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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 sorry Dave, I can't let you in. Your GPA is too low this semester.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
keeping the soda machines near me full of Dew, it's a good thing.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
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.
Does that mean the building is wildly overpriced and requires expensive consultants in suits to do anything right?
sulli
RTFJ.
...Imagine a beowulf cluster of those
Sorry
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
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
Now, when you go down the hall, the "Buildy" mascot asks things like. "You appear to be walking to the bathroom. Would you like some help?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Clap on. Clap off. What else is there?
Apparently RFID tags (and anything that doesn't have its own power source) don't have enough power to do real crypto. So this will be great until someone builds a device to read people's tags as they walk down the hall, and then impersonate any of them to the building. At least with keys or magnetic striped cards you have to get physical access to them before you can copy them.
This proves the point that all things human go in cycles. First computers were the size of buildings, then they shrunk down to fit in the palm, now they are becoming the size of buildings again.
_____
Thank you.
I saw the nearly-completed building a few months ago when visiting the campus. My immediate reaction: this can't be healthy. With that many wires and that many radio signals (RFID, wireless network, etc), I can't help but think that it will increase your risk of developing cancer. Normal offices are bad enough, but this place has significantly more in the air.
G
I'm going to have to disagree. Although there are parts that look odd and half finished, like the metal beams jutting out over the entrances, walking around the back and seeing the gigantic wall of glass is kind of cool. And it's purdy on the inside. Reminds me of DCL, actually.
Gotta wonder what kind of security they've got on her. If I had my face scanned everytime I entered a room, and had some stupid voice asking me questions when I just wanted to finish my assignment back when I was in school, the system would have been modified drastically during finals week.....
Not that I would condone such now, of course. Probably get you labeled a terrorist and thrown under the jail.
The real issue with privacy of course is turning off the location function when you don't want something embarressing happening. I present the following situation as evidence:
Johnny wanted to find Professor X to ask a question about his research paper, approaching the wall he intoned, "Computer, please locate Professor X."
In a booming voice the wall responded, "Professor X is currently in Stall 5 of the Bathroom on the second floor, logging in."
Where is a link to pictures? If there aren't pictures of gadgets, no one cares.
Nice to know that the welcoming avatar has blue hair. Because that's the future, apparently.
I bet they'd fire the receptionist of he/she dyed their hair blue, or they'd refuse to hire the same, but as soon as you need to represent the future, it has blue hair.
Just like Strong Bad has a Japanese cartoon character: http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail57.html
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Oh... and sure, the building's nice, too.
--
"It's better to have an attention span and not need it, than to need whatever it is we were just talking about."
- Mayor {Powerpuff Girls}
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 can't believe on the eve of the night when my school's unveiling the most technologically advanced building in the world, the campus mail is down >=( Prioritize, much?
The web site for the opening lists one of the events as a BFG Competition. Apparently, they will be broadcasting the thing around the world. Also, they will record the competition for future viewings. Hmmm . . . only in computer science could they be proud.
Anyone able to find a neat photo gallery on the site? I looked, but could only find some movies of the grand opening. The itty bitty pictures make the place look nice, but I'd love to see more details. Wonder what their sever room(s) look like...
2 hours later the building was declared obsolete by new technologies...
Those odd, half-finished parts are what I was calling ugly. And it doesn't remind me at all of DCL. I have a few classes there next semester, so i'm going to have to learn to like it.
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."
When it crashes does it become the BBOD (Blue Building of Death)?
Now all you need to get back at a professor you don't like is hack into the building's computer, and turn off the air conditioning in whatever room he goes into.
Sweet revenge!
-S
$80000000/$100000=800. Hmm...
800 faculty years of almost anyone in the world, or one building. Good going UIUC.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
...when caught from a bar near by:
"Nooo. Can't go to school, they're running critical updates on our building today!"
Surprisingly, this is basically the same thing you get when you walk up to an information display on the wall (except the website doesn't have the information specific to the room you're standing in front of).
Everything actually looks really awesome right now. Too bad most of it isn't staying in the building after the weekend.
Anyway, to provide you with some other cool associated things:
web cam, VRML model of building. Enjoy.
PS Though I have complaints, I'm leaving those to the other trolls.
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.
Though the university itself can only carry coca cola products, at the ACM office in Siebel they've got a "robotic" soda machine called Caffeine that will give you Mountain Dew or whatever else it is currently stocked with, and just bill a few cents to your account. There is even a website I think where you can view soda statistics (yes, mountain dew wins).
I'll let you know before you read the rest of my post that I'm a current student at UIUC.
/ I took a tour of it, and the impression it gave me was, "Look at us, we're MIT! This building looks so crazy, we must be geniuses to work here!"
I got into the PhD programs at Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, and UIUC--and UIUC compares very well with the rest of these schools. The only thing UIUC lacks is the publicity to go with the quality of research that happens here. On the other hand, this is a good thing since the students here can concentrate more on research instead of just working very hard at appearing smart like some other schools promote.
At UIUC, the professors are generally fairly young, which I view as a good thing. At the 'bigger' name schools you end up with a bunch of dinosaurs who may have contributed to the field in the past but are simply living off the legacy insteading doing new research. If you actually care about this, check out the UIUC research page at: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/areas.html
I have personally found the AI, Databases, and Theory groups to be very impressive and have had experience working with them.
If you want an interesting comparison, check out MIT's new building.http://web.mit.edu/buildings/statacenter
UIUC has a much more honest and less flashy style, which I find rather refreshing.
I do agree that most of the ubiquitous computing features of the building seem a little silly, but why not make your new computer science building a functional experiment in computer science itself?
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.
Nice building.
Shame they didn't get a spell-checker with it. I believe the reference to "Accomodations" on the main page of their website should read "Accommodations".
Ho hum. Am I being too picky?
Yeah... except for THIS soda machine (which just so happens to be in the seibel center) The link points at the web server running inside the pop machine itself. The only photo I can find of the thing is here, with one of the guys who worked on it sitting in front of it. And a BeBox perched on top.
That's when you want to mod the moderators, +1, Irony. :-)
More than mere navel gazing.
HAL 9000 is from hereabouts. Perhaps you've heard of him. Granted, he did kill a few people, but no one is perfect...
They failed to mention whether caffeine was gratis or not.
If it's free, I'm going to college.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
So now I know why they bought and knocked down my old apartment building!
Surprisingly enough, I just happened to visit this building this past Monday. I was taking a visit to UIUC (thinking about transferring there) for the first time, and was referred to this building, since I'm a CS major.
When I was in there Monday, all kinds of work was being done on the building--I would have never thought it'd be done so soon. I absolutely loved the architecture though, very very cool. And I can't count how many "50 inch plasma screens on wheels" I saw in the various rooms.
And just think, all that above deeply impressed me, and I didn't even have a clue that the building was going to be a giant computer/the first of its kind.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
i took some; they're .
UIUC had the #1 paintball team in the country.
Damned Boilermakers.
paintball
I watched Prof. Jeff Erickson swipe three times before the reader finally recognized him. The elevators fried for a few hours the other night too. It'll all be nice and pretty in a few months.
~LD "My destiny was to be a karma whore. Then, I forgot my user name."
US News and World Report (2003 mirror): UIUC is #5.
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.