Thursday, 30 April 2015

US Military Self-guided Bullet

The U.S. military had made break through in developing a self-steering bullet. The .50-caliber bullets are mounted with optical sensors at the apex to follow moving targets. The bullet’s system is name EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) and is developed by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The "smart bullets" passed their most successful round of live-fire tests to date, the CNN reported on 29 April 2015.

self-guided bullet

Videos supplied by DARPA show the bullets making sharp turns in mid-air as they pursue their targets. "This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO's guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers," said Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager. Exacto can help shooters compensate for high winds give shooters greater range and accuracy makes American troops safer.

Anything Under the Sun: America's 9 Best Entry-level Jobs

REBLOG=>SavySeph

Job hunters need to be mindful that there is always compromise between job security, career development or high pay in the job process. High paying jobs are usually at high risk for being automated or offers little growth potential over the next few years. Based on a study from WalletHub, the top 9 entry-level jobs scores well in all the three categories mentioned. CBS News had compiled their findings on 28 April 2015 to guide college students and high school seniors to consider which field to major in.




Job Starting Pay Median Pay Qualification Growth
9. Financial analyst $51,848 $76,950 bachelor's degree in business, finance or related -
8. Information security analyst $55,310 $86,170 - 37%
7. Web designer $53,041 $62,500 know programming and graphic design 20%
6. Software engineers $62,522 $90,374 bachelor's degree in computer science -
5. Environmental engineer $57,266 $86,340 bachelor's degree in environmental engineering or related 15%
4 Attorney $83,907 $133,470 law degree and pass a state's written bar exam 10%
3 Network Engineer $61,744 $91,982 degrees in computer science or related 12%
2. Web applications designer $54,586 $59,000 know developer languages such as PHP and HTML 12%
1. Training specialist $47,621 $55,930 college degree and strong communication skills 15%

The starting annual salary and the median pay for all workers in the field are based on the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The salary for software engineers were based on information on the employment site Glassdoor.com. Figures for network engineer and web applications designer were derived from the employment site Payscale.com. The job growth rate is projected from 2012 to 2022 by the BLS. A growth of 10 percent or higher is deemed as normal. A growth rate of 15 percent and above is consider rapid growth.


Job Hunting

The information security analyst had the greatest potential growth of 37 percent. Their job entails a simple maintenance routine but once the system gets hacked, they will have to work round the clock to restore the system, pronto. I believe being a hacker is the best qualification for this job but there is no such thing as a certified hacker at the present moment. This may be the reason WalletHub did not list down the qualification for this job. The reason growth is not projected for financial analyst is unclear.


Growth rate for software engineers were not projected as this profession is a bit unusual. While the jobs in this field are plentiful, careers in the field may be short-lived. According to Bloomberg News, most software developers have left the profession by the time they're 40. The industry tend to favor younger engineers because of the impression that they will be more up-to-date with the latest trends.


Although the training specialist had a low income, it top because of job openings and growth potential. About one-quarter of Web designers were self-employed in 2012 but it is forecasted that employment in this field will grow by 20 percent. I believe the forecaster is expecting these self-employed individuals would grow and had the need for expansion.



My Comments

Five out of nine of the top entry level job is related to information technology. Unless something revolutionary comes out of the information age, we would see the tail end of this era. At the present moment the web is the main media to disseminate information. It is news, games, entertainment, and a market place. Instead of bulky laptops, phone will do to accesses this information hub. From word of the mouth to print and broadcast, it hard to imagine another media more efficient than the internet. As for devices, hand help phone are good enough already. Anything smaller would make the world go blind. When 4G becomes the entry level there is not much more improvement to be made to speed. Any faster would not make a difference for human perception.

Saturday, 25 April 2015

Anything Under the Sun: Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

REBLOG=>SavySeph

My Casino Gambling Tip is now a mobile friendly website. My next task would be to get XingCai Gambling Tales to be mobile friendly too. I had outlined the step involved to get it mobile friendly in my previous blog and will use the same procedure. The wave of mobile suffers had got Google to cater to them or lose page ranking. This would be a concern for webmasters until they fix the problem.


Google Mobile Friendly Certification

While Google had written to webmasters with some links to make a mobile friendly website, they provided no link to test the mobile-friendliness of the site. Using W3C tidy up could provide some additional help on the meta tags. After much surfing, I found certification from Google themselves. Visit this link and type in your website’s URL.



My Comments

You have another site on Gambling News, I am impress. I look forward to surf it with mobile.

Thursday, 23 April 2015

Chinese Strippers at Rural Funerals

Striptease had become acceptable at funerals in some rural areas in China. Troupes hired to play laments suddenly changed their tune and began to peel off their clothes. This a relatively recent phenomenon. Good attendance for funeral reflects the honor of the deceased. Some people would be prepared to pay troupes to play folk music and perform racy acts to get the numbers. "They want to have as many people as possible attend the funeral. In this way, they feel they fulfill their obligation of fidelity to their elders," said Zhang Chengdong, vice-president of the Jiangsu Festivals and Events Association.

A female dancer with Red Rose Troupe with a boy watching

Chinese officials are launching a campaign to crack down on striptease and other lewd shows that have become popular at funerals in some rural areas, the Ministry of Culture said Thursday. "Illegal performances such as strip dances have been occurring in rural areas from time to time that have disrupted the cultural market and created a negative influence on the social environment," the ministry said in a statement posted on its website. The ministry cited two cases in which the shows' organizers have been penalized, the China Daily reported on 24 April 2015.

Traditional opera were once popular at funerals. Six performers with Red Rose Troupe, an art group from Handan, Hebei province, participated in a performance at the funeral of an elder in Handan's Cheng'an County on Feb 15. The performance was characterized by elegies with traditional music and traditional dance. The performers ended the show by stripping of their clothes. Li, the troupe manager, was given 15 days in detention and a fine of 70,000 yuan ($11,000) by the police and county cultural authorities. In the other case, three performers delivered what was said to be an obscene act at a funeral in Zhangtang village of Suqian, Jiangsu province, on Feb 27. Photos indicated that children in attendance at shows featuring scantily clad women.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Anything Under the Sun: Think Small to Design Websites for Mobile

REBLOG=>SavySeph

Deciding on picture size is my next task in getting my website to be mobile friendly. In my previous blog on this topic, I figured that reducing the size of navigation menu is a good place to start to design a website to fit mobile device. I used single word for title and double word for subtitle. This seems to work out some of the problem. I figure the next step would be to have a universal width for all pictures. Ideally the picture could be stretch or shrunk to fit across the multiple platforms without losing too much picture quality.


Given the size of webpages, stretching and shrinking a picture is not the real problem. Pictures who are magnify twice or reduce by half are never too shabby when it comes to quality. This should be enough do the trick to fit an image into a website. The bigger concern is manipulated images sometimes take a longer time to load. The 4G phones are great for speed but as the best for the current technology they are a minority user. Most people would have the lower 3G speed on their phones. The loyalist to old phone will still surf with 2G and there are still a number of these mobile surfers out there. These people will favor sites who were sufficiently fast for their devices.


I went window shopping for mobile phones using google and decided that I have 3 categories to please. Based on their minimum screen width, I simply name them mini (80 pixels), midi (321 pixels) and maxi (481). After throwing some math around, I decided that all images on my website will be 240 pixels wide. Shrinking 240 to 80 (the lower end of the mini) is one-third reduction. This will likely cause some problem in loading speed. For the higher end of the mini (320 pixels), the image is stretch less than 50% which is acceptable. For the 481 pixels width, there is no stretching of image. The image with text displayed by the side will be at least half of the screen.


Terminologies in Casino Gambling Tips

I now had all my pictures resize to 240 pixels width. Going through the pictures one by one had been a tedious exercise. Some of my image were name by their sizes. A cat image, for example, had been named cat330x250. The 330 represent the width and 250 is for the height. I still maintain the old name of the image. It would sound silly but once something is publish it is not advisable to make changes. Keeping the old name will ensure that people who link my pictures will not get a blank image. I actually have three manga pages outstanding. These three cartoons are at least 600 pixels wide. The task will be to break them down to smaller pictures who are 240 pixels wide. The main picture that will adopt the old name while new pictures will carry the old name with a sequential numbering suffix.


Going through image by image can also make you see things from a different angle. I redraw two images. I hope the people who had link the old pictures prefer the new pictures. I had also came up with 5 new pictures. These are for the pages which previously did not have a picture. The remaining task, unless new development crops up, I will drop the navigation menu for the mini users.


My Comments

Miniature is the trend. The smaller they more trouble they make.

Time Is a Thief: Unusual Cargo Force Flight to Land

REBLOG=>Amenda Steels

The pilot of Alaska Airline flight 448 requested an emergency for priority landing when heard screaming and banging from the cargo compartment. The flight took off at 3:15 p.m. Pacific Time in Seattle. After 14 minutes in flight the aircraft had to turn back and land in Seattle-Tacoma International.


Alaska Airline in Flight

After the plane landed a ramp agent, an employee of Menzies Aviation, was found inside the front cargo hold. According to Alaska Airlines the cargo hold is pressurized and temperature-controlled. The employee told authorities he had fallen asleep. The worker appeared OK but was taken to a hospital as a precaution the CBC News reported 13 April 2015.


This is going to cost the Airline dearly and it would certainly be investigated. It is hard to imagine that one can fall asleep without fellow workers realizing it. Did the employee actually sneaked into the cargo hold intentionally? Once he realized the compartment was pressurized and temperature-controlled he panicked and start banging away. Upon being rescued, he conveniently use sleeping-on-the-job as an excuse.


My Comments

Falling asleep on a non sedentary job is unbelievable. My take is the guy was on drugs.

Monday, 6 April 2015

Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Revenge Porn Operator Gets 18 Years

REBLOG>Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Revenge Porn Operator Gets 18 Years


Phil Andows' Original Blog

Kevin Bollaert, who was convicted of 27 felonies for operating a "revenge porn" website in California, was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison. He had been found guilty in February of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft. He created a website that allowed people to post lewd images of people without their knowledge. The sexually explicit material, primarily of women, was routinely posted by angry former boyfriends and ex-husbands, authorities said. It contained their real names and links to their Facebook profiles.


Kevin Bollaert

Bollaert used another website solicited payments from people who wanted to have their photographs deleted. He charged $250 to $350 for taking down the photos. The site made about $30,000 the attorney general's office said. "Sitting behind a computer, committing what is essentially a cowardly and criminal act will not shield predators from the law or jail. We will continue to be vigilant and investigate and prosecute those who commit these deplorable acts," Attorney General Kamala Harris.


Bollaert defense attorney admitted her client made moral transgressions but wasn't legally responsible for the 10,170 photos submitted in the year the websites operated, the CNN reported on 3 April 2015. Bollaert's father apologized to the victims during Friday's hearing, saying "how sorry we are here today because of a shameful, stupid, inappropriate thing my son did. My heart goes out to all of you."



My Comments

He had the cheek to charge! Very enterprising but crooked.