[thechat] Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Judah McAuley judah at wiredotter.com
Wed Mar 6 11:32:17 CST 2002


rudy wrote:
> remember, this is a microsoft guy talking -- does "convert the Internet to
> being the World Wide Telescope" make any sense to you?


I try not to understand much that comes out of the mouth of Microsoft,
but...

yeah it does make sense to me...in the context of web services.  The
idea is that if you have a telescope, you point the telescope at a
region of the sky, take a picture and then analyze the data.  The SDSS
is already taking the pictures.  So if they create a web serice that
mimics the data reporting capabilities of a telescope, then other
systems could request the data from the web service as if they were
requesting it from a telescope.  Your software is just querying a web
server as opposed to a computer attached directly to a telescope.
Hence, the World Wide Telescope.

I promise that this is the last time today that I will try to coherently
explain something from a marketing department.

Judah




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