Google's Chrome ...και η Γρίπη ..

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2008/gb20081112_082312.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Danish farm nestled just a bike ride away from Aarhus—a small city founded 1,000 years ago by Vikings—is a long way from traffic-clogged Silicon Valley and its high-energy engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet it was here that work began on the engine that powers the new Chrome Web browser from Google (GOOG), a product that aims to change the very nature of Internet browsing and the way we use computers. Traditional browsers such as Internet Explorer from Microsoft (MSFT) and Firefox from Mozilla are designed primarily to display Web pages accessed from remote servers. But thanks to the Java language from Sun Microsystems (JAVA), there are now a growing number of full-fledged software applications available via the Net—and browsers are increasingly assuming responsibility for running them. When Google dreamed up Chrome, its aim was to create a browser capable of running those applications dramatically faster than any previous alternative (BusinessWeek.com, 9/3/08). If the product succeeds as planned, it could upend the traditional computing model—typified by Microsoft Windows and Office—where software loads and runs locally on a PC, replacing it instead with an approach known as "cloud computing," where programs run over the Internet. That's where the Danish farmhouse comes in. Its occupant, Lars Bak, is one of the world's foremost experts in JavaScript engines—programs that run Java code on a variety of local computers. A slim, 45-year-old Danish computer scientist with close-cropped hair, Bak has spent the last two decades working on so-called "virtual machines" that, like the JavaScript engine in Chrome, execute one program inside another. He holds 18 U.S. patents in the field and spent seven years at Sun, where he developed a high-performance virtual machine that is still used by Sun, Apple (AAPL), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). A Call from Google. k had moved back to Denmark in 2000 so that his two daughters, now 13 and 15, could be educated in his native country. Two years later he left Sun to start a new company with a pair of students from Aarhus University, called OOVM, that was bought in 2004 by Switzerland's Esmertec (ESMN.F). After a two-year stint as chief architect and engineering manager for Esmertec, which specializes in Java software for mobile phones, Bak was ready for a break. Two weeks later, he got a call from Google asking him to work on Chrome. Bak says he was intrigued by the project because "the goal was to raise the bar for the whole industry." But he and his family didn't want to leave the 1860 farmhouse on eight acres of land near Aarhus where they live. Google agreed to hire him anyway—and Bak set up shop in an old stable on the property and began hiring local talent. The engineering team soon outgrew the stable and moved to office space at Aarhus University. There, Bak and a dozen other engineers worked in stealth mode to build a new JavaScript engine for Chrome, code-named V8, that was based on open-source software and designed from the ground up for speedy performance.

Google has reconstructed the sprawling city of Rome !! - inhabited by more than one million people as long ago as AD320. Users can zoom around the map to visit the Forum of Julius Caesar, stand in the centre of the Colosseum or swoop over the Basilica. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7725560.stm Researchers behind the project say it adds to five centuries of knowledge. "This is another step in creating a virtual time machine," said Bernard Frischer of Virginia University, which worked with Google on the Roman reconstruction.

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Σ X E T I K O ..>> Brazil the movie.. http://www.filmsite.org/braz.html

The morose and complex plot, set in a decaying, terrorist-threatened Londonesque metropolis (with a Fascist government), revolves around a meek, unambitious, and humble urban worker/computer expert named Sam Lowry (Pryce) in the red tape-plagued, bureaucratic Ministry of Information. As a lone hero, he combats the real technological threat of The Machine Age to his life by his fantasies of defiance as a winged savior during his nightly dreams. To escape reality and his grinding down by oppressive, official forces (both in the real world and in his imaginative dreams, in the form of evil creatures), he dreamily wings his way into the sky - with lofty but doomed flights - away from technology toward a blonde fantasy-dream girl (Greist). The film's chain of events is set in motion by a clerical error, which condemns an innocent man, and causes Sam to meet his dream girl - a suspected terrorist. His apparent salvation from the nightmarish, chaotic, paper-choked, poorly-functioning society comes in the form of a guerrilla heating-engineer and terrorist enemy of the state Harry Tuttle (De Niro), whose renegade behavior is opposed by the state's own Central Services representative (Hoskins) and Sam's friend-turned-sinister MOI official Jack Lint (Palin). But in the end, the lowly and self-deluded worker is persecuted and tortured to death while again imagining escape to an illusory idyllic paradise that is free of societal restrictions. However, it may be argued that the existence of 'terrorists' in the film (i.e., Jill Layton, Buttle/Tuttle, and Sam are all accused of being terrorists) and various 'terrorist' acts (i.e., the restaurant and shop bombing, the blown up car) are deliberately made ambiguous - it is very probable that the central threat of terrorism is the government's way to silence deviation, provoke fear, cover up its multiple errors, and provide a scapegoat enemy. Viewers must interpret this central theme of the film for themselves -

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Η Google ανακοινωσε ότι υπάρχει πλέον και ενας χαρτης που δειχνει σε ποια μερη εχει εξαπλωθει η γρίπη από το ενδιαφερον των χρηστων για το θεμα και σχετικές θεραπείς .. παμε προς 'Brazil" μεριά κατ' ευθείαν ..