Make 2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes from cheap but sturdy Chinese cookware scoops & a USB WiFi adaptor! The largest so called “WIFRY”,”WOKFI” or “WOKTENNA” (12″= 300mm diam) shows 12-15dB gain (enough for a LOS range extension to 3-5km),costs ~US$5 & comes with a user friendly bamboo handle that suits WLAN fieldwork- if you can handle the curious stares! Neater boutique versions may better appeal indoors. NB-unless you use more powerful USB adapters (such as ALFA & Senao offerings mentioned below),weak USB adapter output power may mean you now hear more stronger APs than you can link back to …
Inteliquent
Established in 2003, Inteliquent, F/K/A Neutral Tandem, Inc. and Tinet SpA, provides voice, IP Transit, Ethernet and hosted service solutions to carriers, service providers, and content management firms based in over 80 countries and six continents. Headquartered in Chicago, Inteliquent is a public company and traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol IQNT.[1]
The SIP Router Project | Kamailio (OpenSER) SIP Server
The SIP Router Project aims to build a solid open source SIP routing platform, based on collaboration of the SIP Express Router (SER) and Kamailio (OpenSER) teams.
Rootbeer GPU Compiler Lets Almost Any Java Code Run On the GPU
Programs don’t magically become faster when they are run on GPUs. E.g. Linear Algebra algorithms work really well on CPUs, but if ported 1 to 1 ( as this would ) to a GPU their performance is just abysmal. Usually one needs to use a specially designed algorithm that can actually use the massive parallelism of a GPU and not get stuck e.g. trying to synchronize or doing other kinds of communication. GPUs really like doing the same operation on independent data, which is basically what happens when rendering an image, they are not really designed to have operations that need information of all other data, or neighbouring data in a grid…. . Just because something works on a GPU does not mean its efficient, thus the performance could be much worse using a GPU .
Also balancing CPU and GPU usage is even harder ( maybe impossible ? ) as you cannot predict what kind of System you will run your software on, thus usually these days the CPU feeds the GPU with data ( with the current Tesla cards only 1 core per GPU, this changes in the Kepler version to 32 ) and does some processing that can’t be done on the GPU, but do not share any kind of workloads.
I don’t know how the h.264 codec is structured or if it is possible to have performance gains on encoding. However I really doubt that x.264 can be just ported as they rely heavily on CPU specific features ( SSE etc ) which is quite different to the much higher level bytecode that Java would produce.
via Rootbeer GPU Compiler Lets Almost Any Java Code Run On the GPU – Slashdot.
Venn diagrams for 11 sets
So called 2-Venn (two circles) and 3-Venn diagrams are very familiar. But higher dimension Venn diagrams that are (relatively) easy to grasp (‘ll explain what I mean by that below) are actually difficult to produce – and until last month nobody had managed to get beyond 7.
NASA uses Amazon’s cloud computing in Mars landing mission
Using AWS’s cloud to operate the mars.jpl.nasa.gov website, Shams noted, enables JPL to get images, videos and developments to the public quickly, without having to build and operate the infrastructure in-house.
According to Amazon, AWS enabled JPL to construct a scalable Web infrastructure in only two to three weeks instead of months.
via NASA uses Amazon’s cloud computing in Mars landing mission – chicagotribune.com.
NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software … from 350M miles away
“We need to take a whole series of steps to make that software active,” said Steve Scandore, a senior flight software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “You have to imagine that if something goes wrong with this, it could be the last time you hear from the rover.”
via NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software … from 350M miles away – Computerworld.
Curiosity, while working on Mars alone, needs to be told what it will do every day — move across the bottom of the crater, zap a rock with its laser, scoop up a soil sample. And once a team of NASA scientists make the daily decision as to what the rover will do, programmers have to begin furiously working on up to a 1,000 different commands that will be uploaded to the rover.
Wall Street and the Mismanagement of Software
It’s clear that Knight’s software was deployed without adequate verification. With a deadline that could not be extended, Knight had to choose between two alternatives: delaying their new system until they had a high degree of confidence in its reliability (possibly resulting in a loss of business to competitors in the interim), or deploying an incompletely verified system and hoping that any bugs would be minor. They did not choose wisely.
via Wall Street and the Mismanagement of Software | Dr Dobb’s.
What is needed is a change in the way that such critical software is developed and deployed. Safety-critical domains such as commercial avionics, where software failure could directly cause or contribute to the loss of human life, have known about this for decades. These industries have produced standards for software certification that heavily emphasize appropriate “life cycle” processes for software development, verification, and quality assurance. A “safety culture” has infused the entire industry, with hazard/safety analysis a key part of the overall process. Until the software has been certified as compliant with the standard, the plane does not fly. The result is an impressive record in practice: no human fatality on a commercial aircraft has been attributed to a software error.
WebRTC
WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an HTML5 standard being drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with a mailing list created in April 2011.[1][2], and jointly in the IETF with a working group chartered in May 2011.[3] It is also the name of framework that was open sourced on June 1, 2011, which implements early versions of the standard and allows web browsers to conduct real-time communication.[4] The goal of WebRTC is to enable applications such as voice calling, video chat and P2P file sharing without plugins.
Motorola Solutions deal to bolster safety of NSA tech
Toronto-based Fixmo, which raised $23 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in November, worked with the NSA to develop the technology behind its Sentinel and SafeZone software. The programs allow companies and government agencies to control how data are shared on employee smartphones and tablets and strengthen protection against harmful software.
via Motorola Solutions deal to bolster safety of NSA tech – chicagotribune.com.
The Tribune’s headline is misleading. It should be s/safety/security/g Also…
Motorola Solutions plans to introduce more Android tablets later this year, Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown said last month.