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You'd be surprised what some schools require. Georgia Tech, for instance, requires Win98 or MAC to be run on the computers of incoming freshman. Or at least they strongly reccomend it.

This reminds me...what if this technology was used on redmeat.com? Let's hope that Max Cannon doesn't combine iSmell with this (with apologies to M.C).

-X_Bones

I too have to give my props to HP LaserJets. An amusing anecdote back from the days when computer support paid my college tuition:

My college at the time had several high-end HP LJ III (x?). Their expected engine life-time (I guess MTBF) was ~250,000 pages. So, one day, my supervisor comes by and he wants to open two of them up and clean the dust out (no instructions for that, BTW :-). So, we print a test-page on both. One had printed ~1,200,000 (that's 1.2 MILLION pages) and the other ~700,000... After playing with the screws and the covers, we open one up. The motherboard was literally under a 1/2" blanket of dust. I mean solid dust that came off like a piece of cloth. We cleaned those guys up, and as far as I know they were still chugging along after I graduated ;-)...

After that I always recommend an HP...



engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

no need to download the whole thing for that file...

it's at:
http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/kaboom/linux/Changes-2 .4/changes24.html

(note: Georgia Tech's network will be shut down from Dec. 30 until Jan. 4, 2000)

Perhaps that's why he has it off-server as well. I would say it's authoratitive. (The report, anyway.)

OK, this all seemed very strange, but I still had doubts that a mentally healthy professor of a respected university would spread hoax. But this was just too much. Quote:
Apple has developed a patch, but it must be applied by OS-9 Macintosh owners before New Years Eve to be effective.

I guess someone has somehow acquired access to this guy's webpage and put all the BS there (like Mahir :)

John Copeland has 42 patents on things as obvious as "Functionally Static Type Semiconductor Shift Register with Half Dynamic-Half Static Stages" and "Magnetic Bubble Enhanced Propagation Pulse Write for Lateral Displacement Coding". I'm all for patents and all, but not for obvious ones like these. This is as bad as Amazon! I think we should boycott him!

There's a link (More...) on the top of that page that goes to another Copeland gatech.edu page with the mac DOS attack described on it. However, that page (http://www.csc.gatech.edu/~copeland/) is on a different subnet that the other gatech servers I checked. Hmmm...

This report seems totally bogus being that it is not on a Georgia Tech server, that Dr. Copeland is a physicist who does research on high speed optical networking, and he doesn't mention it at all on his personal webpage.

Once you fight your way past the bimbos and the crowd shot (is that Bill Gates?), some of the technical wear looks very functional. Check out the funding: "Carnegie Mellon devices funded and supported by: The Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance, Sandbox Advanced Development, DARPA, and The Telxon Corporation." Nice cash flow there.

Ok. Granted the Hands Free Poultry Inspection System should be in a copy of Skin Two but take a look at that audience. These people do not get laid often enough

What depressed me the most was the complete lack of any links to the hardware in question (even most of my searches came up empty.)

I guess the term "Vaporware for the Vapid to Wear" finally applies.

There's an Open Source Smalltalk called Squeak that is an astoundingly interesting platforms from a number of perspectives. Most relevant to this discussion, Squeak has an open source implementation of handwriting recognition, written by Alan Kay and inspired from a rather clever grafitti-like HWR, called GRAIL, from the 60's. I've seen GRAIL in and it's actually rather better than grafitti, which isn't bad in a very old piece of free software. Thus, you can use anything with a pen as a "PDA" if you can run Squeak on it. The recognizer is quite good, and the source code is easy to read.

Squeak runs on all sorts of OS's, including Linux. It doesn't need an OS - it's been ported to "bare metal". It's been ported to PDA's (like the Zaurus PDA), DEC Itsy, WinCE, and others, like DOS, BeOS, Windows, MacOS, OS/2, the Acorn, AmigaDOS... you get the idea.

So if anyone really wants an Open Source HWR for Linux, I'd suggest downloading Squeak and reading the (really short!) code for the recognizer.

There's an Open Source Smalltalk called Squeak that is an astoundingly interesting platforms from a number of perspectives. Most relevant to this discussion, Squeak has an open source implementation of handwriting recognition, written by Alan Kay and inspired from a rather clever grafitti-like HWR, called GRAIL, from the 60's. I've seen GRAIL in and it's actually rather better than grafitti, which isn't bad in a very old piece of free software. Thus, you can use anything with a pen as a "PDA" if you can run Squeak on it. The recognizer is quite good, and the source code is easy to read.

Squeak runs on all sorts of OS's, including Linux. It doesn't need an OS - it's been ported to "bare metal". It's been ported to PDA's (like the Zaurus PDA), DEC Itsy, WinCE, and others, like DOS, BeOS, Windows, MacOS, OS/2, the Acorn, AmigaDOS... you get the idea.

So if anyone really wants an Open Source HWR for Linux, I'd suggest downloading Squeak and reading the (really short!) code for the recognizer.

The main problem with wearable technology is power. It really defeats the purpose of having a computer that sits in your shirt pocket because you need a kilogram worth of batteries to run the thing for a day.

This is the reason why most of wearcomp stuff runs on embedded CPUs, such as the Motorola Dragonball series (as used in Palm) or the ARM chips (as used in Psion and Newton), NOT X86. Xybernaut does great stuff, but so far their systems have been hampered by the fact that they insist on running Windows on their wearables, so they need hefty processing power. Not that there are many companies in the wearable business anyway...

What Linux will offer is the ability to adapt to multiple platforms: you can do your development on your top-of-the-line Athlon system at home, then quite easily port onto your uCsimm system. I personally think that we're going to see a lot of new wearable systems based on light-weight embedded systems and uCLinux.

BTW, for anyone who is interested, go see the International Symposium on Wearable Computing home page (you can download most of the presentations from 98 and 99 as PDF (abstracts) and RealVideo). Another good place (though still heavily under construction) is the Wearable.org page. Did you know, for example, that you can harvest power from your shoes to power a wearable?

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

• Power Consumption
• 
  This is one of the areas that a lot of progress has been made in. IBM's wearable gets three hours of battery life. Thad's wearable gets fifteen. Know what else? He never has his hard drives spin down or his display turn off. He accomplishes this amazing feat by using extremely low power hardware; his wearable is composed of PC-104 boards. You can find more information about the hardware at MIT's Wearable Computing Project.

• Display
• 
  The biggest obstacle to widespread acceptance of wearable computers, in my opinion, is the display. They are, at the moment, extrememly expensive. Quite a bit of technical progress has been made, however. Kopin makes some tiny displays (unfortunately no wearable designs shown on their page), but the ones we use most in the CCG are the ones made by MicroOptical. This page has a photo of the clip-on glasses display prototype; we've got non-prototype models in use, and let me tell you, they are sweet. They are extremely lightweight, slim, and space-age looking. Of course, they're also about $5000 apiece, but that's why we have grants. =)

• Input
• 
  Input is a bit of a problem. Nobody's developed an intuitive, easy to use input device. The Twiddler is the one most used by wearables researchers at the moment. It's a chording, one-handed keyboard with 12 keys (three rows of four) on the front for the fingers, and five keys for the thumb. It acts as both keyboard and mouse, as it has tilt sensors that let you control the pointer. The Twiddler is neat, and very useful, but it's about as hard to learn as touch-typing. MIT's wearables pages have some info on other input devices buried within them.

• Interface
• 
  This is another potential obstacle to widespread use of wearable computers. Thad runs Linux (Slackware, I belive) on his wearable, and his interface to everything is: XEmacs! Yes, XEmacs, heavily modified to do everything he needs it to. One of the most revolutionary applications it uses is the Remberance Agent (PDF). This watches the files on your drive and what you're typing, and suggests a list of related files every 10 seconds or so. In this way, you can see things that might be related to what you're doing currently. For instance, if I'm typing up an article (such as this one), and I talk about Brad Rhodes, the Remberance Agent might display a filename such as "rhodes-RA.pdf", reminding me that he was the one who wrote the Remberance Agent. Or, if I'd met him at ISWC and put his name in "ISWC99-people.txt", that could come up and remind me as well.

• Size
• 
  Size is one of the least concerning of any of these issues. Technology will progress, and things will get smaller. Eventually, we can expect to have powerful computers that fit in our pockets, or on our wrists (check here for a wrist-sized palm pilot). Size is currently a consideration, but it's the least of them.

Here's more recent info on the subject:

From this summer (cached from google)

And even some info on the code

That would be a fun class. (see also Melody Moore)

1) A couple Sun workstations, anything will do. For some reason sun is down today so I cant pick some cool ones. 2) Wearable computer(s) 3) Worlds smallest webserver, for fun. 4) A couple Ferrari's 5) A couple Beamer's 6) First post on Christmas on /.

Being at the plenary last night, neither the IETF, IAB, nor the IESG issued a formal statement last night. Slashdot may want to go with a more reliable news source.

There was definitly a lot of opposition to the wiretapping proposal, but there was some support for it as well. Recordings of the multicasting of the plenary will be available at imj.gatech.edu. Need the multicast tools to view it.

why the hell are they always in academic institutions?!?!?! I suppose the buildings are old and thus chock full of explanations for the presences

Georgia Tech's Library is the perfect setting for a ghost story. When one first walks into the place, they feel a sense of age without glory, as if the building is in the process of dying. It is heightened by the creaky wood staircases, the cramped little restrooms set in odd places, and the sealed-off stairwell with water-corroded paint that can only be seen by looking out the right windows in another stairwell.

The bare flourescent light tubes are covered by parallel, flat plates in the shape of a half-arc that stick down like small guillotines. The large atrium formed by floors 1 and 2 of the West wing is duplicated on floors 3 and 4 (like the old identical-room-switcharoo trick). The building incorporates at least 6 different architectural styles among its operative stairwells: one of them is straight, small, narrow, and creaky; another is constructed like a huge, tomato-green spiraled tube that secretly snakes down towards the basement.

The East wing is two or three floors taller than the West wing, and from here one may peer down on the oldest of campus buildings. The light behaves differently on these floors... the sunlight traces shadows through ancient, hazed-over glass. Even when I stand there, beholding it with my own eyes, the scene appears impossibly faded, like one of grandma's wedding pictures (or maybe some JPEG compression artifacts).

The building has many secret places. Most striking are the many locked rooms that appear randomly scattered throughout the floor plans... their practical purposes forgotten. In this one particular room, statues and busts can be seen through the darkened glass. If I remember correctly, the entire top floor of the East Wing is closed to the public, accessible only to invisible research librarians.

Finally, the building stands at the highest geographical point on campus. "The Hill" was of strategic significance during the civil war battle that this region of Atlanta saw.

Funny, though... Nobody here is creative enough to make up any stories about it. That's Tech for you...

Stephen Bennett

I emailed Apple and Sorenson about working with Mark Podlipec (Xanim's creator) and below is the email I got back.

If we all email them maybe they will get a clue.
For reference, Xanim's home page (and mirrors)
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html
http://smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu/xanim/home.html
http://xanim.resnet.gatech.edu/home.html


Hello,

You're receiving this note because you asked for QuickTime for Linux, QuickTime for UNIX, or QuickTime for Amiga.

QuickTime is available for Mac OS http://www.apple.com/macos, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4. The next platform to be supported will be Mac OS X http://www.apple.com/macosx (including Mac OS X Server), which is Mach/BSD-based.

If you're interested in QuickTime for platforms other than Mac or Windows, contact your platform vendor and let them know that you would like them to license QuickTime from Apple.

If you're interested in QuickTime as it relates to servers, be sure to check out the standards-based Darwin streaming server project http://publicsource.apple.com (which works with any standards-based streaming media client).

Thank you,

--
Charles Wiltgen
QuickTime Technology Manager
Worldwide Developer Relations Apple Computer, Inc. "Don't compromise. Use QuickTime."
http://www.apple.com/quicktime
http://www.QuickTimeFAQ.org

QuickTime 4: The first standards-based architecture for networked media.
Recognized as the industry standard for Macintosh and Windows since 1991.

(An old'un but a good'un.)

Regards, Ralph.

I used to work at the MIT Media Lab in direct conjunction with several of the pioneers of the field. I've listened to Thad pontificate on the various uses of them for almost 5 years now, so I've got a good idea where you're going to see them:

• Places where the PDA is king right now, particularly in the vertically-integrated market. People like UPS and FedEx, inventory at warehouses/supermarkets/etc., airline checkins, etc. Alot of those places would greatly benefit from having more horsepower (and also a network connection).
• Aids for the disabled. The current crop is good enough to do decent sign-language interpretation, and I'd expect wearbles would be a boon to people with limited sight or hearing, since they could use them to do amplification and/or enhancement.
• The Military. The US Army is absolutely bonkers of this kind of stuff - it fits so nicely into their LandWarrior2000 concept of the fully-wired warrior.
• As a replacement for the Laptop, which, let's face it, is a rather cruddy computer. I'd expect the laptop to get completely killed by the wearable within 5 years.
• Specialty medical apps like surgeon's or ER doctor's aids (nothing like being able to look up all the possible drug interactions without taking your hands out of the GSW), or a link from the ER to the Ambulance crew.

The big stumbling blocks to wearables right now are the displays (though take a look at the one Thad is wearing in the above picture) and battery life. I expect displays to be solved within 2 years at the outside, after which it's really simply a matter of production. The battery life is a harder issue, but it's being worked on too.

I look at Xybernaut, and think that they are targeting the wrong market first - they're doing consumer applications, which I don't expect to be feasible for 4-6 years; instead, they should be focusing on the specialty and vertical markets, where the need and demand is NOW.

Disclaimer - Thad is a personal friend of mine, and I think his shit is cool. So I might be biased.

-Erik

Georgia Tech can give you one kick-ass education in CS. As an undergraduate CS major, I feel that we get the complete package: it starts with learning basic algorithmic concepts (in pseudocode, no less), progresses to a real language (currently Java), and then blows wide open with classes on theory (algorithms and automata), compiler implementation, programming practicum, operating systems, software engineering, 00, language concepts, networking, and caffeine consumption. And that's *before* moving into one of the areas of specialization, such as AI, graphics, databases, usability, and seriously deep theory. It truly rocks.

Don't get me wrong--there's a lot of bad stuff about Tech. You have to put up with all sorts of bureaucratic crud, evil policies, hidden costs, a terrible male-female ratio, and all the demons that plague Atlanta (traffic, crime, pollution, heat, etc.). But in the end, you earn three really cool things: (1) a degree from a reputable college, (2) the flexibility required to adapt quickly to new technologies, and (3) a grim understanding of how life works. GA Tech really does teach you a little something about life, but that's a different subject.

If you go to Georgia Tech, you will learn about many different programming tools. However, you will master none of them: you will skip from language to language, learning one thing when you need it and then forgetting about it when it comes time to learn something else. Programming is about mastering the only real tool you have: your mind.

Georgia Tech Links
Undergraduate CS Program Info
General College of Computing Education Info
GT Main Page

Groan... Time to go write a C-preprocessor for lab.

Georgia Tech can give you one kick-ass education in CS. As an undergraduate CS major, I feel that we get the complete package: it starts with learning basic algorithmic concepts (in pseudocode, no less), progresses to a real language (currently Java), and then blows wide open with classes on theory (algorithms and automata), compiler implementation, programming practicum, operating systems, software engineering, 00, language concepts, networking, and caffeine consumption. And that's *before* moving into one of the areas of specialization, such as AI, graphics, databases, usability, and seriously deep theory. It truly rocks.

Don't get me wrong--there's a lot of bad stuff about Tech. You have to put up with all sorts of bureaucratic crud, evil policies, hidden costs, a terrible male-female ratio, and all the demons that plague Atlanta (traffic, crime, pollution, heat, etc.). But in the end, you earn three really cool things: (1) a degree from a reputable college, (2) the flexibility required to adapt quickly to new technologies, and (3) a grim understanding of how life works. GA Tech really does teach you a little something about life, but that's a different subject.

If you go to Georgia Tech, you will learn about many different programming tools. However, you will master none of them: you will skip from language to language, learning one thing when you need it and then forgetting about it when it comes time to learn something else. Programming is about mastering the only real tool you have: your mind.

Georgia Tech Links
Undergraduate CS Program Info
General College of Computing Education Info
GT Main Page

Groan... Time to go write a C-preprocessor for lab.

Georgia Tech can give you one kick-ass education in CS. As an undergraduate CS major, I feel that we get the complete package: it starts with learning basic algorithmic concepts (in pseudocode, no less), progresses to a real language (currently Java), and then blows wide open with classes on theory (algorithms and automata), compiler implementation, programming practicum, operating systems, software engineering, 00, language concepts, networking, and caffeine consumption. And that's *before* moving into one of the areas of specialization, such as AI, graphics, databases, usability, and seriously deep theory. It truly rocks.

Don't get me wrong--there's a lot of bad stuff about Tech. You have to put up with all sorts of bureaucratic crud, evil policies, hidden costs, a terrible male-female ratio, and all the demons that plague Atlanta (traffic, crime, pollution, heat, etc.). But in the end, you earn three really cool things: (1) a degree from a reputable college, (2) the flexibility required to adapt quickly to new technologies, and (3) a grim understanding of how life works. GA Tech really does teach you a little something about life, but that's a different subject.

If you go to Georgia Tech, you will learn about many different programming tools. However, you will master none of them: you will skip from language to language, learning one thing when you need it and then forgetting about it when it comes time to learn something else. Programming is about mastering the only real tool you have: your mind.

Georgia Tech Links
Undergraduate CS Program Info
General College of Computing Education Info
GT Main Page

Groan... Time to go write a C-preprocessor for lab.

This is not to say that our ministry is based on our deep-seated love for Linux, just that computing is a very important part of academics at GaTech and so it is a topic everyone is aware of...

And, when you're not fiddling with re-installing your OS or restoring from a crash, you have more time to pray and discuss the love of Christ.

In my english class we do all of our discussions in a web based discussion format, and all of my cs homework is turned in through a unix shell account.

But it is more that just internet technology. The two tech tv stations broadcast all kinds of acedemic stuff. From complete classes to tutoring help late at night.

I don't know if long distance learning over the internet is the future, but I really think that utilizing all the technology available to provide a complete education is.

A few years ago, Telegrafix (of RipTerm fame) proposed, as a solution to the Unisys LZW patent problem, that the LZW compression be replaced by LZHUF leaving the GIF format otherwise unchanged. This idea was published in an open letter to Compuserv and the online community in general.

This apparently didn't get much attention outside of the BBS community, which at that time was already beginning to lose ground due to growing availability of the Internet.

For anyone who cares, Telegrafix still exists, and is currently promoting the latest incarnation of RipScrip as a vector format for the web. It's interesting, but would be a lot more useful if it were more open. Some folks didn't like RIP back in the BBS days, but I always thought it was a fundamentally good idea that just suffered from being too proprietary.

---
vilvoy

I was in one of Thad Starner's classes earlier this year, and he talked about this a little. He takes notes into seperate files for each event (class, conference, meeting, etc...). He uses a piece of software called a remembrance agent, which shows a list of files relevant to whatever he's typing in emacs at the moment. Go here for a (unfortunately partially raw-latex) description of the remembrance agent and various ways Thad uses his wearable in daily life. This is the page of readings for his class, with various other interesting wearable papers.

I was in one of Thad Starner's classes earlier this year, and he talked about this a little. He takes notes into seperate files for each event (class, conference, meeting, etc...). He uses a piece of software called a remembrance agent, which shows a list of files relevant to whatever he's typing in emacs at the moment. Go here for a (unfortunately partially raw-latex) description of the remembrance agent and various ways Thad uses his wearable in daily life. This is the page of readings for his class, with various other interesting wearable papers.

From the labs at Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Look here for the article from the Alumni Magazine. There's a nice picture, and they discuss some of the cooler uses, like looking at the heart rate for rifle people in the olympics.

I've heard of this before, I think from that cyborg wannabe guy who goes around with augmented reality glasses, and all these borg looking things attached to his head (no, not Bill Gates). Come on, that guy who can't do html to save his life. (Now it definitely sounds like billga) Hmm, he also has a camera relaying all over the place so his friends know where he is...

Well doesn't he have a chordal keyboard?

But that's beside the point anyway. What I'd like to do is try out a simple commercial version, maybe one that I could plug in on a separate port, to complement my real keyboard in case I get lost.

I totally agree with the visionaries who agree that one day we *will* get a good keyboard (Doug Copeland?), and I'd love to try and get that happening by trying chordal stuff out.

As a guitar player a can see the importance of chords, as in complicated key strokes for one complicated effect. It means your music isn't limited to one style, vibe or state of complexity. One thing that I remember from my move from being a windows html typist to linux apache/.sh configurer is the lack of keystrokes I had become so used to, like c-leftarrow to move forward a word at a time, or shift-c-leftarrow to select or in general the much easier cut & paste, which was the same in any program. These things were very valuable when copying a lot of text from one application to another(usually we had to convert stuff to html that was coming in in pagemaker or in microsoft assistant), and I understand that linux as a server OS, rather than a clerical one doesn't need this so urgently.

But I think that with the ever more varying range of things we use keyboards for, we will need a very strong and radical design of the way we interface with stuff. And to keep the musical analogies going, I would go for the drummer's approach in this case: the drummer uses all parts of his body: arms , legs, and sometimes even backing vocal to provide his part. The result is a well balanced use of the entire body that is both healthy (or healthier than just using your hands and eyes anyway) and more balanced. If configurable, so many different jobs would be done to such a great extent, from admin work to music, to gaming, to html cut and paste jobs.

And I think a chordal keyboard would look much more flashy than a flat, grey, £8 keyboard too! (Anyone got a screenshot of one?)

Ale

ps oh yeah: This is the guy I meant

This is just the sort of fuzzy study that can be used as "proof" to further socioligical or political agendas. We (as in knowledgable and frequent users of the 'net) need to keep track this group's research to ensure that it is impartial. Consider the hysteria after Littleton, or the long running effort to censor anything that resembles porn. This study could be skewed in ways that could give credibility to all that silliness.

Of course, I don't understand why this is a big deal. The GVU has been running a Web user survey for years.

This is just the sort of fuzzy study that can be used as "proof" to further socioligical or political agendas. We (as in knowledgable and frequent users of the 'net) need to keep track this group's research to ensure that it is impartial. Consider the hysteria after Littleton, or the long running effort to censor anything that resembles porn. This study could be skewed in ways that could give credibility to all that silliness.

Of course, I don't understand why this is a big deal. The GVU has been running a Web user survey for years.

And it's so much more of a challenge than putting stuff up on a building... I mean, we put a hula hoop on top of the Shaft soon after it was put up... but it's too easy.

More fun: doing research on creating a detergent capable of passing through the shaft's fountain's filtration system!

http://solo.gatech.edu

If I get a chance, I'll mirror the MPEG version there tomorrow.

-adam a

http://solo.gatech.edu/

-adam a

ps. I agree, 'tis a shame, Sorenson rocks.

http://solo.gatech.edu/

Note: you'll need some real horsepower to view the fast bitrate RealVideos of the 480x216 version smoothly. My Pentium 200MMX and PowerbookG3 (250) weren't enough, but my dual PII 400Mhz was...

My mirror is up! check out my site. Er, not that one.... this one!

There's a press release from GA Tech with more info here and on this page there's a paper (PDF or PS) on it.

Go, wramblin' wreck...

There's a press release from GA Tech with more info here and on this page there's a paper (PDF or PS) on it.

Go, wramblin' wreck...

In theory it's pretty simple...if you had a system with two strange attractors you could generate a sequence of eight bits just by plugging the right constant in the right place. Each time it goes around strange attractor A, that's a zero; each time it goes around strange attractor B, that's a one. Lorenz's equasions for modeling the weather could do it pretty simply.

You could double your output with a more complicated five-variable system with four strange attractors; but it's not very far scalable after that.

The geek who thought up this scheme is Rajarshi Roy, chair of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You'll be seeing more chaotic computing coming out in the near future.

In theory it's pretty simple...if you had a system with two strange attractors you could generate a sequence of eight bits just by plugging the right constant in the right place. Each time it goes around strange attractor A, that's a zero; each time it goes around strange attractor B, that's a one. Lorenz's equasions for modeling the weather could do it pretty simply.

You could double your output with a more complicated five-variable system with four strange attractors; but it's not very far scalable after that.

The geek who thought up this scheme is Rajarshi Roy, chair of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. You'll be seeing more chaotic computing coming out in the near future.

Here is the email that I sent to Scoop. And to add to what I said in it, I hope all those that flamed him are forced to apologise for beeing so terribly rude.

--quote--
Scoop,

I wanted to let you know that I thought the new site kicked major ass. Not all of us out there are as rude as those who would flame someone who contributes his time, unpaid, to provide a service to the community. Freshemat was (is?) a resource that I found very useful, and appreciated very much, however, if you feel that removing the site is the right course of action, I support you 100 percent. I probably would have done the same thing. Maybe it'll be a kick in the pants that makes the linux community as a whole grow up a little.

Thanks for all your hard work,
chap
-- end quote---