Slashdot Mirror
UIUC Unveils the Worlds Most Advanced Building
Eagle5596 writes "The University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign, one of the top Computer
Science programs in the world has just officially opened their new $80
million Siebel
Center. The department head describes the building as a
single computing entity, meant to be programmed and to interact with those
in the building via RFID tags in their ID cards.
This is probably one of
the biggest and most expensive projects in ubiquitous computing ever
launched, touching on all the important issues in this field, from privacy to the ultimate question about the usefulness of such a system. Several papers are covering this including the Chicago Sun Times, and the Chicago
Business"
I'm not sure if I like the idea that anything between me and these 4 walls is now between me and some sort of ubiquitous building-computer.
The UIUC bldg sounds extremely cool, but in 5 yrs folks will be smiling politely at the "hokey-ness" of the place.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
UIUC still has some of the greatest minds in computer science, including Michael Heath, probably one of the most brilliant computer scientists of our time. They continue to attract some of the highest calibre students in the world, both nationally and internationally, and have a staff with more citations and awards than most schools can even dream of. They are the site of one NCSA facility, soon to be another one, and one of the DoE's advanced research centers. Most recently they have discovered new fabrication processes for IC's, light emitting transistors, and they continue to push the bounds of excellence in computer science.
This building isn't an effort to revive a program (currently ranked #3 in Engineering, #3 in ECE, and #5 in CS), it's a natural step taking to increase the facilities available to accomidate recent advances by the University, and a continuously growing program which time and time again excells in all areas.
I'm going to have to agree with the first AC on this one. I know some folks who applied to the top 20 grad programs and a few backup schools and got into only UIUC and their backups. Either UIUC is finding diamonds in the rough on a regular basis or it has lowered its standards.
And I don't know about this Michael Heath guy, but I think most places that claim to be top departments have a few Turing award winners running around their halls.
I am waiting for the first time they blow the breakers on the circuit that handles their security computer.
What happens? Does the system fail to "everything is locked"?
This sounds like a RISKS article waiting to happen.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
If you haven't heard of UIUC for computing you probably haven't been around computing or academic circles very long. They have a very strong reputation in the field.
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
What you need to do is observe your surroundings a little more. To teach you a little more about UIUC, go ahead and follow the steps below in Internet Explorer. Click on Help --> About Internet Explorer Then read the textbox that comes up. "Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." The original web browser started there.
Wow! Really?
Wait, I think I heard that before... yes, I did... IN THE DAMN ARTICLE.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot, nobody reads anything before making stupid comments and debating about "important issues" that are completely irrelevant to anyone who took the time to read the article.
Well, I'm in the ECE department, and I'll tend to agree with you with regards to their grad admission - not as hard as their peers to get in. But they have a good filtration system when it comes to the qualifying exams for the PhD.
Beetle B.