actually came from the criticism that … [Read more...] about The Coming Racial War
I Knew Abdur When…
About 8 or 9 years ago, I started working on a Ph.D. in computer science. I already had the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in computer science, so this seemed like the next logical step. At the time, I was working as a software developer for the research arm of the Illinois Institute of Technology and they offered me a pretty good deal to get my Ph.D. with the IIT Computer … [Read more...] about I Knew Abdur When…