Here are some projects that come to mind, aside from the space port:
1. The Burj Al Aarab - "Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the hotel soars to a height of 321 metres, dominating the Dubai coastline. At night, it offers an unforgettable sight, surrounded by choreographed colour sculptures of water and fire. This all-suite hotel reflects the finest that the world has to offer." - http://www.burj-al-arab.com/
2. Ski Dubai - The world's only in-door ski resort, they plan to open some time soon (the project's currently behind schedule), and offer several different ski runs, lessons, snow boarding and an artificial mountain climate, all in the 120 degree desert.
3. The Palm - An artificial penninsula and island, The palm is designed to create a highly desirable piece of real estate for locals, snow birds, and anyone else willing to spend the cash.
I'm sure there are other projects along these lines, but I don't know of any more off the top of my head. You can see that the UAE is being very forward thinking, spending cash now to ensure that they'll have tourism dollars in the future.
I would argue that age is a big issue because several companies are seeing a very large hole in the age distribution of their workforce. For example, the average age of an employee may be 35 years old, but it may well be that you have a very bi-polar distribution of 20-something's (like me) and 50-something's (like a lot of the folks I work with).
Generally a lot of the systems architects are older; they know more, have more experience, and more qualifications. However, they're going to retire at some point, leaving a company with the chance that all their senior technical leadership may evaporate in the term of a few years.
This is why age is a huge issue. Companies are trying to hire the next generation of technical leaders and train them up quickly, so that the transition between generations is as smooth as possible.
Yeah, but if you click on the "black kids with guns" recommendation, it shows a guy with a machine gun (I think), a RC truck, two kittens, and other random stuff. I don't see any actual kids with guns in the results. How that works, I don't quite know.
On a side note, take a look at the suggested terms under "more"(as of noon-ish Saturday, anyway). Your suggested searches also includes "Iraqi kids with guns," which is the only suggested search that actually produces semi-reasonable results.
I could argue that Yahoo's relations algorithms aren't working well. On top of that, they're probably responding to and including aggregate data based on user search queries. This is conjecture, but I'd guess that they found a correlation between people searching for "kids with guns" and "black kids with guns."
Let's have a little fun with the Yahoo! images recommendations system and see what else it recommends. Let's search for "kids."
1. "kids" - http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=kid s&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt Click more, and then "show all." You'll find several different groups called out as suggested search terms. "Black kids" turns up, along with "Russian kids," "Asian kids," "African kids," and whatever else. What gets interesting is that it makes somewhat "suggestive" suggestions. You also find things like "hot kids," "drunk college kids," and even stuff as far out there as "kids speedos," "kids gone wild," and even "kids fuc" (apparently someone can't spell, and the search engine isn't intelligent enough to disregard misspelled "naughty words"). Remember, this is an image search. We also find your "kids with guns" search term.
Once again, select, "more," and then "show all" to get a full listing of suggestions. Now, within this list, we find such oddities as "little kids smoking," "little kids shower," and "michael jackson with little kids." Some people that the FBI would probably like to talk to were probably included in the dataset that generated these results, since you also find suggestions like "hot little kids," "raping little kids," "little kids humping," and "little kids doing it."
Of course, you find at the very, very bottom, "coloring pages for little kids." Just because it was so odd, I took a screen capture and placed it online for safe keeping. I'll stop here, since you get the idea. I actually figured it would be a little harder to get the engine to give me nonsensical or strange results.
I don't think this is Yahoo's fault; they're probably responding to data from their users. I would wonder how long this feature stays active on the site, if it turns up results like that though. They probably need something like Google's "SafeSearch" option. Oh. Wait... SafeSearch was on(screen shot).
So, if this is true, then they're following in the spirit of Contest Searchlight?
Denis Leary, and some very funny comedians parody "Project Greenlight." The scripted story follows a "reality" show, where the actors are all comedy hopefuls are creating a new show for Comedy Central. Its incredibly funny, but generally I think people didn't quite get the fact that it was *not* a real show with real people.
Actually, if you read the descriptions for all the electric models, you'll find that several of them have phrases like "modify your water use habits" and "not for a whole family" or "one shower or sink at a time."
The microwave item mentioned in the post apparently will not have these restrictions.
My favorite item was the "whole house" heater that required something on the order of 24kW of electricity:
"1) Notice that the electrical power needed is a minimum of 24KW rating (120 amps) at 240 volts. Please be sure that you have that much wattage available. 120 amps JUST for your water heater is a lot of power requirements and not all homes have that available. 2) Notice the heat rise of 3 gallons per minute at 65 degrees. That is not enough of a heat rise for a whole house for many people. It depends on your expectations, household size, needs, lifestyle, etc. Many people are thrilled with that much heat rise and energy savings, but you might not be. If you are expecting this whole house electric tank-less water heater to produce the same amount of heat rise as a "standard storage water heater" you will be very disappointed. An example of the heat rise rating is that if your water source is only 45 degrees (F) then you will only see 3 gallons of hot (warm) water at 110 degrees. That is not enough for a family that wishes to take a shower while also doing the dishes and laundry. A family that installs one of these electric whole house water heaters can save a lot of money on their energy bills but must modify their water usage." - http://www.plumbingstore.com/wholehouseelectrictan kless.html
Re:Bots in an official capacity? We do that @ IBM.
on
AIM Bots: Useful or Spam?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Here we are... found a list out on the intranet... I didn't know a few of these existed. I'm sure other corporations have some as well.
Who Is - do BluePages name and phone info searches Helpline - Helpdesk FAQs searches What Is - Definitions of acronyms StockQuote - IBM and all other stock quotes Dictionary - English language dictionary SkillTap - contact others that may be able to help you W3Alert - send broadcasts out to selected groups
Bots in an official capacity? We do that @ IBM...
on
AIM Bots: Useful or Spam?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
At IBM we use Lotus SameTime internally as our IM infrastructure. Several enterprising folks have written various sametime bots that allow us to look up acronyms (WhatIs Bot), look up employee info from our directory (BluePages Bot), and others I can't think off off the top of my head.
I just downloaded Lost. I figured $1.99 was worth seeing the video quality, finding out out the file size, and watching my favorite TV show of the season while I work.;-)
The file is indeed 320x240, and for 43 minutes and change, is 197 megabytes. The download took a little time; I'm not sure how much since I forgot to clock it.
The video is compressed very well. It looks clear and crisp, and the audio sounds great. In fact, I scaled it up to full screen and had a cluster of people watching a few choice scenes (we were trying to identify the manufacturer of the reel-to-reel drives;-) ). The video is very watchable.
This will be interesting... I wonder what sorts of bonus material they will include?
Also, its interesting to note that video is not very well integrated into iTunes (for Windows). For example, when I right-click on the file, it still says "Show Song File." Also, you'd think that Apple, being Apple, would stick my downloaded videos into another folder than "My Music" in "My Documents."
These are small things. However, these are the things that Apple generally gets right.
The list of items you've provided is pretty big; however a lot of these are built-in to Opera. In addition, you get some very interesting capabilities like the ones I outline below, including a tight js debugger, and voiceXML support in websites.
First off, I worked for the group that partnered with Opera to create this, but the Voice plugin for Opera is also free!
Check http://www.opera.com/voice for information about the XHTML + Voice standard that is implemented here. X+V is an open standard - go read the spec for information, and Opera's voice development page for code introductions. For those that downloaded the new 8.x build, go to the Advanced tab in your Preferences and tick the enable box for the "Voice" option. This will download a 10 megabyte add-on that allows voice interactions with Opera. In addition, you can control websites that support X+V! See some basic examples.
Also, see the WebDevToolbar for an INCREDIBLY handy toolbar for web developers debugging complicated interactive web apps. You get trace features for your javascript, the ability to inspect the DOM for a given page and many other introspection features. The handiest feature is a javascript shell for tight debugging of applications inside the browser.
As I posted earlier, its a 1440 ppm printer: Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions). - IBM
That works out to be about 4.364 pages per foot. With that in mind, the cheapest box of toner costs $437.48, according to the supplies page. That carton contains 4 cassettes, each of which is capable of 100,000 feet. 4 x 100,000 x 4.364 = 1,745,600 pages @ $437.48 in toner, or $0.00025 per page.:-)
Of course, that fails to include other consumables, all of which I imagine are important, but I'm replying to a joke poster so I'm sure you all get my point and simply don't care.;-)
~ Mike
Printer's not 330 ppm, its 330 FEET PER MINUTE...
on
New IBM Ultra Fast Printer
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Quoting IBM: Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions).
I had a discussion with a friend that works in that division on Friday when this machine was announced. Apparently, 330 pages per minute was done about 30 years ago according to him (I have no idea what model, when it was, or anything else). Whoever wrote the initial story assumed whoever wrote the press release goofed and wrote feet when they obviously meant pages.;-)
This model of printer is designed to print on a roll of paper which is approximately 19.5" wide. The roll is then cut and collated by other machines.
Actually, I've noticed google doing this for several years. They seem to randomly select search result pages to monitor what's being clicked. Its not something they've "snuck" in recently; its been happening for some time.
If you read the site set up to tell the students' side of the story, you'll find that it wasn't something like "Administrator Password: 50krexler" or whatever it is (or was). The password was in fact part of the school's address, which the administration had placed each machine.
Its possible for the robot to keep a map of its current position relative to the base station. For example, it knows that it turned right 30 degrees, proceeded forward 10 feet, turned left, etc. The IR homing mechanism is most likely to guarantee that the device finds its way home every time. This is needed because the machine has no feedback mechanism to know its true position, so the error in its position relative to the base will become increasingly wrong with each moment the robot is moving.
Now, if iRobot happened to include some sort of positional feedback mechanism like the works found on Sebastian Thrun's page, then you'd get a lot of the features people are wanting (i.e. intelligent route planning through a room instead of a "random walk," collision avoidance instead of apparently getting stuck under the same chair every time it runs, etc.). Check the link for some nifty videos of AI learning applied to robots. The problem with these technologies is not just the software, but the expensive sensors (relative to the Roomba) that would be needed. You may want to watch the FastSLAM videos to see a robot discover a map of its environment.
I agree, though I would broaden your definition of "education" to include soft sciences such as leadership / teaming skills, project management skills (I think management and leadership are two different concepts), and fundamental economics / business principles. I wrote an article about this in my college's magazine, Evolve. See page 26 of the PDF for the article (and a snazzy picture).
I'd also like to point out to those of you that are saying that the job market makes it pointless to pursue a degree that with these "soft" skills, its a little easier to find a good position that pays competetively. I had offers from several large and small corporations doing things toward the hardware side of software engineering.
Further, it *is* in each nation's interest to make sure it has the best technology and the most advanced science. In order to achieve these goals, the best minds are needed. I think the point is not just that we need people to get a jobs "doing software engineering" or "coding," but rather people who can advance the state-of-the-art in computer science or computer engineering, and discover what the next big thing might be.
~ Mike
(snipped from the PDF)... During the course of the internship, I realized just how much I was drawing from many of my experiences in the OU College of Engineering. From project management to presentation skills, all aspects of my education had prepared me to work on this project. In senior capstone, for example, we learned how to work with a small, diverse team on a tight deadline. This past summer, my teammates and I did just that. In Gen. Jerry Holmes's leadership class, we talked about the traits of a good leader. This past summer, I saw those characteristics again and again in the managers and executives I met. In Dean Porter's colloquium, Technology's Role in the Wealth of Nations, we discussed engineering's impact on business and the economy. This past summer, we emphasized that impact while trying to sell our mentors on our ideas. Many students may think that the important parts of their education consist entirely of classes within their discipline, whether it's computer engineering, industrial engineering or any other field. I learned firsthand that it isn't true. Courses like engineering leadership or the colloquium are just as vital to our engineering education as computer architecture in computer engineering or research methods in industrial engineering. As as a participant in the Extreme Blue internship program, I had the rare opportunity to meet and work with some of the top minds inside the company and have an impact on its business. There's no doubt my experience in the College of Engineering helped me turn it into a great success.
This is different from Dictation; this is what is commonly known as a Commmand and Control grammar, where the designer writes given permutations of command sequences, rather than relying on picking out keywords. For example, instead of trying to parse 70,000 words and names, I instead write a simple grammar that is something like:
$rslt = (show movie | find [actor $actors, movie $movies, $themes] | scan $themes); where the $variables are other grammar rules. This syntax is butchered, by the way, but you can get the idea. If you want real syntax, try googling JSGF Grammars or SRGS Grammars.
So as its written, it would only understand things like "show movie" or "find actor Morgan Freeman" or "find comedies" or "scan comedies." If you say something unexpected, its lost. This type of grammar is more an art than a science, since it comes down to what clever permutations you write in or ignore.
I think you'll find that the response is much better than you might think when you got from a dictation-sized 60,000 word dictionary to 500 words or so.
Now, having said that, I haven't used this product. It may very well suck; just possibly not for the reason you think. ~ Mike
As its name implies, it plays in a "shuffle" mode. However, there is an option switch to change to a sequential playlist mode, as set in iTunes when you download the songs.
Actually I just bought a 55" model of one of these for a friend through their employee partner store. The set is pristine as near as we can tell, and Halo 2 looks gorgeous on it. avsforum.com has a few rather long threads about it, by the way.
The first two generations had trouble with quality control. Our 3rd Generation set (A Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37) looks great, and hasn't had any trouble in the month or so that we've had it.
You can find the 55" sets as either a Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37 or Philips Cineos 55PL9774/37. The difference between the two is that the "97" model has an extra piece of DSP hardware for even better SD -> HD pullup than the one we got.
First off, I'll graduate this May with a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Second off, last week I formally accepted a job from IBM's Microelectronics group as a design engineer.
My experiences with finding a position were that it was pretty easy, actually. I interviewed with several groups at IBM, Microsoft, and National Instruments, and receieved offers from each company (including multiple offers from IBM). I also received offers for site interviews and effectively offers for offers from other companies in the defense industry, embedded systems contract work, and a variety of software fields.
All in all, I haven't had a bit of trouble finding a job. In fact, I was faced with choosing from great jobs from the world leaders in several different fields.
Yes, I'm bragging, but this is the one and only time I'll do it.
So I agree with you -- It's getting better, if you're one of those "decent people" the parent poster mentioned. My experiences were that across the US things are getting better... I had offers in Arizona, Washington, and Texas, and offers for offers in Florida, New York, and Minnesota.
The moral of this post might be: * Get involved on campus -- become an officer for a student organization * Get an internship -- it helps you figure out what you do and don't want to do, and gets you experience working with various types of teams and in various fields. * Go to a career fair -- meet recruiters, even if you're a freshman. I've known recruiters from many companies for 4+ years since I met them in the Fall of 2000 when I entered OU out of high school * Find the career services office for your college or your university -- Have them vett your resume, and attend mock interviews, info sessions, whatever you can
Slashdot Mirror
They're becoming very much forward-thinking.
Here are some projects that come to mind, aside from the space port:
1. The Burj Al Aarab - "Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the hotel soars to a height of 321 metres, dominating the Dubai coastline. At night, it offers an unforgettable sight, surrounded by choreographed colour sculptures of water and fire. This all-suite hotel reflects the finest that the world has to offer." - http://www.burj-al-arab.com/
2. Ski Dubai - The world's only in-door ski resort, they plan to open some time soon (the project's currently behind schedule), and offer several different ski runs, lessons, snow boarding and an artificial mountain climate, all in the 120 degree desert.
3. The Palm - An artificial penninsula and island, The palm is designed to create a highly desirable piece of real estate for locals, snow birds, and anyone else willing to spend the cash.
I'm sure there are other projects along these lines, but I don't know of any more off the top of my head. You can see that the UAE is being very forward thinking, spending cash now to ensure that they'll have tourism dollars in the future.
I agree.
I would argue that age is a big issue because several companies are seeing a very large hole in the age distribution of their workforce. For example, the average age of an employee may be 35 years old, but it may well be that you have a very bi-polar distribution of 20-something's (like me) and 50-something's (like a lot of the folks I work with).
Generally a lot of the systems architects are older; they know more, have more experience, and more qualifications. However, they're going to retire at some point, leaving a company with the chance that all their senior technical leadership may evaporate in the term of a few years.
This is why age is a huge issue. Companies are trying to hire the next generation of technical leaders and train them up quickly, so that the transition between generations is as smooth as possible.
~ Mike
Been there. - http://www.sat.qc.ca/the_user/dotmatrix/en/intro.h tml
Check out the link. They have streams of audio samples available. This was featured on slashdot a year or three ago.
Yeah, but if you click on the "black kids with guns" recommendation, it shows a guy with a machine gun (I think), a RC truck, two kittens, and other random stuff. I don't see any actual kids with guns in the results. How that works, I don't quite know.
d s&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt
t tle+kids&rs=1&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&fr=FP-tab-web-t&vf=
On a side note, take a look at the suggested terms under "more"(as of noon-ish Saturday, anyway).
Your suggested searches also includes "Iraqi kids with guns," which is the only suggested search that actually produces semi-reasonable results.
I could argue that Yahoo's relations algorithms aren't working well. On top of that, they're probably responding to and including aggregate data based on user search queries. This is conjecture, but I'd guess that they found a correlation between people searching for "kids with guns" and "black kids with guns."
Let's have a little fun with the Yahoo! images recommendations system and see what else it recommends. Let's search for "kids."
1. "kids" - http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=ki
Click more, and then "show all." You'll find several different groups called out as suggested search terms. "Black kids" turns up, along with "Russian kids," "Asian kids," "African kids," and whatever else.
What gets interesting is that it makes somewhat "suggestive" suggestions. You also find things like "hot kids," "drunk college kids," and even stuff as far out there as "kids speedos," "kids gone wild," and even "kids fuc" (apparently someone can't spell, and the search engine isn't intelligent enough to disregard misspelled "naughty words"). Remember, this is an image search. We also find your "kids with guns" search term.
2. Let's select "little kids," our second suggestion. It links me to these results: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=li
Once again, select, "more," and then "show all" to get a full listing of suggestions.
Now, within this list, we find such oddities as "little kids smoking," "little kids shower," and "michael jackson with little kids." Some people that the FBI would probably like to talk to were probably included in the dataset that generated these results, since you also find suggestions like "hot little kids," "raping little kids," "little kids humping," and "little kids doing it."
Of course, you find at the very, very bottom, "coloring pages for little kids." Just because it was so odd, I took a screen capture and placed it online for safe keeping. I'll stop here, since you get the idea. I actually figured it would be a little harder to get the engine to give me nonsensical or strange results.
I don't think this is Yahoo's fault; they're probably responding to data from their users. I would wonder how long this feature stays active on the site, if it turns up results like that though. They probably need something like Google's "SafeSearch" option. Oh. Wait... SafeSearch was on (screen shot).
Something needs to be fixed.
So, if this is true, then they're following in the spirit of Contest Searchlight?
Denis Leary, and some very funny comedians parody "Project Greenlight." The scripted story follows a "reality" show, where the actors are all comedy hopefuls are creating a new show for Comedy Central. Its incredibly funny, but generally I think people didn't quite get the fact that it was *not* a real show with real people.
The microwave item mentioned in the post apparently will not have these restrictions.
My favorite item was the "whole house" heater that required something on the order of 24kW of electricity:
Here we are... found a list out on the intranet... I didn't know a few of these existed. I'm sure other corporations have some as well.
Who Is - do BluePages name and phone info searches
Helpline - Helpdesk FAQs searches
What Is - Definitions of acronyms
StockQuote - IBM and all other stock quotes
Dictionary - English language dictionary
SkillTap - contact others that may be able to help you
W3Alert - send broadcasts out to selected groups
At IBM we use Lotus SameTime internally as our IM infrastructure. Several enterprising folks have written various sametime bots that allow us to look up acronyms (WhatIs Bot), look up employee info from our directory (BluePages Bot), and others I can't think off off the top of my head.
To get full-screen, you can click an icon below the running video in iTunes. It pops up to full-screen regardless of whether you have QT Pro.
I just downloaded Lost. I figured $1.99 was worth seeing the video quality, finding out out the file size, and watching my favorite TV show of the season while I work. ;-)
;-) ). The video is very watchable.
The file is indeed 320x240, and for 43 minutes and change, is 197 megabytes. The download took a little time; I'm not sure how much since I forgot to clock it.
The video is compressed very well. It looks clear and crisp, and the audio sounds great. In fact, I scaled it up to full screen and had a cluster of people watching a few choice scenes (we were trying to identify the manufacturer of the reel-to-reel drives
This will be interesting... I wonder what sorts of bonus material they will include?
Also, its interesting to note that video is not very well integrated into iTunes (for Windows). For example, when I right-click on the file, it still says "Show Song File." Also, you'd think that Apple, being Apple, would stick my downloaded videos into another folder than "My Music" in "My Documents."
These are small things. However, these are the things that Apple generally gets right.
~ Mike
The list of items you've provided is pretty big; however a lot of these are built-in to Opera. In addition, you get some very interesting capabilities like the ones I outline below, including a tight js debugger, and voiceXML support in websites.
First off, I worked for the group that partnered with Opera to create this, but the Voice plugin for Opera is also free!
Check http://www.opera.com/voice for information about the XHTML + Voice standard that is implemented here. X+V is an open standard - go read the spec for information, and Opera's voice development page for code introductions.
For those that downloaded the new 8.x build, go to the Advanced tab in your Preferences and tick the enable box for the "Voice" option. This will download a 10 megabyte add-on that allows voice interactions with Opera. In addition, you can control websites that support X+V! See some basic examples.
More information from a technical perspective can be found at IBM's Multimodal Software Group.
Also, see the WebDevToolbar for an INCREDIBLY handy toolbar for web developers debugging complicated interactive web apps. You get trace features for your javascript, the ability to inspect the DOM for a given page and many other introspection features. The handiest feature is a javascript shell for tight debugging of applications inside the browser.
~ Mike
Hey, remember this is IBM, not HP or Lexmark. :-)
:-)
;-)
As I posted earlier, its a 1440 ppm printer:
Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions). - IBM
That works out to be about 4.364 pages per foot. With that in mind, the cheapest box of toner costs $437.48, according to the supplies page. That carton contains 4 cassettes, each of which is capable of 100,000 feet.
4 x 100,000 x 4.364 = 1,745,600 pages @ $437.48 in toner, or $0.00025 per page.
Of course, that fails to include other consumables, all of which I imagine are important, but I'm replying to a joke poster so I'm sure you all get my point and simply don't care.
~ Mike
Hey everyone, the printer's not 330 pages per minute; its 330 feet per minute. Please see http://www.printers.ibm.com/internet/wwsites.nsf/v wwebpublished/4100home_ww.
;-)
Quoting IBM: Print at up to 330 linear feet (100.6 m) per minute (1,440 2-up duplex letter impressions or 1,354 2-up A4 duplex impressions).
I had a discussion with a friend that works in that division on Friday when this machine was announced. Apparently, 330 pages per minute was done about 30 years ago according to him (I have no idea what model, when it was, or anything else). Whoever wrote the initial story assumed whoever wrote the press release goofed and wrote feet when they obviously meant pages.
This model of printer is designed to print on a roll of paper which is approximately 19.5" wide. The roll is then cut and collated by other machines.
~ Mike
Actually, I've noticed google doing this for several years. They seem to randomly select search result pages to monitor what's being clicked. Its not something they've "snuck" in recently; its been happening for some time.
~ Mike
If you read the site set up to tell the students' side of the story, you'll find that it wasn't something like "Administrator Password: 50krexler" or whatever it is (or was). The password was in fact part of the school's address, which the administration had placed each machine.
Go read the story before you make assumptions...
Its possible for the robot to keep a map of its current position relative to the base station. For example, it knows that it turned right 30 degrees, proceeded forward 10 feet, turned left, etc. The IR homing mechanism is most likely to guarantee that the device finds its way home every time. This is needed because the machine has no feedback mechanism to know its true position, so the error in its position relative to the base will become increasingly wrong with each moment the robot is moving.
Now, if iRobot happened to include some sort of positional feedback mechanism like the works found on Sebastian Thrun's page, then you'd get a lot of the features people are wanting (i.e. intelligent route planning through a room instead of a "random walk," collision avoidance instead of apparently getting stuck under the same chair every time it runs, etc.). Check the link for some nifty videos of AI learning applied to robots. The problem with these technologies is not just the software, but the expensive sensors (relative to the Roomba) that would be needed. You may want to watch the FastSLAM videos to see a robot discover a map of its environment.
I agree, though I would broaden your definition of "education" to include soft sciences such as leadership / teaming skills, project management skills (I think management and leadership are two different concepts), and fundamental economics / business principles. I wrote an article about this in my college's magazine, Evolve. See page 26 of the PDF for the article (and a snazzy picture).
...
I'd also like to point out to those of you that are saying that the job market makes it pointless to pursue a degree that with these "soft" skills, its a little easier to find a good position that pays competetively. I had offers from several large and small corporations doing things toward the hardware side of software engineering.
Further, it *is* in each nation's interest to make sure it has the best technology and the most advanced science. In order to achieve these goals, the best minds are needed. I think the point is not just that we need people to get a jobs "doing software engineering" or "coding," but rather people who can advance the state-of-the-art in computer science or computer engineering, and discover what the next big thing might be.
~ Mike
(snipped from the PDF)
During the course of the internship, I realized just how much I was drawing from many of my experiences in the OU College of Engineering. From project management to presentation skills, all aspects of my education had prepared me to work on this project.
In senior capstone, for example, we learned how to work with a small, diverse team on a tight deadline. This past summer, my teammates and I did just that. In Gen. Jerry Holmes's leadership class, we talked about the traits of a good leader. This past summer, I saw those characteristics again and again in the managers and executives I met. In Dean Porter's colloquium, Technology's Role in the Wealth of Nations, we discussed engineering's impact on business and the economy. This past summer, we emphasized that impact while trying to sell our mentors on our ideas.
Many students may think that the important parts of their education consist entirely of classes within their discipline, whether it's computer engineering, industrial engineering or any other field. I learned firsthand that it isn't true. Courses like engineering leadership or the colloquium are just as vital to our engineering education as computer architecture in computer engineering or research methods in industrial engineering. As as a participant in the Extreme Blue internship program, I had the rare opportunity to meet and work with some of the top minds inside the company and have an impact on its business. There's no doubt my experience in the College of Engineering helped me turn it into a great success.
One of the things I'm sure someone will point out is that for many people, there's a bit more substance to a gift when you go buy a box in a store.
I like being able to buy a box and stick it in some wrapping paper.
This is different from Dictation; this is what is commonly known as a Commmand and Control grammar, where the designer writes given permutations of command sequences, rather than relying on picking out keywords. For example, instead of trying to parse 70,000 words and names, I instead write a simple grammar that is something like:
$rslt = (show movie | find [actor $actors, movie $movies, $themes] | scan $themes);
where the $variables are other grammar rules. This syntax is butchered, by the way, but you can get the idea. If you want real syntax, try googling JSGF Grammars or SRGS Grammars.
So as its written, it would only understand things like "show movie" or "find actor Morgan Freeman" or "find comedies" or "scan comedies." If you say something unexpected, its lost. This type of grammar is more an art than a science, since it comes down to what clever permutations you write in or ignore.
I think you'll find that the response is much better than you might think when you got from a dictation-sized 60,000 word dictionary to 500 words or so.
Now, having said that, I haven't used this product. It may very well suck; just possibly not for the reason you think.
~ Mike
Hey, I believe what I'm told ;-)
:-)
I suppose you know the language. Assuming you do, thanks for the update.
FURTHER, sosumi can also be translated, depending on who you ask, into absence of sound.
As its name implies, it plays in a "shuffle" mode. However, there is an option switch to change to a sequential playlist mode, as set in iTunes when you download the songs.
Ditto here... See my earlier post for information on the Philips Cineos that we have.
We actually don't have any banding problems, and black levels are good enough for me.
What model TV do you own David?
Actually I just bought a 55" model of one of these for a friend through their employee partner store. The set is pristine as near as we can tell, and Halo 2 looks gorgeous on it. avsforum.com has a few rather long threads about it, by the way.
;-)
The first two generations had trouble with quality control. Our 3rd Generation set (A Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37) looks great, and hasn't had any trouble in the month or so that we've had it.
You can find the 55" sets as either a Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37 or Philips Cineos 55PL9774/37. The difference between the two is that the "97" model has an extra piece of DSP hardware for even better SD -> HD pullup than the one we got.
The 62" sets are 62PL9524/37 and 62PL9774/37.
Go google
First off, I'll graduate this May with a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Second off, last week I formally accepted a job from IBM's Microelectronics group as a design engineer.
My experiences with finding a position were that it was pretty easy, actually. I interviewed with several groups at IBM, Microsoft, and National Instruments, and receieved offers from each company (including multiple offers from IBM). I also received offers for site interviews and effectively offers for offers from other companies in the defense industry, embedded systems contract work, and a variety of software fields.
All in all, I haven't had a bit of trouble finding a job. In fact, I was faced with choosing from great jobs from the world leaders in several different fields.
Yes, I'm bragging, but this is the one and only time I'll do it.
So I agree with you -- It's getting better, if you're one of those "decent people" the parent poster mentioned. My experiences were that across the US things are getting better... I had offers in Arizona, Washington, and Texas, and offers for offers in Florida, New York, and Minnesota.
The moral of this post might be:
* Get involved on campus -- become an officer for a student organization
* Get an internship -- it helps you figure out what you do and don't want to do, and gets you experience working with various types of teams and in various fields.
* Go to a career fair -- meet recruiters, even if you're a freshman. I've known recruiters from many companies for 4+ years since I met them in the Fall of 2000 when I entered OU out of high school
* Find the career services office for your college or your university -- Have them vett your resume, and attend mock interviews, info sessions, whatever you can
If anyone cares, my resume's on my website.
~ Mike