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Posted: 03-09-2013 10:03 Post subject:

Ah, you got it.

Its a good lesson in Reading the Question, eh?

(and its nice Dad remembers it after 65 years...)

Posted: 04-09-2013 07:55 Post subject:

Jonathon Fletcher: forgotten father of the search engine
By Joe Miller, BBC News

As Google celebrates its 15th birthday, the web giant has become a byword for information retrieval.
But if you put Jonathon Fletcher's name into a Google search, none of the immediate results hint to the role he played in the development of the world wide web.
There is certainly nothing that credits him as the father of the modern search engine.

Yet 20 years ago, in a computer lab at the University of Stirling in Scotland, Mr Fletcher invented the world's first web-crawling search engine - the very technology that powers Google, Bing, Yahoo and all the major search tools on the web today.

In 1993, the web was in its infancy.
Mosaic, the first popular browser with an interface that resembles the ones we use today, had just been released, and the total amount of web pages numbered in the thousands.
But the question of how to find things on the web had not been solved.
Mosaic had a page called What's New, which indexed new websites as they were created.

The problem was that in order for developers at Mosaic to be aware of a new website, its creators would have to write to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - where the browser's team were based.

At about this time, Jonathon Fletcher was a promising graduate of the University of Stirling, with an offer to study for a PhD at the University of Glasgow.
Before he could take his place, funding at Glasgow was cut, and Mr Fletcher found himself at a loose end.
"I was suddenly very motivated to find a source of income," he recalls, "so I went back to my university and got a job working for the technology department."

It was in this job that he first encountered the world wide web and Mosaic's What's New page.
While building a web server for the university, Fletcher realised the What's New page was fundamentally flawed.
Because websites were added to the list manually, there was nothing to track changes to their content. Consequently, many of the links were quickly out-of-date or wrongly labelled.

"If you wanted to see what had changed you had to go back and look," Mr Fletcher says of Mosaic's links.
"With a degree in computing science and an idea that there had to be a better way, I decided to write something that would go and look for me."
That something was the world's first web crawler.

Mr Fletcher called his invention JumpStation. He put together an index of pages which could then be searched by a web crawler, essentially an automated process that visits, and indexes, every link on every web page it comes across. The process continues until the crawler runs out of things to visit.
Ten days later, on 21 December 1993, JumpStation ran out of things to visit. It had indexed 25,000 pages. Cool

To date, Google has indexed over a trillion pages.

Mr Fletcher quickly built an easy-to-navigate search tool for the index, stuck his website on Mosaic's What's New page, and the world's first modern search engine was in operation.

"I would say that he is the father of the web search engine," says Prof Mark Sanderson of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, who has studied the history of information retrieval.
"There have obviously been computers doing searches for a very long time, and there were certainly search engines before the web. But Jonathon was the first person to create a search engine that had all the components of a modern search engine."

However, while Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are household names, Mr Fletcher, who now lives in Hong Kong, has received little recognition for his role in the evolution of the internet.
The fact that his project was ultimately abandoned may not have helped.

As JumpStation grew, it required more and more investment - something which the University of Stirling was not willing to provide.
"It ran on a shared server," explains Mr Fletcher. "There wasn't a lot of disk space and back then disks were small and expensive."

By June of 1994, JumpStation had indexed 275,000 pages. Space constraints forced Mr Fletcher to only index titles and headers of web pages, and not the entire content of the page, but even with this compromise, JumpStation started to struggle under the load.
And so did Mr Fletcher. "It wasn't my job," he says. "My job was to keep the student labs running and do system administration and technology odd jobs."

A job offer to go and work in Tokyo proved too strong to resist, and the university did little to try and keep him, or JumpStation, from leaving.
"I was obviously not very successful in convincing them of its potential," says Mr Fletcher.
"At the time I did what I thought was right, but there have been moments in the last 20 years where I've looked back."

Prof Leslie Smith, head of Computing Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling, who remembers Mr Fletcher, acknowledged that JumpStation "proved to be ahead of its time", and told the BBC that "colleagues at Stirling are delighted he is gaining the recognition he deserves for his achievements".

But despite the disappointment Mr Fletcher suffered, his pioneering technology would be the foundation of all subsequent web search engines.
"The web community in 1993 was very small," says Prof Sanderson. "Anybody who was doing anything on the web would've known about JumpStation.
"By the middle of 1994 it was becoming clear that web search engines were going to be very important. Google didn't come out until 1998 and what Jonathon was doing was in 1993."

Mr Fletcher received some recognition for his achievements at a conference in Dublin a few weeks ago, where he was on a panel with representatives from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. But in his speech, he talked about the future.
"In my opinion, the web isn't going to last forever," he told the audience. "But the problem of finding information is."
"The desire to search through content and find information is independent of the medium."

The current medium is making a lot of money for those who followed him, but the Scarborough-born pioneer has no regrets.
"My parents are proud of me, my children are proud of me, and that's worth quite a lot to me, so I'm quite happy." Very Happy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23945326

Posted: 06-09-2013 22:53 Post subject:

The march of technology can be the result of many small steps, as well as a few 'giant leaps':

How Sheppey avoided loss of life
By Tom de Castella, BBC News Magazine

The Sheppey Crossing pile-up involved 130 vehicles colliding in thick fog at high speed. Even worse, the crash took place on a bridge with no hard shoulder. Some commentators have said it was a miracle that no-one died.
Some witnesses said the pile up went on for 10 minutes and that cars were heading into the crash zone at 60-70mph. Shocked

At least 60 people were injured, of whom 35 required hospital treatment. Eight of them were seriously injured. But amazingly no-one was killed.

The vehicles were travelling fast. The speed limit was 70mph for this dual carriageway bridge, higher even than bridges that are wider. The Dartford Crossing is three lanes rather than dual carriageway yet the speed limit is only 50mph.

Previous incidents in the fog involving multiple vehicles have led to fatalities.
In 1991 10 people were killed after 51 vehicles crashed into each on the eastbound carriageway of the M4.
Three people died in 1997 after a 160 car pile-up on the M42 at Bromsgrove.
In 1984, nine people died after 26 vehicles collided on the M25 near Clacket Lane.

All these accidents occurred in fog. And in 2011 seven people died in a crash on the M5 after smoke from a fireworks display caused poor visibility on the motorway.

After the Sheppey accident, Kent Police's Assistant Chief Constable Rob Price said it was "a miracle" there were no life-threatening injuries. It is too early to say how no-one died, a police spokesman says.

One of the key factors in fatalities is whether there are heavy goods vehicles (HGV) that cannot stop in time, says Edmund King, president of the AA. After the Bromsgrove crash an HGV driver was convicted of dangerous driving. The sheer weight of a 44-tonne truck gives car passengers little chance when hit at speed.
"When you look at the M42 crash, the thing that killed people was the HGV ploughing into the back of vehicles and basically crushing them," says King.

A Kent Police spokesman says that two car transporters - one empty - and two HGVs are thought to have been involved in the collision.
From the pictures, it appears they were able to stop without causing too much damage, says King. "The miracle is that there wasn't an HGV ploughing into the back of everyone [at high speed]."

It has been reported that a quick-thinking lorry driver blocked the approach to the bridge to prevent any more cars from entering the crash zone.

The second crucial factor is how much safer cars are today as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago.
The EuroNCAP (new car assessment programme) system - better known as the star safety ratings - has put the onus on manufacturers to improve car safety beyond minimum standards.

Motoring journalist Quentin Willson thinks the word miracle is unnecessary. For him it's all about the design. "In the old days if you'd been in a Cortina you would have gone through the windscreen. The engine would have folded." Nowadays the chassis is much tougher and this is unlikely to happen, he says.

There has been a 50% reduction in death and serious injury for car passengers over the past decade, says Matthew Avery, head of research at Thatcham, the research body that tests cars for the EuroNCAP star ratings
"There are two ways of getting killed in a crash - you can get crushed or have forces exerted on the body that are too great to bear," he says.

Car manufacturers have improved safety features in relation to this. A safety cage now envelopes the cabin, stopping passengers from being crushed. There are crushable zones around it to take away the energy from the crash.
Previously, drivers would be at risk of having their legs or feet crushed as the cabin would give way and pedals come towards the driver, Avery says. Today that shouldn't happen as the interior will remain intact.

Seatbelts have load limiters, which give a little, thus reducing the forces on the body at high speed braking.
There are more airbags. Side airbags protect the thorax and body. Curtain airbags fill the space where the window is and protect the head. Head restraints go forward to help protect against whiplash.

The bridge was probably a contributory factor, increasing the scale of the pile-up, King says. Cars coming up to the apex may not have been able to see the density of the fog on the other side.

But the central reservation and side barriers on the bridge "did their job" King says. They prevented vehicles from plunging off the side or into oncoming traffic on the opposite carriageway.

In the future, the scale of multiple-vehicle pile ups will be radically cut by technology, Avery believes. At present only 1 or 2% of cars have AEB (autonomous emergency braking) - where the car brakes automatically warns the driver at the sign of an obstacle ahead.
"It's radar-based so that even when it's foggy it would have worked," he says. And soon it is likely to become a common feature.

Next year cars seeking a five-star safety rating will require AEB features. Also from 2014 it will become mandatory for lorries to be equipped with forward collision warnings. Crashes will still happen but there will be very few big pile-ups, Avery predicts.
"Things like the Isle of Sheppey crash just won't happen in 10 years' time," he says.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23990750

Posted: 17-09-2013 22:55 Post subject:

Online shopping: The pensioner who pioneered a home shopping revolution
By Denise Winterman and Jon Kelly, BBC News Magazine

People spend billions each year shopping online, but few know it was a grandmother from Gateshead who pioneered it from her living room.
It was an order for margarine, cornflakes and eggs that paved the way for an industry now estimated to be worth £117.6bn ($186.1bn) to the UK economy alone.

Grandmother Jane Snowball, 72, sat down in an armchair in her Gateshead home in May 1984, picked up a television remote control and used it to order the groceries from her local supermarket.
She was part of a council initiative to help the elderly. What she - and everyone else with her at the time - didn't realise was that her simple shopping list was arguably the world's first home online shop.

With her remote control she used a piece of computer technology called Videotex. It sent the order down her phone line to the local Tesco - the goods were then packaged and delivered to her door. Mrs Snowball never saw a computer - her television linked her to the shop.

"What we effectively did was to take a domestic TV in a home and turn it into a computer terminal," says Michael Aldrich, the man behind the technology for the system. "That was the big leap."
It was years before the world wide web came into being.

"Aldrich and his company were very, very advanced for the time," says Kevin Turner, principal lecturer at Brighton Business School, where the Michael Aldrich Archive is kept. "It demonstrated that people could do transactions from home."

Aldrich's system incorporated a television with a chip set used at the time by BT's teletext service Prestel. It was an information service like the BBC's Ceefax and ITV's Oracle.
Using a domestic phone line he connected the TV to retailer computers which could process the transactions. He had built a real-time, multi-user transaction processing computer.

Michael Aldrich with one of the online shopping gadgets
Videotex was already being used by companies to do business, most notably the travel industry. But it was a Gateshead Council community initiative that saw it become the world's first business-to-consumer home online shopping system.

The Gateshead Shopping Experiment was about helping pensioners with mobility problems. Aldrich was keen to provide the technology as he had been thinking about home online shopping for a few years. Three retailers, Tesco, Greggs and Lloyds Pharmacy, agreed to get involved.

Mrs Snowball was selected to try the system as she had broken her hip. She was given a standard television with the chip set and a remote control with an additional button on it that said "phone".
Pressing the button brought up a directory of retailers on the TV screen in the format of a standard teletext page. She would choose a retailer and then the goods. With no world wide web, phone numbers had to be used.

There was a list of 1,000 items from Tesco alone. The order was sent down her phone line, packed and delivered by the supermarket. Mrs Snowball paid in cash when she got her shopping as credit cards were not widely used at the time. It took just 15 minutes to teach her how to use the system.
"It was 1984 and you were doing online home shopping, it was amazing and she loved it," says Aldrich. Very Happy

"It worked very well... and she could just turn off the computer and go back to watching Coronation Street."

Mrs Snowball declared it "wonderful", although Aldrich remembers that she missed the social interaction of shopping.
"Shopping was a social activity where she met friends," he says. "But the system worked very well for ages."

It was adopted by Bradford Council a few years later but never became widely used. The system worked well for businesses-to-business transactions but home online shopping was not viable until home PCs started to become widespread and the internet more popular.

"It's significant because of its influence rather than its direct impact," says Asher Rospigliosi, senior lecturer in e-business and management information systems at the Brighton Business School. "If you only have a few customers it's extra labour for not much extra profit."

Aldrich went on to become an information technology adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Tesco became one of the first retailers in the UK to offer a home online shopping service. Mrs Snowball was recognised by Gateshead Council for the part she played in the ground-breaking initiative in a ceremony in 2009.

But no-one at the time knew the experiment would actually anticipate a transformation of shopping. Gateshead Council says it has has very few records of the experiment because it didn't realise how significant it was at the time. It would be another 10 years before retailers would see the potential.

"It really was a momentous landmark," says Rospigliosi.

But ultimately it was fun, says Aldrich.
"If I hadn't invented it someone else would have done," says Aldrich. "All I've ever thought was it was exciting and interesting but above all fun."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24091393

Posted: 01-10-2013 13:56 Post subject:

Scientists use lightning bolt to charge mobile phone

Some 200 years after Mary Shelley used lightning to breath life into Frankenstein's monster, scientists have copied her idea to power a phone.
The proof-of-concept experiment was conducted at the University of Southampton in collaboration with Nokia.
The mobile firm warned users "not to try this at home". Cool

Harnessing nature in this way could provide power sources where electricity is in short supply, said experts.

Using a transformer, the team recreated a lightning bolt in the lab by passing 200,000 volts across a 30cm (11in) air gap.
"We were amazed to see that the Nokia circuitry somehow stabilised the noisy signal, allowing the battery to be charged," said Neil Palmer, from the University of Southampton's high voltage laboratory.
"This discovery proves devices can be charged with a current that passes through the air, and is a huge step towards understanding a natural power like lightning and harnessing its energy."

Lightning is a discharge of static electricity that occurs when there is an imbalance in the electrical charge between a cloud and the earth's surface.
On average three people die in the UK each year from lightning strikes, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa).

"We obviously aren't recommending people try this experiment at home, but we are always looking to disrupt and push the boundaries of technology," said Chris Weber, executive vice-president for sales at Nokia.

Finding new ways to charge mobile phones and extend battery life is one of the number one priorities for the mobile industry.

"It's certainly a striking idea," said Ben Wood, of analyst firm CCS Insight.
"Nokia has been among the forerunners of device-charging technology for some time. It's also very committed to caring for the environment. So it's perhaps not surprising that the company's involved in what might appear to be a wacky idea."

He thinks the concept might be useful in areas without reliable electricity.
"If you live in a remote village in India you might welcome the possibility of a communal device that charges phones."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24347185

Posted: 01-10-2013 22:40 Post subject:

Wouldnt the high voltage damage the appliance??

Posted: 07-10-2013 10:42 Post subject:

Alien DNA could be 'recreated' on earth
Humans will be able to recreate alien life forms and 'print out' organisms using the biological equivalent of a 3D printer in the future, a DNA pioneer has predicted.
By Claire Carter
11:23AM BST 06 Oct 2013

Dr Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, created the world’s first synthetic lifeform, using chemicals and inserting DNA into the cell of a bacteria.

He believes scientists will soon be to do the same, designing basic organisms to include features useful in farming or medicine, as well as sending robots into space to read the sequence of alien life forms and replicate them back on Earth.

Writing in his latest book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, he says: “In years to come it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of [synthetic] cells from computer-designed software.
The creation of cells from scratch will open up extraordinary possibilities.”

The scientist also predicts in the future machines will be able to analyse the make up of genomes and transmit this through the internet or even space, creating more possibilities in the search for alien life, the Sunday Times reported.

He wrote: “The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome sequencing unit to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there. If we can . . . beam them back to Earth we should be able to reconstruct their genomes.
“The synthetic version of a Martian genome could then be used to recreate Martian life on Earth.”

In 2010 Dr Venter and his team made a new chromosome from artificial DNA in a test tube, transferring it to an empty cell where it multiplied – the definition of being alive.

The multi-millionaire pioneer in genetics compared his work with making a computer at the time, referring to the artificial DNA as the software.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10358801/Alien-DNA-could-be-recreated-on-earth.html

Posted: 07-10-2013 10:54 Post subject:

Posted: 07-10-2013 21:12 Post subject:

Posted: 10-10-2013 08:42 Post subject:

Ford car takes control of steering to avoid collisions
By Leo Kelion, Technology reporter

A car that takes control of the steering wheel when it detects the risk of a collision is being tested at a research facility in Germany.
Ford said the Obstacle Avoidance system first warned the driver of danger and then took charge if they did not react.

The firm said the equipment had been fitted to one of its Focus-branded vehicles as part of a project involving other carmakers and suppliers.
One analyst said it was a staging post on the route to "driverless cars".

The system scans up to 200m (650ft) ahead by using three radars, a number of ultrasonic sensors and a camera, which are all installed in the vehicle.
An additional built-in display shows a warning sign and sounds a chime. Then, if necessary, it applies the brakes, scans for a gap in the road ahead, and steers to avoid a crash.

"You're driving down the road and a pedestrian or something comes out from either side of your vehicle from your peripheral vision where you don't have a good look at it," said Bard Samardzich, vice-president of product development at Ford's European division.
"Obstacle Avoidance can sense that the pedestrian or that object is coming across the front of your vehicle. If it doesn't sense you responding accordingly in your vehicle by braking or manoeuvring, it will take over."

The firm showed off the tech at a facility in Lommel, Belgium, earlier this week.
The new technology builds on safety features already offered by Ford.

Last year it introduced Lane Keeping Alert, a feature that vibrates the wheel - but does not take control - if it detects the driver is drifting out of a lane without using an indicator.

Ford's existing Active City Stop facility also aims to reduce the severity of collisions by applying the brakes if it detects an object in front of the vehicle. But it works only if the object is static or travelling less than 30km/h (19mph) faster than the car.
By contrast, the company said the new tech was being tested at speeds of over 60 km/h (38mph).

Other manufacturers involved in the project at Aachen include BMW, Fiat, Daimler, Volvo and Volkswagen. They will share data from the tests to develop systems of their own.

Volvo - which is owned by China's Geely - has already introduced its own pedestrian and cyclist alert system, which sounds an alarm and applies the brakes. The firm told the BBC in March that it was now adapting the system so it would soon be able to recognise animals.

There may be resistance from some to the idea of a car taking control from its driver.
But Ford points out that fewer than one-third of all drivers involved in rear-end collisions had attempted to steer clear of the accident, according to data collected by Germany's Federal Statistical Office.
With that in mind, one independent analyst said it should not be too hard for manufacturers to convince motorists of the innovation's benefit.

"The logic behind the technology is impeccable - anything that can avoid a potentially dangerous situation that can cause injury or death sounds like a good piece of equipment," said Tim Urquhart, senior analyst at consultants IHS Automotive.
"Obviously it will come at a price. But there will be less resistance to a piece of technology like this than there will be to the concept of totally driverless cars.
"But autonomous vehicles are already being tested by Google, Daimler and others, and taking steering control in an emergency situation is obviously a pretty significant step along the road."

Ford said more tests were needed and it was not yet ready to announce a launch date for its Obstacle Avoidance system.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24464480

Posted: 10-10-2013 09:59 Post subject:

Posted: 11-10-2013 00:19 Post subject:

A bit of technology that didn't get off the ground - yet!

It Is Rocket Science - Series 2 - Episode 2.

Comedy taking a quirky look at the science and history of space travel. With Helen Keen, Peter Serafinowicz and Susy Kane. The story of a nuclear spaceship, Project Orion.

This comic but informative look at the history of space exploration looks this week at the role that leaps of the imagination have played in the science of rocketry, including the strange story of Russian Cosmism, and how their mission to bring back to life everyone who has ever lived produced pioneering work on multi-stage rockets: and the even stranger story of a plan in the 1950s for a giant spaceship capable of carrying a hundred and fifty people that could have been built using existing technology - Project Orion. There was just one snag - it was to be fuelled by nuclear bombs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01hxmxk/It_Is_Rocket_Science_Series_2_Episode_2/

Duration 13 minutes

Available until 11:32PM Wed, 16 Oct 2013