What difference does a second make, I mean, really?

More than you might think. And not just to Usain Bolt. Ask anyone who was flying with Qantas on Sunday when Amadeus, the system the airline uses, had technical issues. Several hours were spent with staff having to turn to manual processes to check passengers in. Although it hasn’t been specified what caused it, there’s a chance it could be down to a leap second issue – where there has to be a one-second time adjustment to synchronise atomic clocks with those based on the Earth’s rotation.
Time is important, of course. As James Gleick memorably pointed out in his fascinating book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything”, the nanosecond can now be measured, and this has led to practical results:
“The time-obsessed used to keep their watches accurate to within seconds; now they keep their computers accurate to within milliseconds. Nanosecond precision matters for worldwide communications systems. It matters for navigation by Global Positioning System satellite signals: an error of a billionth of a second means an error of just about a foot, the distance light travels in that time. One nanosecond – one foot. That is a modern equivalence worth memorising.”
Suddenly, being a minute late for dinner, a meeting or that conference call seems to take on a bigger significance…

Qantas gets rocked by Amadeus • The Register.

Retro TV – Bring back my childhood

Is it me or is the choice of tv, even with over one hundred channels rather poor? I seem to be using the remote to flick through channels more than I use to. Repeats after repeats. Oh and the ads are getting longer to – five minutes of NoNo hair removal – seriously, I doubt after flicking over during that ad break I will come back to the program so do they impact viewing statics?

Where are all the good programs from years back. Rentaghost, Manimal, Pigeon Street, The Clangers and lets not forget the Bannana Splits. There are so many more aren’t there. What was your favorite?

Where are they now, that’s what I would like to know. Is there not a production company that could air these. Perhaps a retro channel, double the audience of not only the oldies but the young’uns too? I may have to switch to a different cable tv provider to access better channels and programs.

Social Gaming – a Growing Trend

I found this Infographic very interesting. Whilst I consider myself an Xbox addict I tend to play shoot ’em ups. The Infographic below suggests that the fastest growing social games are word games with friends creaing friendly competition. Since 2010, social gaming has been expanding the gaming market and broadening the impact of gamification on business. And with sites like Zynga attracting 148 million unique gamers monthly, the trend is only growing.

 

Created by Flowtown