Color Kinetics have a number of LED light product lines, both professional and consumer. Their consumer branch, Sauce makes an assortment of wands, flashlights and nightlights, while their professional arm has done a number of Huge installations.
As for prices, I'm sure if you have to ask, you can't afford it...their 4 color intelligent nightlight looks relatively cool for $8.
Last night the launch site at Cape Spear was covered with heavy fog--zero visibility and ceiling zero. Launch has been scrubbed and the team is looking for another opportunity.
Although not a software solution, we use Test Quest to automate our reboot and application execution tests. Basically the hardware in an external controller machine (a second PC) simulates keyboard and mouse actions, along with a bunch of discrete lines that can be set high and low for things like reboot, power switch, and floppy drive. The system can also read back discrete lines for things like "is the system powered on?", and can take a screen capture to compare bitmaps, or do OCR to read results. It's all controlled by windows DLLs that can be written by anybody with a basic understanding of C, or pseudo-automatically written with the TestQuest recorder system.
They may have other newer systems, or a software solution for now, but for what we do it works great. We only test on PC hardware, but they have a variety of modules and interfaces for touchpads, VGA, svideo, Mac and Sparc hardware as well.
Is a plethora of CS and CG knowledge enough when creating SFX for movies, or do you find advanced knowledge of the movie-making art a requirement as well? For instance, are there times when someone is making an effect that looks good by itself, but breaks some of the "basic rules" of filming or the scene setup. Or instead, do you find yourself unencumbered by the those rules, and able to create more innovative effects without thinking about them?
I second that. BMG has some really great multimedia presentations, which unfortunately are only available in the live version (New York, Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas). They do have a DVD available on their website, but it is meant for surround sound only (which would still not be bad) plus includes some photos and interviews. I haven't seen the video myself, so I can't comment on its possible effectiveness in your course (especially since to really experience it you'd have to have a surround sound auditorium of some sort)
(Subject changed to reflect varying schools' abbreviations)
So here's one way to decide: What did you play with as a kid (or right now, for that matter)?
Choose one:
[ ] "I learned BASIC, asm, and C." Congratulations. You are a CS major.
[ ] "I tore apart radios and used Radio Shack 'x projects in one' kits." Congratulations. You are a CpE (or possibly just plain EE) major.
It does appear all of the current in-prints are paperback however. Powells Books in Portland, OR (a quite giant independent new & used bookstore, great for finding OOPs and rares) has 3 used hardbacks available. Just drop "Brian Aldiss non-stop" in the search. All less than $8 too.
The problem isn't from the kernel not knowing what the CPU is. True, it doesn't, but it doesn't mind that, and works fine on the Pentium 4 anyway. The real problem is in RPM.
When an RPM based system goes to install, it needs to know what arch type to use (i386, sparc, etc) and it doesn't have the CPUID for the Pentium 4 lined up as "i386 compatible" so it basically throws it's hands up, and says "I can't find any packages to install, I give!" Although slightly improper, if Redhat had included a catchall, like "if you don't know what it is, try i386" then things would have been fine.
As it is, 7.0 just masks the cpuid in the kernel to lie and say "686", which I consider a fix at the wrong end of the pipe. They should have fixed the kernel to report the CPUID properly (it's "f86" but everyone thought x would be base10 not hex, so they all parse it wrong and give "?86") and patch the RPM arch database to match the real Pentium 4 CPUID to an i386 compatible install.
My opinions are not those of my employer. Made fresh daily!
Oh what a horrible thought, perverting young minds with the woes of sysadmining. But anyway...
If you have the resources, give each student (or small group of) a newly installed machine (or better yet, let them do it) and then have a few week contest for each team to crack the other boxes. Let them each setup security and such for a few days, and then go at it. The admins can come back and fix any holes they see or exploits that may have made it through, but keep tabs on who's box has been cracked (or cracked worst). It'll either generate a class full of script kiddies, or a set of good, security minded admins.
Or instead on the programming side, fractals. Yeah, they've been done alot, but your students should be able to understand most of the fractal basics, and when they get one going, they make perty images!
Your next available alternative from using Xeons is to use PentuimPros. I forget the chipset (it's not 440FX, it's whatever's after, and it's not very popular... 440GX?) There are 4-way PPro boards out there, but since your top speed is 4x200mhz, it's yet again hardly worth it.
http://developer.intel.com should list the chipset, but good luck finding such a board on the open market.
Slashdot Mirror
Although they didn't say much more about it...
Wired blurb
Color Kinetics have a number of LED light product lines, both professional and consumer. Their consumer branch, Sauce makes an assortment of wands, flashlights and nightlights, while their professional arm has done a number of Huge installations.
As for prices, I'm sure if you have to ask, you can't afford it...their 4 color intelligent nightlight looks relatively cool for $8.
From the site:
Latest 09:20 EST 8/8/02 -
Last night the launch site at Cape Spear was covered with heavy fog--zero visibility and ceiling zero. Launch has been scrubbed and the team is looking for another opportunity.
Although not a software solution, we use Test Quest to automate our reboot and application execution tests. Basically the hardware in an external controller machine (a second PC) simulates keyboard and mouse actions, along with a bunch of discrete lines that can be set high and low for things like reboot, power switch, and floppy drive. The system can also read back discrete lines for things like "is the system powered on?", and can take a screen capture to compare bitmaps, or do OCR to read results. It's all controlled by windows DLLs that can be written by anybody with a basic understanding of C, or pseudo-automatically written with the TestQuest recorder system.
They may have other newer systems, or a software solution for now, but for what we do it works great. We only test on PC hardware, but they have a variety of modules and interfaces for touchpads, VGA, svideo, Mac and Sparc hardware as well.
Is a plethora of CS and CG knowledge enough when creating SFX for movies, or do you find advanced knowledge of the movie-making art a requirement as well? For instance, are there times when someone is making an effect that looks good by itself, but breaks some of the "basic rules" of filming or the scene setup. Or instead, do you find yourself unencumbered by the those rules, and able to create more innovative effects without thinking about them?
I second that. BMG has some really great multimedia presentations, which unfortunately are only available in the live version (New York, Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas). They do have a DVD available on their website, but it is meant for surround sound only (which would still not be bad) plus includes some photos and interviews. I haven't seen the video myself, so I can't comment on its possible effectiveness in your course (especially since to really experience it you'd have to have a surround sound auditorium of some sort)
(Subject changed to reflect varying schools' abbreviations)
So here's one way to decide: What did you play with as a kid (or right now, for that matter)?
Choose one:
[ ] "I learned BASIC, asm, and C." Congratulations. You are a CS major.
[ ] "I tore apart radios and used Radio Shack 'x projects in one' kits." Congratulations. You are a CpE (or possibly just plain EE) major.
It might just be that easy.
It does appear all of the current in-prints are paperback however. Powells Books in Portland, OR (a quite giant independent new & used bookstore, great for finding OOPs and rares) has 3 used hardbacks available. Just drop "Brian Aldiss non-stop" in the search. All less than $8 too.
When an RPM based system goes to install, it needs to know what arch type to use (i386, sparc, etc) and it doesn't have the CPUID for the Pentium 4 lined up as "i386 compatible" so it basically throws it's hands up, and says "I can't find any packages to install, I give!" Although slightly improper, if Redhat had included a catchall, like "if you don't know what it is, try i386" then things would have been fine.
As it is, 7.0 just masks the cpuid in the kernel to lie and say "686", which I consider a fix at the wrong end of the pipe. They should have fixed the kernel to report the CPUID properly (it's "f86" but everyone thought x would be base10 not hex, so they all parse it wrong and give "?86") and patch the RPM arch database to match the real Pentium 4 CPUID to an i386 compatible install.
My opinions are not those of my employer. Made fresh daily!
Oh what a horrible thought, perverting young minds with the woes of sysadmining. But anyway...
If you have the resources, give each student (or small group of) a newly installed machine (or better yet, let them do it) and then have a few week contest for each team to crack the other boxes. Let them each setup security and such for a few days, and then go at it. The admins can come back and fix any holes they see or exploits that may have made it through, but keep tabs on who's box has been cracked (or cracked worst). It'll either generate a class full of script kiddies, or a set of good, security minded admins.
Or instead on the programming side, fractals. Yeah, they've been done alot, but your students should be able to understand most of the fractal basics, and when they get one going, they make perty images!
Your next available alternative from using Xeons is to use PentuimPros. I forget the chipset (it's not 440FX, it's whatever's after, and it's not very popular... 440GX?) There are 4-way PPro boards out there, but since your top speed is 4x200mhz, it's yet again hardly worth it.
http://developer.intel.com should list the chipset, but good luck finding such a board on the open market.