Not a toy at all. As a CS ISU grad, and a friend of a researcher in the C6, I can attest that this has more uses than a toy. For instance, John Deere has used this to model new virtual cockpits for upcoming tractors. They can see if all controls are within reach and in reasonably intuitive places. If they aren't, they can change their positioning using a wand to grab them and move them. It has (or plans to) also been used with other caves to collaboratively develop models and see them work, such as a model of an engine.
It is quite an impressive feat. You can pick, grab, and move things around just like they are right in front of you. It is more than just 6 flat panels. You also wear lcd shutter glasses and make those 6 panels turn 3D. So when reaching out to grab things they are exactly where you would expect them to be.
However, it CAN be used as a toy even though that isn't it's primary purpose... I have also seen Quake played in the C4 (precursor to C6). Pretty cool to say the least.
We are also arrogant to think that are actions couldn't affect the earth's climate. How naive are we to think that we can expell tons of pollutants into the air and say that it won't cause any problems and back it up by climate changes throughout history.
Yes, the climate has changed for various reasons throughout the ages. However, that does NOT mean that our actions don't have anything to do with the climate change in the current age and we should take no responsibility for our contribution to the climate change (of which I'm sure there are many factors that contribute to it). That's like saying (with a slightly exaggerated horrible analogy) "The earth has been changing the landscape and leveling cities in HUGE ways for much longer than the life-span of a human being so it doesn't matter that the a-bomb on Hiroshima turned the city into a desolate wasteland".
Our actions do play a part in this - we are affecting the earth in many ways. To deny that is being naive and arrogant. Everything has cause and effect. Pumping pollutants into the air is the cause, what the effect is may be unknown to us right now but I'm sure we or our descendants will find out someday as long as people are too lazy and naive to care.
It seems to me that, as great as space travel sounds, current solutions won't be easily physically tolerated for the average human.
During the broadcast, the announcers said that SpaceShipOne experienced 5g's on re-entry. Can the average human withstand 5g's without some sort of conditioning? That seems to be an awefully high number (most roller coasters max around 3g's and only experience that for split seconds).
Would space tourism then require physical training? If so, it seems in my experience that the majority of people "fizzle out" with any sort of training, and it may put quite a damper on the interest in this sort of thing.
I, for one, hope that someday it will be as easy as hopping on a jet, but I was just curious on the physical implications of the sort of space travel that looks to be accessible (with lots of money) within the next 5-10 years using a system such as SpaceShipOne.
Java really isn't -that- slow. That's a common misconception.
Everyone thinks "Java is slow" because the only time they experience Java is in a Swing app. Swing is VERY bloated and therefore very slow. The only other "slow" processes in Java are Garbage Collection, which is pretty minimal if the app is written correctly, and the initial startup of the VM.
Look, for example, at Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a Java app, and its extremely powerful and not very slow. Why? They use their own widgets that have less overhead, they are not using Swing widgets.
Also, a correctly written OpenGL java app has been proven to perform at 85% the speed of its C counterpart (yes C, not C++). A couple of guys (I can't find the link) ported QuakeII to java to get this statistic. Not bad considering the relative youth of OpenGL bindings in Java.
I once had a "Java Sucks" attitude myself (I've been a hardcore C++ programmer for over 9 years), but I must say, after using the language for quite some time (~2 years), I've become very fond of it, and have written several large & FAST Java apps -- in about 70% of the time it would have taken to write in C++.
I was a software engineer on Nortel Network's VoIP "succession" line of products, and I can attest that wiretapping ability is something that was required for us to add.
The issue is with conversations now being transmitted in packets as opposed to analog signals, its impossible to tap the wire conventionally. The only place you could do that is from where the signal is converted back to POTS (plain old telephone service) to the house. Which, in a perfect VoIP world, isn't going to even be an option as people are using things like cable modems as their VoIP gateways (so its digital all the way from the house).
However, I don't think this "feature" hobbled our progress. It was just another feature in an extremely long list of features that were necessary. I don't think it took the engineer more than a week to implement, but possibly its more difficult in different architectures? (A key to Nortels architecture was being able to seemlessly integrate with POTS service, so digital->analog conversion was basically a built-in).
Now, whether I agree with the "feature" or not is a different story, but I won't go into that....
All I can say is I worked as a R&D software engineer for Nortel Networks, and this is nothing new.
We were (and they still are) developing voice-over-ip infrastructure equipment (Succession as they call it) and it was -required- that we implement a way for feds to tap the lines before we could even consider rolling out and selling the product.
There are a lot of gov't requirements behind the scenes than you might realize (and people can't talk about)...
Wouldn't the first step, before implementing a lunar-based power plant, be to solve the problem of defense and repair of this power plant from space debris?
The moon is riddled with impact craters due to its lack of an atmosphere, and what would stop one of these impacts from destroying part/all of the power station. Some sort of lunar-based maintenance team, robots, some star-trek esq shields?
Without some sort of defense or repair system, I don't believe we could ever become dependent on a lunar-based power station.
I agree that Iowa may not be the most glamorous state, but you have to give our Universities a little credit. Iowa State University is a leading school for engineering and sciences. Iowa State is the birthplace of Computer Science, not some "no name school in Iowa".
The first digital computer, the ABC or Atanasoff Berry Computer, was invented there after all, and its design concepts were used in the first programmable computer, the Eniac (not invented there).
Iowa State is also leading the way with VR technologies such as the Cave (or C6) technologies the Army and many other universities have today. It is a current ISU professor that invented the techology, not while she was at Iowa State, but she is a professor there in charge of the technology now.
And to give another of Iowa's universities some credit, the University of Iowa is one of the top medical schools in the states. However, I don't know as much about that school since I am a tech person, not a med person.
Yes, as a CS graduate of ISU I may be a little biased, but I get sick of everyone stereotyping Iowa's universities because they weren't worldy enough to ever travel to Iowa and visit any of its several universities (ISU, UofI, UNI, Drake,...) to straighten out the stereotypes they have of the state from what they saw in The Bridges of Madison County.
As appealing as a dash-board sized computer sounds, I think its a little pricey. I've had a computer in my car for ~3 years and it cost 1/3-1/2 of what the asking price of this unit is. The only drawback is that it isn't dash-board sized, so I had to install it under my rear seats.
If anyone wants to do it, buy a power inverter (sinewave inverter otherwise you will probably have noise in the sound and video) for about $50, build a low-cost PC (celeron) with video out ($300+?), a car LCD (5" or 6" for about $100 on ebay), and then some sort of input devices. I used a fellowes touchpad mouse($15) that I installed in my center console and I also made an IR detector (schematics are online and can be built for under $15) that plugged into my serial port that, with the right winamp plugin, would allow me to control winamp with my cd player's remote. For the sound, my car cd player (panasonic) had a Aux-In, but if that isn't an option for you, you could use an FM Modulator that would broadcast the computer's sound over a certain FM station (like cd changers do).
Having a car-computer like this definitally took the edge off long trips (especially for the passengers since I couldn't exactly watch the DivX's/Video games they were playing very well while driving).
Also be aware that an LCD in view of the driver may be illegal! I had the LCD installed in my front dashboard directly above the cd player. This was a great place for everyone to view it, but while on a trip from NC -> IA, I was pulled over for speeding and questioned by the highway patrol about the LCD. Luckily, I had the power for the comp/lcd on a switch so it was turned off by the time the officer had come to the car so I didn't get fined.
As a former employee of Nortel Networks, I can say they have been developing this equipment for many years and have been testing in the field for at least the last 3 years. 2 years ago a 2 billion dollar contract with Sprint was rolled out with the 2nd generation Voice-over-IP equipment (Nortel Networks calls it "Succession" equipment), and we were already working on the 4th generation of it late in 2001 (when I stopped working there). The 4th generation contained virtually every current phone option + more, and plans were in place already for features through the 6th generation back then. There were also several other companies (Cisco Systems) working on the same Voice-over-ip equipment, but Nortel was at least 4 years ahead of them (at least that's what Sprint and several other companies told us).
As far as stability of packet based phone network, the goal is to have 99.999% (5 9's) of stability that is already achieved on our current POTS telephone service, and I can vouch that we were getting very close to that kind of stability with redundancy and nightly sanity tests - no telecom will stand for anythign less out of phone equipment than 5 9's.
Lastly, the equipment being developed by Nortel was amazing and great to work on. All pieces of the network auto-detected each other once connected to the 'net (either over tcp/ip or atm), and would integrate seemlessly with the current phone network making an unnoticable change when it begins to be rolled out in mass. Also,the reason the telecoms are pushing for packet-based phone networks is because its WAY cheaper for them to support 1 network, than it is for them to support internet and phone networks simultaneously and because phone networks must be connected in a web, each local station must connect to every other local station, up to a large scale one where there is a trunk to another large scale.
Iowa State University, which when I lived in the dorms had over 1Terrabyte of searchable shares, recently had a crackdown and had some of the top sharers' equipment seized. Maybe this is going to be the trend in large universities? I remember some other universities getting hit a little over a year ago.
Not necessarily. The basis of quantum physics is that once a particle has been measured its state is set, and until it is measured it is impossible to know its state (its a roll of the dice). Quantum encryption uses interference to set states and if an outsider does make a measurement of its state (up or down) the state of the particle will get set, and the interference used to make quantum encryption work, will not work correctly. It will not only yield a result that is incorrect to them unless they are at the end of the line with the key, but it will also let someone at the end know that someone is eavesdropping.
It really isn't too difficult to build one of these yourself. I recently came across an old cash register laying on the street that said "free" beside it, I grabbed it (it had a really cool looking LCD display), tore it apart and on the back there was a part number for the LCD -- optrex DMF651. I emailed optrex, got the information on this display, wrote a parallel port interface for it, and threw together a cheap P90 to power it and the mp3 playing software. Then all you have to do is get a decent power inverter for your vehicle (if you want a car mp3/cd player) and install that puppy. If you have a deck that has a line in, hook the soundcard output to that, if not, take it straight into your amp. There are lots of these projects at http://www.mp3car.com. Most of these use smaller text based LCD's, but would work fine for the purposes. You can then setup X11amp or whatever you run to play cd's as well as set something up to load an mp3 cd into it. It's really a lot of fun building one of these things if you're into coding at all. I'm currently working on writing a pretty cool GUI for this 640x200 lcd I found:)
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that it may have actually worked, but at about 1/2 the expected output? https://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork
"Q&A just finished; reading of results; 470 kW maintained continuously during self-sustain; customer satisfied; sale made; more later."
Not a toy at all. As a CS ISU grad, and a friend of a researcher in the C6, I can attest that this has more uses than a toy. For instance, John Deere has used this to model new virtual cockpits for upcoming tractors. They can see if all controls are within reach and in reasonably intuitive places. If they aren't, they can change their positioning using a wand to grab them and move them. It has (or plans to) also been used with other caves to collaboratively develop models and see them work, such as a model of an engine.
It is quite an impressive feat. You can pick, grab, and move things around just like they are right in front of you. It is more than just 6 flat panels. You also wear lcd shutter glasses and make those 6 panels turn 3D. So when reaching out to grab things they are exactly where you would expect them to be.
However, it CAN be used as a toy even though that isn't it's primary purpose... I have also seen Quake played in the C4 (precursor to C6). Pretty cool to say the least.
We are also arrogant to think that are actions couldn't affect the earth's climate. How naive are we to think that we can expell tons of pollutants into the air and say that it won't cause any problems and back it up by climate changes throughout history.
Yes, the climate has changed for various reasons throughout the ages. However, that does NOT mean that our actions don't have anything to do with the climate change in the current age and we should take no responsibility for our contribution to the climate change (of which I'm sure there are many factors that contribute to it). That's like saying (with a slightly exaggerated horrible analogy) "The earth has been changing the landscape and leveling cities in HUGE ways for much longer than the life-span of a human being so it doesn't matter that the a-bomb on Hiroshima turned the city into a desolate wasteland".
Our actions do play a part in this - we are affecting the earth in many ways. To deny that is being naive and arrogant. Everything has cause and effect. Pumping pollutants into the air is the cause, what the effect is may be unknown to us right now but I'm sure we or our descendants will find out someday as long as people are too lazy and naive to care.
It seems to me that, as great as space travel sounds, current solutions won't be easily physically tolerated for the average human.
During the broadcast, the announcers said that SpaceShipOne experienced 5g's on re-entry. Can the average human withstand 5g's without some sort of conditioning? That seems to be an awefully high number (most roller coasters max around 3g's and only experience that for split seconds).
Would space tourism then require physical training? If so, it seems in my experience that the majority of people "fizzle out" with any sort of training, and it may put quite a damper on the interest in this sort of thing.
I, for one, hope that someday it will be as easy as hopping on a jet, but I was just curious on the physical implications of the sort of space travel that looks to be accessible (with lots of money) within the next 5-10 years using a system such as SpaceShipOne.
Java really isn't -that- slow. That's a common misconception.
Everyone thinks "Java is slow" because the only time they experience Java is in a Swing app. Swing is VERY bloated and therefore very slow. The only other "slow" processes in Java are Garbage Collection, which is pretty minimal if the app is written correctly, and the initial startup of the VM.
Look, for example, at Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a Java app, and its extremely powerful and not very slow. Why? They use their own widgets that have less overhead, they are not using Swing widgets.
Also, a correctly written OpenGL java app has been proven to perform at 85% the speed of its C counterpart (yes C, not C++). A couple of guys (I can't find the link) ported QuakeII to java to get this statistic. Not bad considering the relative youth of OpenGL bindings in Java.
I once had a "Java Sucks" attitude myself (I've been a hardcore C++ programmer for over 9 years), but I must say, after using the language for quite some time (~2 years), I've become very fond of it, and have written several large & FAST Java apps -- in about 70% of the time it would have taken to write in C++.
I was a software engineer on Nortel Network's VoIP "succession" line of products, and I can attest that wiretapping ability is something that was required for us to add.
The issue is with conversations now being transmitted in packets as opposed to analog signals, its impossible to tap the wire conventionally. The only place you could do that is from where the signal is converted back to POTS (plain old telephone service) to the house. Which, in a perfect VoIP world, isn't going to even be an option as people are using things like cable modems as their VoIP gateways (so its digital all the way from the house).
However, I don't think this "feature" hobbled our progress. It was just another feature in an extremely long list of features that were necessary. I don't think it took the engineer more than a week to implement, but possibly its more difficult in different architectures? (A key to Nortels architecture was being able to seemlessly integrate with POTS service, so digital->analog conversion was basically a built-in).
Now, whether I agree with the "feature" or not is a different story, but I won't go into that....
All I can say is I worked as a R&D software engineer for Nortel Networks, and this is nothing new.
We were (and they still are) developing voice-over-ip infrastructure equipment (Succession as they call it) and it was -required- that we implement a way for feds to tap the lines before we could even consider rolling out and selling the product.
There are a lot of gov't requirements behind the scenes than you might realize (and people can't talk about)...
Wouldn't the first step, before implementing a lunar-based power plant, be to solve the problem of defense and repair of this power plant from space debris?
The moon is riddled with impact craters due to its lack of an atmosphere, and what would stop one of these impacts from destroying part/all of the power station. Some sort of lunar-based maintenance team, robots, some star-trek esq shields?
Without some sort of defense or repair system, I don't believe we could ever become dependent on a lunar-based power station.
I agree that Iowa may not be the most glamorous state, but you have to give our Universities a little credit. Iowa State University is a leading school for engineering and sciences. Iowa State is the birthplace of Computer Science, not some "no name school in Iowa". The first digital computer, the ABC or Atanasoff Berry Computer, was invented there after all, and its design concepts were used in the first programmable computer, the Eniac (not invented there).
...) to straighten out the stereotypes they have of the state from what they saw in The Bridges of Madison County.
Iowa State is also leading the way with VR technologies such as the Cave (or C6) technologies the Army and many other universities have today. It is a current ISU professor that invented the techology, not while she was at Iowa State, but she is a professor there in charge of the technology now.
And to give another of Iowa's universities some credit, the University of Iowa is one of the top medical schools in the states. However, I don't know as much about that school since I am a tech person, not a med person.
Yes, as a CS graduate of ISU I may be a little biased, but I get sick of everyone stereotyping Iowa's universities because they weren't worldy enough to ever travel to Iowa and visit any of its several universities (ISU, UofI, UNI, Drake,
As appealing as a dash-board sized computer sounds, I think its a little pricey. I've had a computer in my car for ~3 years and it cost 1/3-1/2 of what the asking price of this unit is. The only drawback is that it isn't dash-board sized, so I had to install it under my rear seats.
If anyone wants to do it, buy a power inverter (sinewave inverter otherwise you will probably have noise in the sound and video) for about $50, build a low-cost PC (celeron) with video out ($300+?), a car LCD (5" or 6" for about $100 on ebay), and then some sort of input devices. I used a fellowes touchpad mouse($15) that I installed in my center console and I also made an IR detector (schematics are online and can be built for under $15) that plugged into my serial port that, with the right winamp plugin, would allow me to control winamp with my cd player's remote. For the sound, my car cd player (panasonic) had a Aux-In, but if that isn't an option for you, you could use an FM Modulator that would broadcast the computer's sound over a certain FM station (like cd changers do).
Having a car-computer like this definitally took the edge off long trips (especially for the passengers since I couldn't exactly watch the DivX's/Video games they were playing very well while driving).
Also be aware that an LCD in view of the driver may be illegal! I had the LCD installed in my front dashboard directly above the cd player. This was a great place for everyone to view it, but while on a trip from NC -> IA, I was pulled over for speeding and questioned by the highway patrol about the LCD. Luckily, I had the power for the comp/lcd on a switch so it was turned off by the time the officer had come to the car so I didn't get fined.
As a former employee of Nortel Networks, I can say they have been developing this equipment for many years and have been testing in the field for at least the last 3 years. 2 years ago a 2 billion dollar contract with Sprint was rolled out with the 2nd generation Voice-over-IP equipment (Nortel Networks calls it "Succession" equipment), and we were already working on the 4th generation of it late in 2001 (when I stopped working there). The 4th generation contained virtually every current phone option + more, and plans were in place already for features through the 6th generation back then. There were also several other companies (Cisco Systems) working on the same Voice-over-ip equipment, but Nortel was at least 4 years ahead of them (at least that's what Sprint and several other companies told us).
,the reason the telecoms are pushing for packet-based phone networks is because its WAY cheaper for them to support 1 network, than it is for them to support internet and phone networks simultaneously and because phone networks must be connected in a web, each local station must connect to every other local station, up to a large scale one where there is a trunk to another large scale.
As far as stability of packet based phone network, the goal is to have 99.999% (5 9's) of stability that is already achieved on our current POTS telephone service, and I can vouch that we were getting very close to that kind of stability with redundancy and nightly sanity tests - no telecom will stand for anythign less out of phone equipment than 5 9's.
Lastly, the equipment being developed by Nortel was amazing and great to work on. All pieces of the network auto-detected each other once connected to the 'net (either over tcp/ip or atm), and would integrate seemlessly with the current phone network making an unnoticable change when it begins to be rolled out in mass. Also
Iowa State University, which when I lived in the dorms had over 1Terrabyte of searchable shares, recently had a crackdown and had some of the top sharers' equipment seized. Maybe this is going to be the trend in large universities? I remember some other universities getting hit a little over a year ago.
Have you not heard of DivX ? I wouldn't say it compresses dvd's in such a way that they're pointless...
Not necessarily. The basis of quantum physics is that once a particle has been measured its state is set, and until it is measured it is impossible to know its state (its a roll of the dice). Quantum encryption uses interference to set states and if an outsider does make a measurement of its state (up or down) the state of the particle will get set, and the interference used to make quantum encryption work, will not work correctly. It will not only yield a result that is incorrect to them unless they are at the end of the line with the key, but it will also let someone at the end know that someone is eavesdropping.
It really isn't too difficult to build one of these yourself. I recently came across an old cash register laying on the street that said "free" beside it, I grabbed it (it had a really cool looking LCD display), tore it apart and on the back there was a part number for the LCD -- optrex DMF651. I emailed optrex, got the information on this display, wrote a parallel port interface for it, and threw together a cheap P90 to power it and the mp3 playing software. Then all you have to do is get a decent power inverter for your vehicle (if you want a car mp3/cd player) and install that puppy. If you have a deck that has a line in, hook the soundcard output to that, if not, take it straight into your amp. There are lots of these projects at http://www.mp3car.com. Most of these use smaller text based LCD's, but would work fine for the purposes. You can then setup X11amp or whatever you run to play cd's as well as set something up to load an mp3 cd into it. It's really a lot of fun building one of these things if you're into coding at all. I'm currently working on writing a pretty cool GUI for this 640x200 lcd I found :)