Topic: Ccd

Adam Curry provides details of his private tour of the McDonald Observatory, facilitated by the development director of the Giant Magellan Telescope. He describes the various telescopes, including the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope, and the ongoing research into pulsars and dark energy. Curry notes the high number of female astronomers and the international "vibe" of the facility despite the cloudy weather preventing visual observation.

An insider at the National Passport Center provides details on the Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) outage. The system, which is 14 years into a 10-year life cycle, integrates multiple programs including FBI law enforcement tools. The backlog in visa and passport applications is attributed to the failure of this aging infrastructure and the "games" played with government contracts.

The difficulty of transcoding legacy data is illustrated by the legal industry's long-standing reliance on WordPerfect 4.1. In television history, the transition from Vidicon tubes to CCD chips eliminated the problem of "burn-in" caused by bright lights. Older production roles, such as the "shader" who manually adjusted light levels for multiple cameras, have largely been replaced by automated digital systems.