Toss aside Kamen's visions for a moment and remember that he's still got financial backers to deal with, and they want a solid market to rely on. I think that most people have more faith in the Segway as an industrial tool than a commercial unit.
I think the key point that just about everyone I've seen posting so far is missing is this.
The Segway was not developed primarily for the consumer.
If you look through their website, they have already implemented the Segway mostly in industrial and commercial applications.
They're only starting to sell the Segway to consumers now because this is the second phase of the project.
Although the applications of the Segway in some communities as a personal mobility device may be limited, I doubt that we will fail to see it successfully implemented in various divisions of labor.
I would assume that the design is fairly easy to replicate and any of the major manufacturers could bake a three million tag sheet of these little babies in a week.
Just to confirm from the company's official press release:
Kameleon's signature backlighting also provides a bright and vivid display for easy viewing, and the animated graphics on the display give a quick visual feedback of the controller's status.
I perused and perused, there is NO mention of user customization of the animated graphics. Don't make this remote to be more (or less) than it is.
you're absolutely right - touch screens are not very useful when it comes to remotes because you want to be looking at the TV instead, not looking down at the silly remote to check that you didn't accidentally press "record" instead of "play"...
Why don't you READ the article before you start making incorrect claims about it? According to the article: The Electro-Luminous Display combines the flexibility of a touch-screen with the push button feel of a traditional remote control, so you get the best of both worlds!
The Kameleon doesn't use a touchscreen, it lights the buttons that you need. And I bet they're mappable too!
The technology used by this telescope to counter the effects of the atmosphere in measurements is called adaptive optics. This is the first application I know of for adaptive optics on a solar telescope.
This technology has been around for awhile, and was first seriously developed by the military at the Starfire Optical Range.
Recently it has been used in such telescope projects as the WM Keck Observatory and Gemini Project . I know AO is also used for measurement of eye aberrations, with projects being conducted at several Universities. For more information about Adaptive Optics, I suggest the Center for Adaptive Optics
My personal experience with AO was as an intern for Gemini this past summer. I helped write parallel code for a program that simulates current and future adaptive optics systems planned for the next generation of extremely large telescopes.
Remember, what can run, can be reverse engineered. Them making a software driver is an invitation for people to reverse engineer the stuff going on in the card
Criminal Hacker Terrorist 1: I've got into a Top Secret Computer and stole their wireless card's software driver! Lets reverse engineer it so we can listen in on their Secret data transmissions!
Criminal Hacker Terrorist 2: Did you steal their Secret data when you were on the computer?
GROMACS is the main simulation program we use. Its very well programmed, optimized, and GPL to boot. I hope that the software I write will have this sort of functionality and optimization.
I've done a little parallel programming working at my college for a professor as well as an internship for Gemini Observatories in Hawaii.
From what I've seen, just about any simulation involving large systems of particles can be fairly easily parallelized code-wise. These are mostly the sort of problems that require massive processing power in the first place.
I can't think of a reason why we shouldn't be getting hyped about these teraflops. We use a 8 node AppleSeed cluster at work and I've seen that thing hump out 4-6 gigaflops of crunching power. It takes as long as a week to run some of our molecular dynamics simulations. If we had 10 teraflops of power in our hands those simulations could take somewhere on the order of minutes instead of days.
Don't expect a clear signal on your car stereo using Nueros. The Nueros unit has an FM transmitter, not digital radio. So you're still dealing with an analog signal and the sort of loss associated with that.
From my experience with cassette adaptors... some suck, others don't. But on average they do better than an FM wireless transmitter like Nueros's built-in feature.
Of course your best bet is simply to buy a car deck that comes with input jacks
Sorry to break everyone's hearts... but this technology's been around for awhile, here's one of the newer wireless FM adapters you could buy today:
Wireless Music Adapter
I haven't seen much advancement in these devices, particularly since the FCC limits their broadcasting to a miserable 7-10 feet (clear).
So expect to be able to put your Nueros next to your home radio and get clear reception, but don't plan on starting a weekly neighborhood radio "Slashdot Talk" with your new toy.
Slashdot Mirror
and here's the article
Toss aside Kamen's visions for a moment and remember that he's still got financial backers to deal with, and they want a solid market to rely on. I think that most people have more faith in the Segway as an industrial tool than a commercial unit.
Just my 0.02 though...
AA
I think the key point that just about everyone I've seen posting so far is missing is this.
The Segway was not developed primarily for the consumer.
If you look through their website, they have already implemented the Segway mostly in industrial and commercial applications.
They're only starting to sell the Segway to consumers now because this is the second phase of the project.
Although the applications of the Segway in some communities as a personal mobility device may be limited, I doubt that we will fail to see it successfully implemented in various divisions of labor.
AA
I would assume that the design is fairly easy to replicate and any of the major manufacturers could bake a three million tag sheet of these little babies in a week.
Just to confirm from the company's official press release:
Kameleon's signature backlighting also provides a bright and vivid display for easy viewing, and the animated graphics on the display give a quick visual feedback of the controller's status.
I perused and perused, there is NO mention of user customization of the animated graphics. Don't make this remote to be more (or less) than it is.
Aron
you're absolutely right - touch screens are not very useful when it comes to remotes because you want to be looking at the TV instead, not looking down at the silly remote to check that you didn't accidentally press "record" instead of "play"
Why don't you READ the article before you start making incorrect claims about it? According to the article:
The Electro-Luminous Display combines the flexibility of a touch-screen with the push button feel of a traditional remote control, so you get the best of both worlds!
The Kameleon doesn't use a touchscreen, it lights the buttons that you need. And I bet they're mappable too!
-Aron
GROMACs is better suited for the sort of work we're doing. No further comments =)
Aron
my boss works for a development team based at UIUC. I'll get back to you on why we use GROMACS and not NAMD.
Aron
The technology used by this telescope to counter the effects of the atmosphere in measurements is called adaptive optics. This is the first application I know of for adaptive optics on a solar telescope.
.
This technology has been around for awhile, and was first seriously developed by the military at the Starfire Optical Range
Recently it has been used in such telescope projects as the WM Keck Observatory and Gemini Project . I know AO is also used for measurement of eye aberrations, with projects being conducted at several Universities. For more information about Adaptive Optics, I suggest the Center for Adaptive Optics
My personal experience with AO was as an intern for Gemini this past summer. I helped write parallel code for a program that simulates current and future adaptive optics systems planned for the next generation of extremely large telescopes.
Remember, what can run, can be reverse engineered. Them making a software driver is an invitation for people to reverse engineer the stuff going on in the card
...oh...
Criminal Hacker Terrorist 1: I've got into a Top Secret Computer and stole their wireless card's software driver! Lets reverse engineer it so we can listen in on their Secret data transmissions!
Criminal Hacker Terrorist 2: Did you steal their Secret data when you were on the computer?
Criminal Hacker Terrorist 1:
in case you were interested...
GROMACS is the main simulation program we use. Its very well programmed, optimized, and GPL to boot. I hope that the software I write will have this sort of functionality and optimization.
From what I've seen, just about any simulation involving large systems of particles can be fairly easily parallelized code-wise. These are mostly the sort of problems that require massive processing power in the first place.
I can't think of a reason why we shouldn't be getting hyped about these teraflops. We use a 8 node AppleSeed cluster at work and I've seen that thing hump out 4-6 gigaflops of crunching power. It takes as long as a week to run some of our molecular dynamics simulations. If we had 10 teraflops of power in our hands those simulations could take somewhere on the order of minutes instead of days.
Don't expect a clear signal on your car stereo using Nueros. The Nueros unit has an FM transmitter, not digital radio. So you're still dealing with an analog signal and the sort of loss associated with that.
From my experience with cassette adaptors... some suck, others don't. But on average they do better than an FM wireless transmitter like Nueros's built-in feature.
Of course your best bet is simply to buy a car deck that comes with input jacks
I haven't seen much advancement in these devices, particularly since the FCC limits their broadcasting to a miserable 7-10 feet (clear).
So expect to be able to put your Nueros next to your home radio and get clear reception, but don't plan on starting a weekly neighborhood radio "Slashdot Talk" with your new toy.