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Submission + - Free clock democratises atomic accuracy (itnews.com.au)

schliz writes: A new, trial network of software-based clocks could give data centres and networks the accuracy of an atomic clock for free. The so-called RADclock analyses information from multiple computers across the internet by collecting the time from each machine's internal quartz clock, the time it takes for this information to be transmitted across the network, and comparing all the information collected to determine a time that is most likely to be accurate, so machines are calibrated across the network with up to microsecond accuracy — as good as that provided by a $50,000 atomic clock, researchers say.

Comment Re:Well... (Score 1) 180

However, they should have a "real investigation" to find out:

Why on earth did it rebound the way it did and remain stable the rest of the day ?

Why are their reports that traders were locked out their systems during the entire 10-15 minutes of the drop ?

What effects the "Working Group on Financial Markets" aka Plunge Protection Team have on the markets. This entity has absolutely no oversight and can pretty much manipulate the markets how it wishes. The "conspiracy theorist" in me think that they might have done this on purpose to send a message to certain Senators to drop support for the "Audit the Fed" Bill, which quite a few did shortly afterwards.

If it was caused by a typo, how can someone entering a "B"illion instead of a "M"illion cause this, normally wouldn't you have to enter 1,000,000,000 into the computer program instead of "Million" ? I guess unless they were using Microsoft Bob for Day Traders.

Anyway, that is my "Two Cents"

The Internet

Submission + - HotelChatter's Annual Hotel WiFi Report 2010 (hotelchatter.com)

Ant writes: "HotelChatter's Annual Hotel WiFi Report 2010 — "This year marks HotelChatter's sixth annual hotel wifi report. Over the years we've documented the progression of hotel WiFi, from blatant disregard, to price-gouging for WiFi access, and reliable WiFi for loyalty program members, through guests taking matters in to their own hands with wireless laptop/notebook cards and 3G access. A year ago, we thought guest demand for free, reliable, hotel WiFi might just go away, thanks to 3G.

Well guess what? The demand for hotel WiFi has not gone away, quite the opposite, a growing number of hotel guests not only demand the hotel they book have proper wireless access but most will consider *not* staying at a hotel that can't meet their basic access needs. That's right, WiFi is a make or break amenity for many hotel guests that can sway booking decisions — and that isn't going away..."

Seen on Boing Boing."

Announcements

Submission + - All of Gopherspace Available for Download

An anonymous reader writes: Cory Doctorow tells us that in 2007, John Goerzen scraped every gopher site he could find (gopher was a menu-driven text-only precursor to the Web; I got my first online gig programming gopher sites). He saved 780,000 documents, totalling 40GB. Today, most of this is offline, so he's making the entire archive available as a .torrent file; the compressed data is only 15GB. Wanna host the entire history of a medium? Here's your chance!

Go get yourself a piece of pre-Internet history here!
Businesses

Submission + - Japan hopes for humanoid robot on moon by 2015 (examiner.com)

JoshuaInNippon writes: A Japanese manufacturing cooperative named Astro-Technology SOHLA announced on April 27th that they are planning to create and send a two-legged humanoid robot to the moon, have it draw the Japanese flag on the surface, and hopefully then get it to return to the Earth, all by the year 2015. The group wants to inspire people, particularly in Japan, about space and generate confidence among SMEs to create low-cost space technology. While the idea may seem far-fetched to some, SOHLA had success in building a small low-cost satellite, named "Maido-1", which was launched into space aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket in early 2009. The group also commented that they want to have their future humanoid robot hitch a ride to the moon with a surveying rover that JAXA is building.

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