I understand that many of the enhancements made by using new processes are actually mute until they get stupid thin since they are actually making flexible chips using merely normal proceses with the back etched as well and getting very good results with it. Maybe a whole new section of flexible MEMS like sensors will be released based on convention etching as well ?
The Horowitz and Hill book is an absolutely great book. More for those starting their degrees etc and often quoted as a course required book. I was impressed on how readable the book was, I'm not sure how well a young kid will get on with it as even the book is a bit of a weight and the content more so. Having said that it does have many different layers and you can read the bits that would be appropriate to you or more importantly who the kit was for. Maybe the "hardcore" stuff in there to will entice the reader to go further.....Best of luck
It's typical Slashdot to have readers give 5 mega funny brownie points to WokiTalki but actually give usefull info about the subject and how to do you own you get no one reading it...read it find out and do it even if it's on ya walkitalki
Typical the silly chimpanzee Antenna gets all the attention yet the important part is the fact that some bunch of yokels got off there arse and actualy did somthing for them selves. The WOKFI thing is nothing but the TV station is quite a feat and I'm suitably impressed. Hopefully that might inspire someone to do something similar in their area. By the way the CCC have even made their own DVB-T station which you can buy so it's not all that impossible...best of luck all
Yep the 10$ wok replaced 80$ of antenna which I presume is NZ dollars which is £0.35 or $0.70 a pop so you have spent all day frigging with a second rate solution to save £20 ish which I don't think realy floats evn in in NZ. The other think is that this is going via computer to computer so it's most likely a 2.4GHz WIFI + Canntenna mission which I hoped had been done to death. Even I've done 3Km between my car with a router and a Coffee can and a USB stick strapped to a mates Van Window. Old hat!!At least I got to drink the coffee:)
Yep! I know....boring Work harder etc. I was thinking more on the lines of work harder for yourself. You are the only one that's going to look after your self so do it well. Personaly from my experience of the degree system (UK) I would say this:
a) A get a Job, preferably relevent and preferably will allow you time off for courses (paid/unpaid)
b) Get on a part time degree course( Choose what you want)
c) Take certs... Remember that you have 5 ish years now to do it so don't bust a gut.
d) Now you have money coming in a degree in a few years and certs and EXPERIENCE that the monkeys coming out of Uni' wont have..What a package!
I also had another thought. If the cubes need to be aware of the configuration of all the other cubes then what is the limit to the number of cubes that can attach before we run out of comms bandwidth or memory in the device or CPU just trying to work out what shape it thinks it may be in?
The videos are all very cute but there is no actual footage demonstrating the "polymorphic" robot actually changing shape from say a wheel to say a humanoid then say again to a Caterpillar. If a bunch of these cubes self assembled into a shape to perform a task I would be seriously impressed. Also did any one notice that the feet cubes had plates on the end for the "humanoid" robot so not all the cubes were identical. We need self assembling Lego not cubes with feet !!
I've been looking at some Mini ITX based Set top boxes been sold for £40 in odds and sods. Failing that you can get a very good solution using old Citrix Clients thrown out or sold for bugger all on Ebay. Neglecting the monitor my last Semperon 3000+ box was £80 all up with out the HDD. Basically the choices are legion.
Although most users tend to abuse the Internet link somewhat I can not really see what they are moaning about. You the user pay quite an amount of money for what you should realize is a "peak" rated service. Obviously with contention ratios your real millage varies Tremendously! I think that this is the commercial kick back after the first "free" hit, the technology now has a sufficient take up to be a valid medium such as TV and Radio. The quality of content is consistently been hammered down especially for free services(free in cash or in we take your name and details and spam you for ever type free). We are constantly subjected by SPAM/Directed advertising from our online commerce and from various banner adds etc up down left right of our screens. Youtube got interesting by flaunting the Law (or rather getting others to do it!!), you take the commercial clips off Youtube then it's mostly Drivel produced by wannabe monkeys. The important thing here is that now it's used its notoriety to go commercial and become a delivery mechanism for 3rd party content...making the big bucks. Ironicly in the deals they have made they have grassed up the same people they used to make them selves popular and get bought up for the big bucks.
I'm always a bit dubious about power requirements. I think the PC requirements given are a little on the high side.I have measured several of my own systems(with a plug in watt meter!) all of widely differing specs and get:
1GHZ Mini ITX board based firewall with 2.5" drive 25-29W 3GHZ Seperon Board with 2GB of RAM and 2xHDD and DVD 77-109W Athlon 3200 with 4GB RAM and 17xHDDs !!! 255-289W continuous 480W startup peak 19" LCD 35W
Either I have magically frugal computers or people's measurements come from reading off the rating of the PSU
I would say that this whole 64 bit thing is a mute point. 64 Bit CPUs have been around for years even on the desktop SPARC/POWER series etc and more to the point almost all the performance Intel/ AMD will have gone that way. 64 Bit O/S's have been slower on the uptake, Solaris and Linux x64 works fine and has much better support as late. Windows 64 Bit seems to be slower off the mark but then maybe the urge for a 64bit games Console isn't quite there;).
There must be a market for 2D games if you consider the constant mentioning of "retro" gaming especially within Slashdot. Companies are regurgitating old game models and making money with them particularly with Mobile games. the problem here is that they are well within the sub $10 a pop range so no one is going to get rich form a small volume of games. Having said this we have already seen that big name Game companies are complaining about the large upfront costs associated with new 3D games. Maybe lower budget games will come through as a viable undercurrent.. making money but not been the latest technology. Hopefully this will mean that games creators will think more about game play rather than pretty pictures.
Most projects of a size to really worry about this stuff would have an Integration/Deployment team. Essentially they are the "middle ware" of the Application Dev cycle. Dev don't know about the realities of real implementation and have all sorts of bad habits which don't scale to production and IT/production don't know about the deeper technicalities otherwise they would leave and get jobs in Development!! Your Integration Team should be able to keep your dev/project "real", get them doing your Dev environments before the project goes into deployment otherwise its a real PITA. Good deployment teams should also produce a finished result with documentation which should be to a standard that the IT/Production can truly use. Best of luck with your project!
The cpu used here is a part of the "Coldfire" range. The 68K compatability come from the fact that it's evolved from the 68060 RISC core.Lose the FPU/MMU & other funny knobbly bits and you have a cool embedded CPU cheap made in millions for HP printers/routers and the like. The spec is very similar to the evaluation board supplied by motorola for $400 or one of the upmarket palm pilots at half that price. The CF card is cute damn expensive way of buying $40 of parts.
Although Racks are expensive to buy new, I've no problems getting a rack for my or a friends home setup. Goverment or Office surplus stores will give you a price 1/3 ish of the original. Best of all is to keep your eyes open and ask when an office building gets refirbished. Free is best price. People are more than happy for you to take that ugly rubbish out, after all it's only going to fill an expensive skip otherwise!
I Generaly found that the 3 Sane days in the week generated enough work for at least 5 and probably 7 days a week. So therefore it was no great odds to back peddle on the crap for a few days. If it got canceled great if not we fitted in a few days late which in reality was just fine. It's shocking to think how much of our time is wasted on fool's erands....we just decided to think before we just did so we are now all still more or less sane..lol
While working for a large nameless Telecoms Company, I and my fellow Contractors had an unwritten rule to "hold off" on all "good" ideas generated in meetings etc on Monday & Friday. Almost inevitably they would all be canceled within a couple of days. Not subjecting ourselves to post/pre weekend madness saved ourselves a ton of work and helped us bring the project in on time!!
yes I've been using Tomcat on Sol 8 for a while now. Works fine once you've broke the back of it but I agree that it's a real bitch to start off. Those who use it on a Linux platform have it easy as it works straight out the packet. With Solaris you need to put the brain in gear. By the way I'm free for consultancy at any time!!! http://www.apex.is.co.uk
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that many of the enhancements made by using new processes are actually mute until they get stupid thin since they are actually making flexible chips using merely normal proceses with the back etched as well and getting very good results with it. Maybe a whole new section of flexible MEMS like sensors will be released based on convention etching as well ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpZLOCNfrI
The Horowitz and Hill book is an absolutely great book. More for those starting their degrees etc and often quoted as a course required book. I was impressed on how readable the book was, I'm not sure how well a young kid will get on with it as even the book is a bit of a weight and the content more so. Having said that it does have many different layers and you can read the bits that would be appropriate to you or more importantly who the kit was for. Maybe the "hardcore" stuff in there to will entice the reader to go further.....Best of luck
It's typical Slashdot to have readers give 5 mega funny brownie points to WokiTalki but actually give usefull info about the subject and how to do you own you get no one reading it...read it find out and do it even if it's on ya walkitalki
Typical the silly chimpanzee Antenna gets all the attention yet the important part is the fact that some bunch of yokels got off there arse and actualy did somthing for them selves. The WOKFI thing is nothing but the TV station is quite a feat and I'm suitably impressed. Hopefully that might inspire someone to do something similar in their area. By the way the CCC have even made their own DVB-T station which you can buy so it's not all that impossible ...best of luck all
e ws/southtv_300107_56k.asx
http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_video/windows/one_n
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/
Yep the 10$ wok replaced 80$ of antenna which I presume is NZ dollars which is £0.35 or $0.70 a pop so you have spent all day frigging with a second rate solution to save £20 ish which I don't think realy floats evn in in NZ. The other think is that this is going via computer to computer so it's most likely a 2.4GHz WIFI + Canntenna mission which I hoped had been done to death. Even I've done 3Km between my car with a router and a Coffee can and a USB stick strapped to a mates Van Window. Old hat!!At least I got to drink the coffee :)
I think he was Trolling. Sorry, but most Americans I know arn't that ignorant. Some of which can spell..Which is more than I can :)...
Yep! I know ....boring Work harder etc. I was thinking more on the lines of work harder for yourself. You are the only one that's going to look after your self so do it well. Personaly from my experience of the degree system (UK) I would say this:
... Remember that you have 5 ish years now to do it so don't bust a gut.
a) A get a Job, preferably relevent and preferably will allow you time off for courses (paid/unpaid)
b) Get on a part time degree course( Choose what you want)
c) Take certs
d) Now you have money coming in a degree in a few years and certs and EXPERIENCE that the monkeys coming out of Uni' wont have..What a package!
I'm afraid the Japanese lump looks much better it even demonstrates the units changing shape which is what its about I think :)
e rimentE.htm
http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran/English/exp
I also had another thought. If the cubes need to be aware of the configuration of all the other cubes then what is the limit to the number of cubes that can attach before we run out of comms bandwidth or memory in the device or CPU just trying to work out what shape it thinks it may be in?
The videos are all very cute but there is no actual footage demonstrating the "polymorphic" robot actually changing shape from say a wheel to say a humanoid then say again to a Caterpillar. If a bunch of these cubes self assembled into a shape to perform a task I would be seriously impressed. Also did any one notice that the feet cubes had plates on the end for the "humanoid" robot so not all the cubes were identical. We need self assembling Lego not cubes with feet !!
I've been looking at some Mini ITX based Set top boxes been sold for £40 in odds and sods. Failing that you can get a very good solution using old Citrix Clients thrown out or sold for bugger all on Ebay. Neglecting the monitor my last Semperon 3000+ box was £80 all up with out the HDD. Basically the choices are legion.
Although most users tend to abuse the Internet link somewhat I can not really see what they are moaning about. ...making the big bucks. Ironicly in the deals they have made they have grassed up the same people they used to make them selves popular and get bought up for the big bucks.
You the user pay quite an amount of money for what you should realize is a "peak" rated service. Obviously with contention ratios your real millage varies Tremendously! I think that this is the commercial kick back after the first "free" hit, the technology now has a sufficient take up to be a valid medium such as TV and Radio. The quality of content is consistently been hammered down especially for free services(free in cash or in we take your name and details and spam you for ever type free). We are constantly subjected by SPAM/Directed advertising from our online commerce and from various banner adds etc up down left right of our screens. Youtube got interesting by flaunting the Law (or rather getting others to do it!!), you take the commercial clips off Youtube then it's mostly Drivel produced by wannabe monkeys. The important thing here is that now it's used its notoriety to go commercial and become a delivery mechanism for 3rd party content
I'm always a bit dubious about power requirements. I think the PC requirements given are a little on the high side.I have measured several of my own systems(with a plug in watt meter!) all of widely differing specs and get:
1GHZ Mini ITX board based firewall with 2.5" drive 25-29W
3GHZ Seperon Board with 2GB of RAM and 2xHDD and DVD 77-109W
Athlon 3200 with 4GB RAM and 17xHDDs !!! 255-289W continuous 480W startup peak
19" LCD 35W
Either I have magically frugal computers or people's measurements come from reading off the rating of the PSU
What a shallow low tech article.
n et0 7.html
Better reviews using these links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Inter
http://www.space.com/news/mars_micromissions_9912
I would say that this whole 64 bit thing is a mute point. 64 Bit CPUs have been around for years even on the desktop SPARC/POWER series etc and more to the point almost all the performance Intel/ AMD will have gone that way. 64 Bit O/S's have been slower on the uptake, Solaris and Linux x64 works fine and has much better support as late. Windows 64 Bit seems to be slower off the mark but then maybe the urge for a 64bit games Console isn't quite there ;).
There must be a market for 2D games if you consider the constant mentioning of "retro" gaming especially within Slashdot. Companies are regurgitating old game models and making money with them particularly with Mobile games. the problem here is that they are well within the sub $10 a pop range so no one is going to get rich form a small volume of games. Having said this we have already seen that big name Game companies are complaining about the large upfront costs associated with new 3D games. Maybe lower budget games will come through as a viable undercurrent .. making money but not been the latest technology. Hopefully this will mean that games creators will think more about game play rather than pretty pictures.
Most projects of a size to really worry about this stuff would have an Integration/Deployment team. Essentially they are the "middle ware" of the Application Dev cycle. Dev don't know about the realities of real implementation and have all sorts of bad habits which don't scale to production and IT/production don't know about the deeper technicalities otherwise they would leave and get jobs in Development!!
Your Integration Team should be able to keep your dev/project "real", get them doing your Dev environments before the project goes into deployment otherwise its a real PITA. Good deployment teams should also produce a finished result with documentation which should be to a standard that the IT/Production can truly use. Best of luck with your project!
John A
The cpu used here is a part of the "Coldfire" range. /routers and the like.
The 68K compatability come from the fact that it's
evolved from the 68060 RISC core.Lose the FPU/MMU &
other funny knobbly bits and you have a cool
embedded CPU cheap made in millions for HP printers
The spec is very similar to the evaluation board supplied by motorola for $400
or one of the upmarket palm pilots at half that price. The CF card is cute damn
expensive way of buying $40 of parts.
Although Racks are expensive to buy new, I've no
problems getting a rack for my or a friends home setup. Goverment or Office surplus stores will give
you a price 1/3 ish of the original. Best of all is to keep your eyes open and ask when an office building gets refirbished. Free is best price. People are more than happy for you to take that ugly rubbish out, after all it's only going to fill an
expensive skip otherwise!
I Generaly found that the 3 Sane days in the week generated enough work for at least 5 and probably 7 days a week. So therefore it was no great odds to back peddle on the crap for a few days. If it got canceled great if not we fitted in a few days late which in reality was just fine. It's shocking to think how much of our time is wasted on fool's erands....we just decided to think before we just did so we are now all still more or less sane..lol
While working for a large nameless Telecoms Company,
I and my fellow Contractors had an unwritten rule to "hold off" on all "good" ideas generated in meetings etc on Monday & Friday. Almost inevitably they would
all be canceled within a couple of days. Not subjecting ourselves to post/pre weekend madness saved ourselves a ton of work and helped us bring the project in on time!!
yes I've been using Tomcat on Sol 8 for a while now.
Works fine once you've broke the back of it but
I agree that it's a real bitch to start off.
Those who use it on a Linux platform have it easy as
it works straight out the packet. With Solaris
you need to put the brain in gear.
By the way I'm free for consultancy at any time!!!
http://www.apex.is.co.uk