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Saturday, June 28, 2008

Microsoft's Live.com Search Engine Bug

Here is a bug in Microsoft's live.com search engine.

1) Go to Live.com

2) Type in "search php" or "searchengine php" or "search engine php"

3) Watch what happens

---What happens? Nothing!!! you will be treated with a blank page!

Update: I submitted a bug report to Microsoft, now the bug appears to be fixed! the above mentioned queries result in proper results page.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Bug in Gmail logon page

Update (june 27, 11pm): Now its working. A proper snippet appears in the page.
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Found this in Google's gmail today, see the "undefined..." text at the circled area in the screen-shot from logon page? Thats a javascript code returning "undefined" value!


Martian soil is friendly to life (atleast asparagus)

Scientists from NASA's phoenix mission say that the soil samples tested aboard the lander, contain many minerals, friendly to life. The salts and nutrients magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride were found. The soil has a pH of 8. It would support the growth of asparagus. This soil is closely analogous to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica.

The wet soil test was the first of its kind carried on the surface of any planet outside earth.

The presence of salts further provide evidence to existence of water on mars.

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Even though the soil is friendly, the martian atmosphere is hostile to life as we know it on the earth surface. But, on earth itself life exists in extreme conditions, like the depths of sea, with volcanic vents, and no light.

Lets wait for more evidence and test results, who knows one day the lander might dig a hole and find plenty of thriving life forms.

Image Src: NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080626.html)

Friday, June 20, 2008

Water ice on Mars? What could that mean?

Yesterday, the mars Phonenix lander twittered (twitter.com/marsphoenix) that it had found ice, water ice on mars. There were some substance on the martian surface which sublimated leaving no traces, salt deposits does not do that, so scientists speculate that to be ice.

Why is this an exciting discovery? The presence of water on a planet, is a basic necessity for life to evolve, especially life similar to what we see on earth.

Scientists have long speculated, and there have been numerous unconfirmed details on martian surface which indicate to the presence of water, or atleast water existed long time back. Now finally they seem to have some form of evidence, further exploration by phoenix lander should confirm this historical finding. Also this leads to a much bigger question, is there life on mars now?

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Update:

Report from NASA Press conference June 20

- NASA Scientists say they are sure that the substance is water ice

- The phoenix lander mission was specifically sent to confirm that water ice existed on mars

- Ice/ice sheet is 2 inches deep below the dirt/sand

- The mission does not specifically look for life itself

- Could the white stuff be solid CO2 (dry ice)? No, it would turn to gas much quicker

- Is the white stuff any salt? No, would take a long time to disappear, if it indeed is salt and disappeared so fast then there is plenty of water to aid it

- The soil is clumpy and sticky why? we don't know yet

- The next task would be to test the ice for presence of minerals (food for life)

Disappearing Ice - NASA Press release:

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

Sunday, February 03, 2008

SegamiSearch.com - The WWW Image Search Engine

Check out this cool image search engine created by me. Why its cool? since it does something no other major web search engines is capable of doing - image similarity search. Also, its image ranking algorithm is one of the most sophisticated in web. So play around with it and have fun, and do let me know of your feedback.

URL: http://www.segamisearch.com/