Free Republic

Ever find yourself not trusting something or someone from the first moment - but not knowing why? For instance the first moment you saw a politician, instantly not trusting them but you just couldn't place why? *cough* John Edwards *cough*. Well that's what I thought the first time I heard about "cloud computing".

President Obama travels to North Carolina on Wednesday dogged by poor economic news, threats of resistance on the Hill, sagging poll numbers and Democratic losses in a pair of special House elections. If September, and more specifically the president’s jobs speech, was intended to be the start of a new phase of Obama’s presidency, there is precious little indication as of yet that anything at all has changed. -- FOR THE RECORD: Obama tour: An earlier version of this online article misstated the White House's assertions regarding any intended connection between President Obama's tour promoting his jobs package and his...

Although the CLOUD experiment carried out in CERN didn't quite drive a stake through the heart of the global-warming ideology, it came close to. Through simulating the atmosphere being bombarded by cosmic rays, the experiment produced microscopic droplets of water vapour. It established that higher levels of cosmic rays do indeed lead to more droplets in the sky, a claim denied by all global-warming models. As of yet, the droplets produced in the CERN lab aren't large enough to form clouds. So far, a solid causation has not supplemented an already-established correlation. In response to CLOUD, some global-warming supporters are...

I’ll have more on this as it develops (updated twice since the original report now), but for the short term, it appears that a non-visible light irradiance effect on Earth’s cloud seeds has been confirmed. The way it is posited to work is that the effect of cosmic rays (modulated by the sun’s magnetic variations which either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays) creates cloud condensation nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. With more condensation nuclei, more clouds form and vice-versa. Clouds have significant effects on TSI at the surface. Update: From the Nature article, Kirkby is a bit more...

Is your network safe? Almost all of us prefer the convenience of Wi-Fi over the hassle of a wired connection. But what does that mean for security? Our tests tell the whole story. We go from password cracking on the desktop to hacking in the cloud.We hear about security breaches with such increasing frequency that it's easy to assume the security world is losing its battle to protect our privacy. The idea that our information is safe is what enables so many online products and services; without it, life online would be so very different than it is today. And...

Researchers at Microsoft have built a virtual vault that could work on medical data without ever decrypting it. Imagine getting a friend's advice on a personal problem and being safe in the knowledge that it would be impossible for your friend to divulge the question, or even his own reply. Researchers at Microsoft have taken a step toward making something similar possible for cloud computing, so that data sent to an Internet server can be used without ever being revealed. Their prototype can perform statistical analyses on encrypted data despite never decrypting it. The results worked out by the software...

n another sign of the Internet's ability to streamline business processes and make others irrelevant, cloud computing is poised to have a serious impact on a segment of the workforce that never expected to see job cuts or a weakening in demand for its services: traditional information-technology workers. An unintended consequence of Google, Apple, Facebook and other major tech companies building data centers in North Carolina's "Data Center Corridor" may be the accelerated obsolescence of traditional IT jobs as cloud computing and related technologies gain momentum. Cloud computing lets businesses outsource data storage, applications, even their entire data centers to...

Cloud computing is all the rage today, with everyone from the U.S. Federal government to Apple herding us into a brave new world of remotely hosted data and services.  There are, of course, many advantages to the cloud concept.  But as usual, this new IT architecture has some inherent and serious risks that cloud proponents hope potential customers will not dwell on. There's nothing new about that, of course - except for the stakes.  Innovation usually outruns caution and comprehensive consideration of concerns like safety and unintended consequences.  But if we want to put all of our computing resources and...

Computer hackers in China broke into the Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, Google Inc. said Wednesday. The attacks aren't believed to be tied to a more sophisticated assault originating from China in late 2009 and early last year. That intrusion targeted the Google's own security systems and triggered a high-profile battle with China's Communist government over online censorship, which has made it more difficult for the company to do business in the world's most populous country. The latest duplicity appeared to rely on so-called "phishing" scams and other underhanded...

Isn't it great? You no longer have to buy your software. Why, it's on the "cloud". Maybe even Cloud 9. Like beer, which you never buy, you rent it. It won't take up valuable space on you 1,024 gigabyte hard disk, no updates to worry about, no fees for updating the damn thing. But wait, something ain't right! Let's say you are using Google Docs (and let's not get into the discussion of Google being Communists, as they all supposedly are according to some here. If they support the RATS it's only because we've allowed the RATS to control the...

If you've got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often -- as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on.

US computer chip giant Intel posted its best earnings ever in 2010 as businesses beefed up data centers to handle services increasingly shifting to the Internet "cloud." Intel said it took in a net profit of $11.7 billion for the year on revenue of $43.6 billion, a 167 percent jump from the profit it posted in 2009. "2010 was the best year in Intel's history," the California-based company's chief executive Paul Otellini said in comments released with the earnings report. "We believe that 2011 will be even better." Intel's net profit for the final quarter was $3.4 billion, a 48...

I've always considered my wife a little paranoid about her privacy.  Although she has never done anything illegal or immoral, she sometimes acts as though the world is out to get her.  To avoid leaving an electronic trail, she pays for everything in cash as much as possible and has, until recently, refrained from conducting any online financial transactions.  I, on the other hand, have been somewhat cavalier about protecting my privacy, believing there is safety in numbers.  After all, out of some three hundred million folks in this country, what are the odds that I would be a...

Chrome OS draws near. Last night brought perhaps the more surefire sign yet: Google is openly talking to The New York Times about it. Perhaps that is in response to rumors that it was being delayed into next year. While details are still scant, NYT reports that before the end of the year, Google will release a lightweight netbook running Chrome OS. It will likely be branded as a Google product, but built by a third-party, similar to what the search giant did with their Nexus One phone, says the report. This is in line with what we’ve heard and...

We often think about interstellar probes only in the context of what they find at the end of their journeys — astrobiologically interesting planets seem to be the whole story. But not so fast. As Ian Crawford (University of London) notes in a recent paper, there are quite a few fascinating — and indeed critical — things we need to learn about interstellar space itself, in this case what is known as the Local Interstellar Medium (LISM). Crawford, who has been analyzing these matters for the Project Icarus team, notes how much we’ve learned about the LISM since the Daedalus...

Close encounter of the cloudy kind: How menacing sights in the sky turned out to be meteorological marvels By David Derbyshire Last updated at 11:37 AM on 23rd June 2010 Looking to the skies, you'd be forgiven for thinking that something worrying was afoot. Surely that's a massive UFO hovering menacingly over the rooftops above? And isn't that an atomic mushroom cloud filling the horizon in the picture below? Space invader: The flying saucer-shaped cloud that was photographed at the weekend by Brian Wilton Well, no. They're clouds - but they were realistic enough to make those who spotted them...

here is a fervent debate going on in the open source community about cloud computing. Will the cloud kill open source? [2] Will multi-tenancy services make cloud providers need to hide the source, as a recent Forbes article [3] suggests? I recently went to the best expert I could find on the matter to ask: Marten Mickos [4]. Mickos is the CEO of "private cloud" software (aka virtualization) maker Eucalyptus Systems [5]. He earned himself Open Source Hall of Fame status as the charismatic former CEO of MySQL. Mickos was adamant that open source not only won't kill the cloud,...

The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery. "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all." The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council has canceled a trip to Congo because of the volcanic ash cloud over Europe. Diplomats from the 15 council nations were scheduled to leave New York for Paris on Friday night and change planes for Kinshasa, but almost all flights to France and many across Europe have been canceled because of the hazardous cloud from an erupting volcano in Iceland....

TORONTO, ON – The Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the SecDev Group, Ottawa) and the Shadowserver Foundation announce the release of Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber espionage 2.0. The report documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically targeted and compromised computer systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries. Members of the research team are holding a news conference at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 6, to discuss their latest findings and to answer questions from the media....

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. "We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks...

THIS mysterious cloud halo has been spotted over Mexico — sparking fears of an Independence Day style alien attack. The astonishing ring was spotted over the central American state and video of it was posted on the internet — prompting speculation its cause was extra-terrestrial. It is the SECOND time such an amazing sighting has been seen — after The Sun revealed one was recorded in skies over Moscow last October.

These very strange cloud formations suddenly appeared in the sky around 8:30 p.m. when the sun was setting in Union Square Park in NYC today. Moments before their appearance, people were casually sitting on the steps of the park entrance and carrying on as most New Yorkers do. Suddenly, there were sounds of gasps and one by one people held their cell phones up to the sky to photograph this strange occurrence. These weren't the famed chemtrails, neither the Lenticular clouds that are mistaken for UFO's or the wispy metaphysical Sylphs often spoken about in spiritual circles. These clouds weren't...

These choppy clouds over Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in an undated picture could be examples of the first new type of cloud to be recognized since 1951. Or so hopes Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. The British cloud enthusiast said he began getting photos of "dramatic" and "weird" clouds (including the above) in 2005 that he didn't know how to define. A few months ago he began preparing to propose the odd formations as a new cloud variety to the UN's World Meteorological Organization, which classifies cloud types. Pretor-Pinney jokingly calls it the "Jacques Cousteau cloud," after its...

HOUMA — Some people saw Jesus. Others blamed UFOs. Harkening to the popular Journey song, a wheel in the sky appeared over Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes early Saturday morning, a seemingly perfect hole punched though the sheet of clouds blanketing the sky. Locals who phoned and e-mailed the Daily Comet and The Courier this weekend about the strange cloud formation did agree on one thing: “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Raceland resident Sandra Ledet, who shared some spectacular photos with the Daily Comet. Shawn O’Neil, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, identified the...

Well I'm sick to the teeth of the news on the screen of the Hezbollah scum and Jihad the obscene whose men plant the bombs and then live feeling free to watch women and children be killed on TV. Which Satan delivers a child a death curse in the name of a worn out collection of verse? I've not read the book so I cannot recite but I'd bet Salman Rushdie is just about right underneath the black cloud of Islam Watch and save a copy on your computer as it is very likely the political correct liberal crowd and...

New observations made by radio telescopes have finally revealed the nature of the bizarre object known as "Hanny's voorwerp" (SDSS J094103.80+344334.2). The Voorwerp was discovered by Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch school teacher and an enthusiastic volunteer of the Galaxy Zoo project. While surfing through hundred's of images, Hanny noticed a huge green irregular cloud of gas of galactic scale, located about 60,000 light years from a nearby galaxy, IC2497. The object has had astronomers scratching their heads for over a year now - the extent of the cloud is enormous and the gas is extremely hot (> 15000 Celsius)...

These two word-clouds give us a view of the contrasts between the acceptance speeches of Obama and Palin. Created using Wordle, I tried to match them, in terms of layout, as closely as I could. It is interesting to note that there are many personal words in Palin's speech. I look forward to the comments.

[...snip...] But on to antimatter, a cloud of which has been known to exist around the galactic center since the 1970s, when balloon-based gamma-ray detectors first located it. Gamma rays are significant in terms of antimatter because electrons encountering positrons (their antimatter equivalent) annihilate each other, with their mass converted into high energy gamma rays. So the cloud’s presence is well established. The question since its detection is what could have caused it. Now a new paper in Nature may offer an answer, noting the asymmetric distribution of the antimatter cloud, which extends further on one side of galactic center...

A strange blue cloud seen floating and darting around customers, freezing for 30 minutes and then speeding from an Ohio gas station, remains unexplained even though it was caught on security cams. The ghostly image was seen moving near and over cars at a Marathon gas station located near the corner of State Road and Pleasant Valley in Parma on Sunday. Surveillance video of the image showed it flipping and then sitting in the same location for 30 minutes. It then flies off the screen at a high rate of speed. "It gives me the chills," a witness said. Security...

SIERRA VISTA — A funnel cloud Friday afternoon raised eyebrows of police, residents and weather spotters. Another smaller funnel was reported by Sierra Vista police personnel about 10 minutes after the first one retracted into the thunderhead. The funnel clouds were seen by enough people to have an advisory put out on it by the National Weather Service’s Tucson office. Marshall Bryan was mowing his yard on Shawnee Drive in Hereford when he stopped about 1:55 p.m. to look up and see how much time he had before the rain. Instead he saw a funnel cloud to the east of...

Kuelap – the Machu Picchu of Northern Peru.The mysterious super fortress of the Chachapoyan Cloud PeopleKuelap is the largest building structure of the Americas. It is estimated to contain 3 times more material than Egypt’s largest pyramid. Peru considers Kuelap to be as good as Machu Picchu and is trying to make this its equal 2nd major destination. It is twice as old as the Incas and in remarkably better condition before restoration. Kuelap is an unknown giant just waking up. Peru is a huge country the size of the 5 west coast states, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Montana....

HOBART, Australia - Some of the coldest temperatures on Earth brought a rare cloud formation to the skies over Antarctica, scientists said Tuesday. Meteorological officer Renae Baker captured spectacular images of the nacreous clouds, also known as polar stratospheric clouds, last week at Australia's Mawson station in Antarctica. The clouds only occur at high polar latitudes in winter, requiring temperatures less than minus 176 degrees Fahrenheit. A weather balloon measured temperatures at minus 189 degrees Fahrenheit on the day the photos were taken. Resembling airborne mother-of-pearl shells, the clouds are produced when fading light at sunset passes through water-ice crystals...

New Trojan asteroid hints at huge Neptunian cloud 19:00 15 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Kelly YoungThe four known Neptune Trojans are shown in their position 60 degrees ahead of Neptune. The known clusters of Trojan asteroids on either side of Jupiter are also shown (Illustration: Scott Sheppard) A newly discovered asteroid in Neptune's orbit indicates the existence of a much larger, but as-yet-unseen, cloud of rocks in that region. The asteroids in Neptune's orbit might even outnumber those in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the new research suggests." The asteroid was discovered by Scott Sheppard of...

Who is David Cloud, one may ask? He is the visible leader of Way of Life Ministries, a literature and (ostensibly) preaching ministry for Independent, Fundamental, KJV-only Baptists. OK, so that's not very important, but my relationship with David Cloud is long and complex. The reason I'm bothering to address him at all might not be readily apparent to any thinking individual, since he's mostly irrelevant to almost everybody on the face of the earth, but it will become apparent as I continue. Allow me to recount my history with David Cloud. When I first became a Christian, way back...

Two views from the Space Station of a short minor eruption from Cleveland Volcano: Smaller image below: click for the bigger one:

Cloud of scholarly dust rises over ancient footprints claim Tuesday, April 25, 2006 BRADLEY T. LEPPER Are the footprints of surprisingly ancient Americans preserved in 40,000-year-old volcanic ash in southern Mexico? In December, an article in the journal Science cast a cloud of doubt over that claim. The authors, Michael Waters and Paul Renne, argue that the ash dated to 1.3 million years ago, much too old for humans on this continent, and that the so-called footprints were nothing more than marks made by the tools of modern workers quarrying the stone with crowbars. Now, Silvia Gonzalez, an archaeologist from...

Rally at Israeli consulate features pictures of Muslim flags flying over White HouseA New York rally by the Islamic Thinkers Society outside the Israeli consulate yesterday featured chants of "The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real holocaust is on its way!" The demonstration by the Queens-based group was monitored by the Investigative Project on Terrorism whose members noted signs including "Islam will Dominate" and a picture with an Islamic flag flying over the White House. The chants were in Arabic and translated by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, headed by Steve Emerson, a former reporter for CNN. Here...

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, England - Firefighters used chemical foam to extinguish part of the inferno raging Monday after explosions at a fuel depot north of London, while a huge oily smoke cloud from the blaze drifted over northern France and headed toward Spain. The blasts Sunday, which injured 43 people, sent balls of fire into the sky and blew the doors off nearby houses, also contributed to a surge in oil prices to above $60 Monday. The explosions came just four days after an al-Qaida videotape appeared on the Internet calling for attacks on facilities carrying oil that it claims has...

July 2005: USAF B-2 Spirit with vapor cloud and two USAF F-15E Strike Eagles fly in formation over the Pacific Ocean. Andersen Air Force Base, Territory of Guam, USA PhotographerTechnical Sgt. Cecilio M. Ricardo, 36th Communication Squadron, 36th Air Expeditionary Wing, United States Air ForceSourceshttp://www.af.mil/weekinphotos/050708-01.htmlhttp://www.af.mil/media/photodb/photos/060707-F-3961R-003.jpgB-2 Stealth version of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean"http://linkfilter.net/?id=94946

PLANET-DISSOLVING DUST CLOUD IS HEADED TOWARD EARTH!Monday September 12, 2005 By MIKE FOSTER CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Scared-stiff astronomers have detected a mysterious mass they've dubbed a "chaos cloud" that dissolves everything in its path, including comets, asteroids, planets and entire stars -- and it's headed directly toward Earth! Discovered April 6 by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the swirling, 10 million-mile- wide cosmic dust cloud has been likened to an "acid nebula" and is hurtling toward us at close to the speed of light -- making its estimated time of arrival 9:15 a.m. EDT on June 1, 2014. "The good news...

Energy: China's burning ambition Source: Copyright 2005, Nature Date: June 30, 2005 Byline: Peter Aldhous Abstract The economic miracle that is transforming the world's most populous nation is threatened by energy shortages and rising pollution. It also risks plunging the planet's climate into chaos. Peter Aldhous reports. China is booming, and its hunger for energy is insatiable. For its people, the dismal air quality across much of the country is a constant reminder of its reliance on coal and other dirty fuels. When Nature visited Beijing to meet the technocrats responsible for China's energy policy, the city was blanketed in...

United States Navy (USN) F-14B Tomcat assigned to the "Swordsmen" of Fighter Squadron Three Two (VF-32)with its stylish Prandtl-Glauert condensation cloud on March 30, 2005 in the Mediterranean Sea. The PhotographerPhotographer's Mate 3rd Class Justin S. Osborne, USNThe SourceNavy NewsStand - Eye on the Fleet Photo Gallery, USNhttp://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=23503, USN Image ID: 050330-N-0382O-503 The Big Image Linkhttp://www.news.navy.mil/management/photodb/photos/050330-N-0382O-503.jpg

"This view of the shock wave condensation collars backlit by the sun occurred during the launch of Atlantis on STS-106 and was captured on an engineering 35mm motion picture film. One frame was digitized to make this still image. Although the primary effect is created by the Orbiter forward fuselage, secondary effects can be seen on the SRB forward skirt, Orbiter vertical stabilizer and wing trailing edges (behind SSME's)" Source: NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Kennedy Media Gallery, Photo No.: KSC-00PP-1416, September 8, 2000, http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=4720 Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-106) launch video, September 8, 2000 http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-106/html/fd1.htmlhttp://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-106/net56/sts106launch_56.asf (video) http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/shuttle/sts-106/real56/sts106launch_56.rm (video) FreeRepublic.com: "Boing...

Reports say Space Shuttle Discovery's July 25 liftoff generated a Prandtl-Glauert condensation cloud (the mysterious "now-you-see-it-now-you-don't" formations sometimes observed in relation to jets in transonic flight). Link: http://www.BoingBoing.net/2005/07/27/shuttle_makes_spooky.html

USAF B-1B Lancer's Prandtl-Glauert condensation cloud is an additional cloud in Southeast Asia's blue sky. Photographer: Staff Sgt. Shelley R. Gill, Still Photography Journeyman, 125th Fighter Wing, Florida Air National Guard Sources: http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041217.htm , http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041216.htm , http://FluidMech.net/tutorials/sonic/prandtl-glauert-clouds.htm NASA's Hubble Space Telescope zooms in on spiral galaxy NGC 3370 and thousands of distant galaxies. Photographer: Dr. Adam Riess, Astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Sources: http://HubbleSite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/24/image/a , http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041212.htm The sharp eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is on the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543). Photography: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Sources: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/27/image/a , http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041218.htm...

On our way back home from a family drive on 8/29/04 my wife and I noticed a peculiar mushroom cloud just east of our home in Wellington, UT. We ran into the house and brought our both of our digital cameras and started snapping pictures. Within 2 hours there were three different “explosions” resulting in mushroom clouds. We emailed a local news station; they looked into the pictures but to no avail. There were truck drivers parked at the gas station just down from our home, the drivers did not dare drive the road for fear of whatever was happening...

Pre-Inca Ruins Emerging From Peru's Cloud Forests John Roach for National Geographic News September 16, 2004 On the eastern slope of the Andes mountains in northern Peru, forests cloak the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, the size and scope of which explorers and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand. Known as the Chachapoya, the civilization covered an estimated 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The Chachapoya, distinguished by fair skin and great height, lived primarily on ridges and mountaintops in circular stone houses. Sean Savoy, leader of the Gran Saposoa-El Dorado IV Expedition (July-August 2004), points out a stone...

Scientists Find Another Huge Mini-World in Outer Solar System The most distant object ever seen orbiting the Sun is nearly as large as Pluto, expanding astronomers notions of how the solar system formed and what resides in its outskirts. The round world is currently three times farther away than Pluto from the Sun, a distance that expands even further on its 10,000-year orbit. It sits in a part of the solar system that some astronomers had thought empty. It is redder and brighter than anything astronomers have seen in the outer solar system, and scientists don't know why. The object...

<p>Advisers to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to distance him Friday from reports that an international bodybuilding event he co-founded was visited by federal authorities last weekend as part of a widening probe into steroid distribution in the sports world.</p> <p>The Governor's Office declined to respond to an ESPN report that at least five subpoenas were issued at the Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio. The event, which drew an estimated 80,000 spectators and participants, includes the Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition and dozens of exhibits advertising a range of nutritional supplements, hormones and steroids.</p>