Paul Allen is Building a Giant Rocket-Toting Plane!

Paul Allen's huge six Boing 747 jet engine touting bemouth has been tagged The Stratolaunch carrier aircraft. The Stratolaunch is set to become the largest airplane ever built.

Stratolaunch Systems is building an enormous airplane that will carry huge rockets to 30,000 feet and release them for trips into low-Earth orbit.

The carrier plane is being built for Stratolaunch in California's Mojave Desert by founder Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites. With a wingspan of 385 feet, the twin-fuselage carrier aircraft will be the largest ever made. As the graphic illustrates, the plane's wings stretch further than those of a 747-8 Intercontinental, Airbus A-380-800, Antonov An-225, or even Howard Hughes's infamous "Spruce Goose," which only flew once.

Why No Windows 9?

Yep that is the question that has been driving the nerd in us bonkers.  What possessed Microsoft to skip over 9 straight to ten. 

From the Kim Komando site:   

• One popular theory was that Microsoft didn't want older software to confuse Windows 9 with Windows 95 or 98.  

Crazy as it sounds, it is perfectly reasonable to many of  Window users.   Plus things started to take a turn towards the strange when Microsoft staffers showed up at last weeks Build Developers conference wearing blue t-shirts  with the company’s four-paned Windows logo — only each pane was constructed out out of binary numbers.  Strings of ones and zeros that didn't seem to make any sense at all. 

Being developers, the conference attendees recognized the strings right off as binary.  One very enterprising attendee by the name of  Kevin Gosse even started to decode the strings which proved to be four separate messages, one for each "pane". 

The first message read “There are 10 types of people in the world,”.  You really have to wrap your head around the binary language to appreciate just how clever and funny this "play on words"  is. 

Remember I said that binary has only two states, off "0" and on "1".  So if zero is zero and 1 is 1 what is 2?  Well like every other number base, once you have used all the number in you base, you move up a column and express the use of all the numbers in your base a 1 or +1 and reset all preceding columns.  So in "base 1" it is first column zero, first column 1. So now we have one of something setting in front of us until some wise guy put another something in front of us. Now we have 2 somethings in front of us.  Since we can only count with zeros and ones, we now have to start another column, mark that column as +1 sets and zero out the preceding column(s).  That gets us this configuration 10.  I know, confusing, but remember in binary the biggest number in ANY column is 1  first column 1 is one, second column 1 and first column zero is 2  which again looks like 10.  So when the blue T's first pane reads   “There are 10 types of people in the world,” we actually have a play on numbers.  Remember the message was in binary and 10 in binary is.......right you are 2, so the message really reads “There are 2 types of people in the world,”    Here is something to think about, but solvable with the knowledge at hand, say this self-same person sets another something in front of you so you now have 3,  

So we have traveled a bit astray.......

It was the second pane that told Gosse that Microsoft/Windows  staffers  were having a bit of fun with the developers.  The decoded pane said 

• Windows 10, because 7 8 9.”   

A minor twist on  a children favorite.  

Somehow it's a bit fun and interesting to note that a multi-million dollar enterprise has a healthy and a bit goofy sense of humor.   

Time article link HERE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Skype to Instatute Real Time Translator.

Here is a prime example of my ongoing statement on BMU.   When I first heard about this software, the news person equated it to the universal translator used in the original 1960s Star Trek program. Science fiction influences science which in turn influences science!                                                        
Microsoft/Skype are developing  real time translation software.  Windows Eight users will be able to use a beta version of the software by the end of 2014.  A fully function  program is slated for 2016.

Ah but with Microsoft involved, even though Skype is free, we can count on one thing, it won't be free and it won't be cheap, is that two things?

click title for full article.

Its' 1984 All Over Again

This has got to be the most F.U. use of technology since the up skirt camera.  What am I twitchin about now? Well you know that piece of tech attached to the Microsoft 360 called the Kinect?  Well it seems that Microsoft can use the Kinect for nefarious purposes (NO!)  Oh yes!  It seems in a newly uncovered  patent, Microsoft has developed tech that allows Microsoft to use these cameras attached to your TV to gather information (Oh hell, who am I kidding they are spying, jesus I am even lying to myself now) And why is Microsoft so damn interested in what's going on in front of the set?  Would you believe that this new tech allows Microsoft to get this....count how many people are say watching a movie and should you say have too many people watching, they can shut down the player, tv whatever, you name it.  

Check it out in this Boing Boing article:

• Basically, when you buy or rent something like a movie, you’ll only be granted a “license” for a certain number of people to watch it. If Kinect detects more people in the room than you had a licence for, it can stop the movie, and even charge you extra. So if Microsoft has its way, you won’t just be renting movies any more. You’ll have to decide how many people are watching, and no doubt pay more. And if one extra person turns up to your movie night? Click....

Check out the patent here

And here is the original story at Kotaku

Microsoft Seeks Patent On Monitoring Employees' Brains

Hey Shaun, check this out!!!!!! I just found it on TechDirt, looks like FabCola is just another way of saying Microsoft!

A just-published Microsoft patent application for Monitoring Group Activities describes how a company or the government can determine if employees are not meeting their project deadlines through the use of detection components comprised of 'one or more physiological or environmental sensors to detect at least one of heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement, facial movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure.

New software can identify you from your online habits

Boy if you can't see a science fiction story in this....Shaun Saunders, our resident consumerism critic, sent me this..... and if you haven't already seen indications of this and see the implications....well....

>The computing giant Microsoft, is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. Previous studies show there are strong correlations between the sites that people visit and their personal characteristics. So, IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again.<

Click the article title for more....oh and there is much much more

Billionaire blasts off for space station

While Martha Stewart watched on.....

A Russian rocket carrying Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station.

the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan on Saturday. The Soyuz TMA-10 capsule lifted off at 11:31 p.m. local time (1:31 p.m. ET) and it is scheduled to rendezvous with the station Monday. Simonyi, a 58-year-old native of Hungary, paid $25 million for the 13-day trip, the fifth such paying “space tourist,” or “spaceflight participant,” as officials prefer to call them.

Submitted by Shaun A. Saunders