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We may not offer it as a major, but we do certainly offer a very successful class in video game design, alongside other classes that go along with it, such as digital video special effects (who make some very impressive movies), computer graphics, and more AI classes than you can shake a stick at.

Plus, the video game class has successfully sent at least one group to the IDGA conference every semester it's been taught, which is pretty impressive, seeing as it's one class amoung several and only has about 30 students, unlike Digipen where the whole school is trying solely to make games.

So, um, yeah...go Jackets! To hell with Georgia! Woooo!

The helicopter is unique. No other company in the world has succeeded in operating such a flying machine, capable of independent flying without remote control.

I don't know all that this helicopter is supposed to be able to do but, as for the specifically listed claim ... others have come before

Or why not join the autopilot project at SourceForge. ;-)

So Georgia Tech don't really have their own heli UAV's which can perform searches and formate in flight?

Have a look: HERE and especially HERE

Not to mention Berkeley who are it it too.

In fact there are a plethora of companies and universities across the globe who already have advanced UAV helicopter designs so what on earth makes Steadicopter's design unique?

Yes, I know, someone is going to say it; nobody else has exactly the same design but thats not really the point.

So Georgia Tech don't really have their own heli UAV's which can perform searches and formate in flight?

Have a look: HERE and especially HERE

Not to mention Berkeley who are it it too.

In fact there are a plethora of companies and universities across the globe who already have advanced UAV helicopter designs so what on earth makes Steadicopter's design unique?

Yes, I know, someone is going to say it; nobody else has exactly the same design but thats not really the point.

Here's an old press release from Emory. Note the date.

I'm a Graduating Senior at GA Tech and a professor here is already doing this! He has created a class called Network Security that focuses on mimicing the Internet in a completely unconnected network of systems. This allows for the students to learn how to use rootkits, honeynets, viruses, worms, buffer exploits, etc. The goal of the class is that if you explain how all this stuff works, you can also explain how to defend against it all in the real world. The nice part is that we are encouraged to try and break everything (not physically) with the understanding that if we do, we have to explain it later on. The class is only in it's 2nd semester and has only received a $100,000 grant from Cisco but it's definitely shaping up nicely. You can check it out some more by viewing HERE

Hell, even in some Universities, like the one I'm at, the school has a Microsoft Alliance that gets the students the Microsoft "works" (MSDN + VS + .Net thingamajiks) for about $15 -- thats the shipping cost, nothing more.

Although GATech is largely neutral when it comes to your choice of OS and languages, this kinda support pushes a lot of students into not using Opensource. Plus, the lucrative chances of an MS Internship tempts them.

The good news is, as a lot of Professors seem to prefer Macs, there is no one right method or means. But then a lot of times, our GRA work is done on Microsoft platforms, and students end up choosing one platform over another not because they want to but because they have to.

For example, if I'm into things like AI and systems, its Linux. If I'm into media, its Mac and if I'm into generic coding its Windows.

Sucks, because this tends to segregate skillsets and beliefs.

The screenshot you posted is terrible, take a look at the JuK screenshot here. Looks much nicer doesn it?

JuK is cluttered? Unlike iTunes, JuK actually looks and behaves like all the other apps on its desktop. Besides, the correct button count is 10 for iTunes (you didn't count the ones at the bottom) and 14 for JuK. The extra buttons on the juk toolbar are there in the interest of consistency with other KDE apps. Almost all KDE apps have those buttons in the same place. The screenshot you posted is terrible, take a look at the JuK screenshot here. Looks much nicer doesn it?

Although it is on the homepage, not everyone will think to click on the link meant for the press.

Nonetheless, it has some nice clean big pictures so take a look. Nice stuff.
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ccg/iswc03/press.html

How come these guys (who run high-tech simulators) are totally unable to present anything better than a 16-colour logo?

I'm guessing that this is for data in multiple versions of documents -- spatial and temporally disparate ones.

One of the groups that I work with does some data analysis stuff with how data changes over space (location based) and time (your beliefs yesterday vs. your beliefs today) and the ilke -- so this could be something along those lines.

Or like you said, it could just be a buzzword! :)

No Java, no JSP man. Simply use PHP for web development.
Forget Java man and go to PHP!

PHP is 4 times faster than Java technology 'JSP' (Java server pages).
This tallies because compiled "C" program is 4 times faster than Java.

Moreover, PHP is getting the object oriented features of Java language.

The real usefulness of Java is 'Java applets' which run on client browsers but on the server side you simply use PHP.

PHP is a very lightening fast object oriented scripting language. PHP is 100% written in "C" and there is no virtual machine as in Java. Nothing can beat "C" language ("C" is a language which never dies!!)

(Java is just another language. The PHP project needs millions of Java programmers who can add the Java's language features like inner classes, static, private, protected and others to PHP. PHP already has some of java' features).
Java programmers will really "LOVE" PHP as PHP class is identical to Java's class keyword.

Read the benchmars of Java JSP and PHP. PHP tops in the speed!!

Read the doc here and mirrors at [1], [2], [3], [4].

Well, if the RIAA is repeating what Edison did, eventually we'll start putting criminals to death by playing some recent CDs at them until they die.

or kill themselves rather than listen?

(Aaaaack! It's a Pepsi Commercial! Hit the Mute! Hit the Mute!)

Just out of curiosity, have you listened to Laurie Anderson? Specifically Dance of Electricity?

Why is this useful? I do a lot of numerical/engineering work. Say I have a root finding algorithm that throws a bunch of methods at a function in an attempt to find roots. It might first try doing some interval arithmetic to bound the roots and then when it's close enough go in for the kill with a newton solver. So I need to be able to write a polymorphic function that can be evaluated on the types appropriate to these methods (first intervals and then maybe doubles) but also be able to hand it in as an argument to a solver routine (which in this case would be rank-2 polymorphic though people will tell you C++ can't do that!). The above is the only way I know, And the cool thing is that It can also be a partially evaluated function (ie. in the simple example I gave I'm passing in the two argument function + but partially evaluating it by giving one of the arguments 'a'). This is all routine stuff in the functional world and is beginning to be routine in C++, but not yet. It's kinda object oriented but the object oriented frame of mind really is the wrong way to look at it.

Greenspun's rule. Yes, someone said that about some code of mine recently. But I have a response. For one thing the primary function of Greenspun's rule is to provide strokes for Lisp programmers' egos but these are the wrong people! C++ is a typed language and Lisp isn't. This makes a big difference. These methods push C++ more towards typed functional languages like ML or Haskell. Secondly: The example I gave is of a closure, written as (a+) in Haskell. But look where the work is happening: I haven't written any kind of interpreter, the compiler's doing the work. In fact if you take this stuff to its logical conclusion you're not implementing a Lisp interpreter but instead twisting the C++ compiler into a Haskell compiler. And if you don't believe me, here is that logical conclusion. If you look closely very little of that code is executed at run time (the lazy lists are), instead that minor mountain of code is directives to the compiler telling it how to behave like a Haskell compiler.

As for performance penalties: yup, they exist. It's the so-called abstraction penalty. I don't really understand why it exists because it takes only simple rewriting rules to eliminate the overhead but compiler writers don't use them. Luckily people like Veldhuizen are writing papers showing the compiler writers how they should be doing their job.

Your comment is true not just for Physics, but most sciences and even some engineering labs.

I work at the Georgia Tech CASE Lab, and here they have some pretty old systems.

They have this software thats more than 30 years old, and has been evolving! The basic code base that does the core stuff is analog and is still in Fortran, and all other future versions just interface wit this.

Whats funny is that I do my coding (largely simulation graphics and viz.) on this state of the art P4 2.8 Ghz (I think) system with more than a gig of DDR, while at the backend is some old tattered down system thats been working for the past 30 years!

DFuse

Check out Figure 7.

There's been a few comments about how the whole wearable computing thing is silly, and "it's an MIT" thing. Let me clear this up a bit. Maybe it started as an MIT thing way back in the late 50's/early 60's, at least according to this paper. But I know Carnegie Mellon has been working on this stuff for over 5 years because they had ongoing wearable computer projects when I was a freshman there in 98'. And there's a lot of others besides MIT and CMU working on this stuff, just look here under the Organizations section.

This area of technology is already being targeted at consumers. Try to have a little imagination and realize how powerful this technology could be. For example, what if you had a little speech translator that fit in your ear, recognized nearby spoken speech in foreign languages, traslated it to your language, and used a voice synthesizer to repeat it back to you in your native tongue. Just wait a few years and you'll be saying "damn, I need one of those".

Most of them carry assignments, solutions, sample exams, and readings similar to the MIT Open Courseware site....and they're publicly available too.

What was lacking was a common index to campus-wide pages, and a standard format for all of them. When individual professors/TA's put up their class pages, their formats are not standardized, nor are they always upto date (for example, if an assignment was a handout).

From a superficious look at some Electrical Engg and Computer Science classes, I think the MIT folks have basically indexed all the pages, standardized the format, and made sure they are all uptodate.

/end rant

Earlier /. story about Hybrot
Homepage of the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech
News release about Hybrot.

Earlier /. story about Hybrot
Homepage of the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech
News release about Hybrot.

This link might be right on the mark.

So when are we going to get the Smalltalk equivalent of JBoss, or JoNaS? The number of "extensions" that Java has is huge.

I've never worked with JBoss or JOnAS specifically, but Squeak has had a few application servers for a while. Seaside is the higher-level app server I've been using, but there are a couple others that implement similar functionality at different levels. Squeak has an very large library of extensions, not as large as Java, but very substantial. Swazoo is another app server for Smalltalk that comes to mind.

Outside of what you can do in Squeak, there are a handful of other application servers for Squeak, including VisualWave for VisualWorks, IBM's WebSphere and GemStone/S. These are hard-core enterprise app servers. Depending on your needs, there's an option.

And when is the graphics going to improve in Squeak? Right now it looks like a cartoon, instead of a serious tool.

Squeak has looked like more than a cartoon for a long time. This is what my Squeak desktop looks like now, save for a for desktop extensions not in the shot. No, it doesn't look like Windows or OS X, but it's far from looking like a cartoon. You can use any IceWM theme with Squeak, and in that screenshot, I choose a BlueCurve look-a-like theme. A project called Zurgle is working towards some UI beautification that goes beyond IceWM/color themes. You can find some screenshots here showing the WinXP Luna and Borg themes.

The graphic system in Squeak itself is quite powerful, regardless if you are displaying actual cartoons or a more boring business-like desktop.

When is Smalltalk going to have their CSPAN equivalent?

CSPAN? I am guessing you mean CPAN, but if you mean something related to television news, let me know.

Squeak has had something called SqueakMap for the last few point releases. It has a similar goal as CPAN, although isn't a clone. It does some things differently. However, when I download a fresh copy of Squeak 3.6, I can open it up, click the menu option for opening the Package Loader, and simply select an application or library and install it. Usually less than a minute later, whatever I downloaded it installed and ready to use. It's a nice system.

When is code doing to be compatiable across VMs?

It already is, to an extent. A lot of the different Smalltalks use different GUI frameworks, and I don't expect any compatability layers to show up anytime soon. But then again, you wouldn't expect code written for SWT to work for Swing and AWT, would you?

When is the documentation going to improve?

This is an ongoing process. This is an area which really needs work, especially for Squeak. The commercial Smalltalks have good documentation already, which makes sense. Luckily, folks have taken this up lately and are working on better tutorials for beginners and trying to improve other documentation.

It may sound crazy to an armchair hater, but it's not the most glamorous thing, writing documentation. People come into the Squeak community, figure things out and want to start writing code. You know, creating new things or improving existing ones. It's not the easiest thing to find folks who want to write docs. It hurts the community in the end, yes, but that doesn't make it any more fun. If Squeak had the budget of Java, a company like Sun throwing literally millions and millions of dolars at it, I imagine it would have documentation of similar quality and quantity. But alas, that's not the case.

So when are we going to get the Smalltalk equivalent of JBoss, or JoNaS? The number of "extensions" that Java has is huge.

I've never worked with JBoss or JOnAS specifically, but Squeak has had a few application servers for a while. Seaside is the higher-level app server I've been using, but there are a couple others that implement similar functionality at different levels. Squeak has an very large library of extensions, not as large as Java, but very substantial. Swazoo is another app server for Smalltalk that comes to mind.

Outside of what you can do in Squeak, there are a handful of other application servers for Squeak, including VisualWave for VisualWorks, IBM's WebSphere and GemStone/S. These are hard-core enterprise app servers. Depending on your needs, there's an option.

And when is the graphics going to improve in Squeak? Right now it looks like a cartoon, instead of a serious tool.

Squeak has looked like more than a cartoon for a long time. This is what my Squeak desktop looks like now, save for a for desktop extensions not in the shot. No, it doesn't look like Windows or OS X, but it's far from looking like a cartoon. You can use any IceWM theme with Squeak, and in that screenshot, I choose a BlueCurve look-a-like theme. A project called Zurgle is working towards some UI beautification that goes beyond IceWM/color themes. You can find some screenshots here showing the WinXP Luna and Borg themes.

The graphic system in Squeak itself is quite powerful, regardless if you are displaying actual cartoons or a more boring business-like desktop.

When is Smalltalk going to have their CSPAN equivalent?

CSPAN? I am guessing you mean CPAN, but if you mean something related to television news, let me know.

Squeak has had something called SqueakMap for the last few point releases. It has a similar goal as CPAN, although isn't a clone. It does some things differently. However, when I download a fresh copy of Squeak 3.6, I can open it up, click the menu option for opening the Package Loader, and simply select an application or library and install it. Usually less than a minute later, whatever I downloaded it installed and ready to use. It's a nice system.

When is code doing to be compatiable across VMs?

It already is, to an extent. A lot of the different Smalltalks use different GUI frameworks, and I don't expect any compatability layers to show up anytime soon. But then again, you wouldn't expect code written for SWT to work for Swing and AWT, would you?

When is the documentation going to improve?

This is an ongoing process. This is an area which really needs work, especially for Squeak. The commercial Smalltalks have good documentation already, which makes sense. Luckily, folks have taken this up lately and are working on better tutorials for beginners and trying to improve other documentation.

It may sound crazy to an armchair hater, but it's not the most glamorous thing, writing documentation. People come into the Squeak community, figure things out and want to start writing code. You know, creating new things or improving existing ones. It's not the easiest thing to find folks who want to write docs. It hurts the community in the end, yes, but that doesn't make it any more fun. If Squeak had the budget of Java, a company like Sun throwing literally millions and millions of dolars at it, I imagine it would have documentation of similar quality and quantity. But alas, that's not the case.

So when are we going to get the Smalltalk equivalent of JBoss, or JoNaS? The number of "extensions" that Java has is huge.

I've never worked with JBoss or JOnAS specifically, but Squeak has had a few application servers for a while. Seaside is the higher-level app server I've been using, but there are a couple others that implement similar functionality at different levels. Squeak has an very large library of extensions, not as large as Java, but very substantial. Swazoo is another app server for Smalltalk that comes to mind.

Outside of what you can do in Squeak, there are a handful of other application servers for Squeak, including VisualWave for VisualWorks, IBM's WebSphere and GemStone/S. These are hard-core enterprise app servers. Depending on your needs, there's an option.

And when is the graphics going to improve in Squeak? Right now it looks like a cartoon, instead of a serious tool.

Squeak has looked like more than a cartoon for a long time. This is what my Squeak desktop looks like now, save for a for desktop extensions not in the shot. No, it doesn't look like Windows or OS X, but it's far from looking like a cartoon. You can use any IceWM theme with Squeak, and in that screenshot, I choose a BlueCurve look-a-like theme. A project called Zurgle is working towards some UI beautification that goes beyond IceWM/color themes. You can find some screenshots here showing the WinXP Luna and Borg themes.

The graphic system in Squeak itself is quite powerful, regardless if you are displaying actual cartoons or a more boring business-like desktop.

When is Smalltalk going to have their CSPAN equivalent?

CSPAN? I am guessing you mean CPAN, but if you mean something related to television news, let me know.

Squeak has had something called SqueakMap for the last few point releases. It has a similar goal as CPAN, although isn't a clone. It does some things differently. However, when I download a fresh copy of Squeak 3.6, I can open it up, click the menu option for opening the Package Loader, and simply select an application or library and install it. Usually less than a minute later, whatever I downloaded it installed and ready to use. It's a nice system.

When is code doing to be compatiable across VMs?

It already is, to an extent. A lot of the different Smalltalks use different GUI frameworks, and I don't expect any compatability layers to show up anytime soon. But then again, you wouldn't expect code written for SWT to work for Swing and AWT, would you?

When is the documentation going to improve?

This is an ongoing process. This is an area which really needs work, especially for Squeak. The commercial Smalltalks have good documentation already, which makes sense. Luckily, folks have taken this up lately and are working on better tutorials for beginners and trying to improve other documentation.

It may sound crazy to an armchair hater, but it's not the most glamorous thing, writing documentation. People come into the Squeak community, figure things out and want to start writing code. You know, creating new things or improving existing ones. It's not the easiest thing to find folks who want to write docs. It hurts the community in the end, yes, but that doesn't make it any more fun. If Squeak had the budget of Java, a company like Sun throwing literally millions and millions of dolars at it, I imagine it would have documentation of similar quality and quantity. But alas, that's not the case.

This is not the only problem to not have a "done by hand" proof, the four color map theorem proof (one version of it) was in part by done with a computer.
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~thomas/FC/fourcolor.ht ml
By the way, I couldn't help but to notice the quote at the bottom of the page (generated by slashdot)
"Don't think; let the machine do it for you!" -- E. C. Berkeley

TIA == The Internet Adapter, popular about ten years ago.

Hah, TIA was for lusers, real geeks used slirp.

This one is called ComSwiki. It works on Windows and Mac and does not require installation on my company-owned laptop. It runs inside a SmallTalk environment and so is platform-independent. I can also upload files to the pages of the wiki for better organization.

Sorry, but that really isn't impressive at all compared to the Aerial Robotics Competition. They fly themselves!

You raise some valid points, but you need to come off your high horse. Back in the time when the USA was, what you call, a backward country, the US was all so pleased to get Fermi, Einstein fleeing totalitarian regimes in Europe (to name just a few). They did not come to their theories and research in isolation, but were a product of their environment and education in those countries. But they started or helped a developing industry and research in the US.

Later, the US even incited top leading researchers to go to the States, well in many cases, they had little choice, but it was better than being deported by the USSR.

In short, this has happened before (and was done by those that had little to protect or complain about, but are now the first to be scorned), and is happening again. Nothing new here, move along.

In times of world Economy, I am still dazzled to see that ppl seem to find reasons to protect their little countries (in fact, the country they are in can do anything they want, but everyone else should be good, unfair competition anyone?). I am just glad to see another alternative processor and in the long term, it can only benefit us with lower prices and better performance.

The link is here

A snippet:
The Georgia Institute of Technology in partnership with Dell Computer Corporation of Round Rock, Texas is pleased to announce a one-day computer equipment-recycling event in Atlanta. The event will be held at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum parking lot on the Georgia Tech campus on Saturday, July 12, 2003 from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The Coliseum is located on 10th Street off the I-75/85 Connector in downtown Atlanta. Participants are asked to enter the Coliseum via Fowler and 8th Street. The general public is encouraged to bring any brand of old computer-related equipment--computers, computer monitors, keyboards, mice, printers or other peripherals to the site for collection and recycling by Dell.

My comments were based on experience. I'm a software developer that has worked on several commercial applications over the years, for a variety of markets. What is your commentary based on?

Every piece of software has a life-cycle, and version releases are just levels of maturity until the project is no longer worth the time and effort to put into it.

Whether or not you practice good release management has nothing to do with this fact. Those goals you speak of are for releases so that you can keep a lid on creeping featurism and not introduce new regressions. There is rarely, if ever, a penultimate and overarching engineering plan for any significant software project. Most developers aren't even totally sure what the project will do, or who will use it. It is the implementers that often drive most of the development changes over time. Take a look at this slide. Note the "maintenance" bullet. That is where the majority of your time and money is spent on a software project over the whole of it's life.

Software development lifecycles and management practices are well known. You might want to check here and here as well. Note that these are CompSci theories. In the Real World, software development rarely works out so cleanly.

In summary:

• Software release management practices insist on version releases and sometimes redesign of fundamental aspects of the project. This is expected and useful.
• All projects have a life-cycle, and reach the end of their useful life (in terms of maintenance). At this point they are grandfathered.

The second item does not indicate anyone "sucks". It's a fact of software development. Some projects have a longer life, some very short. It all depends on what it does, and who is using it.

No Java, no JSP man. Simply use PHP for web development.
Forget Java man and go to PHP!

PHP is 4 times faster than Java technology 'JSP' (Java server pages).
This tallies because compiled "C" program is 4 times faster than Java.

Moreover, PHP is getting the object oriented features of Java language.

The real usefulness of Java is 'Java applets' which run on client browsers but on the server side you simply use PHP.

PHP is a very lightening fast object oriented scripting language. PHP is 100% written in "C" and there is no virtual machine as in Java. Nothing can beat "C" language ("C" is a language which never dies!!)

(Java is just another language. The PHP project needs millions of Java programmers who can add the Java's language features like inner classes, static, private, protected and others to PHP. PHP already has some of java' features).
Java programmers will really "LOVE" PHP as PHP class is identical to Java's class keyword.

Read the benchmars of Java JSP and PHP. PHP tops in the speed!!

Read the doc here and mirrors at [1], [2], [3], [4].

PHP is 4 times faster than Java technology 'JSP' (Java server pages).

This tallies because compiled "C" program is 4 times faster than Java.

Moreover, PHP is getting the object oriented features of Java language.

The real usefulness of Java is 'Java applets' which run on client browsers but on the server side you simply use PHP.

PHP is a very lightening fast object oriented scripting language. PHP is 100% written in "C" and there is no virtual machine as in Java. Nothing can beat "C" language ("C" is a language which never dies!!)

(Java is just another language. The PHP project needs millions of Java programmers who can add the Java's language features like inner classes, static, private, protected and others to PHP. PHP already has some of java' features).
Java programmers will really "LOVE" PHP as PHP class is identical to Java's class keyword.

Read the benchmars of Java JSP and PHP. PHP tops in the speed!!

Read the doc here and mirrors at [1], [2], [3], [4].

Scheme is used at Georgia Tech for the CS intro class, which most undergrads are required to take (except a few majors). Squeak is used in a later CS course (Objects and Design). I think most pretty much all non-CS people hate Scheme and some CS people do as well. From what I've heard I don't think anyone likes Squeak, mainly because of the environment you're force into working in (I'm taking the class this fall, so I don't know much firsthand about it).

That you're griping about something that is the result of your choice. You said yourself that you wanted a certain type of education - if that's how you chose the school you're at, don't be griping that it's not the school you didn't choose.

If you wanted a school that offered something your current school does not, then maybe you should have chosen somewhere else.

You're not at fault for the degrees offerred at SPSU, but you are responsible for the degrees offered at the school you chose to attend. What school has what sports team has nothing to do with it.

already exists. Atleast one such system was developed at GeorgiaTech by Prof. Gregory Abowd & Prof. Beth Mynatt, among others. It was supported for some time, and then taken off because the research issues to be investigated were found answers to -- and nobody had the manpower to keep supporting it on a regular basis.

Check out FC++. It's funcitonal programming in C++. The syntax can be awkward, but it's interesting.

Alright, I call bullshit on this. First off, you are reading about aren't you? They *are* sharing results, and better than that, they are talking to wide circulation general press. This means their research is exposed to an audience greater than the same conference crowd that they run in.

wheres the models for the function reponse of the rat neurons ? the electrical interface to the cells ? the procesedure and problems encountered ?

Well for a first approximation, at least look at the guy's web page. Notice the section labeled publications & abstracts. Secondly, if you are actually interested on a real level, talk to the guy. I am sure he would love to talk about his research (thats one thing that always tickles scientists, especially academics).

By the time anyone publishes results its years and progress has already moved on.

Welcome to manuscript writing, submitting, responding to reviews, re-submitting, publishing. It is slow by its very nature. You can't help it, and actually it's a damn good thing, peer-review is what makes science valid and useful. Without that science becomes nothing but bad journalism (remember cold fusion?).

the scientific system should be overhauled methinks.

Ok, what is your suggestion? Until you have an idea how to improve, your bitching is basically meaningless blather.

this research is critical and interesting enough that lots of people would be ahppy to contribute significantly if it was easy to obtain.

Ok, first of all while this research is certainly interesting, good basic research, a good foundation for the future, critical i think not. HIV research, cancer research, public safety research, hell, the stuff my lab does are all far, far more critical. As for many people contributing significantly, that can work for open source coding. It's quite different doing science. There is a reason you spend an extra 5 years in grad school after college before you really start contributing to these kinds of topics. They are complex and difficult to understand, they require a great level of scientific understanding and experience. And here's the thing, if it was easy to obtain, then it wouldn't require high-level research to examine it.

a coupla thousand geeks playing with biological-electronic hybrids could do more than a bunch of researchers at a single university or two.

Yeah, right. You've no clue how complex, difficult, and expensive this kind of research is. Have you ever grown neuronal cells? It's quite a bit harder than raising a bunch of sea monkeys. Even supposing you could package a Pocket Pal Rat-brain-cell-silicon-interface system, you still have to have the understanding of what the hell is actually going on. This isn't your high-school science fair project.

High-level research is high-level for a reason. Science is hard.

-Ted

If you are looking for more information or a new perspective, check out the actual news release by Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control Robotic Device

Go Yellow Jackets!

A company called Fast-Talk Communications has a set of tools that they resell for 3rd-party apps for things like searching interviews for specific words that were said. I have actually seen this feature in used some newsroom software made by Dalet Digital Media and it was amazing to see in action. Very fast and accurate

The research for the fast-talk technology was done at Georgia Tech's Interactive Media Technology Center (IMTC). They've got a page about the corporate spin-off of the technology.

A company called Fast-Talk Communications has a set of tools that they resell for 3rd-party apps for things like searching interviews for specific words that were said. I have actually seen this feature in used some newsroom software made by Dalet Digital Media and it was amazing to see in action. Very fast and accurate

The research for the fast-talk technology was done at Georgia Tech's Interactive Media Technology Center (IMTC). They've got a page about the corporate spin-off of the technology.

CMU has one called HELI. Supposedly, it was being considered to fly over the Somerset crash site on 9/11 to map out the area, but the authorities decided that if it crashed also, it would just complicate the crash site more. Lots of other places have similar creatures. There's also the Aerial Robotics Competition

This is total bullshit. The guy knows nothing about Xft, Stsf, or FreeType.

1) FreeType is *very* good. With TrueType hinting enabled, the output on a standard resolution LCD is *dead identical* with the output for the Windows rasterizer. On a high-res LCD, any version of FreeType with the improved autohinters is also extremely good. I personally prefer it to ClearType's rendering, for two reasons: it doesn't require sub-pixel AA (which still causes visible color fringing in Cleartype) to look sharp, and letter shapes look more natural (less hinted, but still sharp). If you don't believe me, look at screenshots of my desktop: this and this.

2) Rendering quality has nothing to do with Xft vs Stsf. Neither of these font services do the actual rendering; that is still handled by FreeType. These services are for font finding and font matching.

This is total bullshit. The guy knows nothing about Xft, Stsf, or FreeType.

1) FreeType is *very* good. With TrueType hinting enabled, the output on a standard resolution LCD is *dead identical* with the output for the Windows rasterizer. On a high-res LCD, any version of FreeType with the improved autohinters is also extremely good. I personally prefer it to ClearType's rendering, for two reasons: it doesn't require sub-pixel AA (which still causes visible color fringing in Cleartype) to look sharp, and letter shapes look more natural (less hinted, but still sharp). If you don't believe me, look at screenshots of my desktop: this and this.

2) Rendering quality has nothing to do with Xft vs Stsf. Neither of these font services do the actual rendering; that is still handled by FreeType. These services are for font finding and font matching.

and it has ugly ass fonts
>>>>>>>>>
Check out this and this. The letter shapes, even on the complex Kaufmann font, are incredible. They'll probably look color fringed on a CRT, because I took these with subpixel AA enabled.

hardware through TCP ports
>>>>>>>>>>
Um, XFree86 uses UNIX domain sockets (very fast on Linux) for local connections, not TCP sockets!

and it has ugly ass fonts
>>>>>>>>>
Check out this and this. The letter shapes, even on the complex Kaufmann font, are incredible. They'll probably look color fringed on a CRT, because I took these with subpixel AA enabled.

hardware through TCP ports
>>>>>>>>>>
Um, XFree86 uses UNIX domain sockets (very fast on Linux) for local connections, not TCP sockets!

I'm right there with you.

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2901

Either this guy has a discusting sense of humor, or his site http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2901 was cracked.