GeekwithEnvy

discussions

Steve Jobs’ Childhood Home Could Become Historical Site

by Leave a Comment

The childhood home of Steve Jobs.
The childhood home of Steve Jobs. ( Source: CNN)

If the seven-member Los Altos Historical Commission completes it’s “historic property evaluation” and decides it so, Steve Jobs’ childhood home could become a historical site. The home is located on 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California. The garage you see in the picture is the same garage that Steve Wozniak was in when he put together the first 50 Apple 1 computers.

“Steve Jobs is considered a genius who blended technology and creativity to invent and market a product which dramatically changed six industries — personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing,” according to the property evaluation.

“His influence is expected to be felt by multiple generations forthcoming.”

Source: CNN

 

Area 51 Officially Confirmed by US Government

by Leave a Comment

Area-51-map
Official US Government Map of Area 51 (Image Source:National Security Archive)

Newly declassified information actually contains the first official acknowledgement of Area 51 by the government along with information on just exactly what was going on behind closed doors. Area 51 is mentioned many times in the documentation and is also shown in a declassified map (shown above).

The primary use of Area 51 according the the newly released history was, no surprise here, to test out secret US government projects, but more interestingly, the declassified history points out the secretive development of the U-2, a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft used by the CIA and USAF to gather intelligence. The documents go into great detail and include information like the names of pilots, code names, locations, inter-govermental co-operation details, cryptonyms and more.Alien Sign

Unfortunately, for those who are awaiting acknowledgement of extraterrestrial life, you will have to wait a little longer. There are clearly no references to knowledge of alien life forms, but there is a ton of awesome, once highly secretive and classified information that’s now available to the public.

You can read the history of the U-2 project at the official National Security Archive website. The site contains many images, maps, videos and even offers up some highlights from the documentation, it’s definitely worth a look.

Voyager 1 Leaves the Solar System, Maybe?

by Leave a Comment

voyager2_large
Voyager Spacecraft ( Source: NASA/JPL)

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the most distant human-made object at over 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from our sun. The mission of the Voyager spacecraft both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, was to explore Jupiter and Saturn. After major success, the mission was extended to have Voyager 2 explore Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is still operating and sending back data after more than 35 years later. The new mission of the Voyager spacecraft named, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), is to explore space outside of our solar system, which is all new territory for us.

We have been anticipating Voyager 1 to finally leave our solar system completely and enter interstellar space, one group thinks we have done just that. UMD research scientist Marc Swisdak,  James F. Drake and Merav Opher of Boston University believe that recent data suggests that Voyager 1 is now in interstellar  space, this conflicts with NASA’s view of the data in which they believe the spacecraft is still on the outer edge of our solar system.

It’s a somewhat controversial view, but we think Voyager has finally left the Solar System, and is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way”

It’s all about our sun’s magnetic field and how it interacts with the magnetic field of interstellar space. The direction that the magnetic field of interstellar space is coming from is the source of controversy. As NASA writes, “Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble.”. This is in contrast to the view that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun, which would mean that Voyager 1 left our solar system back on July 27th, 2012.

This is obviously new for everyone and discussions will need to continue in order to better understand what’s going on at the edge of our solar system. The best thing we can do is continue to analyze new data as it comes in and hopefully it will provide a clearer picture.

You can read the original article from NASA about this topic and you can learn more about the Voyager spacecraft from a post we did last year.

 

WoW Players Preferred Over Harvard MBAs?

by 1 Comment

In a Big Think video John Seely Brown, a notable researcher, discusses the benefits that World of Warcraft gamers have over others. He talks about how World of Warcraft players have a true passion for what they are doing and how that helps drive them towards success. He also talks about how applying the practices of good guilds to the business world could be beneficial and much better than the system we use today. He mentions that self-assesment, group criticism and having employees work on something they genuinely care about is the key to being successful and that we need to rethink the way we do things.

Ask any hardcore raider from WoW and you will most certainly begin to notice that there’s a lot of strategy and structure to what gamers are doing when they are working as part of a guild. After you spend sometime playing in an organized guild, you quickly begin to realize that you have been building a unique skill set that you can easily apply to other situations in the real world. John’s ideas make for an interesting concept and I like the idea of challenging our current system.

[Massively]

Windows 8 Feels Like a Dud

by Leave a Comment

product_win8-startscreen_Web

I have been tinkering around with Windows 8 since the developer preview and I was pretty excited initially about it’s release, but now that it’s finally here, I am feeling like something is majorly wrong with this version of Windows.

One only needs to spend 60 seconds with Windows 8 to realize that it’s not Microsoft’s best work. I have been working with people just about everyday trying to help them easily transition to the new operating system and it’s proven to be quite a challenge. You know something is wrong with your shiny new OS when PC hardware manufacturers, like Gateway, need to place an icon somewhere on the screen to help you shut down your computer. In case you missed it, we have put together a brief how-to that shows you how to make such an icon for yourself.

Windows 8 dosen’t fully commit to one user-interface and that alone will drive you crazy. You will find yourself wanting to exist in one space or the other but ultimately you will need to switch between both. This issue leaves Windows 8 feeling disconnected from itself and it’s just downright frustrating. There a many aspects of the new tile UI that I enjoy but it’s just not built to be productive. Many of the applications that I use day-to-day require me to move to the legacy desktop and therefore I spend almost all of my time there.

There are hidden menus in each corner and once they are open, they frequently disappear unexpectedly. When the menus do stay open, I have trouble fumbling through a poorly designed search system to find files or applications that I need. Changing settings or just trying to obtain Windows updates through the new tile based UI is buggy and most of the time I end up, once again, heading back to the legacy desktop.

Your design should be intuitive and new users should feel welcome when they first see Windows 8. Even though you shouldn’t have too, there is almost no attempt to guide the user in the right direction besides a small animation toward the end of the Windows 8 installation that explains how to bring up the hidden menus that are at the edge of the screen.

Even app developers don’t seem confident in the new OS. The lack of a solid app base is killing Windows 8 more than anything, we need a reason to enjoy our new tile system with full screen applications. Many major software companies have avoided making Windows 8 apps that work with the new tile UI, and those who have adapted have buggy applications that don’t feel like their worth the hard drive space.

I believe Windows 8 is the worst release of Microsoft’s OS software to-date. I would consider myself to be advanced user with knowledge of many different operating systems and yet I find it difficult to perform routine tasks. This one screams out “I’m a DUD!”. What’s worse is that I am starting to feel like the guinea pig here and I am just waiting for Microsoft to ask me to shell out more money for a rushed copy of  Windows 9 due to the failure of Windows 8’s poor design.

Honestly, Windows 8 is a mess and we can only hope that Microsoft will do the right thing and fix many of the issues that plague the new OS today, with the release of a service pack in the near future. I am trying to remain optimistic about Microsoft’s ability to create a next-gen OS that’s sleek, functional, easy-to-use, and that works seamlessly across all of my devices, but I’m loosing faith.