Want to help identify some galaxies from your home computer?

One of the telescopes at the observatory where my wife works is the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. (wiki entry) It has collected a HUGE amount of data in the years that it has been operating, and they've started a "@home" project to help identify characteristics of galaxies.

"They are asking volunteers on the Internet to help classify the galaxies as either elliptical or spiral and note, where possible, in which direction they rotate."

You go through a tutorial to train you to help identify galaxy characteristics and what direction it is rotating, then you go off identifying from photos. Lots of other people are doing the same thing on the same images that you're looking at, so it's a preponderance of votes that gets the galaxy classified, this also dampens the effect of someone going in and classifying everything as counterclockwise to try and throw everything off.

Anyway, I thought that there's enough science geeks who read my blog that might find this interesting to do.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/07/12/galaxy.internet.ap/index.html

Which ancient language am I?

Your Score: Akkadian

You scored

You are Akkadian, a blend of the incomprehensible symbols of the Sumerians with the unwritable sounds of the early Semitic peoples. However, the writing just doesn't suit the words and doesn't represent everything needed, so you end up a schizoid mess. Invented in Babylon, you're probably to blame for that tower story. However, crazy as you are, you're much loved and appreciated, and remain actively in use by records keepers long after schools have switched to other languages.

Link: The Which Ancient Language Are You Test written by imipak on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Harry Potter/Deathly Hallows -- NO SPOILERS

Wow. I did anticipate one thing that happened in the book, but I'm not going into it yet. But thoroughly enjoying it, that's for sure! There are a couple of things that bothered me, but again, not gonna go into them yet, and it'll all be under a cut when I do.

I'm maybe two-thirds through it, Russet will be quite happy if I finish it before I head back to Las Cruces tonight. We read to each other as we drove to and from El Paso yesterday, that was a lot of fun.

Oh, and we saw the movie last week, we both liked it. They did a good job of cutting material to keep the movie at 2.5 hours. And I really like the girl whom they got for Luna Lovegood!

Is your copy of Microsoft Vista checking in with DoD and the UN?

The original article writer claims that he put a packet sniffer on his network to see what his installation of Vista was connecting to and points to screen shots showing the Department of Defense and the UN. Some people on Slashdot scream bullshit, that he's using an unreliable program, that the screenshots show XP, not Vista, etc. Still, the guy says he's getting almost identical results on a friend's Vista installation.

I'm not sure what to think of this, but I know there are a lot of geeks out right now installing packet sniffers and keeping a sharp eye on the results. I expect that we'll see some very detailed information on this in the next few days.


http://www.whitedust.net/news/3984/United_States_Government_Online_Watchdogs?_Part_of_the_war_on_terror?.../

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/22/1712252


In other news in the Wonderful World of Microsoft, apparently MS thinks that they'll have very strong sales for XP Pro in FY '08. Gee, could it be because there's a steaming hunk of crap on the vista?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/21/0624233


And finally, Microsoft is talking a little about the next version of Windows, called simply '7' at this time. No real information, just that it will be either 32 or 64 bit. Which begs the question as to why I bothered posting it. Oh well, back to reading Deathly Hallows and further ruining my eyes.

http://news.com.com/Next+version+of+Windows+Call+it+7/2100-1016_3-6197943.html

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/21/1725233

Just finished Deathly Hallows ***SPOILERS UNDER CUT!***

Very much enjoyed it and have passed it on to the spousal unit.

And just to repeat the warning, SPOILERS UNDER CUT!
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