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Irregular Reporting of Societal IssuesSM |
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| "Get your news weakly"SM | 28 May 2007 |
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Monday, We Hardly Knew YeOfficials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are increasingly concerned about a phenomenon recently labeled "date shift". According to researchers, the phenomenon appears to result in one day of the week taking on characteristics of a totally different date. Following this principle, events that would normally appear on a Monday might appear on a Tuesday. Researchers emphasize that a shift of one day is common, with shifts regularly occurring over a seven-day period. Strangely, it seems that there is an inverse relationship with the basic length of the week; as the date shift becomes more pronounced, there is often an increased sense of duration to the week.Researchers at NIST have reportedly been working all weekend on the concept, but still remain unclear as to the underlying mechanism. "My brain is, like, totally numb this morning; I hate Mondays, particularly after a weekend like that", said graduate intern and researcher Micheal Ohb, in an interview Tuesday. Ohb noted that the primary direction for investigation is in the area of "Correlative Holidays". "We aren't really sure if its causal, so we are simply noting that, when there is a statistical labor pattern off-set, something to which you lay people might refer as a holiday, there is a high likelihood of date shift", explained Ohb, who cut the interview short to attend his regular Monday morning meeting.
Public-Private Partnership Raises The Bar On TechnologyLocal technology leader Computer Profiteering Company (CPC) recently raised the bar on what it means to have a cutting edge test lab. Long encumbered by an out-of-date environment in which to test new concepts for use by government agencies in which assembler is considered state-of-the-art and real-time transaction processing is a new idea, the company has finally secured a combination of corporate and government funds for a much-needed lab environment build-out. "We are justifiably proud of this strong public-private partnership that will help drive the future environments of the agencies with which we contract and the American taxpayer, who so graciously contributed to this lab", said CPC company president Mike Laffen. |
CPC has not yet disclosed their portion of the partnership, but the government appropriation is reportedly in excess of $25 million over five years, with an initial project start-up injection of an additional $5 million. Using the funds, the lab team plans to create a completely secure environment that will allow them to model system behaviors without outside transaction "noise" that might interrupt ideal data flow. Core to the new lab design will be a completely separate LAN and intranet. "This will make an excellent multi-user environment for the development staff", said development lead Michael Cobi, adding, "Our ability to interact in a full 3D, multi-user, fast-paced, role-driven environment will be totally bitchin'… I mean, unparalleled". The staff of CPC is equally excited by the possibilities for new work that come with the lab architecture. "The amount of data we can process for SETI@home is just incredible, considering the processing power and just how much time we expect it to be idle", said IT business development liaison Arthur Klas-Loder.
Weakly Reader Reap LiesAn attentive reader, obviously slacking at his/her job, noted an error in an earlier story. Thanks to the slow pace of work at their office, we are able to run the following correction.
Dear Newsweakly, Point taken, Slow Day. We raised the issue with the government agency involved and they gave it due consideration. The agency has agreed to establish a blue-ribbon commission to investigate correcting the problem, including formal recognition of the Mayan calendar as a crucial part of the project planning lifecycle. However, the problem will not be addressable until after the creation of a full base-line protocol for the conducting of all meetings. |
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© 2006, 2007 Lea Ann Mawler & Stuart Mawler
