The Internet

We take for granted how much information is truly out there. From Googlegangers to String Theory, and everything in between. All there, at the click of a mouse and a few finger movements, for anyone to see.

Dangerous, Exciting, Terrifying. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

I love knowledge. Knowing is being prepared; even if it's just theoretical knowledge that you haven't put to the test, at least it's something you can go on.. a direction, if you will.

There's a great website I like to visit often: How to Make Everything. Sure, it's not much to look at graphic-wise, but I'm not looking for fancy pixels. I'm looking for information on a vast scale.. And, again, sure, some of the links are dead, but most work, and there's a lot of them. Mostly for the distribution to 3rd world countries (which, ironically, we may be one of those soon...), the site is free for the perusing and free downloads of all information within. The sister site is here, with over 13 Gigs of information. Agriculture, Metalworking, Macro and Micro Economics, you name it, it's in there.


Another great site is offered by NDSU (North Dakota State University) Extension Service. 

Full of plans ranging from outhouses to large houses, and all points in between. These are in .PDF format, so you'll have to save and open.

Hope this helps in preparing.

If knowledge is power, than What Hath God Wrought?

Augmented Google Earth Gets Real-Time People, Cars, Clouds

Augmented Google Earth Gets Real-Time People, Cars, Clouds

 

September 30th, 2009 The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.
 

Tice never did tell his story to Congress about this different aspect of the program.

Well, my guess is that it has something to do with providing surveillance data for this SEAS World Sim thing, and that individual Americans are being watched and potentially targeted with it. Tice’s background seems to involve a lot of traditional electronic warfare, radar and ELINT stuff. Maybe Tice’s deal involved the collection of the mobile phone GPS and/or triangulation data which would provide realtime spacial/geographic data to the SEAS system. In other words, SEAS sees you. They could bring up a map of a city and plot your path based on the information that your phone is exchanging with the mobile network.

—Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
Via: Popular Science:

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.
They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars’ motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.
From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.

Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.
They will present their paper at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality next month, but you can read a draft PDF here.
Research Credit: JB


-------------------------------

And an interesting reply by someone, with this:



# Zuma Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:13 am

from a few years back:
what *is* it with these popsci editors?
popular science? popular to whom? who is the mag’s market?

and then there’s this on space surveillance:

Space Surveillance


The Bush NSP does provide updated and improved language in several areas, most notably, as referenced above, regarding space surveillance. There is a new emphasis on providing U.S. space surveillance data and situational awareness analysis – gathered by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network and managed by Air Force Space Command – to non-military users, including foreign governments and commercial companies. The policy states that the Defense Department shall:


“Have responsibility for space situational awareness; in this capacity, the Secretary of Defense shall support the space situational awareness requirements of the Director of National Intelligence and conduct space situational awareness for: the United States Government; U.S. commercial space capabilities and services used for national and homeland security purposes; civil space capabilities and operations, particularly human space flight activities; and, as appropriate, commercial and foreign space entities.”

Google Government Cloud. Is this Good news or Bad?

Here's the link.

Google in 2010 will launch a government cloud that will include Gmail, Google Docs and other software products Google hosts on its servers and provisions to consumers and businesses as a service. Google made the announcement in concert with the launch of the Apps.gov Web store, unveiled by Federal CIO Vivek Kundra at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Google, which is seeking broader adoption of its Google Apps collaboration applications, said Sept. 15 it plans to create a dedicated cloud computing system for the U.S. government in 2010.

The government cloud will include the Web services in Google Apps, a suite that comprises Gmail, Google Docs and other SAAS (software as a service) products Google hosts on its servers. Google offers these applications as an alternative to collaboration applications such as Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus Sametime.

The government cloud will constitute a "dedicated parallel environment" to Google's commercial Google Apps cloud for consumers and enterprises, Matt Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise, told eWEEK in an interview.

Data created in this cloud by federal, state and local government agencies will be hosted on separate servers within existing Google data centers in the United States. Storing such data on separate servers makes sense, given all of the sensitive information the government generates.
Resource Library:

A Pragmatic and Effective Approach to Cloud Computing -- Real Benefits From the
Seeding the Clouds: Key Infrastructure Elements of Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing Infrastructure and the Need for a Service Delivery Platform
IBM Perspective on Cloud Computing

Google made the government cloud announcement in concert with the launch of the Apps.gov Web store, which Federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled at NASA's Ames Research Center Sept. 15. Apps.gov is an online storefront through which federal agencies can search for and buy cloud-based IT services from providers such as Google.

Kundra is well-acquainted with Google Apps. As the CTO for the District of Columbia, Kundra in June 2008 inked a contract worth $500,000 a year to give 38,000 government employees Google Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Kundra discussed the switch to Google Apps in this September 2008 video.

With this kind of support and Kundra's promotion to commanding the nation's federal IT systems, it's no surprise that Google is tailoring a government cloud system.

"The goal is to meet the unique requirements and policies that the government has," Glotzbach said. "That being said, it will still be cloud computing in its truest form—a multitenant cloud."

Google aims to target the 300 million U.S. government users creating and sharing information on 10,000 IT systems. That is a fat market for Google, or any enterprise software maker, to target.

Glotzbach said city government employees for the district are heavily using Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation purposes, as well as the Google Sites wiki application and Google video for businesses. Some of these users are using Gmail; some are also still using Microsoft Outlook.

Details about Google Apps adoption on the federal level are murkier, given the sensitivity inherent in anything with that classification. Glotzbach said more than a dozen agencies are in various stages of pilot and rollout for Google Apps, but declined to specify which agencies were using what.

Meanwhile, Google isn't the only company cheering on Apps.gov, as Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels blogged about the Apps.gov launch and counted "the federal government among our customers."

Techmeme has more stories on the government cloud and the Apps.gov store here. Google Sept. 15 also launched a Google public-sector Website to help local, state and federal government officials reach out to citizens.

Ok, one thing struck me as hilarious:

Google aims to target the 300 million U.S. government users creating and sharing information on 10,000 IT systems. That is a fat market for Google, or any enterprise software maker, to target.

According to this we're only at 307 million... Apparently we're ALL Government employees. Sweet, I'm retiring early.


Kidding aside, this strikes me as a bold move, considering everything on a network as vast as that has a potential backdoor.

Hackers, get to it.